SACRIFICES OF THE GREEKS. 457 
must have lived at least 150 years after the battle of Salamis, and we can gather 
from his fragments no clear idea of his trustworthiness or of his bias. There is, 
therefore, really no sufficient evidence to support the statement, and the silence 
of Herodotus is strongly against it. Additional doubt is thrown on the statement 
by the circumstance that Plutarch gives a different account of the event in his 
Life of Aristides (c. 9). He there represents the sacrifice taking place at the 
end of the battle of Salamis; while in the Life of Themistocles it is said to have 
taken place before the battle. The three youths are said to have been taken 
captive at Psyttaleia and sent from that place to Themistocles. Herodotus, on 
the contrary, expressly affirms that all the Persians found on the island were 
slain (viii. 95). Supposing the sacrifice to have been offered, we get no light 
from it as to the underlying ideas. The sacrifice is offered at the instigation of 
a soothsayer. It is purely accidental; it is a singular occurrence; and it is 
enemies that are sacrificed. 
We have another remarkable passage on human sacrifices in the Life of 
Pelopidas (c. 21). Just before the battle of Leuctra, Pelopidas dreamed that 
he saw the daughters of Scedasus, who had been, in long times past, ravished 
by the Lacedzemonians, and were buried at Leuctra, come to him in tears 
demanding vengeance, and their father said to him that, if he wished to be 
successful, he must sacrifice a yellow-haired maiden to his daughters. On this 
a consultation was held. The soothsayers urged the sacrifice, and appealed to 
the cases of Menoikeus and Macaria in antiquity, and in more recent times to 
the slaughter of Pherecydes, the wise man whose skin was kept by the kings, 
according to an oracular response, the death of Leonidas at Thermopyle, and 
the victims slain by Themistocles. They also reminded Pelopidas that Agis 
had brought on disaster by refusing to obey a divine warning which he had had 
to offer a human victim. Others affirmed that “such a barbarous and unlawful 
sacrifice could be pleasing to none of those who were superior to us and above 
us; that it was not Typhons and Giants who ruled the world, but the father of 
all, of gods and of men.” “ Perhaps,” said they, “it is foolish to believe that 
Saipoves rejoice in the blood and slaughter of men, but if they do they must be 
despised as powerless; for these absurd and cruel desires arise and abide 
only in weak and wicked men.” In the end Pelopidas sacrificed a mare of the 
colour required, which opportunely presented itself. 
In the arguments adduced against the sacrifice we can have little doubt 
that we have a large admixture of the sentiments of Plutarch himself, if the 
whole narrative be not an expansion of some very simple story. 
Plutarch gives us his own opinions fully in his treatise ‘“‘ De Defectu Oraci- 
lorum” (p. 417, D. c. 14). He affirms that it is not probable that the gods should 
either ask or receive the human sacrifices that took place in olden times, nor 
would kings and generals have endured the sacrifice of their own children; but 
