Child Sacrifice

Hello team, I have started a game as carthage and I had a look at their wiki page to get a very quick(and inaccurate overview), but other than on subjects I can see the mistakes, there is a section on child sacrifice. Was child sacrifice ever confirmed? Because reading it, it says that Roman and Greek historians commonly mention it, but that conclusive proof wasn't found. It does say that lots of child graves have been found though.

Now I want to here from people who know what they're talking about. Did Carthage sacrifice children? Was this Propaganda spread by Romans? Wouldn't that lead to population problems? Do we actually know for sure?

link to an extended article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio...hild_sacrifice

Sacrifices of children to Baal and his various derivities is attested in multiple sources, in the Bible as well as Greek histories. Carthaginian religion was decended from that pantheon and there is evidence of child scrifice, mass graves for example. The question is really how common it was and whether it was still happening on a regular basis by 270 BC.

Yeah, they killed babies. But as PVC(Plastic Guy) said, not so sure about later on.

Actually Goldsworthy say that the amount of sacrificed babies increased pretty much every year until 146 BC.

I'll try to find where he got that info from.
First, let's qoute that particular passage from Goldsworthy's The Fall Of Carthage, also known as The Punic Wars (I have both versions):

"In at least one aspect of religious practice the Carthaginians were more conservative than the people of Tyre. They continued the ghastly Moloch sacrifices of infants which were killed and burned in honour of Ba'al Hammon and his consort Tanit, a practice which had been abandoned at Tyre by the time Carthage was established.
The Tophet of Salammbô, the cult site where this ritual occured, is the oldest structure yet discovered by archaeology at Carthage and the excavations have shown that the practice continued until 146 BC. Disturbingly, the proportion of sacrifices where a lamb or other animal was substituted for the child decreased rather than increased over the centuries.
Similar tophets have been discovered at other Carthaginian foundations, but rarely if ever on sites founded directly by the Phoenicians. Religion was closely controlled by the state at Carthage and its senior magistrates combined a political and religious function."

In the back of the book it is stated he gathered this information from:

"Sacrifice to Melquart, Polybius 31. 12; religion and culture, Picard & Picard (1987), pp. 35-50, Lancel (1995), pp. 193-256, esp. 245-56."

I beg your pardon because i cannot provide a source but i heard the thery, that those baby skelettons were from deadborn babies.

You can't sacrifice something that isn't alive. So that theory makes no sense.

Originally Posted by Titus Marcellus Scato

You can't sacrifice something that isn't alive

Actually you can.

Sacrifice only requires that you give up something with any preceived meaning.

I watch a documentary a year or two ago which looked over carthage (i think maybe the documentary that went with BBC's Hannibal) and they basically said that the sources on child sacrifice were Roman and the bible, and we know how accurate that is after all every enemy of the isrealites was deamonised along with thier gods.
I think in the docmentary it was mistaken ritual burial of children and babies that caused the rumours of child sacrifice.

I hate to sound like a jerk, KosaK, but I learnt long ago not to completely trust those documentries on the history channel. I think it'd be best to hear the views of a EB Member on this matter. Most of them, after all, are historians by practice.

I am of the opinion, live sacrifice probably happened, but no where near the level the Romans claimed.

A lot of it was probably offering still born children to some god. "Sacrifice" also could mean putting your baby up for priesthood. The later if I'm correct happened in the "civilized" greco-roman world too. There was also the whole thing about the Romans executing POW's in front of a statue of Mars. That screams ritual murder to me.

One theory I saw somewhere went that by Roman times the Carthies only sacrificed live children in exceptional circumstances, ie. national emergencies and the like, and normally only offered up children who'd died of other causes (of which there should have been no shortage of for all the usual reasons).

Like sacrificing your daughter so the gods don't sink your fleet so you can get your brother's whore of wife back.

Human sacrifice wasn't exactly uncommon in the ancient world. I don't really understand why people want to play devil's advocate for those who did. Does sacrificing less people make it less bad in the 21st century? It happened but no one knows really to what extent. Most everyone did some sort of human sacrifice.

Well I can't be sure but I have heard from several places that many cemeteries containig only the remains of (probably cremeated) children have been discovered around Carthage. This seems to support the claim of Child Sacrafice however we should think about the fact that child-mortality was very high in thoose days and cremation was a common form of burial. Besides as stated above: dead born or early died children could have been offered to the gods so they protect them in the afterlife.

I could also mention the case of Hamilcar Barcas "lost" son. Sources claim he had four sons however we only know the names of the first three - Hannibal, Hasdrubal and Mago.
Some speculate that the fourth son (whose name has never been mentioned anywhere) was sacrificed to win the gods help in war against the romans. If we think about it though: he could just have died of natural causes - in Antiquity children were only given a name at the age of 5 or later because it was very possible they wouldn't live to reach their teens.

Also as stated above human sacrafices were not very uncommen in the Ancient world. It is even suspected that the romans and the greeks made human sacrafices in some extent (above all Prisoners of War). After the punic wars the romans finally outlawed all forms of such practices.

There is a possibility he could have given him to the priesthood too.

Was the sacred band around during the Second Punic War?

The whole baby sacrifice in mass numbers has to have been roman propaganda. I can see if their was a small amount of shild sacrifice, but for there to be huge numbers like the romans said is bound to be hate propaganda.

Originally Posted by Antinous

The whole baby sacrifice in mass numbers has to have been roman propaganda. I can see if their was a small amount of shild sacrifice, but for there to be huge numbers like the romans said is bound to be hate propaganda.

Good propaganda is 100 percent true. That could have been based upon a trader seeing one particular incident of mass sacrifice out of nowhere. That one time only incident eventually spawned into, "dem Carthagians give millions of babies for their gods to eat!"

And if I was a roman hearing that I would hate the carthaginians.

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Sacrifices of children to Baal and his various derivities is attested in multiple sources, in the Bible as well as Greek histories.

lol.

I admit to total ignorance on this subject, but those aren't by any stretch infallible sources. What greek histories, BTW?

Oh yeah I also remember such greeks sources - The Illiad claims Agamennon killed his daughter as sacrifice to the goddes Diana so the greeks could sail to Troy safely. Sure the Illiad is a legend or partly fictional work but it has been proven that it does contain many accurate details.

He killed his daughter?!?!?! I can't believe he sacrificed his own child. What a horrible father!!

Achilles went on a sacrificing spree when his cousin was killed by Hector.

I know he killed alot of animals, but I don't know if he killed any humans.

Originally Posted by Antinous

He killed his daughter?!?!?! I can't believe he sacrificed his own child. What a horrible father!!

Well thats what we all think. However Diana was merciful so she took Iphigenea from the pyrre and (brought her north to the lands of the thracians) replaced her with a young deer (or something like that)
But I even remember worse cases of human sacrafice in greek or roman mithology -not very often but it is there. If only half of them are true then I woulnd't be suprised if evidence for human sacrafice was found.

You see what is interesting is that the greeks and romans didn't show any favor towards human sacrifice. It was more like a loathing towards human sacrifice, but it seems there are accounts of both greeks and romans performing human sacrifice. Now what is weird is that is they detested it then why do human sacrifice. They were basically being a hypocrites.

Lobf, The Bible, like it or not, contains Semetic histories which are just as reliable as Greek or any other works from that period. To suggest that it "must" be propganda is to apply modern ethics to the ancients.

The Greeks and Romans were not dead set against human sacrifice, what disturbed them was gratuitous human sacrifice. That is a very important distinction and worth bearing in mind. It is also worth bearing in mind that the Druidic religion, as well as the Norse religion demanded human sacrifice at certain periods. This is attested in both cases, in the former a drugged and executed bog body has been found.

Antinous, Akhilleus executed the Trojan prisoners he took after he recieved his new armour, he also denied mercy to Trojan nobles he defeated, killing them in cold blood.

Death was a part of the ancient world and ancient religion guys.

I know that Achilles killed all the nobles that he found but that also is a part of the fact that Achilles did not give mercy to his victims. Plus this wasn't ritual sacrifice as much as it was revenge for the death of Patroclus, if you notice in the Illiad Achilles vows never to give mercy to the trojans ever again after Patroclus was killed by Hector.

Originally Posted by Methuselah

I hate to sound like a jerk, KosaK, but I learnt long ago not to completely trust those documentries on the history channel. I think it'd be best to hear the views of a EB Member on this matter. Most of them, after all, are historians by practice.

Absolutely right. History channel is a piece of crap that is designed to be maximally interesting for all audiences. Quite a bit of the things there are exaggerated, embellished or plain false. I remember one kid was recently telling me about that Nostradamus and Bible Code documentaries they recently showed. Bullshaize if you ask me. Purely baseless conjecturing.

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Lobf, The Bible, like it or not, contains Semetic histories which are just as reliable as Greek or any other works from that period. To suggest that it "must" be propganda is to apply modern ethics to the ancients.

When did I suggest it "must" be propaganda? Do you know what quotation marks mean?

My point is that while the Bible contains broad strokes of history, the details are unreliable to a historian.

Originally Posted by HunGeneral

Well thats what we all think. However Diana was merciful so she took Iphigenea from the pyrre and (brought her north to the lands of the thracians) replaced her with a young deer (or something like that)
But I even remember worse cases of human sacrafice in greek or roman mithology -not very often but it is there. If only half of them are true then I woulnd't be suprised if evidence for human sacrafice was found.

I've always heard that that was added later to 'tidy' it up. But yeah, he kills his kid and brings back a mistress after the war. Then his wife kills him while he's taking a bath and also his mistress and makes her lover king. Then Agamemnon's son kills the good queen and her lover and gets aquitted.