Human-sacrifice Sentence Examples

With the decline of totemism arose the need for human sacrifice - the only means of re-establishing the broken tie of kinship when the animal species was no longer akin to man.

If tradition is any guide, human sacrifice seems in many important areas to be of secondary character; in spite of the great development of the rite among the Aztecs, tradition says that it was unknown till two hundred years before the conquest; in Polynesia human sacrifices seem to be comparatively modern; and in India they appear to have been rare among the Vedic peoples.

On the whole, human sacrifice is far commoner among the semi-civilized and barbarous races than in still lower stages of culture.

Among the forms of human sacrifice must be reckoned religious suicide.

Their idolatry (polytheistic) was unaccompanied by human sacrifice.

Accordingly recourse is had, tinder the direction of the Sibylline books, to new forms of appeal for the divine help, the general vowing of the ver sacrum and the elaborate Greek lectisternium after Trasimene in 217 B.C., and the human sacrifice in the forum after Cannae in the following year.

This has led to the generally accepted conclusion that the custom of hanging these oscilla represents an older practice of expiating human sacrifice.

As to sacrifice, maize and other vegetables were offered, and occasionally rabbits, quails, &c., but, in the absence of cattle, human sacrifice was the chief rite, and cannibalism prevailed at the feasts.

At all sacrifices it seems to have been customary to practise divination; in connexion with human sacrifice we have record of this rite from the time of the Cimbri.

The Syrian god was proclaimed the chief deity in Rome, and all other gods his servants; splendid ceremonies in his honour were celebrated, at which Heliogabalus danced in public, and it was believed that secret rites accompanied by human sacrifice were performed in his honour.

During his consulship the practice of magic arts was condemned by a decree of the senate, and human sacrifice was abolished.

There is hardly room to doubt that we have here a tradition of human sacrifice in connexion with the worship of the Phoenician Baal (Zeus Atabyrius) such as prevailed at Rhodes; when misfortune threatened Rhodes the brazen bulls in.

According to Weizsacker, he was an old Pelasgian or pre-Hellenic god, to whom human sacrifice was offered, bearing a non-Hellenic name similar to XLKo, whence the story originated of his metamorphosis into a wolf.

Meyer, the belief that Zeus Lycaeus accepted human sacrifice in the form of a wolf was the origin of the myth that Lycaon, the founder of his cult, became a wolf, i.e.

The whole is a reminiscence of earlier times, when the goddess herself was a bear, to whom human sacrifice was offered.

The custom of flogging youths at the altar of Artemis Orthia 1 at Limnaeum in Laconia, and the legend of Iphigeneia, herself another form of Artemis, connected with Artemis Taurica of the Tauric Chersonese, are usually supposed to point to early human sacrifice (but see Farnell).

This tale is perhaps reminiscent of human sacrifice amongst the Greeks.

Now " from the beginning " the sacrifice, according to Arcadian tradition, had been a human sacrifice.

Many other examples of human sacrifice are mentioned in Greek legend.

At first, his priests had gone into an orgy of human sacrifice.

That the numerous Germanic tribes practiced human sacrifice in sacred groves is beyond doubt.

The story of the voluntary sacrifice of the Attic maiden Aglauros on behalf of her country in time of war (commemorated by the ephebi taking the oath of loyalty to their country in her temple), and of the leap of the three sisters over the Acropolis rock (see Erechtheus), probably points to an old human sacrifice.

They worshipped the sun, and more particularly the moon, the latter being perhaps identical with the great Nature Goddess of Asia Minor (see GREAT MOTHER OF THE GoDs), and believed in soothsaying and the virtue of human sacrifice.

The sacrifice of living creatures to appease wrathful gods was fairly widespread in ancient times, including, in some places, human sacrifice.