CRIMINAL FESTIVALS. 761 



civilized as the Phoenicians, were people who had made consider- 

 able advance. Still, this is not so astonishing as to find human 

 sacrifices in use even among the Greeks, with whom in the 

 period of their grandeur the throng, at the mysteries of Bacchus 

 Zagreus, cut up a goat, a sacrifice which was only a substitution ; 

 for anciently, according to Plutarch, it was a man that the throng 

 cut to pieces on the altar of Dionysos Omostes — Dionysos, the 

 flesh-eater. At the Thargelia, the Athenians gayly decorated a 

 man and a woman who had been entertained at the expense of 

 the state, escorted them in procession, and burned them at the 

 entrance to the plain. The Celts bought slaves, whom they 

 entertained liberally, and at the end of the year conducted in 

 great pomp to the sacrifice. Every twelve months the Scythian 

 tribe of the Albanians, according to Strabo, fattened a slave 

 whom the people then massacred with lance cuts before the 

 shrine of Artemis. 



The great solemn popular festival of the Khonds included 

 the annual immolation of a victim. After three days of inde- 

 scribable orgies, in which women often participated dressed like 

 men and armed like warriors, the victim was bound to a stake 

 in the midst of the forest, and left there all night alone ; in the 

 morning the people returned, with a great noise of bells and 

 gongs, singing and shouting; when the multitude had become 

 well intoxicated with the uproar, and greatly excited by dis- 

 orderly dances, the grand priest would command silence and 

 recite a long prayer, and would then slay the victim, usually 

 with a single stroke of the knife. The multitude, which had 

 been waiting for that moment, rushed upon the quarry with 

 piercing cries, each one trying to tear off a piece of the palpitat- 

 ing flesh, to hack the body to pieces. 



A criminal ceremony exists among the tribes of the interior 

 of Sumatra, which is without doubt the survival of an ancient 

 and very cruel custom, that has passed in the course of time into 

 a civil and religious duty. These people, although of rather gen- 

 tle disposition, piously and ceremoniously kill and eat their aged 

 parents, in the belief that they are performing a sacred duty. At 

 the appointed day the old man who is destined to be eaten goes 

 up into a tree, at the foot of which are gathered the relatives 

 and friends of the family. They strike the trunk of the tree in 

 cadence and sing a funeral hymn. Then the old man descends, his 

 nearest relatives deliberately kill him, and the attendants eat him. 



With some peoples animals take the place of human victims ; 

 but what we have said is sufficient to show that even with these 

 peoples collective crime was formerly a solemn ceremony, al- 

 though individual crime was already regarded as something to be 

 condemned. 



TOL. XLIII. 55 



