Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Taurians, Gauls, and Romans: Lactantius on human sacrifice and other criminal rituals to false gods (early fourth century CE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified August 23, 2026, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=23113.
Ancient author: Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.21 (link; link to Latin).
Comments: In the process of rejecting the false gods of other peoples and of other contemporary Romans specifically, Lactantius (introduced at this link) provides a series of ethnographic examples as amunition. He begins with practices in honour of the gods which he characterizes as criminal, particularly zeroing in on supposed cases of human sacrifice. While other apologetic authors who aimed to defend the worship of the God of the Christians would similarly accuse Romans and other peoples of human sacrifice in order to counter the precise same accusations against Jesus adherents (who were not only accused of human sacrifice but also eating human flesh and incest), Lactantius does not openly refer to such characterizations of Christians (to my knowledge).
With the exception of the inclusion of Latins and Romans (other than those Romans like himself who had adopted the “true God”), his list of non-Greek peoples who engage or did engage in the murderous practice of sacrificing human beings overlaps with similar lists by other Greek and Roman elite authors. Taurians, Gauls or Celts, and Carthaginians appear on such lists with some frequency. After citing the worst possible crimes, he then moves on to other strange and problematic customs associated with false gods. Various Greek peoples are also implicated in that section.
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[Criminal rituals of human sacrifice]
[Cyprians, Taurians, Gauls, and Latins]
(1.21) We have talked about the gods themselves who are worshipped [by the Romans and Greeks, in an argument about how the idea of multiple gods is an error]. Now we need to say a few words regarding their sacrifices and mysteries. Among the people of Cyprus, Teucer [Teuker, legendary founder of Salamis] sacrificed a human victim to Jupiter [i.e. Zeus], and handed down to posterity that sacrifice which was lately abolished by Hadrian when he was emperor [i.e. 117-138 CE]. There was a law (lex) among the Taurians – an inhuman and wild (ferus) people (gens) – by which it was ordered that strangers should be sacrificed to Diana [i.e. Artemis], and this sacrifice was practised for a long time. The Gauls used to appease Hesus and Teutas with human blood. Nor, indeed, were the Latins free from this cruelty, since Jupiter Latialis is even now worshipped with the offering of human blood.
[Romans / Latins – excepting Jesus adherents – guilty of similar crimes]
What benefit do those who offer such sacrifices gain from gods like this? Or what can such deities grant humans by whose sufferings they are propitiated? But this is not surprising when it comes to barbarians, whose sense of duty (religio) agrees with their character. But aren’t we [i.e. educated Romans], who have always claimed for ourselves the glory of gentleness and civilization, shown up as more inhuman by these sacrilegious rites? For those who fall away from humanity even though they have a liberal education are to be considered criminals (scelerati) rather than those who, uneducated and inexperienced, slip into evil practices through ignorance of good things. Yet it is clear that this ritual of human sacrifice is ancient, since Saturn was honoured in Latium with the same kind of sacrifice. Not that a man was actually slaughtered at the altar, but that he was thrown from the Milvian bridge into the Tiber. Varro relates that this was done in accordance with an oracle. The last verse of the oracle is to this effect: “Offer heads to Hades, and a human being to the Father.” And because this appears ambiguous, both a torch and a man are customarily thrown to him. But it is said that sacrifices of this kind were abolished by Hercules when he returned from Hispania [Spain]. The custom still continues but, instead of real humans, images made from rushes were thrown in, as Ovid informs us in his Fasti [5.629–32]: “Until the Tirynthian came into these lands, gloomy sacrifices were annually offered in the Leucadian manner: he threw into the water Romans made of straw. Do you cast in the images of human bodies following the example of Hercules.” The Vestal virgins make these sacred offerings, as the same poet says: “Then also a virgin is accustomed to cast from the wooden bridge the images of ancient men made from rushes” [Ovid, Fasti 5.621-622].
For I cannot find language to speak of the infants who were sacrificed to the same Saturn, on account of his hatred of Jupiter. To think that men were so barbarous, so savage, that they used the word “sacrifice” for the murder of their own children, which is considered a foul and accursed crime (facinus) throughout humanity. Without any regard for parental affection, they destroyed tender and innocent lives at an age which is especially pleasing to parents. They surpassed in brutality the wildness of all wild animals, which — even though they are wild — still love their offspring! O incurable madness! What more could those gods do to them, if they were most angry, than they now do when favourable, namely defiling their worshippers with murder, visiting them with grief, and depriving them of the sensibilities of human beings? What can be sacred to these people? Or what will such people do in profane places when they commit the greatest crimes in the midst of altars for the gods?
[Carthaginians]
Pescennius Festus relates in the books of his Satirical Stories, that the Carthaginians were accustomed to sacrifice human beings to Saturn. When they were conquered by Agathokles, the king of the Sicilians, they imagined that the god was angry with them. Therefore, in order that they might more diligently offer an expiation, they sacrificed two hundred sons of their nobles: “So great the depravity to which a sense of duty (religio) could prompt, which has often produced wicked and impious deeds” [Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 1.101, 83]. What advantage, then, did the people propose by that sacrifice, when they put to death so large a segment of the community, more than even Agathokles had slain when victorious?
[Castration among devotees of the Mother of the gods: Syrians]
No less crazy in comparison with this kind of sacrifices are those public rituals which are done in honour of the Mother of the gods [e.g. Syrian Agdistis], in which men cut off their own sexual organs. Others are done in honour of Virtus, whom they also call Bellona, in which the priests make offerings not with the blood of another victim, but with their own blood [i.e. human blood]. For, cutting their shoulders, and thrusting forth drawn swords in each hand, they run, they are beside themselves, and they are frantic. Quintilian therefore puts it very well in his work Fanatic: “If a god compels this, he does it in anger.” Are even these things sacred? Is it not better to live like cattle rather than to worship deities so impious, profane, and bloodthirsty?
[Other ridiculous and strange, but not criminal, local rituals for, and stories about, the gods]
[Egyptians]
We discuss the source from which these errors and shameful actions (flagitia) of such great disgrace originated in the proper place in this work. In the meantime, let us look at other matters which are not criminal (quae carent scelere), so that it does not seem like we are just picking the worst parts with a desire to find fault.
In Egypt there are sacred rituals in honour of Isis, since she either lost or found her little son. For at first her priests, having plucked their bodies smooth, beat their breasts and lament, as the goddess herself had done when her child was lost. Afterwards the boy is brought forward, as if found, and that mourning is changed into joy. Therefore Lucan says, “And Osiris never searched enough.” For they always lose, and they always find him. Therefore, in the sacred rituals there is a representation of a circumstance which really occurred, if we have any intelligence, that she was a mortal woman and almost desolate if had she not found one person. And this did not escape the notice of the poet himself, because he represents Pompey when a youth as speaking in the following way after hearing about the death of his father: “I will now draw forth the deity Isis from the tomb, and send her throughout the peoples (gentes); and I will scatter Osiris covered with wood on the populace (vulgus)” [Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 9.158–159]. This Osiris is the same one that the populace calls Sarapis. For it is customary for the names of the dead who are deified to be changed, so that no one, as I believe, may imagine them to be human beings. For Romulus after his death became Quirinus, and Leda became Nemesis, and Circe became Marica. Also Ino, when she had leapt into the sea, was called Leucothea; and the mother was called Matuta; and her son Melicerta was called Palaemon and Portumnus.
[Greeks at Athens, Syracuse, Lampsakos, Lindos, Krete]
Furthermore, the sacred rites of the Eleusinian Ceres [i.e. Demeter at Eleusis, just outside Athens] are not unlike these. For as in those which have been mentioned the boy Osiris is sought with the wailing of his mother, so in these Proserpine [i.e. Persephone = Kore] is carried away to contract an incestuous wedding with her uncle. Because Ceres is said to have sought for her in Sicily with torches lighted from the top of mount Etna, on this account her sacred rites are celebrated with the throwing of torches.
At Lampsakos [in what is now northwestern Turkey] the victim to be offered to Priapos (Priapus) is an donkey, and the cause of the sacrifice of this animal is presented in Ovid’s Fasti as follows: “When all the deities had assembled at the festival of the Great Mother, and when, after being satisfied with feasting, they were spending the night in sport, they say that Vesta [i.e. Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home] had laid herself on the ground for rest and had fallen asleep. They say that, at that point, Priapos made a plan to violate her honour as she was sleeping. However, they say she was aroused by an untimely braying of the donkey on which Silenos (or: Silenus) used to ride, and that the design of the insidious plotter was frustrated. On this account they say that the people of Lampsakos were accustomed to sacrifice a donkey to Priapos, as though it were in revenge. However, among the Romans the same animal was crowned at the festival for the goddess Vesta with loaves in honour of the preservation of her virginity. What is lower, what is more disgraceful, than if Vesta is indebted to a donkey for the preservation of her purity?
Oh, the story is an invention fo the poet [Ovid], they object. But is there more truth in what is related by the authors [Aratus, Cicero and Germanicus] of the work Phenomena, when they speak concerning the two stars of the Crab [Cancer], which the Greeks call Donkeys? That donkeys carried across father Bacchos (or: Liber) when he was unable to cross a river, and that he rewarded one of them with the power of speaking with a human voice; that a contest arose between him and Priapos; and that Priapos, being beaten in the contest, was enraged and killed the victor. This truly is much more absurd.
But poets have the licence to say whatever they want. I do not meddle with a deformed mystery. Nor am I going to strip Priapos of his clothes in case something worthy of laughter appears. It is true the poets invented these fictions, but they must have been invented for the purpose of concealing some greater depravity. Let us inquire what this depravity is. But in fact it is clear. The bull is sacrificed to Luna, because he also has horns as she has. As “Persia propitiates with a horse Hyperion surrounded with rays, so that a slow victim may not be offered to the swift god” [Ovid, Fasti 1.385-386]. So in this case no more suitable victim could be found than one that resembled him to whom it is offered in having an enormous sexual organ.
At Lindos, which is a town on the island of Rhodes, there are sacred rites in honour of Herakles (Hercules), the observance of which differs widely from all other rites. For these rites are not celebrated with words of good speech (euphemia) as the Greeks call it, but with revilings and curses. And they consider it a violation of the sacred rites if at any time during the celebration of the rite a good word escapes from any one even by accident. And this is the reason assigned for this practice, if indeed there can be any reason in things utterly senseless: When Herakles had arrived at the place and was suffering hunger, he saw a farmer at work and began to ask him to sell one of his oxen. But the farmer replied that this was impossible, because his hope of farming the land depended completelyon those two bulls. Herakles, with his usual violence, because he was not able to receive one of them, killed both of them. But the unhappy man, when he saw that his oxen were slaughtered, avenged the injury with revilings. This was a circumstance which afforded gratification to the man of elegance and refinement. For while he prepares a feast for his companions, and while he devours the oxen of another man, he receives with ridicule and loud laughter the bitter reproaches with which the other assails him. But when it had been determined that divine honours should be paid to Herakles in admiration of his excellence, an altar was erected in his honour by the citizens. He named the altar “the yoke of oxen” from this situation, and at this altar two yoked oxen were sacrificed, like those which he had taken from the farmer. And he appointed the same man to be his priest, and directed him always to use the same revilings in offering sacrifice, because he said that he had never feasted more pleasantly.
Now these things are not sacred, but a violation of the sacred (sacrilegium). In these cases something is enjoined which, if done in other circumstances, would be punished with the greatest severity. What, moreover, do the rites of the Kretan Zeus (Jupiter) himself show, except the manner in which he was withdrawn from his father, or brought up? There is a goat belonging to the nymph Amalthea which breast-fed the infant. About this goat Germanicus [in Phenomena] speaks like this in his poem translated from Aratus: “She is supposed to be the nurse of Jupiter; if in truth the infant Jupiter pressed the faithful teats of the Kretan goat, which attests the gratitude of her lord by a bright constellation.” Musaeus relates that Jupiter, when fighting against the Titans, used the hide of this goat as a shield, for which reason the poets call him “shield-bearer.” Thus, whatever was done in concealing the boy, that also is done by way of representation in the sacred rites. Moreover, the mystery of his mother also contains the same story which Ovid presents in the Fasti: “Now the lofty Ida resounds with tinklings, that the boy may cry in safety with infant mouth. Some strike their shields with stakes, some beat their empty helmets. This is the employment of the Kouretes (Curetes), this of the Korbybants (Corybantes). The matter was concealed, and imitations of the ancient deed remain. The attendant goddesses shake instruments of brass, and hoarse hides. Instead of helmets they strike cymbals, and drums instead of shields. The flute gives Phrygian strains, as it gave before.” . . [omitted survey of alternative opinions about the story of the Kouretes]. How would anyone with any sense not laugh at these mockeries? . . . [omitted sentence].
[Conclusion of book one reiterating intent of the above material]
A few things still remain which may be very effective in disproving numerous false customary obligations (religiones falsas plurimum). However, I have determined now to bring this book to an end so that it may not exceed moderate limits. For those things must be followed up more fully so that, having refuted all things which seem to oppose the truth, we may be able to teach about the true obligation (religio) to people who, through ignorance of good things, wander in uncertainty. But the first step towards wisdom is to understand what is false; the second, to ascertain what is true. Therefore, anyone who has profited from this first discussion of mine, in which we have exposed false things, will be excited about knowledge of the truth. No pleasure is more gratifying to human beings than knowing the truth. The one who approaches with willingness and preparation to the knowledge of the other subjects will now be worthy of the wisdom of heavenly training.
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Source of translation: W. Fletcher, The Works of Lactantius, Ante-Nicene Christian Library 21–22 (T&T Clark, 1871), public doman, adapted by Harland.