Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's accused of being three things and give evidence of one of his policies as a reason. For which of those, and how that policy make him that?
Im sorry? For instance Plutarch and Livy described one of the campaigns he lead in Spain. Every successful military commander in ancient Rome was a war criminal by modern standards. That not a particularly interesting statement considering how obvious it is but it’s not like anyone could disagree with it. To be fair Cato might have been excessively cruel even by Roman standards since because he did coin this phrase h…
Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
181–190 of 255 posts
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#182Child sacrifice hooks into some very deep and dark aspects of human psychology that we have yet to unpack. There is a reason that this practice crops up in various civilizations seemingly independently, and it is not a pretty one - at least not by contemporary moral sensibilities. It is impossible to understand the biblical narrative of the binding of Isaac, for example, without addressing the context in which such a…
North Africa / Fertile Crescent are not as fertile as say the Nile or the deep European forests. There are also much less rivers in these civilizations. My guess is that this was a measure of population control as the natural death rate was not high enough for the region. Since there was no birth-control method, the only method left is to kill the kid. It's a good idea to disguise this as "child sacrifice" as in the…
North Africa and the Fertile Crescent are great examples of climate change.
They're deserts now but they were lush fertile lands several thousand years ago. The Nile floodplain was also substantially larger and more fertile than it is today.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#183Child and human sacrifices were surprisingly common across the world. Many countries had to pass special laws to ban these practices - but it hasn't yet been rooted out.
Perhaps you could give some examples of where it still occurs, having not been rooted out. I'd be very interested as I'm not aware of any.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#184Was this for religious reasons, or for quality control?
Typically the gods did not look favorably on inferior product being placed on the alter. Even King Kong demands the hottest young babe in the tribe, does he not? Did anyone ever “sacrifice” hoary old men or women to gods? (Only in passage of kingship did humans ritually kille the elder males.) So “religious” thinking would tend to demand something dear. This is inline with an inherent bug in human psyche — a false th…
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disgust against child sacrifice and most human sacrifice was a Roman sensibility, long before there was any church or christianity.
The Romans claimed this about themselves, but I'm not sure they're completely credible, at least about human sacrifice. The Roman Triumphal parade, for instance, included marching captured prisoners of war (often numbering in thousands), who would be led through the triumphal route up to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. There, the prisoners would be executed. The Romans may have claimed that they weren't commit…
I'd define anything as human sacrifice that the culture performing the act would label thus. E.g. we, as a modern civilization, don't call an abortion, war or execution "human sacrifice", so it isn't. The Romans didn't consider executing prisoners as such, because the prisoners were just subhuman and it was just an execution, so it isn't. The Carthagians seemed to think they were doing a human sacrifice, so yes, they were.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me thinks you’ve watched too many armchair historian videos, actually. Carthage didn’t “cease to exist” lol what, you think the land was actually “salted”? Carthage became one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, then became the capital of the Vandal Kingdom who later sacked Rome, famously.
Salted or not, a city is made up of people, people who were either killed or enslaved. Rebuilt or not, it's not the same Carthage. And if you argue that an emperor from the region 400 years later somehow proves that Carthage didn't lose, you're not a serious person.
The ground of Carthage clearly was not salted, as Carthage was able to reestablish itself as a major city.
However, a number of historians note that "salting" in this context is ritual, a small plot of land in a defeated city was ritually salted but the agricultural lands were not since the Romans expected to one day occupy those lands for themselves. Indeed, there is no historical evidence that any culture actually salted the lands of conquered foes, both because it would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do when wars were fought over the right to control agricultural lands, but also because salt was extremely expensive and difficult to acquire in ancient times. ("Salary" is derived from salt, which was so valuable in Roman times that it was used as a measure of value.) The amount of salt that would have been required to salt the lands of Carthage would have equaled the salaries of the entire Roman army. "Salting the earth" as a meme didn't actually arise until the 17th or 18th century, when industrial salt production finally made salt cheap and plentiful.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#187This is one of those moments like when historians say the royal poo wiper is the most prestigious role in court. If historians found modern texts they would think "ass kissing" is the highest ranking role in the country and that people who get selected to that role have all the power and influence.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#188Which is more likely: ancient people sacificing their children, or ancient writers wanting to mess with future historians or simply writing horror?
They mention it was documented by the Greeks & Romans, but was dismissed at the time as politically motivated slander. Those records plus physical evidence give it more weight, so I say the former is more likely.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#189There's absolutely no way this is true. In a time where most of your children die of disease, you aren't going to just kill your healthy children for the comedy value. People do a lot of fucked up shit but nobody kills their own children. Other people's children sure. Giving children to the temple so that they'll become exhaulted priests sure. But they would never beat their own children to death because someone said…
On the other hand, in a time when there is no contraception available you kind of expect to have up to a dozen children over your lifetime. Sacrificing one of them seems easier that if they were the only child.
Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
They mention it was documented by the Greeks & Romans, but was dismissed at the time as politically motivated slander. Those records plus physical evidence give it more weight, so I say the former is more likely.
The same people who wrote about mythical creatures, mythical cities, mythical wars and all kinds of propaganda and made up stories...