442 DR DONALDSON ON THE EXPIATORY AND SUBSTITUTIONARY 
tasted the human entrails, when the entrails of one man had been minced up with 
those of other victims, had to become a wolf.” These are all the references that 
occur in writers of this period to human sacrifice among the genuine Greeks. 
Some have adduced a third passage from Plato (“De Legibus,” vi. xxii. p. 
782 C.) “We see the custom of men sacrificing each other still remaining 
amongst many ; and, on the contrary, we hear that we did not venture to taste* 
even the ox; and amongst others animals were not used as sacrifices to the 
gods, but only cakes and fruit steeped in honey, and such like pure sacrifices ; 
but they abstained from flesh, in the belief that it was not holy to eat it, or to 
pollute the altars of the gods with blood.” The first clause does not assert 
that the custom of offering up human sacrifices prevailed in any of the genuine 
Greek states; and therefore it does not concern us here. . 
The statement in the “ Minos” is exceedingly indefinite. It does not affirm 
that either the Lyceeans or the descendants of Athamas offered up human 
sacrifices ; though, unquestionably, the inference is to be drawn from its 
statement that they offered strange sacrifices. The authorship of the “ Minos” 
is a matter of dispute. Most critics are inclined to the opinion that it is not 
the production of Plato, but they differ as to the date of its composition,—some 
thinking that it was written in the lifetime of Plato, and some that it is much 
later. A few critics of some note, such as GROTE, maintain that it is genuine. 
The text of the work is also in an unsatisfactory condition ; and the passage 
before us gives us a city Lycea, which is‘:not mentioned by any writer but 
STEPHANUS Byzantius. It is possible that the reference to the Lyczean sacrifice 
in the “ Minos,” as well as in the ‘“ Republic,” notwithstanding the present 
tense (@vovow), is to the story of Lycaon, which we shall find afterwards in 
Pausanias ; and it is likely that if the writer of the “ Minos” had stated all — 
that he had heard, he would have added that the sacrificer was always changed 
into a wolf. The reference to the descendants of Athamas is explained by a 
passage in Herodotus. Herodotus states (vii. 197), that when “ Xerxes reached 
Alus, in Thessaly, his guides told him a tradition of the country, relating to 
the temple of Zeus Laphystius. They narrated how Athamas, the son of 
/£olus, along with his wife Ino, plotted the murder of Phrixus, and how the 
Acheeans, in consequence of an oracular response, impose upon his descendants 
the following task :—They have to keep the eldest of the race out of the 
prytaneum, and if he enters, he cannot get out before he is going to be 
sacrificed. They further related how many persons who were already going to 
be sacrificed escaped to another country; but in the progress of time they came 
back, and if they are caught entering the prytaneum, they told how they are 
* This clause STALLBAUM deems corrupt. He would read, “ We hear, in the case of others, that 
they did not dare to taste the ox, and,” &c. 

