one Bassa hath built 400 mosques.  The Mahometans have 1000 monks in a monastery; the like saith Acosta of Americans; Riccius of the Chinese, for men and women, fairly built; and more richly endowed some of them, than Arras in Artois, Fulda in Germany, or St. Edmund’s-Bury in England with us:  who can describe those curious and costly statues, idols, images, so frequently mentioned in Pausanias?  I conceal their donaries, pendants, other offerings, presents, to these their fictitious gods daily consecrated. [6530]Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedonia, sent two statues of pure gold to Apollo at Delphos. [6531]Croesus, king of Lydia dedicated a hundred golden tiles in the same place with a golden altar:  no man came empty-handed to their shrines.  But these are base offerings in respect; they offered men themselves alive.  The Leucadians, as Strabo writes, sacrificed every year a man, averruncandae, deorum irae, causa, to pacify their gods, de montis praecipitio dejecerent, &c. and they did voluntarily undergo it.  The Decii did so sacrifice, Diis manibus; Curtius did leap into the gulf.  Were they not all strangely deluded to go so far to their oracles, to be so gulled by them, both in war and peace, as Polybius relates (which their argurs, priests, vestal virgins can witness), to be so superstitious, that they would rather lose goods and lives than omit any ceremonies, or offend their heathen gods?  Nicias, that generous and valiant captain of the Greeks, overthrew the Athenian navy, by reason of his too much superstition, [6532] because the augurs told him it was ominous to set sail from the haven of Syracuse whilst the moon was eclipsed; he tarried so long till his enemies besieged him, he and all his army were overthrown.  The [6533]Parthians of old were so sottish in this kind, they would rather lose a victory, nay lose their own lives, than fight in the night, ’twas against their religion.  The Jews would make no resistance on the Sabbath, when Pompeius besieged Jerusalem; and some Jewish Christians in Africa, set upon by the Goths, suffered themselves upon the same occasion to be utterly vanquished.  The superstition of the Dibrenses, a bordering town in Epirus, besieged by the Turks, is miraculous almost to report.  Because a dead dog was flung into the only fountain which the city had, they would die of thirst all, rather than drink of that [6534]unclean water, and yield up the city upon any conditions.  Though the praetor and chief citizens began to drink first, using all good persuasions, their superstition was such, no saying would serve, they must all forthwith die or yield up the city. Vix ausum ipse credere (saith [6535]Barletius) tantam superstitionem, vel affirmare levissimam hanc causam tantae rei vel magis ridiculam, quum non dubitem risum potius quum admirationem posteris excitaturam. The story was too ridiculous, he was ashamed to report it, because he thought nobody would believe it.  It is stupend to relate what