Child Sacrifice

[Antinous]

That just seems dumb though because those kids will be your future soldiers.

[penguinking]

That just seems dumb though because those kids will be your future soldiers.

Well, Carthaginian society was hardly designed for maximum military effectiveness.

Plus, if the sacrifices make Baal happy, he'll make sure your soldiers win.

[Megas Methuselah]

It also seems dumb that a high infant mortality rate killed off a lot of kids, because they could have been future soldiers, too.

EDIT: I was being very, very sarcastic with Antinous, but he didn't seem to notice it. *sigh*

[Antinous]

I bet the kids paernts weren't too happy.

[gamegeek2]

From what I know the sick or frail babies were sacrificed to Ba'al.

[Antinous]

Well as a parent with a dying baby they might have taken things a little better.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

sacrificing a baby is actually not that bad of a deal, it's probably going to die anyway. Sacrificing the four year old is more major.

Of course, today we see no difference.

[Antinous]

Well ya, back then once you weren't a baby you had a better chance of survival.

[HunGeneral]

when things went wrong they offered the "proper" sacrifice.

I think thats the true situation - according to my knowledge many sources which mention the sacrafice by the Carhaginians also say that it was only done in times of crisis.

[Mediolanicus]

I bet the kids paernts weren't too happy.

Either that or they would have been ecstatic about the way they honour the gods by giving them their child and basking in your fellow citizens's admirings for this noble gesture which is bound to bring peace and prosperity to the republic.

Of course those parents kept silent this the kid in question was going to die anyway, it suffered constantly from high fevers and had barely eaten for 2 or 3 days. But still, the noble gesture...

[Antinous]

It sounds more like natural selection now.

[Cyclops]

Has anyone mentioned the episode (dramatised so wonderfully by Flaubert in Sallambo) where Hamilcar saves his son from mandatory sacrifice during the Mercenary war (and makes him swear to destroy Rome)?

Its nice bit of dramatic irony: we know that Hannibal will fail to destroy Rome, or even save Carthage. Is it because he wasn't killed? Huzzah for 20/20 hindsight.

...
Of course, that doesn't mean that they actually believed any of this.

Nice point. The Romans seem pretty pedantic about points of superstition when it suited them. Great way to raise morale though: we get beat so we roll out the big ceremonial guns. I guess ritual murder was a sort of divine stimulus package.

I imagine the Cartho's were somewhat similar: they have to "get serious" so they butchered their own kids. I guess it was an incentive make sure you didn't let things get to the crisis stage in the first place.

[Antinous]

Well it seems that the romans really had some good material to hit the carthaginians back with. If I was a foreign nation I wouldn't want to be known as friends of "child murders".

[-Praetor-]

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

I actually never saw it that way

[-Praetor-]

Well, Carthaginian society was hardly designed for maximum military effectiveness.

I think it was. It was much more potent, militarly speaking, than Sparta, even though it didn't encouraged their own population to bear arms and to get good at it like the Lambda guys. However, they dedicated themselves to produce excellent generals and admirals, and to produce money destined to buy and equip the best armies available.

I think it's a very effective society, militarly speaking. They just did it differently.

[antisocialmunky]

Well, I think he was alluding to the whole mercenary war thing.

[HunGeneral]

It was much more potent, militarly speaking, than Sparta, even though it didn't encouraged their own population to bear arms and to get good at it like the Lambda guys. However, they dedicated themselves to produce excellent generals and admirals, and to produce money destined to buy and equip the best armies available.

I think it's a very effective society, militarly speaking. They just did it differently.

Thinking about it I have to say I find it quite true - The Carthaginians never had a large punic populace to serve as the basis for large armies they however had money to hire others to fight for them and willingnis to train, become great generals or officers to lead thoose armies (+ admirals and sailors who ruled the whole western mediteranian). It is even better then the Idea of the Spartans - they could never create a larger kingdom but the Carthaginians did.

By the way: the Spartans themselve "sacraficed" their own children very often - even if the brutal spartan educational system was used just for a short time...

[Dutchhoplite]

Spartans did not sacrifice children...

And:

[Ibrahim]

Spartans did not sacrifice children...

And:

I think he meant the practice of exposure: IIRC, them spartans would "expose" unfit babies.

[Aurgelmir]

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.

Lol...dont know much about sacrifices,but....for the homer fans here...

There is as yet no direct evidence of the existence of Homeric heroes; i.e., no inscriptions, signatures, eye-witness accounts, etc. Theories about them have to rely on a preponderance of other evidence, which alone are not solid enough to warrant much conclusiveness.

Once such piece of quasi-evidence is the names of Trojan heroes in the Linear B tablets. Twenty out of fifty-eight men's names also known from Homer, including e-ko-to (Hector), are Trojan warriors and some, including Hector, are in a servile capacity. No such conclusion that they are the offspring of Trojan captive women is warranted. Generally the public has to be content with the knowledge that these names existed in Greek in Mycenaean times,Hector "may very well be ... a familiar Greek form impressed on a similar-sounding foreign name."

[Megas Methuselah]

Wow. Thanks for stating the excruciatingly obvious, kid.

[KozaK13]

Which of the EB factions are believed to have participatd in human sacrifice of some form? From exposure of spartan babies to the supposed sacrifice of children to Baal?

[HunGeneral]

I think he meant the practice of exposure: IIRC, them spartans would "expose" unfit babies.

Youre right thats exactly what I meant
I believe it to be "sacrafice" because they sentence these children to die just because they don't look fitt to become warriors - It is for the best of the state you could say but the same could be sad about the "supposed" sacrafices he Carthaginians were claimed to do...