Pliny, Natural History VIII, trans. W.H.S. Jones (Loeb, 1963), 286-7 (Book XXX c.4), commenting on the magical rites of the Britons and Gauls, extols the debt owed to the Romans for having `swept away the monstrous rites in which to kill a man was the highest religious duty, and for him to be eaten a passport to health ...'.