[277] "Cyri instit." 7, 1, 4.
[278] 3, 7.
[279] "Vend." 18, 137, 138, 149.
[280] Xenophon, "Cyri instit." 8, 3, 11, 24; Athen. p. 145; Arrian, "Anab." 6, 29.
[281] "Yaçna," 10. 38, 11, 16. Strabo, p. 732, tells us that the deity of the Persians received nothing from the sacrifice.
[282] What Herodotus tells us of the sacrifice of girls and boys by the Magi in Thrace contradicts his own statement that the Magi did not venture to kill any one, and the whole conception of the Avesta. If Cambyses is said to have caused twelve Persians to be buried alive, this is not to be regarded as a sacrifice, but as a barbarous form of execution, which occurs also under the Sassanids. What Herodotus says of the fourteen boys offered by Amestris as a sacrifice, if true, must have its origin in some other superstition, not in the Avesta; and the actions of Amestris and Parysatis in this direction, as recorded by Ctesias, were in any cases crimes, not sacrifices.
[283] Strabo, p. 732.
[284] Fragm. 16, ed. Müller.
[285] 1, 131.
[286] Strabo, p. 733.