However, sometimes not animals but symbolical figures were substituted instead of men, and this must be regarded as another advancement in religious notions. The Egyptian king Amasis offered at Heliopolis wax-images instead of the human beings formerly sacrificed. 12 The Hindoos shaped the form of a man in butter or dough, and burnt it to the destructive goddess Kali. 13 An ancient oracle ordered the old Italic tribes, "Offer heads to Hades, and to his father (Saturn) a man", 14 and this command was for some time acted upon: but when Hercules passed through Italy with the herd of Geryon, he is said to have persuaded the people to offer images of human heads instead of real ones, 15 and torches instead of men. 16 Again, it was customary on the festival of the Compitalia celebrated on the cross-ways, to offer sacrifices in honour of the Lares and their mother the goddess Mania; but Junius Brutus induced the people to present garlic and poppy-heads instead of human heads. 17 Every year, on the ides of May, during the festival of the Lemuralia celebrated for the souls of the departed, 24 or 30 figures 18 of men made of bulrushes 19 were, for the propitiation of Saturn, by the chief priests and the Vestal virgins thrown from the Sublician bridge into the Tiber, as substitutes for the human victims which had once been killed on the same day;20 and this usage, the origin of which is likewise attributed to Hercules, was maintained at least to the time of Augustus.21 The vows of the "sacred spring" which the Romans had adopted from the old Italic tribes, 22 were later confined to the cattle alone, 23 or if the children were also included, they were not killed, but in the spring of their twentieth or twenty-first year, they were led out Plut. Quaest. Rom. 32; Varro, L. L. VII. 44 (Argei ab Argis; Argei fiunt e scirpeis, simulacra hominum XXIV; ea quotannis de ponte sublicio a sacerdotibus publice deici solent in Tiberim); Dion. Ηal. I. 38 (εἴδωλα μορφαῖς ἀνθρώπων εἰκασμένα, τριάκοντα τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ἱερᾶς γεφύρας βάλ λουσιν εἰς τὸ ῥεῦμα τοῦ Τεβέριος, Αργείους αυτὰ καλοῦντες); Festus s. v. Depontani; Lactant. Instit. I. 21. 21 Dionys. Halic. I. 38 (τovro de nai μέχρις ἐμοῦ ἐπετέλουν Ῥωμαῖοι ὁσέτη Tλ.); comp. also Grimm, Deutsche Mythol. p. 690. 22 See supra p. 330; comp. Strabo, V. iv. 12. 23 Liv. XXII. 9, 10; XXXIV. 44 (ver sacrum videri pecus). of the boundaries of the land, provided with arms, and directed to establish colonies wherever they might chance to find a resting place; and indeed many settlements, and among them those of the Picentines and Mamertini in Sicily, owe their origin to the emigration of devoted persons.1 5 But human sacrifices were too deeply rooted in the life of the ancient world to be easily eradicated; they lingered for long periods, even after more rational views had been diffused and adopted; and their suppression required the continuous and zealous efforts of public teachers and reformers. They were kept up in the Roman empire with incredible tenacity. Darius Hystaspis, king of Persia, is said to have forbidden the Carthaginians "to offer human sacrifices and to eat dogflesh;" Gelon, the king of Sicily, after his victory over the Carthaginians at Himera (B. C. 480), made the abolition of child-sacrifices in honour of Moloch a condition of peace; a certain Iphicrates devised another attempt at their extinction; but they survived the destruction of Carthage itself; till at last, in the second century after Christ, the proconsul Tiberius, to put an end to the abomination, ordered the priests who performed the rite to be crucified on the trees of their temples. When, in B. C. 116, two Gauls had been sacrificed in one of the streets of Rome, the practice was forbidden, "except when human offerings were ordered by the Sibylline books." The first interdiction for Italy was proclaimed by the senate in B. C. 96, especially in connection with the art of magic. But that law was by no means decisive or effectual. Men were sacrificed by the most prominent, and often the most educated individuals, as by Caesar, at a sedition of his soldiers, by Augustus after the victory over Mark Antony and at the surrender of Perusia, by Vatinius whom Cicero accused of offering the entrails of boys to the gods of the lower world, 10 by Nero at the appea 8 9 1 See Plin. H. N. III. 13 (18, orti sunt Picentes a Sabinis voto vere sacro); comp. Dion. Hal. 1. 16; Justin. XXIV. 4; Serv. ad Aen. VII. 796. 2 Justin. XIX. 1, Legati a Dario . . . Carthaginem venerunt, afferentes edictum, quo Poeni humanas hostias immolare, et canina vesci prohibebantur. 3 Plut. De Sera Num. Vind. c. 6, ὅτι παύσονται τὰ τέκνα τῷ Κρόνῳ καταθύοντες. 4 Porphyr. II. 56 ; comp. Euseb. Praep. Ev. IV. xvi, 5. 5 Curt.IV.3 (15), quod sacrilegium... Carthaginienses, a conditoribus traditum usque ad excidium urbis suae fe cisse dicuntur; Dion. Halic. I. 38, woяeg 6 Tertull. Apolog. c. 9. 8 See supra, p. 329; Dion Cass. XLIII. 24 (ἐν τρόπῳ τινὶ ἱερουργίας ἐσφάγης σαν, and πρός τε τῶν ποντιφίκων καὶ πρὸς τοῦ ἱερέως τοῦ Αρεως ἐτύθησαν). 9 See supra p. 333 note 11. 10 Cic. In Vatin. c. 6; comp. Tacit. Ann. II. 69, where it is related that attempts were made to avert the death of Germanicus by enchantments supported by "carcases half burnt, besmeared with gore." rance of a comet, 11 and frequently at his magical incantations, 12 by Commodus (A. C. 180) who at the mysteries of Mithra offered human victims, 13 by Didius Julianus (A. C. 192) and Heliogabalus (A. C. 217) who found satisfaction in sacrificing children to the Sun in connection with magic artifices, 14 by the emperor Valerian (A. C. 253) who on the advice of an Egyptian magician sacrificed boys and disemboweled newborn babes, and by Maxentius (A. C. 306), who cut open pregnant females and examined the bowels of children to invoke the daemons or to avert impending war: 15 abominations indulged in at the same period by others also. Indeed, the Fathers of the Church are almost unanimous in testifying to the existence of the horrid practice in their own time. 17 Therefore, the prohibition had to be repeated again and again; it was rigorously enjoined by the emperor Claudius, 18 and renewed by Hadrian for the whole extent of the empire. 19 Still the effect of these edicts was long imperfect and fluctuating. The Gauls sacrificed men publicly at every important crisis in the time of Caesar and Cicero.20 Some transalpine tribes killed human victims at least up to the time of the elder Pliny. On an elevation in Arcadia, Zeus Lycaeus continued to be honoured with sacrifices of boys in the time of Pausanias, in the 11 Sueton. Nero 36. 12 Plin. H. N. XXX. 5, 6. 13 Lamprid. Commod. 9. 14 Comp. Münter, Rel. der Karthag. P. 24. 15 Euseb. H. E. VIII. 14. 16 As the tribune Pollentianus; see Amm. Marcell. XXIX. ii. 17 (Pollentianum. . . iisdem diebus i. e. A. C. 371-convictum confessumque, quod exsecto vivae mulieris ventre, atque intempestivo partu extracto, infernis manibus excitis de permutatione imperii consulere ausus est); comp.supra p. 332; Lucan. Phars. VI. 554-561 (Vulnere si ventris, non qua natura vocabat, Extrahitur partus, calidis ponendus in aris). 17 Comp. Tertull. Apol. c. 9 (sed et nunc in occulto perseveratur hoc saerum facinus); Adv. Gnost. c. 7; Euseb. Praep. Ev. IV. 16; and Lactantius (who died in A. C. 325) says explicitly (Instit. I. 21 ("Ne Latini quidem hujus immanitatis expertes fuerunt, si quidem Latialis Jupiter etiam nunc sanguine colitur humano"); and so Por phyry (De Abst. II. 56, 'AhX' évi nai võv τίς ἀγνοεῖ κατὰ τὴν μεγάλην πόλιν τῇ τοῦ Λατιαρίου Διὸς ἑορτῇ σφαζόμενον άvoлоv). Hence Sir John Acton (l. c. p. 35) is correct in his conclusion that "in every generation of the four centuries, from the fall of the Republic to the establishment of Christianity, human victims were sacrificed by the emperors." 18 Sueton. Claud. 25. 19 Porph. De Abst. II. 56; Lactant. Instit. I. 21. 20 Caes. Bell. Gall. VI. 16, see supra; Cic. Pro Fonteio X. 31 (si quando aliquo metu adducti deos placandos esse arbitrantur. . . quis ignorat, eos usque ad hunc diem retinere illam immanem ac barbaram consuetudinem hominum immolandorum?). 21 Hist. Nat. VII. 2, nuperrime trans Alpes hominem immolare gentium carum more solitum; comp. Dion. Hal. 1.38, ὥσπερ ... παρὰ Κελτοῖς εἰς τόδε χρόνου γίνεται καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις τισὶ τῶν ἑσπερίων ἐθνῶν ἀνδροφόνοις; see also Plat. Legg. VI. 22, p. 782 C. second century of the present era. The old Prussians and Goths adhered to the custom for centuries after their open adoption of Christianity." And in India, the burning of the widows was continued up to the establishment of the British rule. In 1829, Lord William Bentinck abolished it as far as his authority extended, that is among the 37 millions British subjects out of 77 millions souls forming the population. Instances, however, are recorded at Oodypore so late as August 30, 1838, and at Kolah in October 29, 1840. But in 1844, a religious change was wrought. It began in the stronghold of the rite, among the Rajpoots in Rajpootana living in the north-western frontier, a brave race of warriors and hunters, and almost revered by the other tribes. Lieutenant Colonel Ludlow, then the English representative at Jypore, happily availed himself of the movement to carry out his long cherished and philanthropic designs. He forcibly pointed out what indeed had long been known, that the rite of suttee was not only unsanctioned but inferentially forbidden by the earliest and most authoritative Hindoo scriptures; that the laws of Manu clearly involve its non-existence; that an obscure passage in Rig-Veda, long the only support of its advocates, has been clearly proved to have no reference to it whatever; and that, in fact, it was an unauthorised innovation and heresy of no earlier date than B. C. 300. Ludlow succeeded first in Jypore (Aug. 1846), next among most of the remaining Rajpoot states, and then in some other free principalities of India occupying about two thirds of the whole territory.7 8 Among the Dahomans also the rite is beginning to lose ground; it is by the chiefs upheld from motives of expediency rather than of religion; king Gelele released, at Captain Burton's intercession, nearly half of the intended victims; this prince, having to perform "a disagreable duty" over his ancestral graves, takes care that the executions are performed without cruelty; in 1863 and 1864, he allowed no victim to be put to death publicly during day-time; 10 and sometimes he exposes the men without slaying them. 11 "If I were to give up this custom at once", said he, "my head would be taken off to-morrow; by and by, little by little, much may be done." 12 1 Paus. VIII. xxxviii. 5 (inì roútov τοῦ βωμοῦ τῷ Λυκαίῳ Διὶ θύουσι ἐν άлoggýτ); comp. Augustin, De Civit. Dei XVIII. 17 (sacrificio, quod Arcades immolato puero deo suo Lycaeo facere solerent). 2 Procop. II. c. 25. 3 Comp. Wilson, Hist. of Brit. India. III. 265 sqq. 4 Comp. H.J. Bushby, Widowburning, a narrative, 1855, pp. 8 sqq. 5 Comp. supra p. 327 note 18. 7 Comp. Bushby, 1. c. pp. 37-39. 12 L. c. p. 359. 10 L. e. II. 27. ! Thus, then, the slaughter of men to secure the favour of the gods originated indeed in a religious sentiment common to all nations and apparently inherent in the human mind; it was resorted to on occasions of exceptional solemnity when the sacrifice of animals'seemed inadequate to express the full depth of religious emotion; 13 it was long regarded as a form of divine worship so praiseworthy and exalted that its neglect was deplored as a symptom of degeneracy and of declining earnestness; it proved compatible with a very considerable degree of civilisation and mental culture; and as it accustomed men to feel supreme satisfaction in seeing their fellow-beings nay their own children massacred, pierced by the sword, burnt to death, hurled from rocks or lofty terraces, drowned in rivers, seas or cess-pools, exposed to starvation or otherwise cruelly exterminated, 15 it is one of the awful warnings held out by history to prove how narrow-minded enthusiasm, even if exercised for spiritual ends, may lead to the most revolting and most degrading enormities a warning equalled if not surpassed, in the Christian times, by the burning of witches and the horrors of the inquisition. We might now enter upon the question how far human sacrifices were practised among the Hebrews; but in order to prepare the way still more completely for the unbiassed treatment of that enquiry, we deem it expedient to premise a sketch of XXII. THE VARIOUS FORMS OF IDOLATRY ADOPTED BY THE HEBREWS. A COMPREHENSIVE summary of the variety and extent of heathen worship among the Israelites, as mirrored forth in the works of their historians and prophets, suggests the most momentous and most significant conclusions with regard to the religious development of the chosen nation. Can a stronger proof of the confusion which long prevailed in the 13 Comp. Müller, Dor. I. p. 329. 14 Comp. Plut. De Sacrif. c. 13 (ὁ μέν γε Σκύθης πάσας τὰς θυσίας ἀφεὶς καὶ ἡγησάμενος ταπεινὰς αὐτοὺς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τῇ Αρτέμιδι παρίστησι καὶ οὕτως ποιῶν ἀρέσκει τὴν Debr). Ewald (Alterth. pp. 26, 27) observes justly, "Nach der Folgerichtigkeit solcher Gefühle musste endlich eben das Menschenleben als das unvergleichlich höchste und wunderbarste Opfer gelten... So lag dies Menschenopfer eigentlich überall als die Spitze und Vollendung aller dieser Aeusserungen der Gottesfurcht vor." Against all history is Hengstenberg's view (Auth. II. 144). 15 Comp. Strabo, IV. iv. 5, p. 198, ἄνθρωπον γὰρ κατασπεισμένον παίσαντες εἰς νῶτον μαχαίρᾳ ... καὶ κατετόξευόν τινας καὶ ἀνεοταύρουν ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς . . . καὶ ὁλοκαύτουν; Diod. Sic. V. 31, ἄνθρωπον κατασπείσαντες τύπο τουσι μαχαίρᾳ κατὰ τὸν ὑπὲρ τὸ διάφραγμα τόπον καὶ πεσόντος τοῦ πληγέντος ἐκ τῆς πτώσεως κτλ.; etc. |