Celsus calls Herodotus to witness for ancestral custom

So that we do not pass over what Celsus said in the passage between, let us set this out as well. “One might also call on Herodotus as a witness to this, who says as follows: ‘The people of the city of Marea and of Apis, who live in the parts of Egypt bordering on Libya, thought themselves Libyans and not Egyptians, and chafed at the observance of the sacred rites, since they did not wish to be barred from cows. So they sent to Ammon, saying that they had nothing in common with the Egyptians, for they lived outside the Delta and did not agree with them, and that they wished to be allowed to taste of everything. But the god would not let them do this. He said that Egypt was the land which the Nile overflows and waters, and that those were Egyptians who live below the city of Elephantine and drink from this river’ (Herodotus, Histories 2.18). That is Herodotus’s account. But Ammon is no worse an envoy of divine things than the angels of the Jews, so that there is nothing wrong in each people practising its own customs.

“Indeed we shall find the greatest difference among them from nation to nation, and yet each people seems to think its own customs the best of all. Of the Ethiopians, those who live at Meroe worship ‘Zeus and Dionysus alone’ (Herodotus, Histories 2.29); the Arabians worship Urania and Dionysus, these alone (Herodotus, Histories 3.8). All the Egyptians worship Osiris and Isis; the people of Sais worship Athena; the people of Naucratis, who began not long ago, have named Serapis; and the rest each in their own way, nome by nome. Some abstain from sheep, revering them as sacred, others from goats, others from crocodiles, others from cows, and they abstain from pigs because they loathe them. Among the Scythians it is a fine thing even to feast on men, and there are Indians who think they do a holy thing by eating even their fathers.

“And somewhere the same Herodotus says (I will again use his very words, so as to be believed), and his account runs thus: ‘If one were to set before all men the task of choosing the finest customs out of all customs, each, after looking them over, would choose their own, so firmly does each people believe its own customs to be by far the finest. It is not likely, then, that anyone but a madman would make a mockery of such things. That all men hold this view about customs may be judged from many other proofs, and among them from this one. Darius, during his reign, called the Greeks who were present and asked them for what sum they would be willing to eat their fathers when they died. They said that they would not do it for any sum. After this Darius called the Indians known as Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them, while the Greeks were present and learned through an interpreter what was said, for what sum they would agree to burn their fathers with fire when they died. They cried out loudly and told him to speak no words of ill omen. So these things are fixed by custom, and Pindar, I think, put it rightly in his verse when he said that custom is king of all’ (Herodotus, Histories 3.38; Pindar, fragment 169).”