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Many of the family, Xerxes was informed,
had fled to foreign lands to escape this doom; but some of them had
returned long afterwards, and being caught by the sentinels in the
act of entering the town-hall were wreathed as victims, led forth in
procession, and sacrificed. These instances appear to have been
notorious, if not frequent; for the writer of a dialogue attributed
to Plato, after speaking of the immolation of human victims by the
Carthaginians, adds that such practices were not unknown among the
Greeks, and he refers with horror to the sacrifices offered on Mount
Lycaeus and by the descendants of Athamas.
The suspicion that this barbarous custom by no means fell into
disuse even in later days is strengthened by a case of human
sacrifice which occurred in Plutarch's time at Orchomenus, a very
ancient city of Boeotia, distant only a few miles across the plain
from the historian's birthplace. Here dwelt a family of which the
men went by the name of Psoloeis or "Sooty," and the women by the
name of Oleae or "Destructive.


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