With the decline of totemism arose the need for human sacrifice - the only means of re-establishing the broken tie of kinship when the animal species was no longer akin to man.
On the whole, human sacrifice is far commoner among the semi-civilized and barbarous races than in still lower stages of culture.
Among the forms of human sacrifice must be reckoned religious suicide.
Their idolatry (polytheistic) was unaccompanied by human sacrifice.
Accordingly recourse is had, tinder the direction of the Sibylline books, to new forms of appeal for the divine help, the general vowing of the ver sacrum and the elaborate Greek lectisternium after Trasimene in 217 B.C., and the human sacrifice in the forum after Cannae in the following year.
