Another example of similar, but far greater heroism, is given by the same chronicler. A mother and her seven sons were urged with blows to eat the forbidden food, and refused to do so. Thinking that the mother would not be able to endure the sight of her sons' sufferings, the officers took them in succession, and inflicted a series of horrible tortures upon them, beginning by cutting off their tongues, hands, and feet, and ending by roasting them while still alive. Their mother, far from counselling her sons to yield, even though they were bribed by promises of wealth and rank, only encouraged them to persevere, and, when the last of her sons was dead, passed herself through the same fiery trial. Even among the ancient Egyptians this repugnance to the Swine prevailed, though there was a sort of Pariah caste among them who bred the animal and ate its flesh. This we learn from Herodotus ("Euterpe," xlvii.):--"The Egyptians consider the pig to be an impure animal, and if therefore a man in passing near a pig should but touch it with his clothes, he goes at once to the river and plunges into it. In the next place, swine-herds, although they be native Egyptians, are the only men who are not allowed to enter into any of their temples, neither will any man give his daughter in marriage to one of them, nor take a wife from among them, but the swine-herds only marry among themselves. "The Egyptians therefore do not think it right to sacrifice swine to any other deities, but to the moon and Bacchus they sacrifice them at the same time; that is to say, at the same full moon, and then they eat the flesh.... This sacrifice of pigs to the moon is performed in the following manner. When the sacrificer has killed the victims, he puts the tip of the tail, the spleen, and the caul together, covers them with the fat found in the belly of the animal, and then consumes it with fire. The rest of the flesh they eat during the full moon in which they offer the sacrifices, but on no other day would any man ever taste it. The poor among them, through want of money, make pigs out of dough; and, after baking them, offer them in sacrifice. "On the eve of the festival of Bacchus, every one slays a pig before his door, and then restores it to the swine-herd that sold it, that he may carry it away. The rest of this festival to Bacchus, except as regards the pigs, the Egyptians celebrate much in the same manner as the Greeks do." It has been conjectured, and with plausibility, that the pig was prohibited by Moses on account of the unwholesomeness of its flesh in a hot country, and that its almost universal repudiation in such lands is a proof of its unfitness for food. In countries where diseases of the skin are so common, and where the dreaded leprosy still maintains its hold, the flesh of the pig is thought, whether rightly or wrongly, to increase the tendency to such diseases, and on that account alone would be avoided.