s human sacrifice, Petron., 141; and for the
Thargelia, Tsetzes, Chiliads, v. 736; Hellad. in Photius, p. 1590 f. and
Harpoc. s. v.

The institution of human sacrifice, then, whether the offering be
regarded as food, or as a gift to the god of what is dearest to man (as
in the case of Jephtha's daughter), or whether the victim be supposed to
carry on his head the sins of the people, does not necessarily date from
the period of savagery. Indeed, sacrifice flourishes most, not among
savages, but among advancing barbarians. It would probably be impossible
to find any examples of human sacrifices of an expiatory or piacular
character, any sacrifices at all, among Australians, or Andamanese,
or Fuegians. The notion of presenting food to the supernatural powers,
whether ghosts or gods, is relatively rare among savages.(1) The
terrible Aztec banquets of which the gods were partakers are the most
noted examples of human sacrifices with a purely cannibal origin. Now
there is good reason to guess that human sacrifices with no other
origin than cannibalism survived even in ancient Greece. "It may be
conjectured," writes Professor Robertson Smith,(2) "that the human
sacrifices offered to the Wolf Zeus (Lycaeus) in Arcadia were originally
cannibal feasts of a Wolf tribe. The first participants in the rite
were, according to later legend, changed into wolves; and in later
times(3) at least one fragment of the human flesh was placed among the
sacrificial portions derived from other victims, and the man who ate it
was believed to become a were-wolf."(4) It is the almost universal rule
with cannibals not to eat members of their own stock, just as they do
not eat their own totem. Thus, as Professor Robertson Smith says, when
the human victim is a captive or other foreigner, the human sacrifice
may be regarded as a survival of cannibalism. Where, on the other
hand, the victim is a fellow tribesman, the sacrifice is expiatory or
piacular.

(1) Jevons, Introduction to the Science of Religion, pp. 161, 199.

(2) Encyc. Brit., s. v. "Sacrifice".

(3) Plato, Rep., viii. 565, D.

(4) Paus., viii. 2.

Among Greek cannibal gods we cannot fail to reckon the so-called
"Cannibal Dionysus," and probably the Zeus of Orchomenos, Zeus
Laphystius, who is explained by Suidas as "the Glutton Zeus". The
cognate verb ((Greek text omitted)) means "to eat with mangling and
rending," "to devour gluttonously". By Zeus Laphystius, then, men's
flesh