Animal sacrifices seem to have been a usual rite amongst all the Scythian races. Some branches of this great stock appear to have wandered so far from their northern seats as the Peninsula of India, in the most southern parts of which are found great numbers of cromlechs, kistvaens, and cairns. All around Hyderabad, in the Deklian, these are to be seen, and at one place about 12 miles from that city is a vast site of these ancient dead. In all the cairns that have been opened there, sepulchral urns have been found, and in their neighbourhood human bones and bones of auimals. Of the race who adopted that form of burial nothing is now known ; but they were nomades, dwelling in tents, the stone wall en closures for each tent being perfect, and within the enclosures there are no mounds of ruined houses, but in all merely a level space.
Professor Max Midler reminds us of what we read in Herodotus (v. 5), that amongst the Thraciaus it was usual after the death of a man to find out who had been the most beloved of his wives, and to sacrifice her upon the tomb. Mela (ii. 2) gives the same as the general custom of the Getm line. Herodotus (iv. 71) asserts a similar fact of the Scythians, and Pausanias (iv. 2) of the G reeks.
Amongst the Aryan races who went to the north-west, there are no grounds for believing that the Saxons continued to offer human sacri fices after their settleinent in Great Britain, but in their own land the imtnolation of captives in honour of their gods was by no means unconimon. The great temple at Upsal, in Sweden, appears to have been especially dedicated to Odin, Thor, and Friya. Its periodical festivals were accompanied by different degrees of conviviality and licence, in which human sacrifices were rarely wanting, varied in their number and value by the supposed odgency. On some occasions even royal blood was selected that the imagined anger of the gods might be appeased.
The 2slassageta, the Scythian, the Gete, the Sarmatian, all the various nations upon the Baltic, particularly the Suevi and Scandinavians, held it as a fixed principle that their happiness and security could not be obtained but at the ex penae of the lives of others. Their chief gods were Thor and Woden, whom they thought they could never sufficiently glut with blood. They had many very celebrated places of worship, especially in the island of Rugen, near the mouth of the Oder, and in Zeeland. Sonie, too, very I famous ninon tho Sumitomo; and Nalianvalli. But the most reverenced of all, and the tnost I frequented, WAS at Upaal, where there was every year a grand celebration, which continued for nine days. During this term they sacrificed animals of all sorts, but the most acceptable victims and the most numerous were men. Of these sacrifices none were esteemed so auspicious and salutary as a sacrifice of the prince of the country. When the lot fell for the king to die, it was received with universal acclamations and every expreasion of joy, as it once happened in the time of a fatnine, when they cast lots, and it fell to the king Domalder to be the people's victim, and he was accordingly put to death. Glans Triliger,
another prince, was burnt alive to Woden. They did not spare their own children. Harold, the son of Gunild, the first of that name, slew two of his children to obtain a storm of wind. He did not let,' says Verstegan, to sacrifice two of his E0D8 unto these idols, to the eed he might obtain of them such a tempest at sea as should break and disperse the shipping of Harold, king of Denmark.' Saxo Grantmaticus mentions a like fact; he calls the king Haquin, and speaks of the persons put to death RR two very hopeful young pnnces.
Tacitus takes notice of the cruelty of the Her munduri in a war with the Catti, wherein they had greatly the advantage, at the close of which they made one general sacrifice of all that wero taken in battle. The poor remains of the legions under Varrus suffered in some degree the same fate.
lhiman sacrifice, Bunsen says, was abolished by the Egyptians, in the very earliest times, declaring it to be an abomination to the gods. Whereas in Palestine, in Syria, and in cultivated Pheenicia and Carthage, such sacrifices continued to bo offered to Moloch as the very climax of religious worship. Even Rome, in the time of her Coesars, buried her Gallic prisoners alive, in order to appease the wrath of their gods. Many of the kings of Judah and Israel caused their children to pass through the fire. The Greeks also were not free from these atrocities. Chap. xi. of Judges tells how Jephthah, when he invaded the country of the Ammonites, vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, ' If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. . .. And Jeplithah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances.... And he said, Alas ray daughter I ... I have opened my mouth unto tho Lord, aud I cannot go back.... And it came to pass, at the end of two months, that she retunied unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed : and she knew no man.' Jeremiah xix. 4, 5, ahows, says Dr. /Oman, that in later times human sacrifices were offered by the Jews to Moloch and to Baal. Abraham, when comnianded to cut off that lifo on which all the eplendid promises of the Almighty seemed to depend, he °bent and sets forth with his unsuspecting child to offer the fatal sacrifice on Mount Moriah. Besides the common worship of Moloch, the Book of Kings names the Sepharvites as making these human sacrifices (2 Kings xvii. 31), and the king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 27). It was a Babylonian and Assyrian rite. Filial sacrifices were doubtlesa of rate and extra ordinary occurrence, either to expiate some dread ful guilt, to avert the imminent vengeance of an offended deity, or to extort his blessing on some important enterprise. But Hannibal sacrificed 3000 Gtecian prisoners on the field of Himera, where his grandfather Hamilkar had been slain 70 years before.