Note 50 — ROMAN PEOPLE

There has been much discussion of this question; I entirely agree with Wissowa (R.K. p. 354, where references are given for the opposite opinion) that there is no evidence for human sacrifice in the old Roman religion or law, except in the rule that a condemned criminal was made over to a deity (sacer), which may have been a legal survival of an original form of actual sacrifice. The alleged sacrifice by Julius Caesar of two mutinous soldiers in the Campus Martius (Dio Cass. xliii. 24) is of the same nature as the sacrifice of captives to Orcus in Aen. xi. 81, i.e. it is outside of the civil life and religious law; this is shown in the latter case by the mention of blood in the ritual (caeso sparsurus sanguine flammas), and in the former by the beheading of the mutineers.