The fullest classical account of the Indian suttee, however, is that by the Greek writer Diodoros Sikelos, in the first century B.C., who refers (as did Strabo, already cited) to the custom of widow-burning among the Kathaioi and gives an elaborate description of such a voluntary sacrifice by the wives of a Hindu general that was slain in battle. "Among the Kathaioi," he says, "it is customary for the wives to be burned with their husbands – a sanctioned custom which became established among the barbarians on account of one woman's having made away with her husband by poison."[1] Diodoros's elaborate and graphic description of the suttee that followed upon the death of Keteus, the Indian leader who fell in battle, runs as follows:
'There occurred at this time a strange circumstance which differs wholly from the customs of the Greeks. Keteus, the general of the Indian contingent, had been slain in battle after a noble fight. He left behind him two wives who had accompanied hi throughout the campaign. One he had but lately married; the other had been wedded to him some years previously; and both loved him devotedly.
Now, owing to an old custom among the Hindus, for young men and maidens to marry, not according to their parents' advice, but after their own mutual inclination, the young people in former times married rashly. As a result their choice was often a failure, followed by speedy repentance on both sides; and many wives, yielding to their passions, became corrupted and
- ↑ Diodoros Sikelos, Historia, 17. 91.
