On Isis and Osiris

...because many small animals die and are caught in them when they are salted, it is simple-minded to think that salt is not clean. They are also said to water Apis from his own private well, and to keep him away from the Nile entirely, 3 not thinking the water is impure because of the crocodile, as some suppose; (4 for nothing is held in such honor by the Egyptians as the Nile) 5 but because it seems to fatten, and especially to cause corpulence, the Nile...

...read epithigontas. But the reading I have preferred, the first Aldine edition and Basle 1574 exhibit distinctly.

3 ou miaron hēgoumenous not considering it impure] Read hēgoumenoi considering. Markland. I have changed nothing, as all editions object, nor is a correction perhaps needed, since apeirgein to keep away, a verb in the infinitive mood, precedes it more immediately; which verb, as grammarians like to say, can be understood in the following clause: namely, “Not considering the water impure—they keep him away, as some, etc.”

4 ouden gar houtō timē for nothing is in such honor, etc.] It is most certain what our author asserts in this place: for nothing was in such honor among the Egyptians as the Nile, indeed called the Egyptian Jupiter by them; so certainly Parmeno of Byzantium, an ancient poet, reports in Athenaeus (Deipnosophists, book 5). Whence it is also that in Julius Firmicus Maternus and other writers, this nation is said to worship and venerate water: indeed, they consecrated black statues to this river, which the Egyptians could then adore. Thus Pausanias in Arcadia: “For all other rivers, they make the statues of white stone, except for the Egyptian Nile; but for the Nile, they are accustomed to fashion the statues of black stone.” To these you may finally add what Heliodorus reports in Aethiopica, book 9, page 423: “The Egyptians deify the Nile, and consider it the greatest of superior powers.” See also page 445. That the ancients, including the Persians, also worshipped rivers is known from Herodotus and Arnobius.

5 all’ ho piainein but that it fattens] The construction would be clearer and fuller if it were written all’ hoti piainein dokei, namely: “Not that they judge the water of the Nile to be polluted, but that its water, when drunk, seems to cause fatness.”