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§ XLII. About human sacrifice Let us also add that your gods are terrible and inhuman demons, not only rejoicing in human madness, but also enjoying murder. Those armed duels on the lists, that endless rivalry for glory in wars give them pleasure in order to have a greater opportunity to get enough of human corpses. Spreading through cities and tribes like a plague, they demanded monstrous libations. Indeed, the Messenian Aristomenes slaughtered three hundred people to Zeus of Itoma, believing that he performed such great and at the same time such exquisite hecatombs under favorable omens. Among those slain was the Lacedaemonian king Theopompus, a noble sacrificial animal. The Taurians are a tribe inhabiting the Tavrica peninsula; those strangers whom they capture from themselves, after they have lost their way while sailing on the sea, are immediately sacrificed to Artemis of Tauride. Euripides depicted these slaughters in tragedy. Monim, in his “Collection of Amazing Things,” says that in Pele, a city in Thessaly, the Achaeans were sacrificed to Peleus and Chiron. Anticlides in the book “Returns” reports that the Lyktians (a Cretan tribe) slaughter people to Zeus, and the Lesbians, according to Dosidas, make a similar sacrifice to Dionysus. The Phocians, (I will not fail to say about them), as Pitocles narrates in the third book of “On Concord,” arrange human burnt offerings to Artemis of Tauropolis. Erechtheus, a resident of Attica, and Marius, a Roman, sacrificed their own daughters: one to Persephone, as Demaratus reports in the first book of the Tragic Acts, and the other, Marius, to Averrunci, as Dorothea tells in the fourth book of the Italian History. From these examples it is clear how “humane” demons are. How can their superstitious servants not be equally pious? The former are praised under the name of saviors, the latter beg for salvation from those who plot salvation. They imagine that the sacrifice will be favorable for them, but they do not realize that they are stabbing people to death. Indeed, the place does not make the murder victim a sacrificial animal. If someone kills a person to Artemis and Zeus on an altar, in a sacred place, and not on the high road to Wrath and Covetousness or other demons similar to these, declaring him a sacrificial animal, this is not a sacred act of sacrifice, but murder and murder. § XLIII. About Croesus, Cyrus and Solon Why, O people, the wisest of all living beings, do we run away from wild animals and, having accidentally met a bear or a lion, avoid it? Just like the one who, having noticed a snake in a mountain gorge, He immediately retreated back, his veins shaking from fear. He directed his feet away... do you not shy away or run away from the demons that your intuition and mind tell you about as bringing death, wicked, insidious, hating people and harming them? I can immediately show you those who are better than these gods and demons: Cyrus and Solon, each of whom is more worthy than Apollo the Prophet. Your Phoebus is money-loving, not philanthropic. He betrayed his friend Croesus and, forgetting about the payment he received from him (he was such a hypocritical friend), led him across the Halys River to the stake. Showing their favor in this way, demons lead their worshipers into the fire. You, more humane and truthful than Apollo, man, have pity on the one tied at the stake! You, O Solon, prophesy the truth! You, O Cyrus, order the fire to be put out! You, O Croesus, finally become prudent, corrected through suffering. The one you worship is ungrateful: he takes bribes and, having taken gold, lies. It is not a demon who tells you about the end, but a man. Solon predicts unequivocally. His oracle, O barbarian, you will find the only truthful one; at the stake you will verify its truth. § XLIV. On the origin of the cult of Eros and Pan Therefore, I can only wonder, carried away by what fantasies the first lost ones, be it Phoroneus, Meropes or someone else, who erected churches and altars, and, as they say, were the first to make sacrifices, began to preach superstition to people, ordering them to honor wicked demons. After all, only after some time did people begin to invent gods and worship them. Of course, no one honored that Eros, who is called one of the most ancient gods, before Harm took possession of a certain youth and, having satisfied his passion, erected a thanksgiving altar at the Academy. And they began to call the disease of debauchery Eros, deifying unbridled lust. The Athenians did not know who Pan was until Philippides told them about it. It is not surprising that superstition, having originated from somewhere, turned out to be a source of unheard-of evil; then, not being stopped, but having succeeded and spread greatly, it became the creator of many demons, performing hecatombs, organizing festivals, erecting statues and building churches. The latter - I will in no way keep silent about them, but I will expose them too - are euphemistically called churches, being tombs. At least now forget superstition, being ashamed to honor graves. § XLV. About the tomb churches In the churches of Athena at Larissa, in the acropolis, there is the tomb of Acrisius; in Athens, in the acropolis, is the tomb of Cecrops, as Antiochus says in the ninth book of his Histories. And Erichthonius? Isn't he buried in the church of Polyada? Isn’t Immarad, the son of Eumolpus and Daira, in the fence of Eleusis, which is under the acropolis? Are the daughters of Kelei buried in Eleusis? Why should I list to you the Hyperborean women? Their names are Hyperoche and Laodice; they are buried on Delos in Artemisia, which is located in the church of Apollo of Delos. Leandrius states that Cleochus is buried at Mileetes in Didymaea. Here, following Zeno the Mindian, it would be unfair to pass over in silence either the tomb of Leucophryne, buried in the church of Artemis in Magnesia, or the altar of Apollo in Telmessus: this altar, as they say, is the tombstone of the soothsayer Telmessus. Ptolemy, the son of Agesarchus, in the first book about Philopator, says that Kinir and his descendants were buried in the church of Aphrodite in Paphos. But in order to go around all the tombs that are revered among you, Perhaps I don’t have enough time. If you are not overcome by any shame for the daring, blasphemous acts you have committed, wander on, truly being dead men who believed dead men: Oh, you unfortunate ones, what kind of disaster are you suffering now? Your heads are shrouded in darkness.