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After he had sacrificed his second son he
received from the god an answer that he should live so long as he
gave him one of his sons every ninth year. When he had sacrificed
his seventh son, he still lived, but was so feeble that he could not
walk but had to be carried in a chair. Then he offered up his eighth
son, and lived nine years more, lying in his bed. After that he
sacrificed his ninth son, and lived another nine years, but so that
he drank out of a horn like a weaned child. He now wished to
sacrifice his only remaining son to Odin, but the Swedes would not
allow him. So he died and was buried in a mound at Upsala.
In ancient Greece there seems to have been at least one kingly house
of great antiquity of which the eldest sons were always liable to be
sacrificed in room of their royal sires. When Xerxes was marching
through Thessaly at the head of his mighty host to attack the
Spartans at Thermopylae, he came to the town of Alus. Here he was
shown the sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus, about which his guides told
him a strange tale.


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