# History of Monsters, page 315

The Use of Humans in Sacrifices

Antiquity was so blind that, driven by a veneer of religion and the promptings of demons, it rushed headlong into the heinous butchery of human beings, offering human victims to Jupiter, Saturn, Bacchus, and other false deities. Indeed, a wicked custom took root among the Phoenicians where the infants of nobles, chosen by lot and dressed in royal robes, were sacrificed to Saturn. No one was permitted to rescue them from death; thus, both funerals and sacrifices were drenched with the abundant tears of the citizens. Therefore, when Aspar was to be sacrificed, his mother—the wife of Hannibal—laments in the works of Silius:

“What piety is this, to sprinkle shrines with gore? Alas, the first cause of crimes for weary mortals is ignorance of God's nature. Go, pray for what is just with holy incense, and turn away from these savage rites of slaughter. Desist, I pray; for God is kin to man. Let it suffice to have seen bullocks slain before the altars.”

History also records that Aristomenes of Messene sacrificed three hundred men, including Theopompus, at a single time to Jupiter (whom he called Ithomatas). But even more astonishing is that the Romans, then masters of the world, fell into similar errors. Among them, Saturn and Jupiter Latiaris were appeased with human victims; even during the sacrifice, the deity’s statue was sprinkled with human blood, until a decree of the Senate during the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus forbade anyone from sacrificing humans or making offerings with human blood thereafter.

Among the Greeks, Bacchus delighted in human victims during his annual celebrations; in fact, the man to be sacrificed (or the one who had been) gained a great reputation for integrity and religious devotion among the rest. For many generations in Chios and Salamis, the custom of sacrificing humans to Dionysus persisted. In Arcadia, there was a temple to this same Dionysus where girls were flogged to death at the altar. Mars was not averse to such sacrifices either: certain pagans returning from battle would divide captives into groups of one hundred and consecrate one slaughtered man from each group to Mars. Indeed, Procopius wrote that among the inhabitants of the island of Thule in the time of Emperor Justinian, the human victim was the first person they captured in battle, whom they would sacrifice and dedicate to Mars.

What of female deities? History reports they too were pleased by human victims. In Asia, the Laodiceans sacrificed a virgin to Minerva, just as Jupiter Lycaeus among the Arcadians rejoiced in the sacrifice of a boy. Among the Tauri, a people of Scythia, there was a solemn custom of sacrificing foreigners—especially the shipwrecked—as victims to Diana. Similarly, at Sparta, young boys were sacrificed before the altar of Diana Orthia by being struck with lashes.

Finally, in olden times, human heads were dedicated at crossroads to Larunda (also known as Mania, the mother of the Lares), until the consul Junius Brutus, abhorring this horrific and abominable kind of sacrifice, decreed that the heads of poppies should be sacrificed instead of human heads. Because of this, many have believed the poppy plant to be sacred to Larunda. Lastly, the Thracians believed that Zalmoxis, whom they considered their greatest god, could only be made favorable if a man fell by the stroke of spears near the altar.

Countless nations employed this type of sacrifice. Near the Borysthenes, men were offered as victims, and human bones were burned in the sacrifice. The Celts were even permitted to clean the head of a captive enemy and encrust the skull with gold; this was then used as a cup during celebrations. The ancient Lusitanians would carefully examine the intestines of slaughtered men to catch prophecies, and they offered the severed right hands of captives as gifts to the gods. The Galatians and Massagetae believed the gods could only be consulted by slaughtering a man at the altar; from whose fall