Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/309

 B. iv. c. iv. 6. GAUL. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 295 heads of any illustrious persons they embalm with cedar, ex- hibit them to strangers, and would not sell them lor their weight in gold. 1 However, the Romans put a stop to these customs, as well as to their modes_of^acrifice and divination, which were quite opposite to those sanctioned by our laws. They would strike a man devoted as an offering in his back with a sword, and divme from his convulsive" throes. W^h- __ *^ out the Druids they never sacrifice. It is said they have r "8fner~ modes oi' sacrificing their human victims ; that they // pierce some of them with arrows, and crucify others in their ^u""* temples ; and that they prepare a colossus of hay and wood, into which they put cattle, beasts of all kinds,"ahd men, and then set fire to it. 6. They say that in the ocean, not far from the coast, there is a small island lying opposite to the outlet of the river > Loire, inhabited by Samnite women who are Bacchantes, and f conciliate and appease that god by masteries and sacrifices. / / No man is permitted to land on the island ; and when the C7u"* women desire "To" have intercourse with the other sex, they cross the^a, and afterwards return again 1. They have a custom of once a year unroofing the whole of the temple, and roofing it again the same day before sun-set, each one bringing some of the materials. If any one lets her burden fall, she is torn in pieces by the others, and her limbs carried round the temple with wild shouts, which they never cease until their rage is exhausted. [They say] it always happens that some one drops her burden, and is thus sacrificed. But what Artemidorus tells us concerning the crows, par- takes still more of fiction. He narrates that on the coast, washed by the ocean, there is a harbour named the Port of Two Crows, and that here two crows may be seen with their right wings white. Those who have any dispute come here, and eaclT one" having placed a plank for himself on a lofty eminence, sprinkles crumbs thereupon ; the birds fly to these, eat up the one and scatter the other, and he whose crumbs are scattered gains the cause. This narration has decidedly too much the air of fiction. What he narrates concerning Ceres and Proserpine is more credible. He says that there // is an island near Britain in which they perform sacrifices to kr'a 1 These particulars are taken from Posidonius. See also Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. c. 29.