Some have already been carried to such a degree of impiety and madness that they even slaughter human beings—the very originals of the figures and forms they call gods—and offer them as sacrifices to their false gods. The miserable people do not see that the victims they slaughter are the models of the gods they themselves fashion and worship, and to whom they offer human beings. They are, one might say, offering like to like—or rather, the better to the worse: living beings to lifeless things, rational beings to things that cannot move.
The Scythians called Taurians offer to the one they call the Virgin those who survive shipwreck, together with any Greeks they capture. In this they go so far in impiety against their fellow human beings and expose the cruelty of their gods. Those whom providence saved from danger at sea they themselves slaughter, all but setting themselves against providence, because by their own savage spirit they nullify the good it did. Others, when they return victorious from war, divide their captives into groups of a hundred and take one from each group; they then slaughter to Ares as many as they have selected, one from every hundred.
Nor are the Scythians alone in doing such abominations because of the savagery innate to them as barbarians. This practice is characteristic of the wickedness of idols and demons. The Egyptians too once offered such victims to Hera. The Phoenicians and Cretans propitiated Cronus with sacrifices of their own children. The ancient Romans worshiped the one called Latiarian Zeus with human sacrifices. Others did so in other ways; in short, all both defiled and were defiled. They were themselves defiled by committing these murders, and they defiled their temples by filling them with the smoke of such sacrifices.
From these things evils multiplied among humanity. Seeing their demons delight in such acts, people immediately imitated their own gods in the same offenses, thinking it an achievement to imitate those they considered superior. From this people were overcome by murder, child-killing, and every kind of licentiousness. Nearly every city is full of every kind of licentiousness because it has come to resemble the character of its gods; and among their idols there is no chaste one except the very one whose licentiousness they themselves attest.
Some have already been carried to such a degree of impiety and madness that they even slaughter human beings—the very originals of the figures and forms they call gods—and offer them as sacrifices to their false gods. The miserable people do not see that the victims they slaughter are the models of the gods they themselves fashion and worship, and to whom they offer human beings. They are, one might say, offering like to like—or rather, the better to the worse: living beings to lifeless things, rational beings to things that cannot move.
The Scythians called Taurians offer to the one they call the Virgin those who survive shipwreck, together with any Greeks they capture. In this they go so far in impiety against their fellow human beings and expose the cruelty of their gods. Those whom providence saved from danger at sea they themselves slaughter, all but setting themselves against providence, because by their own savage spirit they nullify the good it did. Others, when they return victorious from war, divide their captives into groups of a hundred and take one from each group; they then slaughter to Ares as many as they have selected, one from every hundred.
Nor are the Scythians alone in doing such abominations because of the savagery innate to them as barbarians. This practice is characteristic of the wickedness of idols and demons. The Egyptians too once offered such victims to Hera. The Phoenicians and Cretans propitiated Cronus with sacrifices of their own children. The ancient Romans worshiped the one called Latiarian Zeus with human sacrifices. Others did so in other ways; in short, all both defiled and were defiled. They were themselves defiled by committing these murders, and they defiled their temples by filling them with the smoke of such sacrifices.
From these things evils multiplied among humanity. Seeing their demons delight in such acts, people immediately imitated their own gods in the same offenses, thinking it an achievement to imitate those they considered superior. From this people were overcome by murder, child-killing, and every kind of licentiousness. Nearly every city is full of every kind of licentiousness because it has come to resemble the character of its gods; and among their idols there is no chaste one except the very one whose licentiousness they themselves attest.