as hospitality required: and now seeing you say that you have a
great affection for us, and are troubled when you think we are
departing, we are not averse to your entreaties; and if we may
receive such assurance of your good-will as we think can be alone
sufficient, we will be glad to lead our lives with you as your
wives; but we are afraid that you will in time be weary of our
company, and will then abuse us, and send us back to our parents,
after an ignominious manner." And they desired that they would
excuse them in their guarding against that danger. But the young
men professed they would give them any assurance they should
desire; nor did they at all contradict what they requested, so
great was the passion they had for them. "If then," said they,
"this be your resolution, since you make use of such customs and
conduct of life as are entirely different from all other men,
(12) insomuch that your kinds of food are peculiar to yourselves,
and your kinds of drink not common to others, it will be
absolutely necessary, if you would have us for your wives, that
you do withal worship our gods. Nor can there be any other
demonstration of the kindness which you say you already have, and
promise to have hereafter to us, than this, that you worship the
same gods that we do. For has any one reason to complain, that
now you are come into this country, you should worship the proper
gods of the same country? especially while our gods are common to
all men, and yours such as belong to nobody else but yourselves."
So they said they must either come into such methods of divine
worship as all others came into, or else they must look out for
another world, wherein they may live by themselves, according to
their own laws.

9. Now the young men were induced by the fondness they had for