THE RELIGION OF THE PHfENIClANS.
H6
" celestial worship of the goddess" was characterized by the same impurity as that of Ashtoreth in Phoenicia and
Syria.
Another fearful blot on the religion of the Phrenicians, and one which belongs to Carthage quite as much as to the mother-country,* is the systematic offering of human victims, The ground as expiatory sacrifices, to El and other gods. of this horrible superstition is to be found in the words addressed by Balak to Balaam f " Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give
my
my
my
transgression, the fruit of body firstborn for As Philo Byblius expresses it,| the sin of my soul?"" " It was customary among the ancients, in times of great calamity and danger, that the rulers of the city or nation should offer up the best beloved of their children, as an expiatory sacrifice to the avenging deities : and these victims were slaughtered mystically." The Phoenicians were taught that, once upon a time, the god El himself, under the pressure of extraordinary peril, had taken his only son, adorned him with royal attire, placed him as a victim upon an altar,
for
and slain him with his own hand. Thenceforth, it could not but be the duty of rulers to follow the divine example and even private individuals, when beset by diffiset them culties, might naturally apply the lesson to themselves, and offer up their children to appease the divine anger. have only too copious evidence that both procedures were ;
We
that vogue among the Phoenicians. Porphyry declares " the Phoenician history was full of instances, in which that people, when suffering under great calamity from war, or pestilence, or drought, chose by public vote one of those most dear to them, and sacrificed him to Saturn." Two hundred noble youths were offered on a single occasion at Hamilcar, it is Carthage, after the victory of Agathocles. in
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* See Diod. Sic. xx. 14, 65; Justin, xviii. 6; Sil. Ital. iv. 765-76S: Dionys. Hal. i. 38; etc. Compare Geseriius, "Script. Pluen. Mon. " Carthage," pp. 296, 297. pp. 448, 449, 453; and Davis, t J
'\
Micah
vi. 6, 7.
Philo Bybl. c. vi. 3. De Abstlnentia," ii. 56. " Init." i. Lactaut. "
21,
quoting Pescennius Festus.