410 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



fays, it was peculiar to the Spaniards to facrifice them- 

 felves for their friends. This is not very different from 

 what Silius Italicus reports of the Betid, his anceftors, 

 which is, that after they had paffed the age of youth, 

 grown weary of life, they committed fuicide ; and which 

 he praifes as an heroic action. Who would believe, that 

 ancient cuftom of Betica would be revived at this time in 

 England and France. To come to later times, Mariana, 

 in fpeaking of the Goths, who occupied Spain, writes 

 thus : " Becaufe they were perfuaded that the war 

 " would never be profperous when they did not make 

 " an offering of human blood for the army, they facrific- 

 " ed the prifoners of war to the god Mars, to whom 

 H they were principally devoted, and ufed alfo to offer 

 " him the firft of the fpoils, and fufpend from the trunks 

 " of trees the fkins of thofe whom they had flain." If 

 thofe Spaniards who wrote the hiftory of Mexico, had 

 not forgotten this, which happened to their own penin- 

 fula, they would not have wondered fo much at the fa- 

 crifices of the Mexicans. 



Whoever would wifh to fee more examples, may con- 

 fult Eufebius of Caefarea, in book iv. de Preparatione 

 Evangelica, where he gives a long detail of the nations 

 by whom fuch barbarous facrifices were pra&ifed ; what 

 we have faid is enough to {hew that the Mexicans have 

 done nothing but trod in the fteps of the moft celebrat- 

 ed nations of the old continent, and that their rites were 

 neither more cruel, nor lefs rational. It is, perhaps, 

 greater cruelty, and inhumanity to facrifice fellow-citi- 

 zens, children, and themfelves, as the greater part of 

 thofe nations did, than to facrifice prifoners of war as 

 was pracYifed among the Mexicans. The Mexicans were 

 never known to facrifice their own countrymen, unlefs 



it 



