
SACRIFICES OF THE GREEKS. 463 
him a good chance. Then, again, we find in the “Transformations” of 
Antoninus Liberalis, that the daughters of Minyas of Orchomenos found fault 
with the other women of the place for celebrating the orgies of Dionysus. 
Whereupon Dionysus awoke great terror in the three maidens. The maidens 
cast lots, and one of them vowed that she would offer up a sacrifice to the god, 
and in fulfilment of this vow she tore her son Hippasus to pieces, with the 
aid of her sisters. The three sisters after this duly performed the orgiastic 
rites, and were ultimately turned into birds. Preller (i. p. 429) sees in this 
an explanation of the Orchomenian festival of the Agrionia, in which a priest 
of Dionysus (according to Plutarch, Qu. Gr. 38) followed the female 
descendants of the daughters of Minyas with a drawn sword with the right 
to kill any of them that he overtook. And, finally, we have the case of the 
supposed offerig up of two Locrian maidens at the shrine of Athene in 
Ilium, because Ajax the Locrian violated Cassandra. Mr Cuiinton* has collected 
all the passages relating to this subject. The circumstances are referred to by 
Aelian, Plutarch, Polybius, A*neas Tacticus, Strabo, Iamblichus, a scholiast on 
Homer, Jerome,and Tzetzes. Theyall distinctly mention that the Locrian maidens 
were sent to Ilium. Not one says a word about killing them until we come to 
TzZETZES. TZETZES says that when they were sent the Trojans who went out to 
meet them killed them if they could lay hold of them. ‘The story of TzErzEs is 
improbable in itself. It is impossible that all the previous narrators should 
have known nothing of this hideous practice. And we have here but one of 
the many instances which Tzerzes, in his low opinion of paganism, has con- 
tributed to the horrors of the early state of mankind. NAGrLspacu indeed has 
supposed that Timeeus (264 B.c.) is TzErzes’s authority for all that he states ; 
but a moment’s consideration will lead one to see that TzeTzEes quotes Timeeus 
as authority only for the date. 
I have also excluded from notice such occurrences as the death of Codrus 
and Leonidas ; for these men were not offered up as sacrifices in the strict sense 
of the term. I have also carefully avoided dealing with the sacrifices of the 
Romans. ‘The religion of the Romans was widely different from that of the 
Greeks ; and an examination into the ideas which they associated with sacrifices 
“might give us results considerably different from those to which we have now 
been led in regard to the Greeks. 
The conclusions to which this investigation leads may be summed up in the 
following propositions :— 
1. That the sacrifices of the Greeks were offered to the gods with the idea 
that the food and drink would gratify them, and that the other offerings would 
* Fast. Hell. vol. i. p. 134, note v. 
VOL. XXVII. PART IV. Grc 
