TITHE-GIVING AMONGST ANCIENT PAGAN NATIONS, 129 



frankincense, he repeats, in substance, of the Ethiopians and 

 their cinnamon, which they did not eat, but with prayers made 

 first to their gods, and a sacrifice of forty-four goats and 

 rams ; then the priest, dividing- the cinnamon, took that part 

 belonging to their god Assabinns and left them the rest to 

 make merchandize of.* 



If, then, it is asked of the Babylonians and the other 

 peoples just allnded to, whether they recognised it as a duty 

 to offer a part of their property to their gods, and in what 

 proportion they did so, we see Tiglath-Pileser, Nebuchad- 

 nezzar, Nabonidus, Belshazzar, Cyrus, and other sovereigns, 

 offering their spoils, and often the tithe. But we have 

 inention also of various classes of people in the Euphrates 

 Valley, as well as Phoenician colonists in Carthage, annually 

 offering a tenth of their increase, whether from fruits of the 

 ground or profits by merchandize ; whether from spoils of 

 Avar or other sources of income, whereby the temples Avere 

 furnished and endowed, the priests supported, and the gods 

 honoured; all this being done, partly as a matter of obliga- 

 tion, and partly voluntarily as in payment of vows or giving 

 of thanks. 



We now turn to the Greeks, Romans, and some few other 

 pagan nations of Europe. The earliest allusions to tithe- 

 giving in Greece go back to mythological times, cluster 

 round the oldest writers and lawgivers, and include such 

 legendary names as that of Evander. 



Evander, in classical legend, was a son of Hermes, and the 

 leader of an Arcadian colony into Latium sixty years before 

 the Trojan Avar, or say about 1300 B.C. Cassius (in Aurelius 

 Victor) reports that in Evauder's day, one Recaranus, a 

 shepherd of Greek extraction (called Hercules because of his 

 stiength) having recove-red his oxen that Cacus had stolen, 

 dedicated an altar under the Aventine Mount, Inventori Patri 

 (that is, probably, to Jupiter), calling it the greatest, and 

 teaching j^eople to consecrate their tithes there, for it 

 seemed to him more fit that the gods should receive that 

 honour than their kings, Avhence it came to pass, after the 

 said Hcicules was deified, that it grew into a custom to con- 

 secrate to him a tithe.f 



It is related also by Diodorus Siculus, of the Argives, tbat 



* Pliny, lib. xii, cap. 19, § 89. 



t Cassius, ap. Aurel. Victor^ hi orig. Gent. Rom. Comber's Historical 

 vindication of divine right of tithes, p. 37. 



