Lives of Alcyone

FORTY-SEVENTH LIFE 255
At the age of eighteen Alcyone married Irene, a good and
spiritually-minded woman, and in a year’ s time a son was born to
them. A year later his father died, and Alcyone consequently
became the head of the family, and inherited the father’ s duties
and possessions. He had therefore to take his place in turn in the
administration of the temple and its sacrifices. He strongly disliked
the sacrificial work, tough since the duty came to him he did it for a
time as a matter of course, as his father had done. It involved a
large amount of slaughter, as the offering of animals to the deity was
supposed to be meritorious. The sacrifice of a horse was thought to
be in some way especially pleasing; goats were even more
frequently offered, but were not considered so acceptable.
All Alcyone’ s feelings revolted this wholesale slaughter and
he inwardly doubted whether it could be pleasing to any good God.
Also, he further disliked intensely his father’ s methods of attracting
pilgrims to the temple. He quite understood the advantage of the
arrival of large parties of rich people during his tenancy of the office;
but his father had frequently resorted to direct trickery and
shameless falsehood in order to produce this result, and Alcyone felt
a strong repugnance for this; in fact, he absolutely declined to
engage in it. He therefore made by no means so good a thing out of
the temple revenues as his father had done.
His cousin Mizar did not at all agree with him on these points.
The father’ s teaching had deeply impressed him, and he watched
all this with a somewhat jealous eye, regarding Alcyone’ s scruples
with some contempt, and often telling himself how much better he
could manage affairs if he were the head of the family. He often
urged Alcyone to follow in his father’ s footsteps, and intimated that