were, as it seems, the most welcome sacrifice. The dearest possession was the most powerful expiation. The best beloved children, the firstborn or only son, must be offered to the god "as a ransom."[524] We have seen above (p. 356), how Philo represents El himself as performing this sacrifice of a son. Only the surrender of what was dearest could touch the cruel feeling of the relentless god, and turn his wrath upon the enemy so that he laid his curse upon him. Thus it came to pass that the eldest son of the king was clothed with purple and burned to Moloch in the place of the ruler of the land. When Joram, king of Israel, had shut up the king of Moab in Kir Harosheth, "the Moabite took his firstborn son, who would have been king in his place, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering upon the wall. Then there was great indignation against Israel, and Israel turned back to his own land."[525] Hamilcar, Hanno's son, burnt himself in the year 480 B.C., when the battle of Himera went against the Carthaginians; and when Himilco, in the year 406 B.C., besieged Agrigentum, and a pestilence came upon the army, he sacrificed a boy to Cronus, in order to stay the plague.[526] When Agathocles of Syracuse, after landing in Africa had defeated the Carthaginian army, and encamped under the walls of Carthage, the Carthaginians believed that they had brought the anger of the god upon them because of late, instead of sacrificing the children of the noblest citizens, they had secretly purchased and substituted other children. Inquiry showed that this had been done in some cases. In expiation, 200 boys of the first families were selected as victims, and the families, who were suspected of previously withdrawing their children from the god, now spontaneously brought forward 300 children. "In Carthage," so Diodorus, who tells us this incident, continues, "there was an iron image of Cronus, which held out the hands in a downward position, so that the victim placed upon them rolled into a cavity filled with fire."[527] The cries of the victims, Plutarch tells us, were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes; the mothers were compelled to stand by without lamentation or sighing. If a sigh or a tear escaped them, they were regarded as dishonoured; but the child was burnt just the same. A Roman poet gives an invocation to the "paternal gods" of Carthage, whose temples are cleansed by murder, and who rejoice in being worshipped by the agony of mothers.[528]