invaluable guide-book of the
artistic and religious pilgrim written in the second century after
our era by Pausanias. If we follow him, we shall find that many of the
ceremonies, stories and idols which he regarded as oldest are analogous
to the idols and myths of the contemporary backward races. Let us then,
for the sake of illustrating the local and savage survivals in Greek
religion, accompany Pausanias in his tour through Hellas.

In Christian countries, especially in modern times, the contents of one
church are very like the furniture of another church; the functions in
one resemble those in all, though on the Continent some shrines still
retain relics and customs of the period when local saints had their
peculiar rites. But it was a very different thing in Greece. The pilgrim
who arrived at a temple never could guess what oddity or horror in
the way of statues, sacrifices, or stories might be prepared for his
edification. In the first place, there were HUMAN SACRIFICES. These are
not familiar to low savages, if known to them at all. Probably they were
first offered to barbaric royal ghosts, and thence transferred to gods.
In the town of Salamis, in Cyprus, about the date of Hadrian, the
devout might have found the priest slaying a human victim to Zeus,--an
interesting custom, instituted, according to Lactantius, by Teucer, and
continued till the age of the Roman Empire.(1)

(1) Euseb., Praep. Ev., iv. 17, mentions, among peoples practising human
sacrifices, Rhodes, Salamis, Heliopolis, Chios, Tenedos, Lacedaemon,
Arcadia and Athens; and, among gods thus honoured, Hera, Athene, Cronus,
Ares, Dionysus, Zeus and Apollo. For Dionysus the Cannibal, Plutarch,
Themist., 13; Porphyr., Abst., ii. 55. For the sacrifice to Zeus
Laphystius, see Grote, i. c. vi., and his array of authorities,
especially Herodotus, vii. 197. Clemens Alexandrinus (i. 36) mentions
the Messenians, to Zeus; the Taurians, to Artemis, the folk of Pella,
to Peleus and Chiron; the Cretans, to Zeus; the Lesbians, to Dionysus.
Geusius de Victimis Humanis (1699) may be consulted.

At Alos in Achaia Phthiotis, the stranger MIGHT have seen an
extraordinary spectacle, though we admit that the odds would have been
highly against his chance of witnessing the following events. As the
stranger approaches the town-hall, he observes an elderly and most
respectable citizen strolling in the same direction. The citizen is so
lost in thought that apparently he d