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prevailed. For that it was loosed and abolished at no other time than during the times of Hadrian, when the teaching of Christ was already shining like a light in every place. To these things not we, but again the explicit testimonies of those who do not share our beliefs will bear witness, accusing the times before this of such great wickedness, that the superstitious now went beyond even the bounds of nature, being driven mad by destructive spirits and being openly possessed by demons, so as to think to propitiate the blood-stained powers with the blood of their dearest ones and with countless other human sacrifices. And a certain father would offer his only-begotten son, and a mother her beloved daughter, to the demon, and their dearest ones slaughtered their own kin as if they were irrational and alien beasts, and they sacrificed to the so-called gods throughout cities and countries their housemates and fellow citizens, having sharpened their philanthropic and compassionate nature to what is merciless and inhuman, and displaying a manner truly manic and demonic. And so you would find, examining all Greek and barbarian history, how some would consecrate their sons, others their daughters, and others even themselves in the sacrifices to demons. But I present to you as a witness to these things the one I have previously mentioned, in the same words in which he forbade the sacrifice of irrational beasts as unholy and most unjust, saying these things word for word:

17. FROM PORPHYRY, ON THE ANCIENT PRACTICE OF HUMAN SACRIFICE "And that we say these things not simply, but from a full account of history, the following are also sufficient to establish. For in Rhodes also, on the sixth day of the month Metageitnion, a man was sacrificed to Cronus. This custom, having prevailed for a long time, was changed. For they would keep one of those publicly condemned to death until the Cronia, and when the festival began, having brought the man outside the gates opposite the shrine of Aristobule, they gave him wine to drink and slaughtered him. And in what is now Salamis, but was formerly called Coroneia, in the Cyprian month of Aphrodisius, a man was sacrificed to Agraulos, daughter of Cecrops and the nymph Agraulis. And the custom continued until the time of Diomedes. Then it changed, so that the man was sacrificed to Diomedes. Under one enclosure were both the temple of Athena and that of Agraulos and Diomedes. The man who was to be sacrificed, being led by the ephebes, ran around the altar three times; then the priest struck him in the stomach with a lance, and so they burned him whole on the heaped-up pyre. But Diphilus, king of Cyprus, who lived in the time of Seleucus the theologian, abolished this rite, changing the custom to the sacrifice of an ox. And the demon accepted the ox instead of the man; so equivalent is the deed. Amosis also abolished the law of homicide in Heliopolis of Egypt, as Manetho testifies in his work *On Antiquity and Piety*. For they were sacrificed to Hera and were examined just as the pure calves that are sought for and sealed. And three were sacrificed a day; in their place Amosis commanded an equal number of wax figures to be offered. And in Chios they sacrificed a man to Dionysus Omadius by tearing him to pieces, and also in Tenedos, as Euelpis of Carystus says; since Apollodorus also says that the Lacedaemonians sacrifice a man to Ares. The Phoenicians, in great calamities either of wars or plagues or droughts, would sacrifice one of their dearest by a public vote to Cronus. And the Phoenician history is full of those who sacrificed, which Sanchuniathon wrote in the Phoenician language, and Philo of Byblos translated into the Greek language in eight books. And Istrus, in his *Collection of Cretan Sacrifices*, says that the Curetes in ancient times used to sacrifice children to Cronus. But that human sacrifices were abolished almost everywhere is stated by Pallas, who best <the> things concerning the of