The Carthaginians retained the barbarous custom of offering human sacrifices to their gods,(518) till the ruin of their city:(519) an action which ought to have been called a sacrilege rather than a sacrifice. _Sacrilegium veriùs quàm sacrum._ It was suspended only for some years, from the fear they were under of drawing upon themselves the indignation and arms of Darius I. king of Persia, who forbade them the offering up of human sacrifices, and the eating the flesh of dogs: but they soon resumed this horrid practice, since, in the reign of Xerxes, the successor to Darius, Gelon the tyrant of Syracuse, having gained a considerable victory over the Carthaginians in Sicily, among other conditions of peace which he enjoined them, inserted this article:(520) _viz._ “That no more human sacrifices should be offered to Saturn.” And, doubtless, the practice of the Carthaginians, on this very occasion, made Gelon use this precaution. For during the whole engagement, which lasted from morning till night, Hamilcar, the son of Hanno their general, was perpetually offering up to the gods sacrifices of living men, who were thrown in great numbers on a flaming pile; and seeing his troops routed and put to flight, he himself rushed into it, in order that he might not survive his own disgrace, and to extinguish, says St. Ambrose speaking of this action, with his own blood this sacrilegious fire, when he found that it had not proved of service to him.(521)(522) In times of pestilence(523) they used to sacrifice a great number of children to their gods, unmoved with pity for a tender age, which excites compassion in the most cruel enemies; thus seeking a remedy for their evils in guilt itself; and endeavouring to appease the gods by the most shocking barbarity. Diodorus relates(524) an instance of this cruelty which strikes the reader with horror. At the time that Agathocles was just going to besiege Carthage, its inhabitants, seeing the extremity to which they were reduced, imputed all their misfortunes to the just anger of Saturn, because that, instead of offering up children nobly born, who were usually sacrificed to him, there had been fraudulently substituted in their stead the children of slaves and foreigners. To atone for this crime, two hundred children of the best families in Carthage were sacrificed to Saturn; besides which, upwards of three hundred citizens, from a sense of their guilt of this pretended crime, voluntarily sacrificed themselves. Diodorus adds, that there was a brazen statue of Saturn, the hands of which were turned downward; so that when a child was laid on them, it dropped immediately into a hollow, where was a fiery furnace.