462 DR DONALDSON ON THE EXPIATORY AND SUBSTITUTIONARY 
show “how the plague of polytheistic error ruled the life of man before the 
evangelical teaching of our Saviour.” And he will adduce testimonies from 
those who are not agreed with him in opinion, to show that before this time 
there was such wickedness that “the superstitious went even beyond the limits 
of nature, goaded on by destructive spirits, so as to think that the murderous 
demons were propitiated by the blood of the dearest, and by ten thousand other 
human sacrifices” (c. 15). After this introduction he quotes from Porphyry 
and Clemens Alexandrinus. He also quotes from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 
from Philo of Byblos, and from Diodorus, principally in regard to human 
sacrifices among the Carthaginians, Italians, and Pelasgians. 
The lexicographers and scholiasts give us no reliable information. Such 
words as \advotios, Gwnotys, ddd. are applied to gods: Aadvarvos is defined as 
meaning gluttonous, one who eats with eagerness, tearing ; ®unorys is one who 
eats raw flesh. From these definitions it is inferred that reference is made to 
human sacrifices. “ Dionysus ®uyno7%s,” says Arsenius (thirteenth century P.c.)} 
is the god “to whom the ancients were in the habit of offering up living men.”* 
TzeTzes finds in Lycophron the epithet Bpedoxrévos applied to Palzemon, a sea 
deity, and he at once explains the epithet by stating that children were sacrificed 
at Tenedos to Melicerta, the same god as Palemon, but with another name 
(ad. Lyc. 229). Such notices do not deserve any serious consideration when 
we are dealing with matters of fact, for such epithets are applied to the gods to 
denote some quality that arises out of their character, not to denote actions 
that are done to them. And they are wrong in principle. 
I have now given all the instances of human sacrifice which the Greek 
writers recorded. I may have omitted one or two cases, which were probably 
treated by the tragic poets, and which have come down to us in Hyginus or 
other Latin mythographers. I have purposely neglected to take note of several 
alleged instances. Many of the best writers on mythology have a firm belief 
that in early times human sacrifices were common, and they accordingly find 
survivals of them in customs which can be easily explained otherwise. GERHARD 
is especially addicted to this habit. He sees in Plato (Leges, xii. p. 945) an 
allusion to the sacrifice of three men to Apollo and Helios, though the utmost 
that can be made out of it is, that three of the best men were selected from 
the community, and specially set apart for the priesthood of Apollo. 
Kari OTFRIED MULLERt finds in the leap from the Leucadian rock, taken 
at a festival of Apollo, a remnant of human sacrifice to that god; but this 
mode of sacrifice would be assuredly very singular. It is much more likely to 
have been a kind of ordeal by which a person accused of some crime might 
substantiate his innocence, and every means seems to have been taken to give 
* See Parcemiographi Greci, Leutscu, vol. ii. p. 735. 
+ Dorians, vol. i. p. 260, Transl. 



