crifices are offered,
that is, where some other victim is slain or a dummy of a man is
destroyed, and where legend maintains that the sacrifice was once human,
there men and women were originally the victims. Greek ritual and Greek
myth were full of such tales and such commutations.(1) In Rome, as is
well known, effigies of men called Argives were sacrificed.(2) As an
example of a beast-victim given in commutation, Pausanias mentions(3)
the case of the folk of Potniae, who were compelled once a year to offer
to Dionysus a boy, in the bloom of youth. But the sacrifice was commuted
for a goat.

(1) See Hermann, Alterthumer., ii. 159-161, for abundant examples.

(2) Plutarch, Quest. Rom. 32.

(3) ix. 8, 1.

These commutations are familiar all over the world. Even in Mexico,
where human sacrifices and ritual cannibalism were daily events,
Quetzalcoatl was credited with commuting human sacrifices for blood
drawn from the bodies of the religious. In this one matter even the most
conservative creeds and the faiths most opposed to change sometimes say
with Tartuffe:--

Le ciel defend, de vrai, certains contentements,
Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements.

Though the fact has been denied (doubtless without reflection), the fact
remains that the Greeks offered human sacrifices. Now what does this
imply? Must it be taken as a survival from barbarism, as one of the
proofs that the Greeks had passed through the barbaric status?

The answer is less obvious than might be supposed. Sacrifice has two
origins. First, there are HONORIFIC sacrifices, in which the ghost or
god (or divine beast, if a divine beast be worshipped) is offered the
food he is believed to prefer. This does not occur among the lowest
savages. To carnivorous totems, Garcilasso says, the Indians of Peru
offered themselves. The feeding of sacred mice in the temples of Apollo
Smintheus is well known. Secondly, there are expiatory or PIACULAR
sacrifices, in which the worshipper, as it were, fines himself in a
child, an ox, or something else that he treasures. The latter kind of
sacrifice (most common in cases of crime done or suspected within the
circle of kindred) is not necessarily barbaric, except in its cruelty.
An example is the Attic Thargelia, in which two human scape-goats
annually bore "the sins of the congregation," and were flogged, driven
to the sea with figs tied round their necks, and burned.(1)

(1) Compare the Marseille