Procopius relates of the People about the Arabian Gulph, “That they oftentimes Sacrific’d Men to the Sun.”
Lib. 3. sect. 8 Geogr.
“The Indians, saith Pomponius Mela, kill their nearest Relations and Parents, before they decay by Sickness or Age, and judg’d it fit and most Religious to Feast and Banquet themselves with the Entrails of the slain.”
Lib. 11. Geog.
The Albanians, as Strabo relates, offer yearly one of their Priests to the Moon.
The same Mela relates of the Tauri, That they us’d to cut the Throats of Strangers, whenever they came near to the Place of their Sacrifice.
Lib. 2. cap. 1.
The Egyptian Idol Typhon, as you may read in Manethon, was daily made red-hot, and living People put in, and broyl’d to death.
Bell. Gall. Comm.
But to pass by several other People guilty of such bloody Idolatry, How did the Altars erected in the Woods in Gaul and Germany, for Taran, Hesus, Teutates, and Woden, continually smoke with the Blood of Humane Expiations? Of which Cæsar saith thus in his Commentaries; “The Gauls are a very Devout and Superstitious Nation; and therefore when any were dangerously sick, or likely to be worsted in Battel, they vow’d to feast their Gods that sav’d them with Humane Flesh, and if need were, would make themselves a thankful Sacrifice to those that help’d them off in such an Exigence. Concerning these bloody Rites, they consulted and imploy’d the Druydes, by whose advice they all believ’d that no Victim was so acceptable to the Numens, as pour’d-out Humane Blood, but especially that of Malefactors; which Dainty if they could not procure, their Gods must be treated with the Lives of the Innocent.”