SACRIFICES OF THE GREEKS. 441 
We have here a psychological explanation of what took place. First, the 
murderer had to purify himself from the ceremonial stain which he had con- 
tracted ; secondly, he had to repair the damage done; and, thirdly, he had to 
appease the departed spirit. Often the damage done was repaired by appealing 
to the departed spirit, or to the deities under whose protection he was. 
Now, the compensation and propitiation were not accomplished by blood. 
The passages quoted to prove that murder could be expiated by murder, mean 
that the spirit of the murdered man and the Chthonian deities under whose 
care he was, could be appeased only by the violent death of the murderer, or 
of those of the same stock. No substitution was possible. But if the murder 
was not intentional, or if the feeling of vengeance had died away through the 
lapse of time, a compensation different in kind altogether from the wrong 
committed, might appease the vengeful Erinyes of the man. Some Phoceans 
were stoned to death. As the men of Agylla passed the place where their 
bodies lay, disease attacked them. The Agylleans consulted the oracle, and, 
according to its answer, they offered annual libations to the dead, and instituted 
gymnastic and equestrian games.* The Aegide, at one time, lost all their 
children, whereupon they built a temple to the Erinyes of Laius and Cidipus, 
and the mortality ceased.t Here there is no possibility of substitution. The 
means of propitiation are entirely different from the actual injury done. So in 
all the sacrifices offered to the Chthonian deities. They are always genuine 
sacrifices; things that would gratify the deities: and there is no instance in 
which the sacrifice symbolises the /ife of the individual, or in which the shed 
blood of the man is expiated by the blood of an animal. 
4. In this period we first hear of human sacrifices. These sacrifices are care- 
fully to be divided into two classes,—those which belong to the mythic times, 
and those which are said to have been offered up in historical times. We shall 
take the historical sacrifices first. In regard to them, we have only two 
passages. The one is in the “ Minos,” attributed to Plato. “For instance,” 
the writer says, “it is not the custom (vdmos) with us to sacrifice human beings, 
but it is unholy to do so. Yet the Carthaginians do so, in the belief that it is 
~ holy and lawful for them; and some of them actually sacrifice their own sons to 
Kronos, as perhaps you yourself have heard. But not only do barbarous men 
follow different customs from ours, but what (olas @vcias) sacrifices do those 
well-known inhabitants of Lyczea, and the descendants of Athamas who are 
Greeks offer up!”{ The second occurs in the “ Republic.”§ “Clearly, when 
the ruler begins to do the same thing as the man in the tale which is told of the 
Arcadian temple of the Lyczean Zeus. What tale? The tale is, that he who 
e Herod. 1,167, t Herod. iv. 149. t Minos, ¢. v. p. 315, C. 
§ Rep. viii. c. xvi. p. 565, D. 
