458 DR DONALDSON ON THE EXPIATORY AND SUBSTITUTIONARY 
they did it to avoid the wrath and indignation of cruel and harsh demons, and 
to satisfy their vengeful spirit. And he goes on to say, “Just as Heracles 
besieged QCichalia for the sake of a virgin, so strong and violent demons, 
eagerly seeking after a human soul enclosed in flesh, and being unable to have 
bodily intercourse with it, send plagues and barrenness of soil on states, and 
create wars and seditions until they get and obtain the object of their lust.”* 
Plutarch, as we have seen above, adduced Phanias as his evidence for the 
sacrifice of Themistocles. Possibly Phanias was the only historian who recorded 
such an event. A passage in Athenzeus should make us careful how we receive 
such evidence. He tells us that Neanthes of Cyzicus (241 B.c., Clinton 
Fast. Hell. ii. 509), affirmed that, when Epimenides purified Attica with 
human blood, on account of some ancient pollutions, a beautiful youth, of the 
name of Cratinus, offered himself willingly in behalf of his country, and that 
his lover Aristodemus killed himself,t and the calamity ended (xiii. 78). 
Neanthes is again and again praised as a trustworthy historian, and his evidence 
is as good as that of Phanias,—though we have to take into account that 
Phanias was much nearer the time of Themistocles than Neanthes the time of 
Epimenides. Athenzeus in the next chapter says, “I am not ignorant that 
Polemon the traveller (199 B.c., Clinton) in his writings against Neanthes, 
affirms that the story of Cratinus and Aristodemus is a fiction;” and subse- 
quent critics have regarded Polemon as being in the right. 
The opinions of Porphyry, the great antagonist of Christianity at the end of 
the third century, are given in the second book of his treatise “‘ De Absti- 
nentia.” His object is to urge philosophers to abstain from the eating of flesh. 
He is, therefore, so far under a strong motive to show that neither animals nor 
human beings were sacrificed to the gods. At the same time, he again and 
again takes care to caution his readers against thinking that the two things go 
together,—the eating of animal flesh and the sacrificing it to the gods. The 
latter may be right when the other is wrong, or at least injudicious for the 
philosopher. Porphyry agrees with Plutarch in his doctrine of the datpoves. 
Porphyry thinks that man, in his earliest stage, lived entirely on the fruits 
of the earth. He is a strong believer in the theory of development. Grass 
* Plutarch frequently refers to mythic sacrifices. These are all noticed in the text except the 
following :—‘“‘ When a famine prevailed at Lacedeemon, the god gave an oracle to the effect that it 
would cease if they sacrificed a noble virgin every year. On one occasion the lot fell on Helen, and, 
as she was led forth arrayed for the sacrifice, an eagle flew down and snatched away the sword, and 
carrying it to the herds laid it upon a heifer, in consequence of which they refrained from the 
slaughter of virgins. This is related by Aristodemus in his third collection of myths, év tpitn wuOcK7n 
ovvayeyn” (Greek and Roman Parallels, xxxv.; Moralia, p. 314, C). Who this Aristodemus was 
is uncertain. 
t+ The words of Athenzus are peculiar: 6 xal émaméBaveyv 6 épactis “Apiotodnwos. “On 
whom also his lover Aristodemus died,” probably implying that he slew himself on the dead body of 
his favourite. The word ésramo@vyjoxKw occurs in Plato with the meaning, “ to die immediately after.” 


