As the stranger approaches the town-hall, he observes an elderly and most respectable citizen strolling in the same direction. The citizen is so lost in thought that apparently he does not notice where he is going. Behind him comes a crowd of excited but silent people, who watch him with intense interest. The citizen reaches the steps of the town-hall, while the excitement of his friends behind increases visibly. Without thinking, the elderly person enters the building. With a wild and un-Aryan howl, the other people of Alos are down on him, pinion him, wreathe him with flowery garlands, and, lead him to the temple of Zeus Laphystius, or "The Glutton," where he is solemnly sacrificed on the altar.
This was the custom of the good Greeks of Alos whenever a descendant of the house of Athamas entered the Prytaneion. Of course the family were very careful, as a rule, to keep at a safe distance from the forbidden place. "What a sacrifice for Greeks!"as the author of the Minos says in that dialogue which is incorrectly attributed to Plato. "He cannot get out except to be sacrificed," says Herodotus, speaking of the unlucky descendant of Athamas. The custom appears to have existed as late as the time of the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius.
315, c.; Plato, Laws, vi. 782, c.
Argonautica, vii. 197.
Even in the second century, when Pausanias visited Arcadia, he found what seem to have been human sacrifices to Zeus. The passage is so very strange and romantic that we quote a part of it.
"The Lycaean hill hath other marvels to show, and chiefly this:
thereon there is a grove of Zeus Lycaeus, wherein may men in nowise enter; but if any transgresses the law and goes within, he must die within the space of one year. This tale, moreover, they tell, namely, that whatsoever man or beast cometh within the grove casts no shadow, and the hunter pursues not the deer into that wood, but, waiting till the beast comes forth again, sees that it has left its shadow behind. And on the highest crest of the whole mountain there is a mound of heaped-up earth, the altar of Zeus Lycaeus, and the more part of Peloponnesus can be seen from that place. And before the altar stand two pillars facing the rising sun, and thereon golden eagles of yet more ancient workmanship. And on this altar they sacrifice to Zeus in a manner that may not be spoken, and little liking had I to make much search into this matter. BUTLET IT BE AS IT IS, AND AS IT HATH BEEN FROM THE BEGINNING." The words "as it hath been from the beginning" are ominous and significant, for the traditional myths of Arcadia tell of the human sacrifices of Lycaon, and of men who, tasting the meat of a mixed sacrifice, put human flesh between their lips unawares. This aspect of Greek religion, then, is almost on a level with the mysterious cannibal horrors of "Voodoo," as practised by the secret societies of negroes in Hayti. But concerning these things, as Pausanias might say, it is little pleasure to inquire.
Pausanias, viii. 2.
Plato, Rep., viii. 565, d. This rite occurs in some African coronation ceremonies.
Even where men were not sacrificed to the gods, the tourist among the temples would learn that these bloody rites had once been customary, and ceremonies existed by way of commutation. This is precisely what we find in Vedic religion, in which the empty form of sacrificing a man was gone through, and the origin of the world was traced to the fragments of a god sacrificed by gods. In Sparta was an altar of Artemis Orthia, and a wooden image of great rudeness and antiquity--so rude indeed, that Pausanias, though accustomed to Greek fetish-stones, thought it must be of barbaric origin. The story was that certain people of different towns, when sacrificing at the altar, were seized with frenzy and slew each other. The oracle commanded that the altar should be sprinkled with human blood. Men were therefore chosen by lot to be sacrificed till Lycurgus commuted the offering, and sprinkled the altar with the blood of boys who were flogged before the goddess.
The priestess holds the statue of the goddess during the flogging, and if any of the boys are but lightly scourged, the image becomes too heavy for her to bear.
The Purusha Sukhta, in Rig-Veda, x. 90.
The Ionians near Anthea had a temple of Artemis Triclaria, and to her it had been customary to sacrifice yearly a youth and maiden of transcendent beauty. In Pausanias's time the human sacrifice was commuted. He himself beheld the strange spectacle of living beasts and birds being driven into the fire to Artemis Laphria, a Calydonian goddess, and he had seen bears rush back among the ministrants; but there was no record that any one had ever been hurt by these wild beasts. The bear was a beast closely connected with Artemis, and there is some reason to suppose that the goddess had herself been a she-bear or succeeded to the cult of a she-bear in the morning of time.
Paus., vii. 18, 19.
See "Artemis", postea.
It may be believed that where symbolic human sacrifices are offered, that is, where some other victim is slain or a dummy of a man is destroyed, and where legend maintains that the sacrifice was once human, there men and women were originally the victims.
Greek ritual and Greek myth were full of such tales and such commutations. In Rome, as is well known, effigies of men called Argives were sacrificed. As an example of a beast-victim given in commutation, Pausanias mentions the case of the folk of Potniae, who were compelled once a year to offer to Dionysus a boy, in the bloom of youth. But the sacrifice was commuted for a goat.
See Hermann, Alterthumer., ii. 159-161, for abundant examples.
Plutarch, Quest. Rom. 32.
ix. 8, 1.
