”Malcolm, that’s gross!”
His glance was highly sardonic. “Well, yes, from our perspective it is. But they really believed sacrificial blood was required to fertilize the earth. Crops wouldn’t grow without it. And they really believed the god and his severed phallus were regenerated by the blood and by mating with the Goddess. That’s why the full-fledged priests in the procession carried reed scepters. They’re symbols of the god’s phallus reborn as grain. It’s the same reason you’ll find Herms-phallus symbols-all over Herculaneum, for instance, which has Hercules as its patron deity. They re considered good luck symbols. People put them up by their doorways, touch them for luck.”
Margo could understand rubbing a stone penis for luck better than she could a man mutilating himself. “But Malcolm … what kind of man would want to do that to himself? Did they do it voluntarily? Or were they prisoners”
”No, they were volunteers. Look on the bright side: the tradition was modified years ago to kill the bull instead of the castrated priests. And now the tradition’s been modified again, substituting broken reed scepters for the real castration. Roman law wouldn’t tolerate the cult, otherwise. Of course, the Romans like to pay lip service to civilized notions about human sacrifices, but they have their own darker element to religious practices.”
Like what?”
”The Games.”
”Those are human sacrifices?” She halted again; blocking the flow of the dispersing crowd behind her. Someone cursed at her in Latin. Hastily she stepped aside. “Malcolm, you’re not serious? Nobody in any of my history classes ever said anything about human sacrifices in Rome and I didn’t find anything like that in any of the reading I did do. I mean … the Romans were supposed to be civilized!” She stared down the hill toward the hulking facade of the great Circus. “Why would civilized people do something like that? I don’t understand. Malcolm, it doesn’t make sense and it ought to, if it’s true.”