es of Lycaon, and of men who,
tasting the meat of a mixed sacrifice, put human flesh between their
lips unawares.(2) This aspect of Greek religion, then, is almost on a
level with the mysterious cannibal horrors of "Voodoo," as practised by
the secret societies of negroes in Hayti. But concerning these things,
as Pausanias might say, it is little pleasure to inquire.

(1) Pausanias, viii. 2.

(2) Plato, Rep., viii. 565, d. This rite occurs in some African
coronation ceremonies.

Even where men were not sacrificed to the gods, the tourist among the
temples would learn that these bloody rites had once been customary, and
ceremonies existed by way of commutation. This is precisely what we find
in Vedic religion, in which the empty form of sacrificing a man was gone
through, and the origin of the world was traced to the fragments of a
god sacrificed by gods.(1) In Sparta was an altar of Artemis Orthia,
and a wooden image of great rudeness and antiquity--so rude indeed, that
Pausanias, though accustomed to Greek fetish-stones, thought it must
be of barbaric origin. The story was that certain people of different
towns, when sacrificing at the altar, were seized with frenzy and slew
each other. The oracle commanded that the altar should be sprinkled
with human blood. Men were therefore chosen by lot to be sacrificed till
Lycurgus commuted the offering, and sprinkled the altar with the blood
of boys who were flogged before the goddess. The priestess holds the
statue of the goddess during the flogging, and if any of the boys are
but lightly scourged, the image becomes too heavy for her to bear.

(1) The Purusha Sukhta, in Rig-Veda, x. 90.

The Ionians near Anthea had a temple of Artemis Triclaria, and to her
it had been customary to sacrifice yearly a youth and maiden of
transcendent beauty. In Pausanias's time the human sacrifice was
commuted. He himself beheld the strange spectacle of living beasts
and birds being driven into the fire to Artemis Laphria, a Calydonian
goddess, and he had seen bears rush back among the ministrants; but
there was no record that any one had ever been hurt by these wild
beasts.(1) The bear was a beast closely connected with Artemis, and
there is some reason to suppose that the goddess had herself been
a she-bear or succeeded to the cult of a she-bear in the morning of
time.(2)

(1) Paus., vii. 18, 19.

(2) See "Artemis", postea.

It may be believed that where symbolic human sa