The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

If persons of fastidious taste should object that the Greeks never could have conceived Demeter and Persephone to be embodied in the form of pigs, it may be answered that in the cave of Phigalia in Arcadia the Black Demeter was portrayed with the head and mane of a horse on the body of a woman.[71 - Pausanias, viii. 42.] Between the portrait of a goddess as a pig, and the portrait of her as a woman with a horse's head, there is little to choose in respect of barbarism. The legend told of the Phigalian Demeter indicates that the horse was one of the animal forms assumed in ancient Greece, as in modern Europe,[72 - Above, vol. i. pp. 292 sqq.] by the corn-spirit. It was said that in her search for her daughter, Demeter assumed the form of a mare to escape the addresses of Poseidon, and that, offended at his importunity, she withdrew in dudgeon to a cave not far from Phigalia in the highlands of Western Arcadia. The very cavern, now turned into a little Christian chapel with its holy pictures, is still shewn to the curious traveller far down the side of that profound ravine through which the brawling Neda winds under overhanging woods to the sea. There, robed in black, she tarried so long that the fruits of the earth were perishing, and mankind would have died of famine if Pan had not soothed the angry goddess and persuaded her to quit the cave. In memory of this event, the Phigalians set up an image of the Black Demeter in the cave; it represented a woman dressed in a long robe, with the head and mane of a horse.[73 - Pausanias, viii. 25 and 42. At the sanctuary of the Mistress (that is, of Persephone) in Arcadia many terracotta statuettes have been found which represent draped women with the heads of cows or sheep. They are probably votive images of Demeter or Persephone, for the ritual of the sanctuary prescribed the offering of images (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 939, vol. ii. pp. 803 sq.). See P. Perdrizet, “Terres-cuites de Lycosoura, et mythologie arcadienne,” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, xxiii. (1899) p. 635; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 347 sq. On the Phigalian Demeter, see W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, pp. 244 sqq. I well remember how on a summer afternoon I sat at the mouth of the shallow cave, watching the play of sunshine on the lofty wooded sides of the ravine and listening to the murmur of the stream.] The Black Demeter, in whose absence the fruits [pg 022] of the earth perish, is plainly a mythical expression for the bare wintry earth stripped of its summer mantle of green.

§ 3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig

Attis and the pig

Passing now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which seem to shew that these deities of vegetation had also, like other deities of the same class, their animal embodiments. The worshippers of Attis abstained from eating the flesh of swine.[74 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 221. On the position of the pig in ancient Oriental and particularly Semitic religion, see F. C. Movers, Die Phoenizier, i. (Bonn, 1841), pp. 218 sqq.] This appears to indicate that the pig was regarded as an embodiment of Attis. And the legend that Attis was killed by a boar[75 - Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 220.] points in the same direction. For after the examples of the goat Dionysus and the pig Demeter it may almost be laid down as a rule that an animal which is said to have injured a god was originally the god himself. Perhaps the cry of “Hyes Attes! Hyes Attes!”[76 - Demosthenes, De corona, p. 313.] which was raised by the worshippers of Attis, may be neither more nor less than “Pig Attis! Pig Attis!” —hyes being possibly a Phrygian form of the Greek hȳs, “a pig.”[77 - The suggestion was made to me in conversation by my lamented friend, the late R. A. Neil of Pembroke College, Cambridge.]

Adonis and the boar. Ambiguous position of pigs at Hierapolis

In regard to Adonis, his connexion with the boar was not always explained by the story that he had been killed by the animal.[78 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 8; and to the authorities there cited add Athenaeus, ii. 80, p. 69 b; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28; Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iv. 5. 3, § 8; Aristides, Apologia, II, p. 107, ed. J. Rendel Harris (Cambridge, 1891); Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iv. 44; Propertius, iii. 4 (5). 53 sq., ed. F. A. Paley; Lactantius, Divin. Instit. i. 17; Augustine, De civitate Dei, vi. 7; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 9; Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 21. 4. See further W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), pp. 142 sqq.] According to another story, a boar rent with his tusk the bark of the tree in which the infant Adonis was born.[79 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 186.] According to yet another story, he perished at the [pg 023] hands of Hephaestus on Mount Lebanon while he was hunting wild boars.[80 - W. Cureton, Spicilegium Syriacum (London, 1855), p. 44.] These variations in the legend serve to shew that, while the connexion of the boar with Adonis was certain, the reason of the connexion was not understood, and that consequently different stories were devised to explain it. Certainly the pig ranked as a sacred animal among the Syrians. At the great religious metropolis of Hierapolis on the Euphrates pigs were neither sacrificed nor eaten, and if a man touched a pig he was unclean for the rest of the day. Some people said this was because the pigs were unclean; others said it was because the pigs were sacred.[81 - Lucian, De dea Syria, 54.] This difference of opinion points to a hazy state of religious thought in which the ideas of sanctity and uncleanness are not yet sharply distinguished, both being blent in a sort of vaporous solution to which we give the name of taboo. It is quite consistent with this that the pig should have been held to be an embodiment of the divine Adonis, and the analogies of Dionysus and Demeter make it probable that the story of the hostility of the animal to the god was only a late misapprehension of the old view of the god as embodied in a pig. The rule that pigs were not sacrificed or eaten by worshippers of Attis and presumably of Adonis, does not exclude the possibility that in these rituals the pig was slain on solemn occasions as a representative of the god and consumed sacramentally by the worshippers. Indeed, the sacramental killing and eating of an animal implies that the animal is sacred, and that, as a general rule, it is spared.[82 - The heathen Harranians sacrificed swine once a year and ate the flesh (En-Nedîm, in D. Chwolsohn's Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, St. Petersburg, 1856, ii. 42). My friend W. Robertson Smith conjectured that the wild boars annually sacrificed in Cyprus on 2nd April (Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iv. 45) represented Adonis himself. See his Religion of the Semites,

pp. 290 sq., 411.]

Attitude of the Jews to the pig

The attitude of the Jews to the pig was as ambiguous as that of the heathen Syrians towards the same animal. The Greeks could not decide whether the Jews worshipped swine or abominated them.[83 - Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iv. 5.] On the one hand they might not eat swine; but on the other hand they might not kill them. And if the former rule speaks for the uncleanness, the latter [pg 024] speaks still more strongly for the sanctity of the animal. For whereas both rules may, and one rule must, be explained on the supposition that the pig was sacred; neither rule must, and one rule cannot, be explained on the supposition that the pig was unclean. If, therefore, we prefer the former supposition, we must conclude that, originally at least, the pig was revered rather than abhorred by the Israelites. We are confirmed in this opinion by observing that down to the time of Isaiah some of the Jews used to meet secretly in gardens to eat the flesh of swine and mice as a religious rite.[84 - Isaiah lxv. 3, lxvi. 3, 17. Compare R. H. Kennett, The Composition of the Book of Isaiah in the Light of History and Archaeology (London, 1910) p. 61, who suggests that the eating of the mouse as a sacrament may have been derived from the Greek worship of the Mouse Apollo (Apollo Smintheus). As to the Mouse Apollo see below, pp. 282 sq.] Doubtless this was a very ancient ceremony, dating from a time when both the pig and the mouse were venerated as divine, and when their flesh was partaken of sacramentally on rare and solemn occasions as the body and blood of gods. And in general it may be said that all so-called unclean animals were originally sacred; the reason for not eating them was that they were divine.

§ 4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull

Attitude of the ancient Egyptians to the pig. Annual sacrifice of pigs to Osiris and the moon

In ancient Egypt, within historical times, the pig occupied the same dubious position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first sight its uncleanness is more prominent than its sanctity. The Egyptians are generally said by Greek writers to have abhorred the pig as a foul and loathsome animal.[85 - Herodotus, ii. 47; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8; Aelian, Nat. Anim. x. 16. Josephus merely says that the Egyptian priests abstained from the flesh of swine (Contra Apionem, ii. 13).] If a man so much as touched a pig in passing, he stepped into the river with all his clothes on, to wash off the taint.[86 - Herodotus, l. c.] To drink pig's milk was believed to cause leprosy to the drinker.[87 - Plutarch and Aelian, ll.cc.] Swineherds, though natives of Egypt, were forbidden to enter any temple, and they were the only men who were thus excluded. No one would give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or marry a swineherd's daughter; the swineherds married among themselves.[88 - Herodotus, l. c. At Castabus in Chersonese there was a sacred precinct of Hemithea, which no one might approach who had touched or eaten of a pig (Diodorus Siculus, v. 62. 5).] [pg 025] Yet once a year the Egyptians sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris, and not only sacrificed them, but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of the year they would neither sacrifice them nor taste of their flesh. Those who were too poor to offer a pig on this day baked cakes of dough, and offered them instead.[89 - Herodotus, ii. 47 sq.; Aelian and Plutarch, ll.cc. Herodotus distinguishes the sacrifice to the moon from that to Osiris. According to him, at the sacrifice to the moon, the extremity of the pig's tail, together with the spleen and the caul, was covered with fat and burned; the rest of the flesh was eaten. On the evening (not the eve, see H. Stein's note on the passage) of the festival the sacrifice to Osiris took place. Each man slew a pig before his door, then gave it to the swineherd, from whom he had bought it, to take away.] This can hardly be explained except by the supposition that the pig was a sacred animal which was eaten sacramentally by his worshippers once a year.

Belief that the eating of a sacred animal causes skin-disease, especially leprosy

The view that in Egypt the pig was sacred is borne out by the very facts which, to moderns, might seem to prove the contrary. Thus the Egyptians thought, as we have seen, that to drink pig's milk produced leprosy. But exactly analogous views are held by savages about the animals and plants which they deem most sacred. Thus in the island of Wetar (between New Guinea and Celebes) people believe themselves to be variously descended from wild pigs, serpents, crocodiles, turtles, dogs, and eels; a man may not eat an animal of the kind from which he is descended; if he does so, he will become a leper, and go mad.[90 - J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 432, 452.] Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America men whose totem is the elk, believe that if they ate the flesh of the male elk they would break out in boils and white spots in different parts of their bodies.[91 - Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, “Omaha Sociology,” Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1884), p. 225; Miss A. C. Fletcher and F. la Flesche, “The Omaha Tribe,” Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1911), p. 144. According to the latter writers, any breach of a clan taboo among the Omahas was supposed to be punished either by the breaking out of sores or white spots on the body of the offender or by his hair turning white.] In the same tribe men whose totem is the red maize, think that if they ate red maize they would have running sores all round [pg 026] their mouths.[92 - Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, op. cit. p. 231.] The Bush negroes of Surinam, who practise totemism, believe that if they ate the capiaï (an animal like a pig) it would give them leprosy;[93 - J. Crevaux, Voyages dans l'Amérique du Sud (Paris, 1883), p. 59.] perhaps the capiaï is one of their totems. The Syrians, in antiquity, who esteemed fish sacred, thought that if they ate fish their bodies would break out in ulcers, and their feet and stomach would swell up.[94 - Plutarch, De superstitione, 10; Porphyry, De abstinentia, iv. 15. As to the sanctity of fish among the Syrians, see also Ovid, Fasti, ii. 473 sq.; Diodorus Siculus, ii. 4.] The Nyanja-speaking tribes of Central Angoniland, in British Central Africa, believe that if a person eats his totemic animal, his body will break out in spots. The cure for this eruption of the skin is to bathe the body in a decoction made from the bone of the animal, the eating of which caused the malady.[95 - R. Sutherland Rattray, Some Folklore Stories and Songs in Chinyanja (London, 1907), pp. 174 sq.] The Wagogo of German East Africa imagine that the sin of eating the totemic animal is visited not on the sinner himself but on his innocent kinsfolk. Thus when they see a child with a scald head, they say at once that its father has been eating his totem and that is why the poor child has scabs on its pate.[96 - Rev. H. Cole, “Notes on the Wagogo of German East Africa,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 307, compare p. 317.] Among the Wahehe, another tribe of German East Africa, a man who suffers from scab or other skin disease will often set the trouble down to his having unwittingly partaken of his totemic animal.[97 - E. Nigmann, Die Wahehe (Berlin, 1908), p. 42.] Similarly among the Waheia, another tribe of the same region, if a man kills or eats the totemic animal of his clan, he is supposed to suffer from an eruption of the skin.[98 - J. Kohler, “Das Banturecht in Ostafrika,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, xv. (1902) pp. 2, 3.] In like manner the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, in Central Africa, hold that the eating of the totem produces a severe cutaneous eruption, which can however be cured by mixing an extract of certain herbs with the fat of a black ox and rubbing the body of the sufferer all over with the mixture.[99 - C. W. Hobley, “Anthropological Studies in Kavirondo and Nandi,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. (1903) p. 347.] The Chasas of Orissa believe that if they were to injure their totemic animal, they [pg 027] would be attacked by leprosy and their line would die out.[100 - Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, II. Draft Articles on Uriya Castes (Allahabad, 1907), p. 16.] These examples prove that the eating of a sacred animal is often believed to produce leprosy or other skin-diseases; so far, therefore, they support the view that the pig must have been sacred in Egypt, since the effect of drinking its milk was believed to be leprosy. Such fancies may perhaps have been sometimes suggested by the observation that the eating of semi-putrid flesh, to which some savages are addicted, is apt to be followed by eruptions on the skin. Indeed, many modern authorities attribute leprosy to this cause, particularly to the eating of half rotten fish.[101 - C. Creighton, s. v. “Leprosy,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii. col. 2766.] It seems not impossible that the abhorrence which the Hebrews entertained of leprosy, and the pains which they took to seclude lepers from the community, may have been based on religious as well as on purely sanitary grounds; they may have imagined that the disfigurement of the sufferers was a penalty which they had incurred by some infraction of taboo. Certainly we read in the Old Testament of cases of leprosy which the historian regarded as the direct consequence of sin.[102 - 2 Kings v. 27; 2 Chronicles xxvi. 16-21.]

Mere contact with a sacred object is deemed dangerous and calls for purification as a sort of disinfectant

Again, the rule that, after touching a pig, a man had to wash himself and his clothes, also favours the view of the sanctity of the pig. For it is a common belief that the effect of contact with a sacred object must be removed, by washing or otherwise, before a man is free to mingle with his fellows. Thus the Jews wash their hands after reading the sacred scriptures. Before coming forth from the tabernacle after the sin-offering, the high priest had to wash himself, and put off the garments which he had worn in the holy place.[103 - Leviticus xvi. 23 sq.] It was a rule of Greek ritual that, in offering an expiatory sacrifice, the sacrificer should not touch the sacrifice, and that, after the offering was made, he must wash his body and his clothes in a river or spring before he could enter a city or his own house.[104 - Porphyry, De abstinentia, ii. 44. For this and the Jewish examples I am indebted to my friend W. Robertson Smith. Compare his Religion of the Semites,

pp. 351, 426, 450 sq.] The Parjas, a small tribe of [pg 028] the Central Provinces in India, are divided into clans which have for their respective totems the tiger, the tortoise, the goat, a big lizard, a dove, and so on. If a man accidentally kills his totemic animal, “the earthen cooking-pots of his household are thrown away, the clothes are washed, and the house is purified with water in which the bark of the mango or jamun tree (Eugenia jambolana) has been steeped. This is in sign of mourning, as it is thought that such an act will bring misfortune.”[105 - Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, VII. Draft Articles on Forest Tribes (Allahabad, 1911), p. 97.] If a Chadwar of the Central Provinces who has the pig for his totem should even see a pig killed by somebody else, he will throw away the household crockery and clean the house as if on the death of a member of his family.[106 - Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, I. Draft Articles on Hindustani Castes (Allahabad, 1907), p. 32.] The Polynesians felt strongly the need of ridding themselves of the sacred contagion, if it may be so called, which they caught by touching sacred objects. Various ceremonies were performed for the purpose of removing this contagion. We have seen, for example, how in Tonga a man who happened to touch a sacred chief, or anything personally belonging to him, had to perform a certain ceremony before he could feed himself with his hands; otherwise it was believed that he would swell up and die, or at least be afflicted with scrofula or some other disease.[107 - See Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 133 sq.] We have seen, too, what fatal effects are supposed to follow, and do actually follow, from contact with a sacred object in New Zealand.[108 - Op. cit. pp. 134-136.] In short, primitive man believes that what is sacred is dangerous; it is pervaded by a sort of electrical sanctity which communicates a shock to, even if it does not kill, whatever comes in contact with it. Hence the savage is unwilling to touch or even to see that which he deems peculiarly holy. Thus Bechuanas, of the Crocodile clan, think it “hateful and unlucky” to meet or see a crocodile; the sight is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes. Yet the crocodile is their most sacred object; they call it their father, swear by it, and celebrate it in their festivals.[109 - E. Casalis, The Basutos (London, 1861), p. 211; D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (London, 1857), p. 255; John Mackenzie, Ten Years north of the Orange River (Edinburgh, 1871), p. 135 note. See further Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 372.] The goat is the sacred animal of the Madenassana [pg 029] Bushmen; yet “to look upon it would be to render the man for the time impure, as well as to cause him undefined uneasiness.”[110 - J. Mackenzie, l. c.] The Elk clan, among the Omaha Indians, believe that even to touch the male elk would be followed by an eruption of boils and white spots on the body.[111 - Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, “Omaha Sociology,” Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1884), p. 225.] Members of the Reptile clan in the same tribe think that if one of them touches or smells a snake, it will make his hair white.[112 - Ibid. p. 275.] In Samoa people whose god was a butterfly believed that if they caught a butterfly it would strike them dead.[113 - G. Turner, Samoa (London, 1884), p. 76.] Again, in Samoa the reddish-seared leaves of the banana-tree were commonly used as plates for handing food; but if any member of the Wild Pigeon family had used banana leaves for this purpose, it was supposed that he would suffer from rheumatic swellings or an eruption all over the body like chicken-pox.[114 - Ibid. p. 70.] The Mori clan of the Bhils in Central India worship the peacock as their totem and make offerings of grain to it; yet members of the clan believe that were they even to set foot on the tracks of a peacock they would afterwards suffer from some disease, and if a woman sees a peacock she must veil her face and look away.[115 - Captain C. Eckford Luard, in Census of India, 1901, vol. xix. Central India, Part i. (Lucknow, 1902) pp. 299 sq.; also Census of India, 1901, vol. i. Ethnographic Appendices (Calcutta, 1903), p. 163.] Thus the primitive mind seems to conceive of holiness as a sort of dangerous virus, which a prudent man will shun as far as possible, and of which, if he should chance to be infected by it, he will carefully disinfect himself by some form of ceremonial purification.

Thus the pig was probably at first a sacred animal with the Egyptians, and may have been regarded as an embodiment of the corn-god Osiris, though at a later time he was looked on as an embodiment of Typhon, the enemy of Osiris. The havoc wrought by wild boars in the corn is a reason for regarding them as foes of the corn-god

In the light of these parallels the beliefs and customs of the Egyptians touching the pig are probably to be explained as based upon an opinion of the extreme sanctity rather than of the extreme uncleanness of the animal; or rather, to put it more correctly, they imply that the animal was looked on, not simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but as a being endowed with high supernatural powers, and that as [pg 030] such it was regarded with that primitive sentiment of religious awe and fear in which the feelings of reverence and abhorrence are almost equally blended. The ancients themselves seem to have been aware that there was another side to the horror with which swine seemed to inspire the Egyptians. For the Greek astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus, who resided fourteen months in Egypt and conversed with the priests,[116 - Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum, viii. 8.] was of opinion that the Egyptians spared the pig, not out of abhorrence, but from a regard to its utility in agriculture; for, according to him, when the Nile had subsided, herds of swine were turned loose over the fields to tread the seed down into the moist earth.[117 - Aelian, Nat. Anim. x. 16. The story is repeated by Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 168.] But when a being is thus the object of mixed and implicitly contradictory feelings, he may be said to occupy a position of unstable equilibrium. In course of time one of the contradictory feelings is likely to prevail over the other, and according as the feeling which finally predominates is that of reverence or abhorrence, the being who is the object of it will rise into a god or sink into a devil. The latter, on the whole, was the fate of the pig in Egypt. For in historical times the fear and horror of the pig seem certainly to have outweighed the reverence and worship of which he may once have been the object, and of which, even in his fallen state, he never quite lost trace. He came to be looked on as an embodiment of Set or Typhon, the Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris. For it was in the shape of a black pig that Typhon injured the eye of the god Horus, who burned him and instituted the sacrifice of the pig, the sun-god Ra having declared the beast abominable.[118 - E. Lefébure, Le Mythe Osirien, Première Partie, Les yeux d'Horus (Paris, 1874), p. 44; The Book of the Dead, English translation by E. A. Wallis Budge (London, 1901), ii. 336 sq., chapter cxii.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (London, 1904), i. 496 sq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London and New York, 1911), i. 62 sq.] Again, the story that Typhon was hunting a boar when he discovered and mangled the body of Osiris, and that this was the reason why pigs were sacrificed once a year,[119 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8. E. Lefébure (op. cit. p. 46) recognises that in this story the boar is Typhon himself.] is clearly a modernised version of an older story that Osiris, like Adonis and Attis, was slain [pg 031] or mangled by a boar, or by Typhon in the form of a boar. Thus, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris might naturally be interpreted as vengeance inflicted on the hostile animal that had slain or mangled the god. But, in the first place, when an animal is thus killed as a solemn sacrifice once and once only in the year, it generally or always means that the animal is divine, that he is spared and respected the rest of the year as a god and slain, when he is slain, also in the character of a god.[120 - This important principle was first recognised by W. Robertson Smith. See his article, “Sacrifice,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, xxi. 137 sq. Compare his Religion of the Semites,

pp. 373, 410 sq.] In the second place, the examples of Dionysus and Demeter, if not of Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the animal which is sacrificed to a god on the ground that he is the god's enemy may have been, and probably was, originally the god himself. Therefore, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris, coupled with the alleged hostility of the animal to the god, tends to shew, first, that originally the pig was a god, and, second, that he was Osiris. At a later age, when Osiris became anthropomorphic and his original relation to the pig had been forgotten, the animal was first distinguished from him, and afterwards opposed as an enemy to him by mythologists who could think of no reason for killing a beast in connexion with the worship of a god except that the beast was the god's enemy; or, as Plutarch puts it, not that which is dear to the gods, but that which is the contrary, is fit to be sacrificed.[121 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 31.] At this later stage the havoc which a wild boar notoriously makes amongst the corn would supply a plausible reason for regarding him as the foe of the corn-spirit, though originally, if I am right, the very freedom with which the boar ranged at will through the corn led people to identify him with the corn-spirit, to whom he was afterwards opposed as an enemy.

Evidence of the depredations committed by wild boars on the crops

As the depredations committed by wild swine on the growing crops in countries where these creatures abound are necessarily unfamiliar to most English readers, it may be well to illustrate them by examples. Thus, for instance, in Palestine the wild boar “is eagerly chased and destroyed on account of the frightful ravages it makes among the [pg 032] crops. Not only does it devour any fruits within reach, but in a single night a party of wild boars will uproot a whole field, and destroy the husbandman's hopes for the year. The places they love to frequent are the reedy marshes and thickets by rivers and lakes, and they swarm in the thickets all along the banks of the Jordan from Jericho to the Lake of Gennesaret. From these fastnesses, whence neither dog nor man can dislodge them, they make nightly forays upon the corn-fields and root-crops of the villagers, returning at daybreak to their coverts. About Jericho they are especially destructive, and when the barley crop is ripening, the husbandmen have to keep nightly watch to drive them away. Their presence can always be detected by the crashing noise they make in forcing their way through the thickets, when the men fire, guided by the sound.”[122 - H. B. Tristram, The Natural History of the Bible, Ninth Edition (London, 1898), pp. 54 sq.] Wild pigs are the special enemies of the crops in South Africa; the fences constructed by the Zulus round their gardens are mainly designed to guard against the devastating depredations of these brutes, though porcupines, baboons, hippopotamuses, and elephants also make havoc of the ripe grain. Sometimes small huts are erected on platforms in the gardens, and in these huts watchers are set to scare away the nocturnal invaders.[123 - Rev. J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country (London, 1857), pp. 18-20.] So in British Central Africa sentinels are posted day and night in huts raised on platforms to protect the maize fields from the inroads of baboons and of wild pigs, which are still more destructive than the baboons, for they grub up the plants as well as devour the grain; and the watchers drum continually on any metal they have at hand to keep the marauders at bay.[124 - Miss A. Werner, The Natives of British Central Africa (London, 1906), pp. 182 sq.] In the island of Nias whole fields are sometimes trampled down by these pests between sunset and sunrise. Often the stillness of the serene equatorial night is broken by the strident cries of the watchers of the fields; the sound goes echoing through the wooded valleys for a long time, and here and there a dull grunting tells that the efforts of the sentinels have not been in vain.[125 - E. Modigliano, Un Viaggio a Nías (Milan, 1890), pp. 524 sq., 601.] [pg 033] In Northern Luzon, of the Philippine Archipelago, the rice-fields are similarly exposed to the depredations of wild hogs, and watchers remain on guard day and night in outlooks, sometimes in commodious structures of stone erected for the purpose, who burn fires at night to frighten the animals away.[126 - A. E. Jenks, The Bontoc Igorot, (Manilla, 1905), pp. 100, 102.] At the beginning of their annual agricultural labours the Banars of Cambodia pray to Yang-Seri that he would be pleased to give them plenty of rice and to prevent the wild boars from eating it up.[127 - A. Bastian, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Gebirgs-stämme in Kambodia,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, i. (1866) p. 44.] In Gayo-land, a district of Sumatra, the worst enemies of the rice crops are wild swine and field mice; the whole of the harvest is sometimes destroyed by their inroads.[128 - G. Snouck Hurgronje, Het Gajōland en zijne Bewoners (Batavia, 1903), p. 348.] Among the Kai of German New Guinea people who are engaged in the labour of the fields will on no account eat pork. The reason is that pigs, both wild and tame, are the most dangerous foes of the crops; therefore it seems clear to the mind of the Kai that if a field labourer were to eat pork, the flesh of the dead pig in his stomach would attract the living pigs into the field.[129 - Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Leben der Kaileute,” in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea (Berlin, 1911), p. 125.] Perhaps this superstition, based on the principle of sympathetic magic, may explain the aversion to pork which was entertained by some of the agricultural peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean in antiquity.

The ravages of wild boars among the crops help us to understand the ambiguous attitude of the ancient Egyptians to swine

To people thus familiarised with the ravages of wild boars among the ripe crops the idea might naturally present itself that the animal is either the enemy of the corn-god or perhaps the corn-god himself come in person to enjoy his own despite all the efforts of mankind to keep him out of his rights. Hence we can understand how an agricultural people like the ancient Egyptians may have identified the wild boar either with their corn-god Osiris or with his enemy Typhon. The view which identifies the pig with Osiris derives not a little support from the sacrifice of pigs to him on the very day on which, according to tradition, Osiris himself was killed;[130 - E. Lefébure, Le Mythe Osirien, Première Partie, Les yeux d'Horus (Paris, 1874), pp. 48 sq.] for thus the killing [pg 034] of the pig was the annual representation of the killing of Osiris, just as the throwing of the pigs into the caverns at the Thesmophoria was an annual representation of the descent of Persephone into the lower world; and both customs are parallel to the European practice of killing a goat, cock, and so forth, at harvest as a representative of the corn-spirit.

Egyptian sacrifices of red oxen and red-haired men

Again, the theory that the pig, originally Osiris himself, afterwards came to be regarded as an embodiment of his enemy Typhon, is supported by the similar relation of red-haired men and red oxen to Typhon. For in regard to the red-haired men who were burned and whose ashes were scattered with winnowing-fans, we have seen fair grounds for believing that originally, like the red-haired puppies killed at Rome in spring, they were representatives of the corn-spirit himself, that is, of Osiris, and were slain for the express purpose of making the corn turn red or golden.[131 - See above, pp. 260 sq.; Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 331, 338.] Yet at a later time these men were explained to be representatives, not of Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon,[132 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 33, 73; Diodorus Siculus, i. 88.] and the killing of them was regarded as an act of vengeance inflicted on the enemy of the god. Similarly, the red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians were said to be offered on the ground of their resemblance to Typhon;[133 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 31; Diodorus Siculus, i. 88. Compare Herodotus, ii. 38.] though it is more likely that originally they were slain on the ground of their resemblance to the corn-spirit Osiris. We have seen that the ox is a common representative of the corn-spirit and is slain as such on the harvest-field.

Osiris identified with the sacred bulls Apis and Mnevis. Stratification of three great types of religion or superstition in ancient Egypt

Osiris was regularly identified with the bull Apis of Memphis and the bull Mnevis of Heliopolis.[134 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 20, 29, 33, 43; Strabo, xvii. 1. 31; Diodorus Siculus, i. 21, 85; Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums,

i. 55 sqq. On Apis and Mnevis, see also Herodotus, ii. 153, with A. Wiedemann's comment, iii. 27 sq.; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 14. 7; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 184 sqq.; Solinus, xxxii. 17-21; Cicero, De natura deorum, i. 29; Augustine, De civitate Dei, xviii. 5; Aelian, Nat. Anim. xi. 10 sq.; Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. viii. 1. 3; id., Isis et Osiris, 5, 35; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 13. 1 sq.; Pausanias, i. 18. 4, vii. 22. 3 sq.; W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (Leipsic, 1903-1905), Nos. 56, 90 (vol. i. pp. 98, 106, 159). Both Apis and Mnevis were black bulls, but Apis had certain white spots. See A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Aegypter (Münster i. W., 1890), pp. 95, 99-101. When Apis died, pious people used to put on mourning and to fast, drinking only water and eating only vegetables, for seventy days till the burial. See A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion (Berlin, 1905), pp. 170 sq.] But it is hard [pg 035] to say whether these bulls were embodiments of him as the corn-spirit, as the red oxen appear to have been, or whether they were not in origin entirely distinct deities who came to be fused with Osiris at a later time. The universality of the worship of these two bulls[135 - Diodorus Siculus, i. 21.] seems to put them on a different footing from the ordinary sacred animals whose worships were purely local. Hence if the latter were evolved from totems, as they may have been, some other origin would have to be found for the worship of Apis and Mnevis. If these bulls were not originally embodiments of the corn-god Osiris, they may possibly be descendants of the sacred cattle worshipped by a pastoral people.[136 - On the religious reverence of pastoral peoples for their cattle, and the possible derivation of the Apis and Isis-Hathor worship from the pastoral stage of society, see W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites,

pp. 296 sqq.] If this were so, ancient Egypt would exhibit a stratification of three great types of religion or superstition corresponding to three great stages of society. Totemism, which may be roughly described as a species of superstitious respect paid to wild animals and plants by many tribes in the hunting stage of society, would be represented by the worship of the local sacred animals; the worship of cattle, which belongs to society in the pastoral stage, would be represented by the cults of Apis and Mnevis; and the worship of cultivated plants, which is peculiar to society in the agricultural stage, would be represented by the religion of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptian reverence for cows, which were never killed,[137 - Herodotus, ii. 41.] might belong either to the second or the third of these stages. The consecration of cows to Isis, who was portrayed with cow's horns[138 - Herodotus, ii. 41, with A. Wiedemann's commentary; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 19; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London and New York, 1911), i. 8. In his commentary on the passage of Herodotus Prof. Wiedemann observes (p. 188) that “the Egyptian name of the Isis-cow is ḥes-t and is one of the few cases in which the name of the sacred animal coincides with that of the deity.”] and may have been supposed to be incarnate in the animals, would indicate that they, like the red oxen, were embodiments of the corn-spirit. However, this identification of Isis with the cow, like that of Osiris with the bulls Apis and Mnevis, may be only an effect of [pg 036] syncretism. But whatever the original relation of Apis to Osiris may have been, there is one fact about the former which ought not to be passed over in a disquisition on the custom of killing a god. Although the bull Apis was worshipped as a god with much pomp and profound reverence, he was not suffered to live beyond a certain length of time which was prescribed by the sacred books, and on the expiry of which he was drowned in a holy spring.[139 - Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 184; Solinus, xxxii. 18; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 14. 7. The spring or well in which he was drowned was perhaps the one from which his drinking-water was procured; he might not drink the water of the Nile (Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 5).] The limit, according to Plutarch, was twenty-five years;[140 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 56.] but it cannot always have been enforced, for the tombs of the Apis bulls have been discovered in modern times, and from the inscriptions on them it appears that in the twenty-second dynasty two of the holy steers lived more than twenty-six years.[141 - G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne

(Paris, 1886), p. 31. Compare Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums,

i. 56. It has been conjectured that the period of twenty-five years was determined by astronomical considerations, that being a period which harmonises the phases of the moon with the days of the Egyptian year. See L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1825-1826), i. 182 sq.; F. K. Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 180 sq.]

On the stratification of religions corresponding to certain social types

To prevent misunderstandings it may be well to add that what I have just said as to the stratification of three great types of religion or superstition corresponding to three great types of society is not meant to sketch, even in outline, the evolution of religion as a whole. I by no means wish to suggest that the reverence for wild animals and plants, the reverence for domestic cattle, and the reverence for cultivated plants are the only forms of religion or superstition which prevail at the corresponding stages of social development; all that I desire to convey is that they are characteristic of these stages respectively. The elements which make up any religious system are far too numerous and their interaction far too complex to be adequately summed up in a few simple formulas. To mention only a single factor of which I have taken no account in indicating roughly a certain correspondence between the strata of religion and of society, the fear of the spirits of the dead appears to have been one of the most powerful factors, [pg 037] perhaps, indeed, the most powerful of all, in shaping the course of religious evolution at every stage of social development from the lowest to the highest; and for that very reason it is not specially characteristic of any one form of society. And the three types of religion or superstition which I have selected as characteristic of three stages of society are far from being strictly limited each to its corresponding step in the social ladder. For example, although totemism, or a particular species of reverence paid by groups of men to wild animals and plants, probably always originated in the hunting stage of society, it has by no means been confined to that primitive phase of human development but has often survived not only into the pastoral but into the agricultural stage, as we may see for example by the case of many tribes in Africa, India, and America; and it seems likely that a similar overlapping of the various strata takes place in every instance. In short, we cannot really dissect the history of mankind as it were with a knife into a series of neat sections each sharply marked off from all the rest by a texture and colour of its own; we may indeed do so theoretically for the convenience of exposition, but practically the textures interlace, the colours melt and run into each other by insensible gradations that defy the edge of the finest instrument of analysis which we can apply to them. It is a mere truism to say that the abstract generalisations of science can never adequately comprehend all the particulars of concrete reality. The facts of nature will always burst the narrow bonds of human theories.

Reverence of the Dinka for their cattle

Before quitting this part of our subject it may be well to illustrate by one or two examples the reverence which primitive pastoral tribes pay to their cattle, since, as I have just indicated, the worship of sacred bulls by the ancient Egyptians, like the modern Hindoo worship of cows, may very well have been directly derived from a similar respect paid by their remote ancestors to their cattle. A good instance is supplied by the Dinka, a large cattle-breeding tribe, or rather nation, of the White Nile. “Every idea and thought of the Dinka,” says Schweinfurth, “is how to acquire and maintain cattle: a kind of reverence would [pg 038] seem to be paid to them; even their offal is considered of high importance; the dung, which is burnt to ashes for sleeping in and for smearing their persons, and the urine, which is used for washing and as a substitute for salt, are their daily requisites. It must be owned that it is hard to reconcile this latter usage with our ideas of cleanliness. A cow is never slaughtered, but when sick it is segregated from the rest, and carefully tended in the large huts built for the purpose. Only those that die naturally or by an accident are used as food. All this, which exists among most of the pastoral tribes of Africa, may perchance appear to be a lingering remnant of an exploded cattle-worship; but I may draw attention to the fact that the Dinka are by no means disinclined to partake of any feast of their flesh, provided that the slaughtered animal was not their own property. It is thus more the delight of actual possession, than any superstitious estimate, that makes the cow to them an object of reverence. Indescribable is the grief when either death or rapine has robbed a Dinka of his cattle. He is prepared to redeem their loss by the heaviest sacrifices, for they are dearer to him than wife or child. A dead cow is not, however, wantonly buried; the negro is not sentimental enough for that; such an occurrence is soon bruited abroad, and the neighbours institute a carousal, which is quite an epoch in their monotonous life. The bereaved owner himself is, however, too much afflicted at the loss to be able to touch a morsel of the carcass of his departed beast. Not unfrequently in their sorrow the Dinka remain for days silent and abstracted, as though their trouble were too heavy for them to bear.”[142 - G. Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, Third Edition (London, 1878), i. 59 sq.] A rich Dinka will sometimes keep a favourite ox and treat it with such marks of respect that an observer has compared the animal to the Apis of the ancient Egyptians. “Here and there,” we are told, “beside the hut of a wealthy negro is set up a great withered tree. From its boughs hang vessels containing food and perhaps trophies of war; to its trunk is fastened the great drum (Noqara), which summons to war or to the dance. To this tree, separated from the rest of the cattle, [pg 039] is tethered a great fat ox. It is of a white colour passing into a slaty grey on the shoulders and legs: its long horns are artificially bent to opposite sides and adorned with bunches of hair: the tuft of the tail is cut off. This is the makwi, the Apis of the negro. His master, who has singled him out from his youth for his colour and certain marks, has cherished and reared him in order that he may one day be his pride in the eyes of the village. He has gelded him, adorned him, trained him to walk at the head of the herd, to dance, and to fight. His makwi is always an object of his tenderest attention; he never fails to bring him a bundle of the finest herbs; if he can procure a bell, he hangs it round the animal's neck; and at evening, if he has milk or meriṣa enough for guests, the drum is beaten to summon the youth to come and dance round the deified ox.”[143 - E. de Pruyssenaere, Reisen und Forschungen im Gebiete des Weissen und Blauen Nil (Gotha, 1877), pp. 22 sq. (Petermann's Mittheilungen, Ergänzungsheft, No. 50).]

Reverence of the Nuehr for their cattle

Again, speaking of the Nuehr, another pastoral tribe of the Upper Nile, a traveller tells us that “as among the Dinka, so among the Nuehr-negroes the cattle enjoy a respect, indeed we may say a veneration, which reminds us of the animal worship of the ancient Egyptians, especially of that of the holy steer Apis, though the respect may be grounded on the simple fact that cattle are the only possession of these negroes. The largest and handsomest bull is the leader of the herd; he is decked with bunches of hair and small bells, marked out from the rest in every way, and regarded as the guardian genius of the herd as well as of the family. His loss is the greatest misfortune that can befall his owner. At night his master drives the animal round the herd, couched about the smoky fire, and sings of his beauty and courage, while the bull signifies his contentment by a complacent lowing. To him his master every morning commits the herd, in order that he may guide them to the best pastures and guard them from danger; in him he reveres his ideal of all that is beautiful and strong; nay he designates him by the same name which he applies to his own dim conception of a Supreme Being, Nyeledit, and to the thunder.”[144 - Ernst Marno, Reisen im Gebiete des Blauen und Weissen Nil (Vienna, 1874), p. 343. The name Nyeledit is explained by the writer to mean “very great and mighty.” It is probably equivalent to Nyalich, which Dr. C. G. Seligmann gives as a synonym for Dengdit, the high god of the Dinka. According to Dr. Seligmann, Nyalich is the locative of a word meaning “above” and, literally translated, signifies, “in the above.” See C. G. Seligmann, s. v. “Dinka,” in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by J. Hastings, D.D., vol. iv. (Edinburgh, 1911), p. 707. The Sakalava of Ampasimene, in Madagascar, are said to worship a black bull which is kept in a sacred enclosure in the island of Nosy Be. On the death of the sacred bull another is substituted for it. See A. van Gennep, Tabou et Totémisme à Madagascar (Paris, 1904), pp. 247 sq., quoting J. Carol, Chez les Hova (Paris, 1898), pp. 418 sq. But as the Sakalava are not, so far as I know, mainly or exclusively a pastoral people, this example of bull-worship does not strictly belong to the class illustrated in the text.][pg 040]

§ 5. Virbius and the Horse

The tradition that Virbius had been killed in the character of Hippolytus by horses, and the custom of excluding horses from the sacred Arician grove, may point to the conclusion that the horse was regarded as an embodiment of Virbius and was annually sacrificed in the grove. Similarly at Athens the goat was usually excluded from the Acropolis but was admitted once a year for a necessary sacrifice

We are now in a position to hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of the tradition that Virbius, the first of the divine Kings of the Wood at Aricia, had been killed in the character of Hippolytus by horses.[145 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 19 sqq.] Having found, first, that spirits of the corn are not infrequently represented in the form of horses;[146 - See above, vol. i. pp 292-294.] and, second, that the animal which in later legends is said to have injured the god was sometimes originally the god himself, we may conjecture that the horses by which Virbius or Hippolytus was said to have been slain were really embodiments of him as a deity of vegetation. The myth that he had been killed by horses was probably invented to explain certain features in his worship, amongst others the custom of excluding horses from his sacred grove. For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice. In the case before us we may be sure that the myth is more modern than the custom and by no means represents the original reason for excluding horses from the grove. From their exclusion it might be inferred that horses could not be the sacred animals or embodiments of the god of the grove. But the inference would be rash. The goat was at one time a sacred animal or embodiment of Athena, as may be inferred from the practice of representing the goddess clad in a goat-skin (aegis). Yet the goat was [pg 041] neither sacrificed to her as a rule, nor allowed to enter her great sanctuary, the Acropolis at Athens. The reason alleged for this was that the goat injured the olive, the sacred tree of Athena.[147 - Athenaeus, xiii. 51, p. 587 a; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 204. Compare W. Robertson Smith, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, article “Sacrifice,” vol. xxi. p. 135.] So far, therefore, the relation of the goat of Athena is parallel to the relation of the horse to Virbius, both animals being excluded from the sanctuary on the ground of injury done by them to the god. But from Varro we learn that there was an exception to the rule which excluded the goat from the Acropolis. Once a year, he says, the goat was driven on to the Acropolis for a necessary sacrifice.[148 - Varro, De agri cultura, i. 2. 19 sq.: “hoc nomine etiam Athenis in arcem non inigi, praeterquam semel ad necessarium sacrificium.” By semel Varro probably means once a year.] Now, as has been remarked before, when an animal is sacrificed once and once only in the year, it is probably slain, not as a victim offered to the god, but as a representative of the god himself. Therefore we may infer that if a goat was sacrificed on the Acropolis once a year, it was sacrificed in the character of Athena herself;[149 - The force of this inference is greatly weakened, if not destroyed, by a fact which I had overlooked when I wrote this book originally. A goat was sacrificed to Brauronian Artemis at her festival called the Brauronia (Hesychius, s. v. Βραυρωνίοις; compare Im. Bekker's Anecdota Graeca, p. 445, lines 6 sqq.). As the Brauronian Artemis had a sanctuary on the Acropolis of Athens (Pausanias, i. 23. 7), it seems probable that the goat sacrificed once a year on the Acropolis was sacrificed to her and not to Athena. (Note to Second Edition of The Golden Bough.)] and it may be conjectured that the skin of the sacrificed animal was placed on the statue of the goddess and formed the aegis, which would thus be renewed annually. Similarly at Thebes in Egypt rams were sacred and were not sacrificed. But on one day in the year a ram was killed, and its skin was placed on the statue of the god Ammon.[150 - Herodotus, ii. 42.] Now, if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove better, we might find that the rule of excluding horses from it, like the rule of excluding goats from the Acropolis at Athens, was subject to an annual exception, a horse being once a year taken into the grove and sacrificed as an embodiment of the god Virbius.[151 - It is worth noting that Hippolytus, with whom Virbius was identified, is said to have dedicated horses to Aesculapius, who had raised him from the dead (Pausanias, ii. 27. 4).] By the usual misunderstanding the horse [pg 042] thus killed would come in time to be regarded as an enemy offered up in sacrifice to the god whom he had injured, like the pig which was sacrificed to Demeter and Osiris or the goat which was sacrificed to Dionysus, and possibly to Athena. It is so easy for a writer to record a rule without noticing an exception that we need not wonder at finding the rule of the Arician grove recorded without any mention of an exception such as I suppose. If we had had only the statements of Athenaeus and Pliny, we should have known only the rule which forbade the sacrifice of goats to Athena and excluded them from the Acropolis, without being aware of the important exception which the fortunate preservation of Varro's work has revealed to us.

Annual sacrifice of a horse at Rome in October

The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been sacrificed in the Arician grove as a representative of the deity of the grove derives some support from the similar sacrifice of a horse which took place once a year at Rome. On the fifteenth of October in each year a chariot-race was run on the Field of Mars. Stabbed with a spear, the right-hand horse of the victorious team was then sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of ensuring good crops, and its head was cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. Thereupon the inhabitants of two wards – the Sacred Way and the Subura – contended with each other who should get the head. If the people of the Sacred Way got it, they fastened it to a wall of the king's house; if the people of the Subura got it, they fastened it to the Mamilian tower. The horse's tail was cut off and carried to the king's house with such speed that the blood dripped on the hearth of the house.[152 - Festus, ed. C. O. Müller, pp. 178, 179, 220; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 97; Polybius, xii. 4 b. The sacrifice is referred to by Julian, Orat. v. p. 176 d (p. 228 ed. F. C. Hertlein). It is the subject of a valuable essay by W. Mannhardt, whose conclusions I summarise in the text. See W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), pp. 156-201.] Further, it appears that the blood of the horse was caught and preserved till the twenty-first of April, when the Vestal virgins mixed it with the blood of the unborn calves which had been sacrificed six days before. The mixture was then distributed to shepherds, and used by them for fumigating their flocks.[153 - Ovid, Fasti, iv. 731 sqq., compare 629 sqq.; Propertius, v. 1. 19 sq.][pg 043]

The horse so sacrificed seems to have embodied the corn-spirit

In this ceremony the decoration of the horse's head[154 - The Huzuls of the Carpathians attribute a special virtue to a horse's head. They think that fastened on a pole and set up in a garden it protects the cabbages from caterpillars. See R. F. Kaindl, Die Huzulen (Wienna, 1894), p. 102. At the close of the rice-harvest the Garos of Assam celebrate a festival in which the effigy of a horse plays an important part. When the festival is over, the body of the horse is thrown into a stream, but the head is preserved for another year. See Note at the end of the volume.] with a string of loaves, and the alleged object of the sacrifice, namely, to procure a good harvest, seem to indicate that the horse was killed as one of those animal representatives of the corn-spirit of which we have found so many examples. The custom of cutting off the horse's tail is like the African custom of cutting off the tails of the oxen and sacrificing them to obtain a good crop.[155 - Above, pp. 9 (#x_4_i17)sq.] In both the Roman and the African custom the animal apparently stands for the corn-spirit, and its fructifying power is supposed to reside especially in its tail. The latter idea occurs, as we have seen, in European folk-lore.[156 - Above, vol. i. pp. 268, 272.] Again, the practice of fumigating the cattle in spring with the blood of the horse may be compared with the practice of giving the Old Wife, the Maiden, or the clyack sheaf as fodder to the horses in spring or the cattle at Christmas, and giving the Yule Boar to the ploughing oxen or horses to eat in spring.[157 - Above, vol. i. pp. 141, 155, 156, 158, 160 sq., 301.] All these usages aim at ensuring the blessing of the corn-spirit on the homestead and its inmates and storing it up for another year.

Archaic character of the sacrifice and its analogies in the harvest customs of Northern Europe

The Roman sacrifice of the October horse, as it was called, carries us back to the early days when the Subura, afterwards a low and squalid quarter of the great metropolis, was still a separate village, whose inhabitants engaged in a friendly contest on the harvest-field with their neighbours of Rome, then a little rural town. The Field of Mars on which the ceremony took place lay beside the Tiber, and formed part of the king's domain down to the abolition of the monarchy. For tradition ran that at the time when the last of the kings was driven from Rome, the corn stood ripe for the sickle on the crown lands beside the river; but no one would eat the accursed grain and it was flung into the river in such heaps that, the water being low with the summer heat, it formed the nucleus of an island.[158 - Livy, ii. 5.] [pg 044] The horse sacrifice was thus an old autumn custom observed upon the king's corn-fields at the end of the harvest. The tail and blood of the horse, as the chief parts of the corn-spirit's representative, were taken to the king's house and kept there; just as in Germany the harvest-cock is nailed on the gable or over the door of the farmhouse; and as the last sheaf, in the form of the Maiden, is carried home and kept over the fireplace in the Highlands of Scotland. Thus the blessing of the corn-spirit was brought to the king's house and hearth and, through them, to the community of which he was the head. Similarly in the spring and autumn customs of Northern Europe the Maypole is sometimes set up in front of the house of the mayor or burgomaster, and the last sheaf at harvest is brought to him as the head of the village. But while the tail and blood fell to the king, the neighbouring village of the Subura, which no doubt once had a similar ceremony of its own, was gratified by being allowed to compete for the prize of the horse's head. The Mamilian tower, to which the Suburans nailed the horse's head when they succeeded in carrying it off, appears to have been a peel-tower or keep of the old Mamilian family, the magnates of the village.[159 - Festus, ed. C. O. Müller, pp. 130, 131.] The ceremony thus performed on the king's fields and at his house on behalf of the whole town and of the neighbouring village presupposes a time when each township performed a similar ceremony on its own fields. In the rural districts of Latium the villages may have continued to observe the custom, each on its own land, long after the Roman hamlets had merged their separate harvest-homes in the common celebration on the king's lands. There is no intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove of Aricia, like the Field of Mars at Rome, may have been the scene of a common harvest celebration, at which a horse was sacrificed with the same rude rites on behalf of the neighbouring villages. The horse would represent the fructifying spirit both of the tree and of the corn, for the two ideas melt into each other, as we see in customs like the Harvest-May.

Other examples of the exclusion of horses from sanctuaries. Uncertainty as to the reason for excluding horses from the Arician grove

However, it should be borne in mind that the evidence for thus interpreting the relation of horses to Virbius is [pg 045] exceedingly slender, and that the custom of excluding horses from the sacred Arician grove may have been based on some other superstitious motive which entirely escapes us. At the city of Ialysus in Rhodes there was a sanctuary of Alectrona, one of the daughters of the Sun, into which no horse, ass, mule, or beast of burden of any kind might enter. Any person who broke the law by introducing one of these animals into the holy precinct, had to purify the place by a sacrifice; and the same atonement had to be made by any man who brought shoes or any portion of a pig within the sacred boundaries. And whoever drove or suffered his sheep to stray into the precinct was obliged to pay a fine of one obol for every sheep that set foot in it.[160 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,