Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/351

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 329 of each year, the city and the temple were crowded with a long train of pilgrims, who presented their vows and offerinfrs in the house of God. The same rites, which are now accomplished by the faithful Musulman, were invented and practised by the superstition of the idolaters. At an awful distance they cast away their garments ; seven times, with hasty steps, they en- circled the Caaba, and kissed the black stone ; seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains ; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship ; the temple was adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes ; and most conspicuous was the statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination. But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts ; the devotion of the ruder ages was content with a pillar or a tablet ; and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone ^^ of Mecca, which is deeply tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From Japan to Peru, the use sacrifices ana of sacrifice has universally prevailed ; and the votary has ex- pressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming, in honour of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their gifts. The life of a man ^'-^ is the most precious oblation to deprecate a public calamity : the altars of Phoenicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore ; the cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs ; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the Dumatians ; ^* and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by of a stone — Wpd^iot a-ePova-i fiki', ovrLi'a Sk ovK o'8a, to &i ayaKfio. [o[ el&ov Ai8o; i]V Ttrpaywro? (dissert. viii. torn. i. p. 142, edit. Reiske) ; and the reproach is furiously re-echoed by the Christians (Clemens Alex, in Protreptico, p. 40 ; Arnobius contra Gentes, 1. vi. p. 246). Yet these stones were no other than the $ai.Tva of Syria and Greece, so renowned in sacred and profane antiquity (Euseb. Prtep. Evangel. 1. i. p. 37, Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 54-56). 5^ The two horrid subjects of 'fSpo6va-La and UniSoCi/o-ia are accurately discussed by the learned Sir John Marsham (Canon. Chron. p. 76-78, 301-304). Sanchonia- tho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the example of Chronus ; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived before or after Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all. ^■'Kot' ero? eVatrroi' naiSa eOvor, is the reproach of Porphyry; but he likewise imputes to the Romans the same barbarous custom, which, ..u.c. 657, had been
 * " In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes to the Arabs the worship