peculiar marks and all, after the same manner as Jacob did with Laban's sheep.
Respecting the details of animal worship and its ceremonials, these must be left with Diodore of Sicily, for they were so abominable and utterly abhorred by other nations who were provoked to war against the Egyptian zootheists. In one of these engagements, Cambyses, King of Persia, mortally wounded the helpless god Apis with a spear, and actually gave its carcase to the dogs to be devoured by them. But as the dogs were sacred animals also, such a sacrament as one god eating another, was too much even for the Egyptians, who struck off the dogs from the Catalogue of Gods.
Darius Ochus, another Persian king, sorely troubled the Egyptians for calling him an ass. Darius replied, "the ass would eat their ox." This he did, and then caused an ass to be installed in the Temple in place of Apis as a token of achievement. For this sacrilege, an Egyptian eunuch named Bagoas assassinated Darius, whose corpse the sacred cats ate.
Although one specie of animals deified by one sect would be abominated by others, yet whole nations were unanimous respecting the worship of an ox-god. And such was the extraordinary variety of animals claimed for zootheism, that we find wolves worshipped in Lycopolis. Venus had a pigeon and Minerva the Dragon. Peacocks were claimed by Juno, while Esculapus loved serpents, about which several ridiculous tales are told. Others showed their preference for the Ibis and Ichneumon. Some worshipped the grasshopper-god, Locustarius; and a ratkiller-god is mentioned by Eustathius, the famous commentator of Homer upon the Iliad, etc. Even the old Romans, as Clemens Alexandrinus says, had a god as expeller of flies in the Temple, in the Ox Market, where neither dogs nor flies were ever known to enter. Tacitus exhibits a monstrosity having three heads, viz., that of a lion in the middle, a dog's on the right, and a wolf's head to the left. This trinity was known as God Serapis, which means the Prince of my Father.
Vigilance being a characteristic peculiar to dogs,
