But there were two respects in which the religion was, if not singular, at any rate markedly different from ordinary polytheisms, though less in the principles involved than in the extent to which they were carried out in practice.

These were the prevalence of licentious orgies and of human sacrifice.

The worship of Astarte was characterised by the one, the worship of Baal by the other.
Phoenician mythology taught that the great god, Il or El, when reigning upon earth as king of Byblus, had, under circumstances of extreme danger to his native land, sacrificed his dearly loved son, Ieoud, as an expiatory offering.

Divine sanction had thus been given to the horrid rite; and thenceforth, whenever in Phoenicia either public or private calamity threatened, it became customary that human victims should be selected, the nobler and more honourable the better, and that the wrath of the gods should be appeased by taking their lives.

The mode of death was horrible.