The Carthaginians retained the custom of offering human sacrifices
to their gods till the destruction of their city. When Gelon
of Syracuse gained a victory over them in Sicily, one of the articles
of stipulation was that no more human lives should be sacrificed to
Saturn. “For,” says Rollin, “during the whole engagement, which
lasted from morn till night, Hamilcar, the son of Hanno, was continually
offering to the gods sacrifices of living men, who were
thrown on a flaming pile.” Seeing his troops put to flight, Hamilcar
threw himself upon the same pile, and received, after his death,
divine honors. Mothers (according to Plutarch and Tertullian)
threw their children into the sacrificial flames, and the least indication
of pity or sorrow would have been punished in them as
impious.
According to the belief of the fathers, it must have been the
princely instigator of the rebellion in heaven who caused himself to
be adored as the god Belus or Saturn, whose altars were continually
glowing with the blood and flames of human sacrifices. Those
angels who fell from the thirst of power must have been the authors
of all cruelty. The seraphic offenders were only voluptuous.
The angel presiding over licentious love is sometimes forcibly
alluded to in “Les Martyrs” of M. de Châteaubriand.
