The statements respecting the theocratical state of Meroê and its superior civilization come from Diodorus (iii, 2, 5, 7), Strabo (xvii, p. 822), and Pliny (H. N. vi, 29-33), much later than Herodotus. Diodorus seems to have had no older informants before him, about Ethiopia, than Agatharchidês and Artemidôrus, both in the second century B. C. (Diod. iii, 10.)
[584] Wesseling ad Diodor. iii, 3.
[585] Herodot. ii, 37. Θεοσεβέες δὲ περισσῶς ἐόντες μάλιστα πάντων ἀνθρώπων, etc. He is astonished at the retentiveness of their memory; some of them had more stories to tell than any one whom he had ever seen (ii, 77-109; Diodor. i, 73).
The word priest conveys to a modern reader an idea very different from that of the Egyptian ἱερεῖς, who were not a profession, but an order comprising many occupations and professions,—Josephus the Jew was in like manner an ἱερεὺς κατὰ γένος (cont. Apion. c. 3).
[586] Diodorus (i, 70-73) gives an elaborate description of the monastic strictness with which the daily duties of the Egyptian king were measured out by the priests: compare Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 353, who refers to Hekatæus (probably Hekatæus of Abdêra) and Eudoxus. The priests represented that Psammetichus was the first Egyptian king who broke through the priestly canon limiting the royal allowance of wine: compare Strabo, xvii, p, 790.
The Ethiopian kings at Meroê are said to have been kept in the like pupillage by the priestly order, until a king named Ergamenês, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt, emancipated himself and put the chief priests to death (Diodor. iii, 6).
[587] Herodot. ii, 82-83.
[588] Herodot. ii, 143.
[589] Herodot. ii, 113; στίγματα ἱρά.
[590] Herodot. ii, 30.