element by which the sun-god chiefly manifested himself, and by the
sacrifice his powers were augmented, and thus growth and fertility were
promoted. These holocausts were probably extensions of an earlier
slaying of a victim representing the spirit of vegetation, though their
value in aiding fertility would be still in evidence. This is suggested
by Strabo's words that the greater the number of murders the greater
would be the fertility of the land, probably meaning that there would
then be more criminals as sacrificial victims.[800] Varro also speaks of
human sacrifice to a god equated with Saturn, offered because of all
seeds the human race is the best, i.e. human victims are most productive
of fertility.[801] Thus, looked at in one way, the later rite was a
propitiatory sacrifice, in another it was an act of magico-religious
ritual springing from the old rite of the divine victim. But from both
points of view the intention was the same--the promotion of fertility in
field and fold.

Divination with the bodies of human victims is attested by Tacitus, who
says that "the Druids consult the gods in the palpitating entrails of
men," and by Strabo, who describes the striking down of the victim by
the sword and the predicting of the future from his convulsive
movements.[802] To this we shall return.

Human sacrifice in Gaul was put down by the Romans, who were amazed at
its extent, Suetonius summing up the whole religion in a
phrase--_druidarum religionem dirae immanitatis_.[803] By the year 40
A.D. it had ceased, though victims were offered symbolically, the Druids
pretending to strike them and drawing a little blood from them.[804]
Only the pressure of a higher civilisation forced the so-called
philosophic Druids to abandon their revolting customs. Among the Celts
of Britain human sacrifice still prevailed in 77 A.D.[805] Dio Cassius
describes the refinements of cruelty practised on female victims
(prisoners of war) in honour of the goddess Andrasta--their breasts cut
off and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their
bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove.[806] Tacitus speaks of
the altars in Mona (Anglesey) laved with human blood. As to the Irish
Celts, patriotic writers have refused to believe them guilty of such
practices,[807] but there is no _a priori_ reason which need set them
apart from other races on the same level of civilisation in this custom.
The Irish texts no doubt exaggerate th