TITHE-GIVING AMONGST ANCIENT PAGAN NATIONS. 131 



This brings us to the period of the Greco-Persian wars, in 

 the early years of which flourislied Herodotus. He travelled 

 widely and records the customs of many nations. Of the 

 Phocians he relates that out of the tithe of money plained 

 by their victory over the Thessalians they made four statues 

 to Apollo.* 



The same writer tells of a small people, on the Island of 

 Samos, in the ^Egeaii Sea, that they yielded at one time six 

 talents for the tithe of their gain gotten by merchandize. 



A case still more extraordinary, and which may be 

 regarded perhaps as the working of a heathen conscience, is 

 related by Herodotus of a woman of Thracia, a courtesan 

 named Khodophis, who sent a tenth of her gains, in the 

 form of spits for sacrifices, to the temple of Apollo at 

 Delphi. t That this was not unusual seems to be suggested 

 by the case of another of the same class, who, in an old 

 Greek poem, vowed to offer the tenth of all her gains to 

 Aphrodite.:): 



Herodotus^ tells, too, of the Siphnians, who paid tithes of 

 their gold and silver mines. It is worthy of note also that 

 Pausanias, who lived in the second century A.D., said of 

 these Siphnians that " Avhen through greediness they failed 

 to pay their due, the sea overflowing hid their mines from 



sight.! 



But perhaps the most noteworthy instance of tithe- 

 paying in this period was that of Xenophon, who, after his 

 return with the ten thousand Greeks, having first given a 

 part of the tithe of his portion of the spoil to Apollo at 

 Delphi, with another part purchased land and built a temple 

 and altar to the goddess Artemis ; after which he con- 

 secrated the tithe of the fruits of the fields for sacrifices, and 

 instituted a feast, wherein Artemis, out of this land and 

 these tithes, furnished all that came there Avitli meal, bread, 

 wine, junkets, money, and Avith her part of the cattle fed 

 in the sacred pastures, or taken in hunting.lF 



And near the temple, Xenophon set up a pillar with this 

 inscription, " Ground sacred to Artemis. Whosoever pos- 



* Herodotus, lib. 8, c. 27. t Herodotus, lib. 2 : 135. 



J Antholog., lib. 6 ; Comber, p. 31. § iii, 57. 



II Pausanias. Descrijjtio Unecice, x. 11, § 2, Spelman, Larger Treatise 

 concerning tithes, p. 124. 



II Xenophon, Anabasis, lib. 5, c. 3, § 4-13. 



