Note Note XV — NOTES TO CHAPTER VI.

The Jews had derived the worship of Moloch from the Canaanites. Moloch and Saturn appear to have been the same deity: the way in which they were worshipped is the same. The Carthaginians, who were descended from the Canaanites, offered human victims to Saturn. "There was in their city," says Diodorus Siculus (Book XX. chap. 14), "a bronze statue representing Cronos (Saturn): it had its hands spread out, and bent down towards the ground, so that the child that was put in its hands, rolling itself up, fell into a fiery furnace." These cruel sacrifices continued to prevail in Africa till the time of the Emperor Tiberius (Tertullian, Apol. IX.). From Syria the practice passed into Europe. Agathocles, king of Sicily, sacrificed two hundred children of the noblest families to his deity, believing him to be angry. (Pescennius Festus in Lactant. Divin. Instit. I. 21.)