In Africa he (= Agathocles) was at first amazingly successful ; he captured Tunis; and besieged Carthage, where the government became alarmed, and set to work to propitiate Moloch. It was found that aristocrats whose children ought to have been sacrificed to the god had been in the habit of purchasing poor children as substitutes; the practice was now sternly repressed, since Moloch was known to be more gratified by the sacrifice of aristocratic children. After this reform the fortunes of the Carthaginians began to mend.
Source: Power, 1938.
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