Besides these things the Egyptians have found out also to what god each
month and each day belongs, and what fortunes a man will meet with who
is born on any particular day, and how he will die, and what kind of
a man he will be: and these inventions were taken up by those of the
Hellenes who occupied themselves about poesy. Portents too have been
found out by them more than by all other men besides; for when a portent
has happened, they observe and write down the event which comes of it,
and if ever afterwards anything resembling this happens, they believe
that the event which comes of it will be similar. Their divination is
ordered thus:--the art is assigned not to any man but to certain of the
gods, for there are in their land Oracles of Heracles, of Apollo, of
Athene, of Artemis, or Ares, and of Zeus, and moreover that which they
hold most in honour of all, namely the Oracle of Leto which is in the
city of Buto. The manner of divination however is not established among
them according to the same fashion everywhere, but is different
in different places. The art of medicine among them is distributed
thus:--each physician is a physician of one disease and of no more; and
the whole country is full of physicians, for some profess themselves
to be physicians of the eyes, others of the head, others of the teeth,
others of the affections of the stomach, and others of the more obscure
ailments.

Their fashions of mourning and of burial are these:--Whenever any
household has lost a man who is of any regard amongst them, the whole
number of women of that house forthwith plaster over their heads or even
their faces with mud. Then leaving the corpse within the house they go
themselves to and fro about the city and beat themselves, with their
garments bound up by a girdle and their breasts exposed, and with them
go all the women who are related to the dead man, and on the other side