 | Zóphiël ; or, the bride of seven |  |
II.
But now that city's turrets frown on high;And from her distant streets is heard the shriek
Of frenzied mothers, uttered as they fly
From where with children's blood their guilty altars reek.
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.
| Zóphiël ; or, the bride of seven | |