Augustine, "that the immolation of blood, carrying an announcement of the future, testified from the beginning of the human race the Passion of the Mediator that was to be." But there is likewise a series of portentous facts, bearing upon the institution of bloody sacrifice, which runs through all human history. This is the offering of human sacrifices in expiation of guilt, or to ward off calamities. The religious ideas which lie at the bottom of this are, that as life is a gift of God to man on the condition that he fulfils God's commands, every sinner has thereby forfeited his life. The rule of inexorable justice is set forth in strongest language by the Greek tragedians, as when Æschylus says, "It abides, while Jove abides through the series of ages, that he who has done a deed shall suffer for it. It is an ordinance."[94] But as all men stand in a real communion of life to each other, and as members of one living whole are bound in one responsibility to the Godhead, the idea also prevailed that one man's life could be given for another's; that one might offer himself in expiation for another, and the willing sacrifice of the innocent was esteemed to have the more power in proportion as the vicarious will of the offerer was pure, and therefore acceptable to the gods: "For I think that a single soul performing this expiation would suffice for a thousand, if it be there with good-will," says Œdipus in Sophocles. So kings offer themselves for their people; so the royal virgin gains for the host with her blood prosperous winds. But from such acts of self-devotion, freely performed, we proceed to a further step, in which men are sacrificed against their will. At Athens is found the frightful custom that two miserable human beings, one of each sex, were yearly nourished at the public cost, and then solemnly sacrificed at the feast of the Thargelia for expiation of the people. Not only did the Consul Decius, at the head of his army, solemnly devote himself for his country, but so often as a great and general calamity threatened the existence of the Roman State human sacrifices were offered, and a male and female Gaul, a male and female Greek, or those of any other nation whence danger threatened, were buried alive in the ox-market, with magic forms of prayer uttered by the head of the college of the Quindecemviri. Nay, the human sacrifices yearly offered upon the Alban Mount to Jupiter Latiaris were continued down to the third century of our era.