_Piamlar Sacrifices_.—“The idea of substitution is widespread among all early religions, and is found in honorific as well as piacular rites. In all such cases the idea is that the substitute shall imitate as closely as is possible or convenient the victim whose place it supplies; and so in piacular ceremonies the god may indeed accept one life for another, or certain select lives to atone for the guilt of a whole community; but these lives ought to be of the guilty kin, just as in blood-revenge the death of any kinsman of the manslayer satisfies justice. Hence such rites as the Semitic sacrifices of children by their fathers [Moloch], the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and similar cases among the Greeks, inasmuch as something is given up by the worshippers nor the offering up of boys to the goddess Mania at Rome.... “In advanced societies the tendency is to modify the horrors of the ritual, either by accepting an effusion of blood without actually slaying the victim—e. g. in the flagellation of the Spartan lads—or by a further extension of the doctrine of substitution: the Romans, for example, substituted puppets for the human sacrifices to Mania, and cast rush dolls into the Tiber, at the yearly atoning sacrifice on the Sublician Bridge. More usually, however, the life of an animal is accepted by the god in place of a human life.... Among the Egyptians the victim was marked with a seal bearing the image of a man bound and kneeling with a sword at his throat. And often we find a ceremonial laying of the sin to be expiated on the head of the victim (Herod, ii. 39; Lev. 4: 4, compared with 14: 21). “In such piacular rites the god demands only the life of the victim, which is sometimes indicated by a special ritual with the blood (as among the Hebrews the blood of the sin-offering was applied to the horns of the altar or to the mercy-seat within the veil), and there is no sacrificial meal. Thus, among the Greeks the carcase of the victim was buried or cast into the sea [comp, with most important Hebrew sin-offerings and sacrifice of children to Moloch—outside the camp or city]. “When the flesh of the sacrifice is consumed by the priests, as with certain Roman piacula and Hebrew sin-offerings, the sacrificial flesh is seemingly a gift accepted by the deity and assigned by him to the priests, so that the distinction between a honorific and a piacular sacrifice is partly obliterated. But this is not hard to understand; for just as a blood-rite takes the place of blood-revenge in human justice, so an offence against the gods may in certain cases be redeemed by a fine (e. g. Herod, ii. 65) or a sacrificial gift. This seems to have been the origin of the Hebrew _trespass-offering_ (p. 136).