Thucydides[60] informs us, that Themistocles had received great gifts from Artaxerxes king of Persia, when settled at Magnesia; the king had given him that city for bread, Lampsacus for wine, and Myuns to furnish him with victuals. To these Athenaeus adds two more, Palæscepsis and Percope, to yield him clothing and furniture. This precisely, to this day, is the Abyssinian idea, when they conceive they are entertaining men of rank; for strangers, that come naked and vagabond among them, without name and character, or means of subsistence, such as the Greeks in Abyssinia, are always received as beggars, and neglected as such, till hunger sets their wits to work to provide for the present exigency, and low intrigues and practices are employed afterwards to maintain them in the little advancements which they have acquired, but no honour or confidence follows, or very rarely. In Abyssinia, when the prisoner is condemned in capital cases, he is not again remitted to prison, which is thought cruel, but he is immediately carried away, and the sentence executed upon him. I have given several instances of this in the annals of the country. Abba Salama, the Acab Saat, was condemned by the king the morning he entered Gondar, on his return from Tigré, and immediately hanged, in the garment of a priest, on a tree at the door of the king’s palace. Chremation, brother to the usurper Socinios, was executed that same morning; Guebra Denghel, Ras Michael’s son-in-law, was likewise executed that same day, immediately after judgment; and so were several others. The same was the practice in Persia, as we learn from Xenophon[61], and more plainly from Diodorus[62]. The capital punishments in Abyssinia are the cross. Socinios[63] first ordered Arzo, his competitor, who had fled for assistance and refuge to Phineas king of the Falasha, to be crucified without the camp. We find the same punishment inflicted by Artaxerxes upon Haman[64], who was ordered to be affixed to the cross till he died. And Polycrates of Samos, Cicero tells us[65], was crucified by order of Orætis, prætor of Darius. The next capital punishment is flaying alive. That this barbarous execution still prevails in Abyssinia is already proved by the fate of the unfortunate Woosheka, taken prisoner in the campaign of 1769 while I was in Abyssinia; a sacrifice made to the vengeance of the beautiful Ozoro Esther, who, kind and humane as she was in other respects, could receive no atonement for the death of her husband. Socrates[66] says, that Manes the heretic was flayed alive by order of the king of Persia, and his skin made into a bottle. And Procopius[67] informs us, that Pacurius ordered Basicius to be flayed alive, and his skin made into a bottle and hung upon a high tree. And Agathias[68] mentions, that the same punishment was inflicted upon Nachorages _more majorum_, according to ancient custom.