Lucian of Samosata De Syria dea 58

A relic of child-sacrifice. “Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6,7). On traces of infant sacrifice discovered in the excavations in Palestine, see Cook, pp. 36, 38, 43; Frazer, Folklore i, 418 and note. From recent excavations in asanctuary of Tanit at Carthage, it is apparent that firstborn children were offered to that goddess during the whole period of Punic occupation (Am. Journal of Archaevl., 1923, R 107). “Jephthah’s daughter had many successors before adrian tried to stamp out the practice. At Laodicea a virgin was annually sacrificed to ‘ Athena’ until a deer took her place; Elagubalus was accused of offering children in his sun-temple at Rome; . . . an Arabian tribe annually sacrificed a child, which they buried beneath the altar that served them as an idol. In many parts, too, bodies of slain victims were used for purposes of. divination” (Bouchier, Syria as a Roman Province, p. 247 sq.).