MOLOCH. 
195 
among the ancient Greeks and Romans at a time 
when they were looked upon as the most civilized 
people upon earth. It was a well-known decree of the 
Spartan lawgiver., Lycurgus, whose code was consi- 
dered merciful compared with the bloody institutes 
of Draco, that all children born with any deformity 
should be destroyed. Even the Jews, in the early 
period of their history, forced their children to pass 
through the fire of Moloch, thus presenting a most 
horrible sacrifice to the brazen god of the Ammonites. 
When children were offered to this sanguinary deity, 
his statue was heated red-hot, and the wretched victims 
were placed within its gigantic arms, where they were 
almost instantly consumed. 
“ Such,” says Bryant, “ was the Kronos of the 
Greeks and the Moloch of the Phoenicians, and nothing 
can appear more shocking than the sacrifices of the 
Tyrians and Carthaginians which they performed to 
this idol ; in all emergencies of state, and times of ge- 
neral calamity, they devoted what was most necessary 
and valuable to them for an offering to the gods, and 
particularly to Moloch. But, besides these undeter- 
mined times of bloodshed, they had particular and 
prescribed seasons every year, when children were 
chosen out of the noble and reputable families, as has 
been before mentioned. If a person had an infant 
child it was the more liable to be put to death, as 
being more acceptable to the deity and more effica- 
cious to the general good. Those who were sacrificed 
to Kronos were thrown into the arms of a brazen idol 
which stood in the midst of a large fire and was red 
with heat ; the arms of it were stretched out and the 
