MINUCIUS FELIX. 501 he says,bothcruellyexpose theirchildrennewly lorn,and beforethey are bom destroythem by a cruelabortion. Christiansare neitlierallowedtosee nor tohearof man slaughter. " And now I should wish to meet him who saysor believes that we are initiatedby the slaughterand bloodof an infant. Think you that it can be possiblefor so tender,so littlea body to receivethose fatalwounds ; for any one to shed, pour forth,and drain that new blood of a youngling,and of a man scarcelycome intoexistence? No one can believethis, except one who can dare to do it. And I seethatyou atone time exposeyour begottenchildrentowild beastsand to birds; at another,thatyou crush them when strangledwith a miser ablekind of death. There are some women who, by drink ing medicalpreparations,1extinguishthe sourceof thefuture man in theirvery bowels,and thus commit a parricidebefore they bring forth. And these things assuredlycome down from the teachingof your gods. For Saturn did not expose his children,but devoured them. With reasonwere infants sacrificedto him by parentsin some partsof Africa,caresses and kissesrepressingtheir crying,that a weeping victim might not be sacrificed.Moreover, among the Tauri of Pontus, and to the Egyptian Busiris,it was a sacred rite to immolate theirguests,and for the Gallito slaughterto Mercury human, or ratherinhuman, sacrifices.The Roman sacrificersburied livinga Greek man and a Greek woman, a Gallicman and a Gallicwoman ; and to thisday,Latiaris Jupiter is worshipped by them with murder ; and, what is worthy of the son of Saturn,he isgorged with the bloodof an eviland criminalman. I believethathe himselftaught Catilineto conspireunder a compact of blood,and Bellona to steep her sacred riteswith a draught of human gore,and taught men to healepilepsywith the bloodof a man, thatis, with a worse disease. They alsoare not unlike to him who devour the wild beastsfrom the arena,besmeared and stained with blood,or fattenedwith the limbsor the entrailsof men. 1By medicamentsauddrinka.