the common people in Egypt learn only, from their parents or relations, that which is required for the exercise of their peculiar professions, as we have already seen: a few of them only teach them something of literature, especially those who cultivate the more refined of the arts: wrestling and music it is not their custom to practice: for they conceive that, by exercise in the palaestra, young men acquire not solid health, but a temporary increase of strength, which is by no means free from danger; and music they esteem not only useless, but even injurious, as rendering the minds of men effeminate.... § 83. W. The customs of the Egyptians with regard to their sacred animals are exceedingly surprising, and worthy to be examined; for they venerate some of these animals in an extraordinary degree, not only while they are living, but even after their death: for example, cats, and ichneumons, and dogs; and besides these, the hawk and the ibis; furthermore, wolves and crocodiles, and other beasts of prey.... Now each kind of the animals, that are held sacred, has a piece of ground appropriated to them, affording a rent sufficient for the care and the food that they require: the Egyptians are also in the habit of making vows to some of their divinities on behalf of their children; and if they recover from the disease, they shave off their hair, and counterpoising it with silver or with gold, they give the money to the priests, who have the care of these animals: the priests expend this money in articles of food; and cutting up the meat for the hawks, call out to them with a loud voice, and throw it to them as they fly near: and for the oats and the ichneumons they soften the bread in milk, and lay it before them with the proper calls and signals; or give them some of the fishes of the Nile cut in pieces: and in the same manner they furnish to every other kind of animal its appropriate food: nor do they attempt to perform these services with any degree of privacy, or to avoid the sight of the multitude; but on the contrary they value themselves, as being the ministers of the highest honours of the Gods, and travel through the cities and the country with their appropriate standards: showing obviously at a distance to what deities they are attached; and receiving the universal respect and homage of those who meet them: and when any one of these animals dies, they roll it up in fine linen, and bewail themselves, and beat their breasts, as they carry it to be embalmed: and then they embalm it with resins, and with substances fit to perfume and to preserve it, and bury it in the sacred vaults: and if any one voluntarily destroys one of these animals, he suffers death: with the exception of the cat and the ibis; for if a person kills either of these, even involuntarily, he infallibly loses his life, a multitude immediately collecting and tearing him in pieces, often without any form of trial; so that, for