(1) The puppets were substitutes for human victims, and probably for old men. The evidence for this view is—first, the Roman tradition expressed in the saying _sexagenarios de ponte_[447], and supported by the fact that the puppets appeared, to Dionysius at least, like men bound hand and foot[448]; secondly, the fact that human sacrifice was not entirely unknown at Rome, though there is no trace of any such custom regularly recurring. We may allow that Italy could not have been entirely free from a practice which existed even in Greece, and also that the habit of substituting some object for the original victim is common and well attested in religious history; but whether either the Argei, or the _oscilla_ or _maniae_, which are often compared with the Argei, really had this origin, may well indeed be doubted[449]. Thirdly, there is evidence that not only human sacrifice, but the sacrifice of old men, was by no means unknown in primitive times. Passing over the general evidence as to human sacrifice, we know that the old and weak were sometimes put to death[450]. Being of no further use in the struggle for existence, they were got rid of in various ways—an act perhaps not so much of cruelty as of kindness, and under certain circumstances not incompatible with filial piety[451]. The chief objections to this explanation are—first, that it obliges us to ascribe to the early Romans a habit which seems quite incompatible with their well-known respect for old age and their horror of parricide; secondly, that it does not explain why a practice, which can hardly have ever been a regularly recurring one, should have passed into a yearly ceremony[452].