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[–] 22 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Are you saying Carthage had dirt on Rome that even Romans would cop to? Cause Roman society openly celebrated that kind of slaughter anyway. The romans sucked and they were bragging about it all the time.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (10 children)

    They kept slaves (the kind without safe words) and the fact that even they were offended by Carthage's practices enough to destroy them speaks volumes. Hans, are we the baddies?

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  • [–] 25 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    The thing Romans were offended by is that Carthage was their primary competitor. Everything else was just trying to justify it.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    They said the Carthaginians sacrificed babies to Moloch, which everyone assumed was a lie. A year or two ago someone bothered to actually dig, and lo and behold, baby skulls tacked up in neat rows.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Given the insane level of infant mortality in that age, it is much more probable that they died of natural causes.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Infant mortality is one thing but removing the heads of infants and putting them in vessels stacked neatly in rows?

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    It doesn't prove sacrifice. People all around the world often had weird funeral practices.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    What a weird thing to cast doubt on. Moloch is the god of child sacrifice.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Moloch is the god of child sacrifice.

    I assume you have a decent source for this, and are not just taking the bible (which advocates the destruction of moloch worshippers down to the last child) or Roman sources (who regarded Carthage as their greatest enemy) at face value, given that this sort of thing is an extremely common form of atrocity propaganda in all eras we have knowledge of including up to the present day. Otherwise, well, I'm sure you can find remains that support the claims of conquistadors that Aztecs sold human flesh in their markets or American claims of millions of dead Uyghurs. To my knowledge we don't even have particularly good proof that there even was a god called "moloch", a quick browse says that many modern scholars think the word may have referred to the sacrifice itself, and not a figure of worship.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Moloch (spelled differently) was the god of rain in the Levant. He demanded child sacrifice to ensure adequate rain. I never knew about this stuff until the Epstein Files came out and they were doing all this fucked-up shit on that island which matched up with the occult, and I don't mean Alestair Crowley. All I knew was that nethack had an altar of Moloch and if you messed with it you got hit by disintegration rays.

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