Note 78.2 — Chapter XVIII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

Europe furnishes numerous remains of human sacrifice to water. At Rome, during historical times, the Vestal Virgins threw from the Sublician bridge into the Tiber, every year on the Ides of May, thirty human effigies formed of rushes. We cannot doubt that at an earlier period living men were hurled into the flood. This was the opinion entertained by the Romans themselves, who held that it was Hercules who first substituted images of straw.78.2 A similar substitution is practised in India by the Gonds in their offerings to Burha deo; and, we are told, they find it answers the purpose;78.3 as did the Romans.