The Carthaginians had two deities to whom they paid a more particular worship, and who deserve to have some mention made of them in this place.
The first was the goddess Cœlestis, called likewise Urania, the same with the moon, who was invoked in great calamities, and particularly in droughts, in order to obtain rain: that [pg 094] very virgin Cœlestis, says Tertullian,[511] the promiser of rain, Ista ipsa Virgo Cœlestis pluviarum pollicitatrix. Tertullian, speaking of this goddess and of Æsculapius, makes the heathens of that age a challenge, which is bold indeed, but at the same time very glorious to the cause of Christianity; declaring, that any Christian who may first come, shall oblige these false gods to confess publicly, that they are but devils; and consenting that this Christian shall be immediately killed, if he does not extort such a confession from the mouth of these gods. Nisi se dæmones confessi fuerint Christiano mentiri non audentes, ibidem illius Christiani procacissimi sanguinem fundite. St. Austin likewise makes frequent mention of this deity. “What is now,” says he,[512] “become of Cœlestis, whose empire was once so great in Carthage?” This was doubtless the same deity whom Jeremiah calls the queen of heaven;[513] and who was held in so much reverence by the Jewish women, that they addressed their vows, burnt incense, poured out drink-offerings, and made cakes for her with their own hands, ut faciant placentas reginæ cœli; and from whom they boasted their having received all manner of blessings, whilst they regularly paid her this worship; whereas, since they had failed in it, they had been oppressed with misfortunes of every kind.
The second deity particularly adored by the Carthaginians, and in whose honour human sacrifices were offered, was Saturn, known in Scripture by the name of Moloch; and this worship had passed from Tyre to Carthage. Philo quotes a passage from Sanchoniathon, which shows that the kings of Tyre, in great dangers, used to sacrifice their sons to appease the anger of the gods; and that one of them, by this action, procured himself divine honours, and was worshipped as a god, under the name of the planet Saturn; to this doubtless was owing the fable of Saturn's devouring his own children. Private persons, when they were desirous of averting any great calamity, took the same method; and, in imitation of their princes, were so very superstitious, that such as had no children, purchased those of the poor, in order that they might not be deprived of the merit of such a sacrifice. This custom prevailed long among the Phœnicians and Canaanites, from whom the Israelites [pg 095] borrowed it, though forbidden expressly by heaven. At first, these children were inhumanly burnt, either in a fiery furnace, like those in the valley of Hinnon, so often mentioned in Scripture, or enclosed in a flaming statue of Saturn. The cries of these unhappy victims were drowned by the uninterrupted noise of drums and trumpets.[514] Mothers[515] made it a merit, and a part of their religion, to view this barbarous spectacle with dry eyes, and without so much as a groan; and, if a tear or a sigh stole from them, the sacrifice was less acceptable to the deity, and all the effects of it were entirely lost. This strength of mind, or rather savage barbarity, was carried to such excess, that even mothers would endeavour, with embraces and kisses, to hush the cries of their children;[516] lest, had the victim been offered with an unbecoming grace, and in the midst of tears, it should be displeasing to the god: Blanditiis et osculis comprimebant vagitum, ne flebilis hostia immolaretur.[517] They afterwards contented themselves with making their children pass through the fire; as appears from several passages of Scripture, in which they frequently perished.
The Carthaginians retained the barbarous custom of offering human sacrifices to their gods,[518] till the ruin of their city:[519] an action which ought to have been called a sacrilege rather than a sacrifice. Sacrilegium veriùs quàm sacrum. It was suspended only for some years, from the fear they were under of drawing upon themselves the indignation and arms of Darius I. [pg 096] king of Persia, who forbade them the offering up of human sacrifices, and the eating the flesh of dogs: but they soon resumed this horrid practice, since, in the reign of Xerxes, the successor to Darius, Gelon the tyrant of Syracuse, having gained a considerable victory over the Carthaginians in Sicily, among other conditions of peace which he enjoined them, inserted this article:[520] viz. “That no more human sacrifices should be offered to Saturn.” And, doubtless, the practice of the Carthaginians, on this very occasion, made Gelon use this precaution. For during the whole engagement, which lasted from morning till night, Hamilcar, the son of Hanno their general, was perpetually offering up to the gods sacrifices of living men, who were thrown in great numbers on a flaming pile; and seeing his troops routed and put to flight, he himself rushed into it, in order that he might not survive his own disgrace, and to extinguish, says St. Ambrose speaking of this action, with his own blood this sacrilegious fire, when he found that it had not proved of service to him.[521][522]
In times of pestilence[523] they used to sacrifice a great number of children to their gods, unmoved with pity for a tender age, which excites compassion in the most cruel enemies; thus seeking a remedy for their evils in guilt itself; and endeavouring to appease the gods by the most shocking barbarity.
Diodorus relates[524] an instance of this cruelty which strikes the reader with horror. At the time that Agathocles was just going to besiege Carthage, its inhabitants, seeing the extremity to which they were reduced, imputed all their misfortunes to the just anger of Saturn, because that, instead of offering up children nobly born, who were usually sacrificed to him, there had been fraudulently substituted in their stead the children of slaves and foreigners. To atone for this crime, two hundred children of the best families in Carthage were sacrificed to Saturn; besides which, upwards of three hundred citizens, from [pg 097] a sense of their guilt of this pretended crime, voluntarily sacrificed themselves. Diodorus adds, that there was a brazen statue of Saturn, the hands of which were turned downward; so that when a child was laid on them, it dropped immediately into a hollow, where was a fiery furnace.
Can this, says Plutarch,[525] be called worshipping the gods? Can we be said to entertain an honourable idea of them, if we suppose that they are pleased with slaughter, thirsty of human blood, and capable of requiring or accepting such offerings? Religion, says this judicious author,[526] is placed between two rocks, that are equally dangerous to man, and injurious to the deity, I mean impiety and superstition. The one, from an affectation of free-thinking, believes nothing; and the other, from a blind weakness, believes all things. Impiety, to rid itself of a terror which galls it, denies the very existence of the gods: whilst superstition, to calm its fears, capriciously forges gods, which it makes not only the friends, but protectors and models, of crimes. Had it not been better, says he further,[527] for the Carthaginians to have had originally a Critias, or a Diagoras, who were open and undisguised atheists, for their lawgivers, than to have established so frantic and wicked a religion? Could the Typhons and the giants, (the avowed enemies of the gods,) had they gained a victory over them, have established more abominable sacrifices?
Such were the sentiments which a heathen entertained of this part of the Carthaginian worship. One would indeed scarce believe that mankind were capable of such madness and frenzy. Men do not generally of themselves entertain ideas so destructive of all that nature considers as most sacred, as to sacrifice, to murder, their children with their own hands, and to throw them in cool blood into fiery furnaces! Sentiments so unnatural and barbarous, and yet adopted by whole nations, and even by the most civilized, by the Phœnicians, Carthaginians, Gauls, Scythians, and even the Greeks and Romans, and consecrated by custom during a long series of ages, can have been inspired by him only who was a murderer from the beginning; and who delights in nothing but the humiliation, misery, and perdition of man.
Sect. III. Form of the Government of Carthage.—The government of Carthage was founded upon principles of the most consummate wisdom; and it is with reason that Aristotle[528] ranks this republic in the number of those that were had in the greatest esteem by the ancients, and which were fit to serve as a model for others. He grounds his opinion on a reflection, which does great honour to Carthage, by remarking, that, from its foundation to his time, (that is, upwards of five hundred years,) no considerable sedition had disturbed the peace, nor any tyrant oppressed the liberty of that state. Indeed, mixed governments, such as that of Carthage, where the power was divided betwixt the nobles and the people, are subject to two inconveniences; either of degenerating into an abuse of liberty by the seditions of the populace, as frequently happened in Athens, and in all the Grecian republics; or into the oppression of the public liberty by the tyranny of the nobles, as in Athens, Syracuse, Corinth, Thebes, and Rome itself under Sylla and Cæsar. It is, therefore, giving Carthage the highest praise, to observe, that it had found out the art, by the wisdom of its laws, and the harmony of the different parts of its government, to shun, during so long a series of years, two rocks that are so dangerous, and on which others so often split.
It were to be wished, that some ancient author had left us an accurate and regular description of the customs and laws of this famous republic. For want of such assistance, we can only give our readers a confused and imperfect idea of them, by collecting the several passages which lie scattered up and down in authors. Christopher Hendrich has obliged the learned world in this particular, and his work[529] has been of great service to me.