Herodotus on Arabia

The Essential Primary Sources
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Herodotus on Arabia
https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844247.book-part-005

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Abstract

The Arabs keep . . . pledges more religiously than almost any other people. They plight faith with the forms following. When two men would swear a friendship, they stand on each side of a third: he with a sharp stone makes a cut on the inside of the hand of each near the middle finger, and, taking a piece from their dress, dips it in the blood of each, and moistens therewith seven stones lying in the midst, calling the while on Bacchus and Urania.

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