Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale 2.13.1 · 2.13.1
The robbers prepare a sacrifice to Ares
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Οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἱππόθοον τὸν λῃστὴν ἐκείνης μὲν τῆς νυκτὸς ἔμεινον εὐωχούμενοι, τῇ δὲ ἑξῆς περὶ τὴν θυσίαν ἐγίνοντο. Παρεσκευάζετο δὲ πάντα καὶ ἀγάλματα τοῦ Ἄρεος καὶ σῦλα καὶ στεφανώματα·
Hippothous the robber and his men spent that night feasting, and on the next day they set about the sacrifice. Everything was being made ready: images of Ares, and spoils, and garlands.
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The setting
Book 2, chapter 13. Shipwrecked off Cilicia, Anthia was captured in a forest by the robber Hippothous and his band (2.11.10–2.11.11).
A note on this passage
The story goes back to the forest where Hippothous' band captured Anthia and the merchants who had survived the shipwreck (2.11.11). The robbers' god is Ares, the war god; in the Iliad Zeus tells him that he is the most hateful to him of all the gods on Olympus, because strife and war are always dear to him (Iliad 5.890–891). Herodotus describes a people who gave Ares human victims: the Scythians set up an old iron sword as "the image of Ares" (τοῦ Ἄρεος τὸ ἄγαλμα) and sacrificed to it sheep and horses, and one in every hundred of the prisoners they took in war (Herodotus 4.62).
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