CHRONOS AND TALOS
Lewis Richard Farnell
1896
LEWIS RICHARD FARNELL (1856-1934) was a classical scholar at Oxford University. In his Cults of the Greek States (1896), he argued that Talos (Talus) was derived from the Phoenician god Moloch, something later research would prove chronologically impossible. Nevertheless, his intuition that the Talos myth has pre-Greek and Near Eastern influences would later prove to be correct, just not with the specific Near Eastern peoples he assumed.
The darker aspect of the worship [of Cronos], the practice of human sacrifice, is scarcely attested by any trustworthy record concerning any Greek community except Rhodes; but is an inference legitimately drawn from legend and from indirect evidence. The Greek authors of the earlier period who mention it regard it as a barbaric institution; but if there were no ancient tradition connecting it with the Hellenic or Hellenized god, it would be impossible to explain why he should be so constantly identified with a Semitic and Celtic god to whom the cruel sacrifice was paid. And we have a detailed account given by Plutarch and Diodorus of the Carthaginian offering of children to Moloch, who was often regarded as Cronos. The bronze idol stood with his arms extended and his hands sloping downwards, so that the infant placed upon them slipped off and fell into a pit full of fire that was placed beneath, and its wails were drowned with the noise of drums. This ghastly rite certainly travelled to Crete, where the myth of the brazen giant, Talus, who clasped strangers to his breast and sprang with them into a pit of fire, attests the worship of the Semitic god.
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