DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0145
135
is now in Ii eland, and held to be a lioly and mystic means of com-
munion with the oreat active principle of the universe.1
H)S. It must, however, be admitted that the Carthaginians and
other nations of antiquity did occasionally sacrifice their children .to
their gods, in the most cruel and barbarous manner; and, indeed,
there is scarcely any people whose history does not afford some
instances of such abominable rites. Even the patriarch Abraham,
when ordered to sacrifice his only son, does not appear to have
been surprised or startled at it, or to have conceived the slightest
suspicion that it might have been the contrivance of an evil being
to seduce him : neither could Jephtha have had any notion that
such sacrifices were odious or even unacceptable to the Deity, or
he would not have considered his daughter as included in his ge-
neral vow, or imagined that a breach of it in such an instance could
be a greater crime than fulfilling it. Another mode of mystic pu-
rification by baptism was the Taurobolium, iEgobolium, or Cri-
obolium of the Mithriac rites; which preceded Christianity but
a short time in the Roman empire, and spread and flourished with
it*. The catechumen was placed in a pit covered with perforated
boards ; upon which the victim, whether a bull, a goat, or a ram,
was sacrificed so as to bathe him in the blood which flowed from it.
To this the compositions, so frequent in the sculptures of the
third and fourth centuries, of Mithras the Persian Mediator, or
' Moxque per ardentes stipulw crepitantis acervos
Trajicias eeleri strenua membra pede.
Expositus mos est: moris mihi restat origo.
Turba facit duliium ; cceptaque nostra tenet.
Omnia purgat edax ignis, vitiumque meiallis
Excoquit : idcirco cum duce purgat oves.
An, quia cunctarum contraria semina rerurn
Sunt duo, discordes ignis et unda dei;
Junxerunt elementa patres : aptumque putanint
Ignibus, et sparsa tangere corpus aqua?
An, quod in his vita; caussa est; liaec perdidit exul:
His nova fit conjux : hax duo magna putantf
Ovid. Fast. lib. iv. 781
is now in Ii eland, and held to be a lioly and mystic means of com-
munion with the oreat active principle of the universe.1
H)S. It must, however, be admitted that the Carthaginians and
other nations of antiquity did occasionally sacrifice their children .to
their gods, in the most cruel and barbarous manner; and, indeed,
there is scarcely any people whose history does not afford some
instances of such abominable rites. Even the patriarch Abraham,
when ordered to sacrifice his only son, does not appear to have
been surprised or startled at it, or to have conceived the slightest
suspicion that it might have been the contrivance of an evil being
to seduce him : neither could Jephtha have had any notion that
such sacrifices were odious or even unacceptable to the Deity, or
he would not have considered his daughter as included in his ge-
neral vow, or imagined that a breach of it in such an instance could
be a greater crime than fulfilling it. Another mode of mystic pu-
rification by baptism was the Taurobolium, iEgobolium, or Cri-
obolium of the Mithriac rites; which preceded Christianity but
a short time in the Roman empire, and spread and flourished with
it*. The catechumen was placed in a pit covered with perforated
boards ; upon which the victim, whether a bull, a goat, or a ram,
was sacrificed so as to bathe him in the blood which flowed from it.
To this the compositions, so frequent in the sculptures of the
third and fourth centuries, of Mithras the Persian Mediator, or
' Moxque per ardentes stipulw crepitantis acervos
Trajicias eeleri strenua membra pede.
Expositus mos est: moris mihi restat origo.
Turba facit duliium ; cceptaque nostra tenet.
Omnia purgat edax ignis, vitiumque meiallis
Excoquit : idcirco cum duce purgat oves.
An, quia cunctarum contraria semina rerurn
Sunt duo, discordes ignis et unda dei;
Junxerunt elementa patres : aptumque putanint
Ignibus, et sparsa tangere corpus aqua?
An, quod in his vita; caussa est; liaec perdidit exul:
His nova fit conjux : hax duo magna putantf
Ovid. Fast. lib. iv. 781