Note 187 — Chapter II
Reading edition
It is impossible to tell whether in Ancient Britain oxen were at any time regarded as sacred, as they apparently were among the early Phoenicians, the Libyans, the ancestors of the Greeks, and other primitive peoples, their flesh being never eaten except in sacrificial feasts, partaken of by the whole clan. See W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 1901, pp. 296-311.