CHAPTER XII. MOTHER-KIN AND MOTHER GODDESSES.

§ 1. Dying Gods and Mourning Goddesses.

(M171) We have now concluded our inquiry into the nature and worship of

the three Oriental deities Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. The substantial

similarity of their mythical character justifies us in treating of them

together. All three apparently embodied the powers of fertility in general

and of vegetation in particular. All three were believed to have died and

risen again from the dead; and the divine death and resurrection of all

three were dramatically represented at annual festivals, which their

worshippers celebrated with alternate transports of sorrow and joy, of

weeping and exultation. The natural phenomena thus mythically conceived

and mythically represented were the great changes of the seasons,

especially the most striking and impressive of all, the decay and revival

of vegetation; and the intention of the sacred dramas was to refresh and

strengthen, by sympathetic magic, the failing energies of nature, in order

that the trees should bear fruit, that the corn should ripen, that men and

animals should reproduce their kinds.

(M172) But the three gods did not stand by themselves. The mythical

personification of nature, of which all three were in at least one aspect

the products, required that each of them should be coupled with a goddess,

and in each case it appears that originally the goddess was a more

powerful and important personage than the god. At all events it is always

the god rather than the goddess who comes to a sad end, and whose death is

annually mourned. Thus, whereas Osiris was slain by Typhon, his divine

spouse Isis survived and brought him to life again. This feature of the

myth seems to indicate that in the beginning Isis was, what Astarte and

Cybele always continued to be, the stronger divinity of the pair. Now the

superiority thus assigned to the goddess over the god is most naturally

explained as the result of a social system in which maternity counted for

more than paternity, descent being traced and property handed down through

women rather than through men. At all events this explanation cannot be

deemed intrinsically improbable if we can show that the supposed cause has

produced the very same effect among existing peoples, about whose

institutions we possess accurate information. This I will now endeavour to

do.

§ 2. Influence of Mother-Kin on Religion.

(M173) The social system which traces descent and transmits property

through the mother alone may be called mother-kin, while the converse

system which traces descent and transmits property through the father

alone may be called father-kin.(505) A good example of the influence which

mother-kin may exert on religion is furnished by the Khasis of Assam,

whose customs and beliefs have lately been carefully recorded by a British

officer specially charged with the study of the native races of the

province.(506) Like the ancient Egyptians and the Semites of Syria and

Mesopotamia, the Khasis live in settled villages and maintain themselves

chiefly by the cultivation of the ground; yet “their social organization

presents one of the most perfect examples still surviving of matriarchal

institutions, carried out with a logic and thoroughness which, to those

accustomed to regard the status and authority of the father as the

foundation of society, are exceedingly remarkable. Not only is the mother

the head and source, and only bond of union, of the family: in the most

primitive part of the hills, the Synteng country, she is the only owner of

real property, and through her alone is inheritance transmitted.(507) The

father has no kinship with his children, who belong to their mother’s

clan; what he earns goes to his own matriarchal stock, and at his death

his bones are deposited in the cromlech of his mother’s kin. In Jowai he

neither lives nor eats in his wife’s house, but visits it only after dark.

In the veneration of ancestors, which is the foundation of the tribal

piety, the primal ancestress (_Ka Iāwbei_) and her brother are the only

persons regarded. The flat memorial stones set up to perpetuate the memory

of the dead are called after the woman who represents the clan (_māw

kynthei_), and the standing stones ranged behind them are dedicated to the

male kinsmen on the mother’s side. In harmony with this scheme of ancestor

worship, the other spirits to whom propitiation is offered are mainly

female, though here male personages also figure. The powers of sickness

and death are all female, and these are those most frequently worshipped.

The two protectors of the household are goddesses, though with them is

also revered the first father of the clan, _U Thāwlang_. Priestesses

assist at all sacrifices, and the male officiants are only their deputies;

in one important state, Khyrim, the High Priestess and actual head of the

State is a woman, who combines in her person sacerdotal and regal

functions.”(508) Thus amongst the Khasis of the present day the

superiority of the goddess to the god, and especially of the revered

ancestress to the revered ancestor, is based directly on the social system

which traces descent and transmits property through women only. It is not

unreasonable therefore to suppose that in Western Asia the superiority of

the Mother Goddess to the Father God originated in the same archaic system

of mother-kin.

(M174) Another instance of the same cause producing the same effect may be

drawn from the institutions of the Pelew Islanders, which have been

described by an accurate observer long resident in the islands. These

people, who form a branch of the Micronesian stock, are divided into a

series of exogamous families or clans with descent in the female

line,(509) so that, as usually happens under such a system, a man’s heirs

are not his own children but the children of his sister or of his maternal

aunt.(510) Every family or clan traces its descent from a woman, the

common mother of the whole kin,(511) and accordingly the members of the

clan worship a goddess, not a god.(512) These families or clans, with

female descent and a worship of goddesses rather than of gods, are grouped

together in villages, each village comprising about a score of clans and

forming with its lands a petty independent state.(513) Every such

village-state has its special deity or deities, generally a god and a

goddess. But these political deities of the villages are said to be

directly derived from the domestic deities of the families or clans,(514)

from which it seems to follow that among these people gods are

historically later than goddesses and have been developed out of

them.(515) The late origin of the gods as compared with the goddesses is

further indicated by the nature of their names.(516)

(M175) This preference for goddesses over gods in the clans of the Pelew

Islanders has been explained, no doubt rightly, by the high importance of

women in the social system of the people.(517) For the existence of the

clan depends entirely on the life of the women, not at all upon the life

of the men. If the women survive, it is no matter though every man of the

clan should perish; for the women will, as usual, marry men of another

clan, and their offspring will inherit their mother’s clan, thereby

prolonging its existence. Whereas if the women of the clan all die out,

the clan necessarily becomes extinct, even though every man of it should

survive; for the men must, as usual, marry women of another clan, and

their offspring will inherit their mothers’ clan, not the clan of their

fathers, which accordingly, with the death of the fathers, is wiped out

from the community. Hence in these islands women bear the titles of

_Adhalál a pelú_, “Mothers of the Land,” and _Adhalál a blay_, “Mothers of

the Clan,” and they are said to enjoy complete equality with the men in

every respect.(518) Indeed, in one passage our principal authority speaks

of “the predominance of feminine influence in the social condition of the

people,” and asserts without qualification that the women are politically

and socially superior to the men.(519) The eldest women of the clan

exercise, he tells us, the most decisive influence on the conduct of its

affairs, and the headman does nothing without full consultation with them,

a consultation which in the great houses extends to affairs of state and

foreign politics.(520) Nay, these elder women are even esteemed and

treated as equal to the deities in their lifetime.(521)

(M176) But the high position which women thus take in Pelew society is not

a result of mother-kin only. It has an industrial as well as a kinship

basis. For the Pelew Islanders subsist mainly on the produce of their taro

fields, and the cultivation of this, their staple food, is the business of

the women alone. “This cardinal branch of Pelew agriculture, which is of

paramount importance for the subsistence of the people, is left entirely

in the hands of the women. This fact may have contributed materially to

the predominance of female influence in the social condition of the

people. The women do not merely bestow life on the people, they also do

that which is most essential for the preservation of life, and therefore

they are called _Adhalál a pelú_, the ‘Mothers of the Land,’ and are

politically and socially superior to men. Only their offspring enjoy the

privilege of membership of the state (the children of the men are,

strictly speaking, strangers destitute of rights), and the oldest women of

the families are esteemed and treated as equal to deities even in their

lifetime, and they exercise a decisive influence on the conduct of affairs

of state. No chief would venture to come to a decision without first

consulting with the _Adhalál a blay_, the ‘Mothers of the Family.’ From

this point of view it is impossible to regard the assignment of the taro

cultivation to women as a consequence of their subordinate position in

society: the women themselves do not so regard it. The richest woman of

the village looks with pride on her taro patch, and although she has

female followers enough to allow her merely to superintend the work

without taking part in it, she nevertheless prefers to lay aside her fine

apron and to betake herself to the deep mire, clad in a small apron that

hardly hides her nakedness, with a little mat on her back to protect her

from the burning heat of the sun, and with a shade of banana leaves for

her eyes. There, dripping with sweat in the burning sun and coated with

mud to the hips and over the elbows, she toils to set the younger women a

good example. Moreover, as in every other occupation, the _kaliths_, the

gods, must also be invoked, and who could be better fitted for the

discharge of so important a duty than the Mother of the House?”(522) It

seems clear that in any agricultural people who, like the Pelew Islanders,

retain mother-kin and depute the labours of husbandry to women, the

conception of a great Mother Goddess, the divine source of all fertility,

might easily originate. Perhaps the same social and industrial conditions

may have combined to develop the great Mother Goddesses of Western Asia

and Egypt.

(M177) But in the Pelew Islands women have yet another road to power. For

some of them are reputed to be the wives of gods, and act as their

oracular mouthpieces. Such prophetesses are called _Amlaheys_, and no

surprise is felt when one of them is brought to bed. Her child passes for

the offspring of the god, her divine husband, and goes about with his hair

hanging loose in token of his superhuman parentage. It is thought that no

mortal man would dare to intrigue with one of these human wives of a god,

since the jealous deity would surely visit the rash culprit with deadly

sickness and a lingering decline.(523) But in these islands men as well as

women are often possessed by a deity and speak in his name. Under his

inspiration they mimic, often with great histrionic skill, the particular

appearance and manner which are believed to be characteristic of the

indwelling divinity. These inspired men (_Korongs_) usually enjoy great

consideration and exert a powerful influence over the whole community.

They always acquire wealth in the exercise of their profession. When they

are not themselves chiefs, they are treated as chiefs or even preferred to

them. In not a few places the deity whom they personate is also the

political head of the land; and in that case his inspired priest, however

humble his origin, ranks as a spiritual king and rules over all the

chiefs. Indeed we are told that, with the physical and intellectual decay

of the race, the power of the priests is more and more in the ascendant

and threatens, if unchecked, to develop before long into an absolute

theocracy which will swallow up every other form of government.(524)

(M178) Thus the present, or at least the recent, state of society and

religion in the Pelew Islands presents some interesting parallels to the

social and religious condition of Western Asia and Egypt in early days, if

the conclusions reached in this work are correct. In both regions we see a

society based on mother-kin developing a religion in which goddesses of

the clan originally occupied the foremost place, though in later times, as

the clans coalesced into states, the old goddesses have been rivalled and

to some extent supplanted by the new male gods of the enlarged pantheon.

But in the religion of the Pelew Islanders, as in that of the Khasis and

the ancient Egyptians, the balance of power has never wholly shifted from

the female to the male line, because society has never passed from

mother-kin to father-kin. And in the Pelew Islands as in the ancient East

we see the tide of political power running strongly in the direction of

theocracy, the people resigning the conduct of affairs into the hands of

men who claimed to rule them in the name of the gods. In the Pelew Islands

such men might have developed into divine kings like those of Babylon and

Egypt, if the natural course of evolution had not been cut short by the

intervention of Europe.(525)

(M179) The evidence of the Khasis and the Pelew Islanders, two peoples

very remote and very different from each other, suffices to prove that the

influence which mother-kin may exert on religion is real and deep. But in

order to dissipate misapprehensions, which appear to be rife on this

subject, it may be well to remind or inform the reader that the ancient

and widespread custom of tracing descent and inheriting property through

the mother alone does not by any means imply that the government of the

tribes which observe the custom is in the hands of women; in short, it

should always be borne in mind that mother-kin does not mean mother-rule.

On the contrary, the practice of mother-kin prevails most extensively

amongst the lowest savages, with whom woman, instead of being the ruler of

man, is always his drudge and often little better than his slave. Indeed,

so far is the system from implying any social superiority of women that it

probably took its rise from what we should regard as their deepest

degradation, to wit, from a state of society in which the relations of the

sexes were so loose and vague that children could not be fathered on any

particular man.(526)

(M180) When we pass from the purely savage state to that higher plane of

culture in which the accumulation of property, and especially of landed

property, has become a powerful instrument of social and political

influence, we naturally find that wherever the ancient preference for the

female line of descent has been retained, it tends to increase the

importance and enhance the dignity of woman; and her aggrandizement is

most marked in princely families, where she either herself holds royal

authority as well as private property, or at least transmits them both to

her consort or her children. But this social advance of women has never

been carried so far as to place men as a whole in a position of political

subordination to them. Even where the system of mother-kin in regard to

descent and property has prevailed most fully, the actual government has

generally, if not invariably, remained in the hands of men. Exceptions

have no doubt occurred; women have occasionally arisen who by sheer force

of character have swayed for a time the destinies of their people. But

such exceptions are rare and their effects transitory; they do not affect

the truth of the general rule that human society has been governed in the

past and, human nature remaining the same, is likely to be governed in the

future, mainly by masculine force and masculine intelligence.

(M181) To this rule the Khasis, with their elaborate system of mother-kin,

form no exception. For among them, while landed property is both

transmitted through women and held by women alone, political power is

transmitted indeed through women, but is held by men; in other words, the

Khasi tribes are, with a single exception, governed by kings, not by

queens. And even in the one tribe, which is nominally ruled by women, the

real power is delegated by the reigning queen or High Priestess to her

son, her nephew, or a more distant male relation. In all the other tribes

the kingship may be held by a woman only on the failure of all male heirs

in the female line.(527) So far is mother-kin from implying mother-rule. A

Khasi king inherits power in right of his mother, but he exercises it in

his own. Similarly the Pelew Islanders, in spite of their system of

mother-kin, are governed by chiefs, not by chieftainesses. It is true that

there are chieftainesses, and that they indirectly exercise much

influence; but their direct authority is limited to the affairs of women,

especially to the administration of the women’s clubs or associations,

which answer to the clubs or associations of the men.(528) And to take

another example, the Melanesians, like the Khasis and the Pelew Islanders,

have the system of mother-kin, being similarly divided into exogamous

clans with descent in the female line; “but it must be understood that the

mother is in no way the head of the family. The house of the family is the

father’s, the garden is his, the rule and government are his.”(529)

(M182) We may safely assume that the practice has been the same among all

the many peoples who have retained the ancient system of mother-kin under

a monarchical constitution. In Africa, for example, the chieftainship or

kingship often descends in the female line, but it is men, not women, who

inherit it.(530) The theory of a gynaecocracy is in truth a dream of

visionaries and pedants. And equally chimerical is the idea that the

predominance of goddesses under a system of mother-kin like that of the

Khasis is a creation of the female mind. If women ever created gods, they

would be more likely to give them masculine than feminine features. In

point of fact the great religious ideals which have permanently impressed

themselves on the world seem always to have been a product of the male

imagination. Men make gods and women worship them. The combination of

ancestor-worship with mother-kin furnishes a simple and sufficient

explanation of the superiority of goddesses over gods in a state of

society where these conditions prevail. Men naturally assign the first

place in their devotions to the ancestress from whom they trace their

descent. We need not resort to a fantastic hypothesis of the preponderance

of the feminine fancy in order to account for the facts.

(M183) The theory that under a system of mother-kin the women rule the men

and set up goddesses for them to worship is indeed so improbable in

itself, and so contrary to experience, that it scarcely deserves the

serious attention which it appears to have received.(531) But when we have

brushed aside these cobwebs, as we must do, we are still left face to face

with the solid fact of the wide prevalence of mother-kin, that is, of a

social system which traces descent and transmits property through women

and not through men. That a social system so widely spread and so deeply

rooted should have affected the religion of the peoples who practise it,

may reasonably be inferred, especially when we remember that in primitive

communities the social relations of the gods commonly reflect the social

relations of their worshippers. How the system of mother-kin may mould

religious ideas and customs, creating goddesses and assigning at least a

nominal superiority to priestesses over priests, is shown with perfect

lucidity by the example of the Khasis, and hardly less clearly by the

example of the Pelew Islanders. It cannot therefore be rash to hold that

what the system has certainly done for these peoples, it may well have

done for many more. But unfortunately through lack of documentary evidence

we are seldom able to trace its influence so clearly.

§ 3. Mother-Kin and Mother Goddesses in the Ancient East.

(M184) While the combination of mother-kin in society with a preference

for goddesses in religion is to be found as a matter of fact among the

Khasis and Pelew Islanders of to-day, the former prevalence of mother-kin

in the lands where the great goddesses Astarte and Cybele were worshipped

is a matter of inference only. In later times father-kin had certainly

displaced mother-kin among the Semitic worshippers of Astarte, and

probably the same change had taken place among the Phrygian worshippers of

Cybele. Yet the older custom lingered in Lycia down to the historical

period;(532) and we may conjecture that in former times it was widely

spread through Asia Minor. The secluded situation and rugged mountains of

Lycia favoured the survival of a native language and of native

institutions long after these had disappeared from the wide plains and

fertile valleys which lay on the highroads of war and commerce. Lycia was

to Asia Minor what the highlands of Wales and of Scotland have been to

Britain, the last entrenchments where the old race stood at bay. And even

among the Semites of antiquity, though father-kin finally prevailed in

matters of descent and property, traces of an older system of mother-kin,

with its looser sexual relations, appear to have long survived in the

sphere of religion. At all events one of the most learned and acute of

Semitic scholars adduced what he regarded as evidence sufficient to prove

“that in old Arabian religion gods and goddesses often occurred in pairs,

the goddess being the greater, so that the god cannot be her Baal, that

the goddess is often a mother without being a wife, and the god her son,

and that the progress of things was towards changing goddesses into gods

or lowering them beneath the male deity.”(533)

(M185) In Egypt the archaic system of mother-kin, with its preference for

women over men in matters of property and inheritance, lasted down to

Roman times, and it was traditionally based on the example of Isis, who

had avenged her husband’s murder and had continued to reign after his

decease, conferring benefits on mankind. “For these reasons,” says

Diodorus Siculus, “it was appointed that the queen should enjoy greater

power and honour than the king, and that among private people the wife

should rule over her husband, in the marriage contract the husband

agreeing to obey his wife in all things.”(534) A corollary of the superior

position thus conceded to women in Egypt was that the obligation of

maintaining parents in their old age rested on the daughters, not on the

sons, of the family.(535)

(M186) The same legal superiority of women over men accounts for the most

remarkable feature in the social system of the ancient Egyptians, to wit,

the marriage of full brothers with full sisters. That marriage, which to

us seems strange and unnatural, was by no means a whim of the reigning

Ptolemies; on the contrary, these Macedonian conquerors appear, with

characteristic prudence, to have borrowed the custom from their Egyptian

predecessors for the express purpose of conciliating native prejudice. In

the eyes of the Egyptians “marriage between brother and sister was the

best of marriages, and it acquired an ineffable degree of sanctity when

the brother and sister who contracted it were themselves born of a brother

and sister, who had in their turn also sprung from a union of the same

sort.”(536) Nor did the principle apply only to gods and kings. The common

people acted on it in their daily life. They regarded marriages between

brothers and sisters as the most natural and reasonable of all.(537) The

evidence of legal documents, including marriage contracts, tends to prove

that such unions were the rule, not the exception, in ancient Egypt, and

that they continued to form the majority of marriages long after the

Romans had obtained a firm footing in the country. As we cannot suppose

that Roman influence was used to promote a custom which must have been

abhorrent to Roman instincts, we may safely assume that the proportion of

brother and sister marriages in Egypt had been still greater in the days

when the country was free.(538)

(M187) It would doubtless be a mistake to treat these marriages as a relic

of savagery, as a survival of a tribal communism which knew no bar to the

intercourse of the sexes. For such a theory would not explain why union

with a sister was not only allowed, but preferred to all others. The true

motive of that preference was most probably the wish of brothers to obtain

for their own use the family property, which belonged of right to their

sisters, and which otherwise they would have seen in the enjoyment of

strangers, the husbands of their sisters. This is the system which in

Ceylon is known as _beena_ marriage. Under it the daughter, not the son,

is the heir. She stays at home, and her husband comes and lives with her

in the house; but her brother goes away and dwells in his wife’s home,

inheriting nothing from his parents.(539) Such a system could not fail in

time to prove irksome. Men would be loth to quit the old home, resign the

ancestral property to a stranger, and go out to seek their fortune

empty-handed in the world. The remedy was obvious. A man had nothing to do

but to marry his sister himself instead of handing her over to another.

Having done so he stayed at home and enjoyed the family estate in virtue

of his marriage with the heiress. This simple and perfectly effective

expedient for keeping the property in the family most probably explains

the custom of brother and sister marriage in Egypt.(540)

(M188) Thus the union of Osiris with his sister Isis was not a freak of

the story-teller’s fancy: it reflected a social custom which was itself

based on practical considerations of the most solid kind. When we reflect

that this practice of mother-kin as opposed to father-kin survived down to

the latest times of antiquity, not in an obscure and barbarous tribe, but

in a nation whose immemorial civilization was its glory and the wonder of

the world, we may without being extravagant suppose that a similar

practice formerly prevailed in Syria and Phrygia, and that it accounts for

the superiority of the goddess over the god in the divine partnerships of

Adonis and Astarte, of Attis and Cybele. But the ancient system both of

society and of religion had undergone far more change in these countries

than in Egypt, where to the last the main outlines of the old structure

could be traced in the national institutions to which the Egyptians clung

with a passionate, a fanatical devotion. Mother-kin, the divinity of kings

and queens, a sense of the original connexion of the gods with

nature—these things outlived the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman

conquest, and only perished under the more powerful solvent of

Christianity. But the old order did not vanish at once with the official

establishment of the new religion. In the age of Constantine the Greeks of

Egypt still attributed the rise of the Nile to Serapis, the later form of

Osiris, alleging that the inundation could not take place if the standard

cubit, which was used to measure it, were not deposited according to

custom in the temple of the god. The emperor ordered the cubit to be

transferred to a church; and next year, to the general surprise, the river

rose just as usual.(541) Even at a later time Athanasius himself had to

confess with sorrow and indignation that under his own eyes the Egyptians

still annually mourned the death of Osiris.(542) The end came with the

destruction of the great Serapeum at Alexandria, the last stronghold of

the heathen in Egypt. It perished in a furious and bloody sedition, in

which Christians and pagans seem to have vied with each other in mutual

atrocities. After its fall the temples were levelled with the ground or

converted into churches, and the images of the old gods went to the

melting-pot to be converted into base uses for the rabble of

Alexandria.(543)

(M189) The singular tenacity with which the Egyptian people maintained

their traditional beliefs and customs for thousands of years sprang no

doubt from the stubborn conservatism of the national character. Yet that

conservatism was itself in great measure an effect of geographical and

climatic conditions and of the ways of life which they favoured.

Surrounded on every side by deserts or almost harbourless seas, the

Egyptians occupied a position of great natural strength which for long

ages together protected them from invasion and allowed their native habits

to set and harden, undisturbed by the subversive influence of foreign

conquest. The wonderful regularity of nature in Egypt also conduced to a

corresponding stability in the minds of the people. Year in, year out, the

immutable succession of the seasons brought with it the same unvarying

round of agricultural toil. What the fathers had done, the sons did in the

same manner at the same season, and so it went on from generation to

generation. This monotonous routine is common indeed to all purely

agricultural communities, and everywhere tends to beget in the husbandman

a settled phlegmatic habit of mind very different from the mobility, the

alertness, the pliability of character which the hazards and uncertainties

of commerce and the sea foster in the merchant and the sailor. The

saturnine temperament of the farmer is as naturally averse to change as

the more mercurial spirit of the trader and the seaman is predisposed to

it. But the stereotyping of ideas and of customs was carried further in

Egypt than in most lands devoted to husbandry by reason of the greater

uniformity of the Egyptian seasons and the more complete isolation of the

country.

(M190) The general effect of these causes was to create a type of national

character which presented many points of resemblance to that of the

Chinese. In both we see the same inflexible strength of will, the same

astonishing industry, the same strange blend of humanity and savagery, the

same obstinate adherence to tradition, the same pride of race and of

ancient civilization, the same contempt for foreigners as for upstarts and

barbarians, the same patient outward submission to an alien rule combined

with an unshakeable inward devotion to native ideals. It was this

conservative temper of the people, bred in great measure of the physical

nature of their land, which, so to say, embalmed the memory of Osiris long

after the corresponding figures of Adonis and Attis had suffered decay.

For while Egypt enjoyed profound repose, the tides of war and conquest, of

traffic and commerce, had for centuries rolled over Western Asia, the

native home of Adonis and Attis; and if the shock of nationalities in this

great meeting-ground of East and West was favourable to the rise of new

faiths and new moralities, it was in the same measure unfavourable to the

preservation of the old.

NOTES.

I. Moloch The King.

(M191) I cannot leave the evidence for the sacred character of Jewish

kings(544) without mentioning a suggestion which was made to me by my

friend and teacher the Rev. Professor R. H. Kennett. He thinks that

Moloch, to whom first-born children were burnt by their parents in the

valley of Hinnom, outside the walls of Jerusalem,(545) may have been

originally the human king regarded as an incarnate deity. Certainly the

name of Moloch, or rather Molech (for so it is always written in the

Massoretic text(546)), is merely a slightly disguised form of _melech_,

the ordinary Hebrew word for “king,” the scribes having apparently given

the dreadful word the vowels of bosheth, “shameful thing.”(547) But it

seems clear that in historical times the Jews who offered these sacrifices

identified Molech, not with the human king, but with Jehovah, though the

prophets protested against the custom as an outrage on the divine

majesty.(548)

(M192) If, however, these sacrifices were originally offered to or in

behalf of the human king, it is possible that they were intended to

prolong his life and strengthen his hands for the performance of those

magical functions which he was expected to discharge for the good of his

people. The old kings of Sweden answered with their heads for the

fertility of the ground,(549) and we read that one of them, Aun or On by

name, sacrificed nine of his sons to Odin at Upsala in order that his own

life might be spared. After the sacrifice of his second son he received

from the god an oracle that he should live as long as he gave him one of

his sons every tenth year. When he had thus sacrificed seven sons, the

ruthless father still lived, but was so feeble that he could no longer

walk and had to be carried in a chair. Then he offered up his eighth son

and lived ten years more, bedridden. After that he sacrificed his ninth

son, and lived ten years more, drinking out of a horn like a weaned child.

He now wished to sacrifice his last remaining son to Odin, but the Swedes

would not let him, so he died and was buried in a mound at Upsala.(550) In

this Swedish tradition the king’s children seem to have been looked upon

as substitutes offered to the god in place of their father, and apparently

this was also the current explanation of the slaughter of the first-born

in the later times of Israel.(551) On that view the sacrifices were

vicarious, and therefore purely religious, being intended to propitiate a

stern and exacting deity. Similarly we read that when Amestris, wife of

Xerxes, was grown old, she sacrificed on her behalf twice seven noble

children to the earth god by burying them alive.(552) If the story is

true—and it rests on the authority of Herodotus, a nearly contemporary

witness—we may surmise that the aged queen acted thus with an eye to the

future rather than to the past; she hoped that the grim god of the

nether-world would accept the young victims in her stead, and let her live

for many years. The same idea of vicarious suffering comes out in a

tradition told of a certain Hova king of Madagascar, who bore the sonorous

name of Andriamasinavalona. When he had grown sickly and feeble, the

oracle was consulted as to the best way of restoring him to health. “The

following result was the consequence of the directions of the oracle. A

speech was first delivered to the people, offering great honours and

rewards to the family of any individual who would freely offer himself to

be sacrificed, in order to the king’s recovery. The people shuddered at

the idea, and ran away in different directions. One man, however,

presented himself for the purpose, and his offer was accepted. The

sacrificer girded up his loins, sharpened his knife, and bound the victim.

After which, he was laid down with his head towards the east, upon a mat

spread for the purpose, according to the custom with animals on such

occasions, when the priest appeared, to proceed with all solemnity in

slaughtering the victim by cutting his throat. A quantity of red liquid,

however, which had been prepared from a native dye, was spilled in the

ceremony; and, to the amazement of those who looked on, blood seemed to be

flowing all around. The man, as might be supposed, was unhurt; but the

king rewarded him and his descendants with the perpetual privilege of

exemption from capital punishment for any violation of the laws. The

descendants of the man to this day form a particular class, called _Tay

maty manota_, which may be translated, ‘Not dead, though transgressing.’

Instances frequently occur, of individuals of this class appropriating

bullocks, rice, and other things belonging to the sovereign, as if they

were their own, and escaping merely with a reprimand, while a common

person would have to suffer death, or be reduced to slavery.”(553)

(M193) Sometimes, however, the practices intended to prolong the king’s

life seem to rest on a theory of nutrition rather than of substitution; in

other words, the life of the victims, instead of being offered vicariously

to a god, is apparently supposed to pass directly into the body of the

sacrificer, thus refreshing his failing strength and prolonging his

existence. So regarded, the custom is magical rather than religious in

character, since the desired effect is thought to follow directly without

the intervention of a deity. At all events, it can be shown that

sacrifices of this sort have been offered to prolong the life of kings in

other parts of the world. Thus in regard to some of the negroes who

inhabit the delta of the Niger we read that: “A custom which formerly was

practised by the Ibani, and is still prevalent among all the interior

tribes, consists in prolonging the life of a king or ancestral

representative by the daily, or possibly weekly, sacrifice of a chicken

and egg. Every morning, as soon as the patriarch has risen from his bed,

the sacrificial articles are procured either by his mother, head wife, or

eldest daughter, and given to the priest, who receives them on the open

space in front of the house. When this has been reported to the patriarch,

he comes outside and, sitting down, joins in the ceremony. Taking the

chicken in his hand, the priest first of all touches the patriarch’s face

with it, and afterwards passes it over the whole of his body. He then cuts

its throat and allows the blood to drop on the ground. Mixing the blood

and the earth into a paste, he rubs it on the old man’s forehead and

breast, and this is not to be washed off under any circumstances until the

evening. The chicken and the egg, also a piece of white cloth, are now

tied on to a stick, which, if a stream is in the near vicinity, is planted

in the ground at the water-side. During the carriage of these articles to

the place in question, all the wives and many members of the household

accompany the priest, invoking the deity as they go to prolong their

father’s life. This is done in the firm conviction that through the

sacrifice of each chicken his life will be accordingly prolonged.”(554)

(M194) The ceremony thus described is, like so many other rites, a

combination of magic and religion; for whereas the prayers to the god are

religious, the passing of the victim over the king’s body and the smearing

of him with its blood are magical, being plainly intended to convey to him

directly, without the mediation of any deity, the life of the fowl. In the

following instances the practices for prolonging the king’s life seem to

be purely magical. Among the Zulus, at one of the annual feasts of

first-fruits, a bull is killed by a particular regiment. In slaughtering

the beast they may not use spears or sticks, but must break its neck or

choke it with their bare hands. “It is then burned, and the strength of

the bull is supposed to enter into the king, thereby prolonging his

life.”(555) Again, in an early Portuguese historian we read of a Caffre

king of East Africa that “it is related of this Monomotapa that he has a

house where he commands bodies of men who have died at the hands of the

law to be hung up, and where thus hanging all the humidity of their bodies

falls into vases placed underneath, and when all has dropped from them and

they shrink and dry up he commands them to be taken down and buried, and

with the fat and moisture in the vases they say he makes ointments with

which he anoints himself in order to enjoy long life—which is his

belief—and also to be proof against receiving harm from sorcerers.”(556)

(M195) The Baganda of Central Africa used to kill men on various occasions

for the purpose of prolonging the king’s life; in all cases it would seem

to be thought that the life of the murdered man was in some mysterious

fashion transferred to the king, so that the monarch received thereby a

fresh accession of vital energy. For example, whenever a particular royal

drum had a new skin put on it, not only was a cow killed to furnish the

skin and its blood run into the drum, but a man was beheaded and the

spouting blood from the severed neck was allowed to gush into the drum,

“so that, when the drum was beaten, it was supposed to add fresh life and

vigour to the king from the life of the slain man.”(557) Again, at the

coronation of a new king, a royal chamberlain was chosen to take charge of

the king’s inner court and to guard his wives. From the royal presence the

chamberlain was conducted, along with eight captives, to one of the human

shambles; there he was blindfolded while seven of the men were clubbed to

death, only the dull thud and crashing sound telling him of what was

taking place. But when the seven had been thus despatched, the bandages

were removed from the chamberlain’s eyes and he witnessed the death of the

eighth. As each man was killed, his belly was ripped open and his bowels

pulled out and hung round the chamberlain’s neck. These deaths were said

to add to the King’s vigour and to make the chamberlain strong and

faithful.(558) Nor were these the only human sacrifices offered at a

king’s coronation for the purpose of strengthening the new monarch. When

the king had reigned two or three months, he was expected to hunt first a

leopard and then a bushbuck. On the night after the hunt of the bushbuck,

one of the ministers of State caught a man and brought him before the king

in the dark; the king speared him slightly, then the man was strangled and

the body thrown into a papyrus swamp, that it might never be found again.

Another ceremony performed about this time to confirm the king in his

kingdom was to catch a man, bind him, and bring him before the king, who

wounded him slightly with a spear. Then the man was put to death. These

men were killed to invigorate the king.(559)

(M196) When a king of Uganda had reigned some time, apparently several

years, a ceremony was performed for the sake of prolonging his life. For

this purpose the king paid a visit—a fatal visit—to a chief of the

Lung-fish clan, who bore the title of Nankere and resided in the district

of Busiro, where the tombs and temples of the kings were situated. When

the time for the ceremony had been appointed, the chief chose one of his

own sons, who was to die that the king might live. If the chief had no

son, a near relation was compelled to serve as a substitute. The hapless

youth was fed and clothed and treated in all respects like a prince, and

taken to live in a particular house near the place where the king was to

lodge for the ceremony. When the destined victim had been feasted and

guarded for a month, the king set out on his progress from the capital. On

the way he stopped at the temple of the great god Mukasa; there he changed

his garments, leaving behind him in the temple those which he had been

wearing. Also he left behind him all his anklets, and did not put on any

fresh ones, for he was shortly to receive new anklets of a remarkable

kind. When the king arrived at his destination, the chief met him, and the

two exchanged a gourd of beer. At this interview the king’s mother was

present to see her son for the last time; for from that moment the two

were never allowed to look upon each other again. The chief addressed the

king’s mother informing her of this final separation; then turning to the

king he said, “You are now of age; go and live longer than your

forefathers.” Then the chief’s son was introduced. The chief took him by

the hand and presented him to the king, who passed him on to the

body-guard; they led him outside and killed him by beating him with their

clenched fists. The muscles from the back of the body of the murdered

youth were removed and made into two anklets for the king, and a strip of

skin cut from the corpse was made into a whip, which was kept in the royal

enclosure for special feasts. The dead body was thrown on waste land and

guarded against wild beasts, but not buried.(560)

(M197) When that ceremony was over, the king departed to go to another

chief in Busiro; but on the way thither he stopped at a place called Baka

and sat down under a great tree to play a game of spinning fruit-stones.

It is a children’s game, but it was no child’s play to the man who ran to

fetch the fruit-stones for the king to play with; for he was caught and

speared to death on the spot for the purpose of prolonging the king’s

life. After the game had been played the king with his train passed on and

lodged with a certain princess till the anklets made from the muscles of

the chief’s murdered son were ready for him to wear; it was the princess

who had to superintend the making of these royal ornaments.(561)

(M198) When all these ceremonies were over, the king made a great feast.

At this feast a priest went about carrying under his mantle the whip that

had been made from the skin of the murdered young man. As he passed

through the crowd of merrymakers, he would flick a man here and there with

the whip, and it was believed that the man on whom the lash lighted would

be childless and might die, unless he made an offering of either nine or

ninety cowrie shells to the priest who had struck him. Naturally he

hastened to procure the shells and take them to the striker, who, on

receiving them, struck the man on the shoulder with his hand, thus

restoring to him the generative powers of which the blow of the whip had

deprived him. At the end of the feast the drummers removed all the drums

but one, which they left as if they had forgotten it. Somebody in the

crowd would notice the apparent oversight and run after the drummers with

the drum, saying, “You have left one behind.” The thanks he received was

that he was caught and killed and the bones of his upper arm made into

drumsticks for that particular drum. The drum was never afterwards brought

out during the whole of the king’s reign, but was kept covered up till the

time came to bring it out on the corresponding feast of his successor. Yet

from time to time the priest, who had flicked the revellers with the whip

of human skin, would dress himself up in a mantle of cow-hide from neck to

foot, and concealing the drumstick of human bones under his robe would go

into the king’s presence, and suddenly whipping out the bones from his

bosom would brandish them in the king’s face. Then he would as suddenly

hide them again, but only to repeat the manoeuvre. After that he retired

and restored the bones to their usual place. They were decorated with

cowrie shells and little bells, which jingled as he shook them at the

king.(562)

(M199) The precise meaning of these latter ceremonies is obscure; but we

may suppose that just as the human blood poured into a drum was thought to

pass into the king’s veins in the booming notes of the drum, so the

clicking of the human bones and the jingling of their bells were supposed

to infuse into the royal person the vigour of the murdered man. The

purpose of flicking commoners with the whip made of human skin is even

more obscure; but we may conjecture that the life or virility of every man

struck with the whip was supposed to be transmitted in some way to the

king, who thus recruited his vital, and especially his reproductive,

energies at this solemn feast. If I am right in my interpretation, all

these Baganda modes of strengthening the king and prolonging his life

belonged to the nutritive rather than to the vicarious type of sacrifice,

from which it will follow that they were magical rather than religious in

character.

(M200) The same thing may perhaps be said of the wholesale massacres which

used to be perpetrated when a king of Uganda was ill. At these times the

priests informed the royal patient that persons marked by a certain

physical peculiarity, such as a cast of the eye, a particular gait, or a

distinctive colouring, must be put to death. Accordingly the king sent out

his catchpoles, who waylaid such persons in the roads and dragged them to

the royal enclosure, where they were kept until the tale of victims

prescribed by the priest was complete. Before they were led away to one of

the eight places of execution, which were regularly appointed for this

purpose in different parts of the kingdom, the victims had to drink

medicated beer with the king out of a special pot, in order that he might

have power over their ghosts, lest they should afterwards come back to

torment him. They were killed, sometimes by being speared to death,

sometimes by being hacked to pieces, sometimes by being burned alive.

Contrary to the usual custom of the Baganda, the bodies, or what remained

of the bodies, of these unfortunates were always left unburied on the

place of execution.(563) In what way precisely the sick king was supposed

to benefit by these massacres of his subjects does not appear, but we may

surmise that somehow the victims were believed to give their lives for him

or to him.

(M201) Thus it is possible that in Israel also the sacrifices of children

to Moloch were in like manner intended to prolong the life of the human

king (_melech_) either by serving as substitutes for him or by recruiting

his failing energies with their vigorous young life. But it is equally

possible, and perhaps more probable, that the sacrifice of the first-born

children was only a particular application of the ancient law which

devoted to the deity the first-born of every womb, whether of cattle or of

human beings.(564)

II. The Widowed Flamen.

§ 1. The Pollution of Death.

(M202) A different explanation of the rule which obliged the Flamen Dialis

to resign the priesthood on the death of his wife(565) has been suggested

by my friend Dr. L. R. Farnell. He supposes that such a bereavement would

render the Flamen ceremonially impure, and therefore unfit to hold

office.(566) It is true that the ceremonial pollution caused by death

commonly disqualifies a man for the discharge of sacred functions, but as

a rule the disqualification is only temporary and can be removed by

seclusion and the observance of purificatory rites, the length of the

seclusion and the nature of the purification varying with the degree of

relationship in which the living stand to the dead. Thus, for example, if

one of the sacred eunuchs at Hierapolis-Bambyce saw the dead body of a

stranger, he was unclean for that day and might not enter the sanctuary of

the goddess; but next day after purifying himself he was free to enter.

But if the corpse happened to be that of a relation he was unclean for

thirty days and had to shave his head before he might set foot within the

holy precinct.(567) Again, in the Greek island of Ceos persons who had

offered the annual sacrifices to their departed friends were unclean for

two days afterwards and might not enter a sanctuary; they had to purify

themselves with water.(568) Similarly no one might go into the shrine of

Men Tyrannus for ten days after being in contact with the dead.(569) Once

more, at Stratonicea in Caria a chorus of thirty noble boys, clad in white

and holding branches in their hands, used to sing a hymn daily in honour

of Zeus and Hecate; but if one of them were sick or had suffered a

domestic bereavement, he was for the time being excused, not permanently

excluded, from the performance of his sacred duties.(570) On the analogy

of these and similar cases we should expect to find the widowed Flamen

temporarily debarred from the exercise of his office, not permanently

relieved of it.

(M203) However, in support of Dr. Farnell’s view I would cite an Indian

parallel which was pointed out to me by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers. Among the

Todas of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India the priestly dairyman

(_palol_) is a sacred personage, and his life, like that of the Flamen

Dialis, is hedged in by many taboos. Now when a death occurs in his clan,

the dairyman may not attend any of the funeral ceremonies unless he gives

up office, but he may be re-elected after the second funeral ceremonies

have been completed. In the interval his place must be taken by a man of

another clan. Some eighteen or nineteen years ago a man named Karkievan

resigned the office of dairyman when his wife died, but two years later he

was re-elected and has held office ever since. There have meantime been

many deaths in his clan, but he has not attended a funeral, and has not

therefore had to resign his post again. Apparently in old times a more

stringent rule prevailed, and the dairyman was obliged to vacate office

whenever a death occurred in his clan. For, according to tradition, the

clan of Keadrol was divided into its two existing divisions for the

express purpose of ensuring that there might still be men to undertake the

office of dairyman when a death occurred in the clan, the men of the one

division taking office whenever there was a death in the other.(571)

At first sight this case may seem exactly parallel to the case of the

Flamen Dialis and the Flaminica on Dr. Farnell’s theory; for here there

can be no doubt whatever that it is the pollution of death which

disqualifies the sacred dairyman from holding office, since, if he only

avoids that pollution by not attending the funeral, he is allowed at the

present day to retain his post. On this analogy we might suppose that it

was not so much the death of his wife as the attendance at her funeral

which compelled the Flamen Dialis to resign, especially as we know that he

was expressly forbidden to touch a dead body or to enter the place where

corpses were burned.(572)

(M204) But a closer inspection of the facts proves that the analogy breaks

down at some important points. For though the Flamen Dialis was forbidden

to touch a dead body or to enter a place where corpses were burned, he was

permitted to attend a funeral;(573) so that there could hardly be any

objection to his attending the funeral of his wife. This permission

clearly tells against the view that it was the mere pollution of death

which obliged him to resign office when his wife died. Further, and this

is a point of fundamental difference between the two cases, whereas the

Flamen Dialis was bound to be married, and married too by a rite of

special solemnity,(574) there is no such obligation on the sacred dairyman

of the Todas; indeed, if he is married, he is bound to live apart from his

wife during his term of office.(575) Surely the obligation laid on the

Flamen Dialis to be married of itself implies that with the death of his

wife he necessarily ceased to hold office: there is no need to search for

another reason in the pollution of death which, as I have just shown, does

not seem to square with the permission granted to the Flamen to attend a

funeral. That this is indeed the true explanation of the rule in question

is strongly suggested by the further and apparently parallel rule which

forbade the Flamen to divorce his wife; nothing but death might part

them.(576) Now the rule which enjoined that a Flamen must be married, and

the rule which forbade him to divorce his wife, have obviously nothing to

do with the pollution of death, yet they can hardly be separated from the

other rule that with the death of his wife he vacated office. All three

rules are explained in the most natural way on the hypothesis which I have

adopted, namely, that this married priest and priestess had to perform in

common certain rites which the husband could not perform without his wife.

The same obvious solution of the problem was suggested long ago by

Plutarch, who, after asking why the Flamen Dialis had to lay down office

on the death of his wife, says, amongst other things, that “perhaps it is

because she performs sacred rites along with him (for many of the rites

may not be performed without the presence of a married woman), and to

marry another wife immediately on the death of the first would hardly be

possible or decent.”(577) This simple explanation of the rule seems quite

sufficient, and it would clearly hold good whether I am right or wrong in

further supposing that the human husband and wife in this case represented

a divine husband and wife, a god and goddess, to wit Jupiter and Juno, or

rather Dianus (Janus) and Diana;(578) and that supposition in its turn

might still hold good even if I were wrong in further conjecturing that of

this divine pair the goddess (Juno or rather Diana) was originally the

more important partner.

(M205) However it is to be explained, the Roman rule which forbade the

Flamen Dialis to be a widower has its parallel among the Kotas, a tribe

who, like the Todas, inhabit the Neilgherry Hills of Southern India. For

the higher Kota priests are not allowed to be widowers; if a priest’s wife

dies while he is in office, his appointment lapses. At the same time

priests “should avoid pollution, and may not attend a Toda or Badaga

funeral, or approach the seclusion hut set apart for Kota women.”(579)

Jewish priests were specially permitted to contract the pollution of death

for near relations, among whom father, mother, son, daughter, and

unmarried sister are particularly enumerated; but they were forbidden to

contract the pollution for strangers. However, among the relations for

whom a priest might thus defile himself a wife is not mentioned.(580)

§ 2. The Marriage of the Roman Gods.

(M206) The theory that the Flamen Dialis and his wife personated a divine

couple, whether Jupiter and Juno or Dianus (Janus) and Diana, supposes a

married relation between the god and goddess, and so far it would

certainly be untenable if Dr. Farnell were right in assuming, on the

authority of Mr. W. Warde Fowler, that the Roman gods were celibate.(581)

On that subject, however, Varro, the most learned of Roman antiquaries,

was of a contrary opinion. He not only spoke particularly of Juno as the

wife of Jupiter,(582) but he also affirmed generally, in the most

unambiguous language, that the old Roman gods were married, and in saying

so he referred not to the religion of his own day, which had been modified

by Greek influence, but to the religion of the ancient Romans, his

ancestors.(583) Seneca ridiculed the marriage of the Roman gods, citing as

examples the marriages of Mars and Bellona, of Vulcan and Venus, of

Neptune and Salacia, and adding sarcastically that some of the goddesses

were spinsters or widows, such as Populonia, Fulgora, and Rumina, whose

faded charms or unamiable character had failed to attract a suitor.(584)

(M207) Again, the learned Servius, whose commentary on Virgil is a gold

mine of Roman religious lore, informs us that the pontiffs celebrated the

marriage of the infernal deity Orcus with very great solemnity;(585) and

for this statement he would seem to have had the authority of the

pontifical books themselves, for he refers to them in the same connexion

only a few lines before. As it is in the highest degree unlikely that the

pontiffs would solemnize any foreign rites, we may safely assume that the

marriage of Orcus was not borrowed from Greek mythology, but was a genuine

old Roman ceremony, and this is all the more probable because Servius, our

authority for the custom, has recorded some curious and obviously ancient

taboos which were observed at the marriage and in the ritual of Ceres, the

goddess who seems to have been joined in wedlock to Orcus. One of these

taboos forbade the use of wine, the other forbade persons to name their

father or daughter.(586)

(M208) Further, the learned Roman antiquary Aulus Gellius quotes from “the

books of the priests of the Roman people” (the highest possible authority

on the subject) and from “many ancient speeches” a list of old Roman

deities, in which there seem to be at least five pairs of males and

females.(587) More than that he proves conclusively by quotations from

Plautus, the annalist Cn. Gellius, and Licinius Imbrex that these old

writers certainly regarded one at least of the pairs (Mars and Nerio) as

husband and wife;(588) and we have good ancient evidence for viewing in

the same light three others of the pairs. Thus the old annalist and

antiquarian L. Cincius Alimentus, who fought against Hannibal and was

captured by him, affirmed in his work on the Roman calendar that Maia was

the wife of Vulcan;(589) and as there was a Flamen of Vulcan, who

sacrificed to Maia on May Day,(590) it is reasonable to suppose that he

was assisted in the ceremony by a Flaminica, his wife, just as on my

hypothesis the Flamen Dialis was assisted by his wife the Flaminica.

Another old Roman historian, L. Calpurnius Piso, who wrote in the second

century B.C., said that the name of Vulcan’s wife was not Maia but

Majestas.(591) In saying so he may have intended to correct what he

believed to be a mistake of his predecessor L. Cincius. Again, that

Salacia was the wife of Neptune is perhaps implied by Varro,(592) and is

positively affirmed by Seneca, Augustine, and Servius.(593) Again, Ennius

appears to have regarded Hora as the wife of Quirinus, for in the first

book of his Annals he declared his devotion to that divine pair.(594) In

fact, of the five pairs of male and female deities cited by Aulus Gellius

from the priestly books and ancient speeches the only one as to which we

have not independent evidence that it consisted of a husband and wife is

Saturn and Lua; and in regard to Lua we know that she was spoken of as a

mother,(595) which renders it not improbable that she was also a wife.

However, according to some very respectable authorities the wife of Saturn

was not Lua, but Ops,(596) so that we have two independent lines of proof

that Saturn was supposed to be married.

Lastly, the epithets “father” and “mother” which the Romans bestowed on

many of their deities(597) are most naturally understood to imply

paternity and maternity; and if the implication is admitted, the inference

appears to be inevitable that these divine beings were supposed to

exercise sexual functions, whether in lawful marriage or in unlawful

concubinage. As to Jupiter in particular his paternity is positively

attested by Latin inscriptions, one of them very old, which describe

Fortuna Primigenia, the great goddess of Praeneste, as his daughter.(598)

Again, the rustic deity Faunus, one of the oldest and most popular gods of

Italy,(599) was represented by tradition in the character of a husband and

a father; one of the epithets applied to him expressed in a coarse way his

generative powers.(600) Fauna or the Good Goddess (_Bona Dea_), another of

the oldest native Italian deities, was variously called his wife or his

daughter, and he is said to have assumed the form of a snake in order to

cohabit with her.(601) Again, the most famous of all Roman myths

represented the founder of Rome himself, Romulus and his twin brother

Remus, as begotten by the god Mars on a Vestal Virgin;(602) and every

Roman who accepted the tradition thereby acknowledged the fatherhood of

the god in the physical, not in a figurative, sense of the word. If the

story of the birth of Romulus and Remus should be dismissed as a late

product of the mythical fancy working under Greek influence, the same

objection can hardly be urged against the story of the birth of another

Roman king, Servius Tullius, who is said to have been a son of the

fire-god and a slave woman; his mother conceived him beside the royal

hearth, where she was impregnated by a flame that shot out from the fire

in the shape of the male organ of generation.(603) It would scarcely be

possible to express the physical fatherhood of the fire-god in more

unambiguous terms. Now a precisely similar story was told of the birth of

Romulus himself;(604) and we may suspect that this was an older form of

the story than the legend which fathered the twins on Mars. Similarly,

Caeculus, the founder of Praeneste, passed for a son of the fire-god

Vulcan. It was said that his mother was impregnated by a spark which

leaped from the fire and struck her as she sat by the hearth. In later

life, when Caeculus boasted of his divine parentage to a crowd, and they

refused to believe him, he prayed to his father to give the unbelievers a

sign, and straightway a lambent flame surrounded the whole multitude. The

proof was conclusive, and henceforth Caeculus passed for a true son of the

fire-god.(605) Such tales of kings or heroes begotten by the fire-god on

mortal women appear to be genuine old Italian myths, which may well go

back far beyond the foundation of Rome to the common fountain of Aryan

mythology; for the marriage customs observed by various branches of the

Aryan family point clearly to a belief in the power of fire to impregnate

women.(606)

(M209) On the whole, if we follow the authority of the ancients

themselves, we seem bound to conclude that the Roman gods, like those of

many other early peoples, were believed to be married and to beget

children. It is true that, compared with the full-blooded gods of Greece,

the deities of Rome appear to us shadowy creatures, pale abstractions

garbed in little that can vie with the gorgeous pall of myth and story

which Grecian fancy threw around its divine creations. Yet the few

specimens of Roman mythology which have survived the wreck of

antiquity(607) justify us in believing that they are but fragments of far

more copious traditions which have perished. At all events the comparative

aridity and barrenness of the Roman religious imagination is no reason for

setting aside the positive testimony of learned Roman writers as to a

point of fundamental importance in their own religion about which they

could hardly be mistaken. It should never be forgotten that on this

subject the ancients had access to many sources of information which are

no longer open to us, and for a modern scholar to reject their evidence in

favour of a personal impression derived from a necessarily imperfect

knowledge of the facts seems scarcely consistent with sound principles of

history and criticism.(608)

§ 3. Children of Living Parents in Ritual.

(M210) But Dr. Farnell adduces another argument in support of his view

that it was the pollution of death which obliged the widowed Flamen Dialis

to resign the priesthood. He points to what he considers the analogy of

the rule of Greek ritual which required that certain sacred offices should

be discharged only by a boy whose parents were both alive.(609) This rule

he would explain in like manner by supposing that the death of one or both

of his parents would render a boy ceremonially impure and therefore unfit

to perform religious functions. Dr. Farnell might have apparently

strengthened his case by observing that the Flamen Dialis and the

Flaminica Dialis were themselves assisted in their office, the one by a

boy, the other by a girl, both of whose parents must be alive.(610) At

first sight this fits in perfectly with his theory: the Flamen, the

Flaminica, and their youthful ministers were all rendered incapable of

performing their sacred duties by the taint or corruption of death.

(M211) But a closer scrutiny of the argument reveals a flaw. It proves too

much. For observe that in these Greek and Roman offices held by boys and

girls the disqualification caused by the death of a parent is necessarily

lifelong, since the bereavement is irreparable. Accordingly, if Dr.

Farnell’s theory is right, the ceremonial pollution which is the cause of

the disqualification must also be lifelong; in other words, every orphan

is ceremoniously unclean for life and thereby excluded for ever from the

discharge of sacred duties. So sweeping a rule would at a stroke exclude a

large, if not the larger, part of the population of any country from the

offices of religion, and lay them permanently under all those burdensome

restrictions which the pollution of death entails among many nations; for

obviously a large, if not the larger, part of the population of any

country at any time has lost one or both of its parents by death. No

people, so far as I know, has ever carried the theory of the ceremonial

pollution of death to this extremity in practice. And even if it were

supposed that the taint wore off or evaporated with time from common folk

so as to let them go about their common duties in everyday life, would it

not still cleave to priests? If it incapacitated the Flamen’s minister,

would it not incapacitate the Flamen himself? In other words, would not

the Flamen Dialis be obliged to vacate office on the death of his father

or mother? There is no hint in ancient writers that he had to do so. And

while it is generally unsafe to argue from the silence of our authorities,

I think that we may do so in this case without being rash; for Plutarch

not only mentions but discusses the rule which obliged the Flamen Dialis

to resign office on the death of his wife,(611) and if he had known of a

parallel rule which compelled him to retire on the death of a parent, he

would surely have mentioned it. But if the ceremonial pollution which

would certainly be caused by the death of a parent did not compel the

Flamen Dialis to vacate office, we may safely conclude that neither did

the similar pollution caused by the death of his wife. Thus the argument

adduced by Dr. Farnell in favour of his view proves on analysis to tell

strongly against it.

(M212) But if the rule which excluded orphans from certain sacred offices

cannot with any probability be explained on the theory of their ceremonial

pollution, it may be worth while to inquire whether another and better

explanation of the rule cannot be found. For that purpose I shall collect

all the cases of it known to me. The collection is doubtless far from

complete: I only offer it as a starting-point for research.

(M213) At the time of the vintage, which in Greece falls in October,

Athenian boys chosen from every tribe assembled at the sanctuary of

Dionysus, the god of the vine. There, branches of vines laden with ripe

grapes were given to them, and holding them in their hands they raced to

the sanctuary of Athena Sciras. The winner received and drained a cup

containing a mixture of olive-oil, wine, honey, cheese, and barley-groats.

It was necessary that both the parents of each of these boy-runners should

be alive.(612) At the same festival, and perhaps on the same day, an

Athenian boy, whose parents must both be alive, carried in procession a

branch of olive wreathed with white and purple wool and decked with fruits

of many kinds, while a chorus sang that the branch bore figs, fat loaves,

honey, oil, and wine. Thus they went in procession to a temple of Apollo,

at the door of which the boy deposited the holy bough. The ceremony is

said to have been instituted by the Athenians in obedience to an oracle

for the purpose of supplicating the help of the god in a season of

dearth.(613) Similar boughs similarly laden with fruits and loaves were

hung up on the doors of every Athenian house and allowed to remain there a

year, at the end of which they were replaced by fresh ones. While the

branch was being fastened to the door, a boy whose parents were both alive

recited the same verses about the branch bearing figs, fat loaves, honey,

oil, and wine. This custom also is said to have been instituted for the

sake of putting an end to a dearth.(614) The people of Magnesia on the

Maeander vowed a bull every year to Zeus, the Saviour of the City, in the

month of Cronion, at the beginning of sowing, and after maintaining the

animal at the public expense throughout the winter they sacrificed it,

apparently at harvest-time, in the following summer. Nine boys and nine

girls, whose fathers and mothers were all living, took part in the

religious services of the consecration and the sacrifice of the bull. At

the consecration public prayers were offered for the safety of the city

and the land, for the safety of the citizens and their wives and children,

for the safety of all that dwelt in the city and the land, for peace and

wealth and abundance of corn and all other fruits, and for the cattle. A

herald led the prayers, and the priest and priestess, the boys and girls,

the high officers and magistrates, all joined in these solemn petitions

for the welfare of their country.(615) Among the Karo-Bataks of Central

Sumatra the threshing of the rice is the occasion of various ceremonies,

and in these a prominent part is played by a girl, whose father and mother

must be both alive. Her special duty is to take care of the sheaf of rice

in which the soul of the rice is believed to reside. This sheaf usually

consists of the first rice cut and bound in the field; it is treated

exactly like a person.(616)

(M214) The rites thus far described, in which boys and girls of living

parents took part, were clearly ceremonies intended specially to ensure

the fertility of the soil. This is indicated not merely by the nature of

the rites and of the prayers or verses which accompanied them, but also by

the seasons at which they were observed; for these were the vintage, the

harvest-home, and the beginning of sowing. We may therefore compare a

custom practised by the Roman Brethren of the Ploughed Fields (_Fratres

Arvales_), a college of priests whose business it was to perform the rites

deemed necessary for the growth of the corn. As a badge of office they

wore wreaths of corn-ears, and paid their devotions to an antique goddess

of fertility, the Dea Dia. Her home was in a grove of ancient evergreen

oaks and laurels out in the Campagna, five miles from Rome. Hither every

year in the month of May, when the fields were ripe or ripening to the

sickle, reaped ears of the new corn were brought and hallowed by the

Brethren with quaint rites, that a blessing might rest on the coming

harvest. The first or preliminary consecration of the ears, however, took

place, not in the grove, but in the house of the Master of the Brethren at

Rome. Here the Brethren were waited upon by four free-born boys, the

children of living fathers and mothers. While the Brethren reclined on

couches, the boys were allowed to sit on chairs and partake of the feast,

and when it was over they carried the rest of the now hallowed corn and

laid it on the altar.(617)

(M215) In these and all other rites intended to ensure the fertility of

the ground, of cattle, or of human beings, the employment of children of

living parents seems to be intelligible on the principle of sympathetic

magic; for such children might be deemed fuller of life than orphans,

either because they “flourished on both sides,” as the Greeks put it, or

because the very survival of their parents might be taken as a proof that

the stock of which the children came was vigorous and therefore able to

impart of its superabundant energy to others.

(M216) But the rites in which the children of living parents are required

to officiate do not always aim at promoting the growth of the crops. At

Olympia the olive-branches which formed the victors’ crowns had to be cut

from a sacred tree with a golden sickle by a lad whose father and mother

must be both alive.(618) The tree was a wild olive growing within the holy

precinct, at the west end of the temple of Zeus. It bore the name of the

Olive of the Fair Crown, and near it was an altar to the Nymphs of the

Fair Crowns.(619) At Delphi every eighth year a sacred drama or

miracle-play was acted which drew crowds of spectators from all parts of

Greece. It set forth the slaying of the Dragon by Apollo. The principal

part was sustained by a lad, the son of living parents, who seems to have

personated the god himself. In an open space the likeness of a lordly

palace, erected for the occasion, represented the Dragon’s den. It was

attacked and burned by the lad, aided by women who carried blazing

torches. When the Dragon had received his deadly wound, the lad, still

acting the part of the god, fled far away to be purged of the guilt of

blood in the beautiful Vale of Tempe, where the Peneus flows in a deep

wooded gorge between the snowy peaks of Olympus and Ossa, its smooth and

silent tide shadowed by overhanging trees and tall white cliffs. In places

these great crags rise abruptly from the stream and approach each other so

near that only a narrow strip of sky is visible overhead; but where they

recede a little, the meadows at their foot are verdant with evergreen

shrubs, among which Apollo’s own laurel may still be seen. In antiquity

the god himself, stained with the Dragon’s blood, is said to have come, a

haggard footsore wayfarer, to this wild secluded glen and there plucked

branches from one of the laurels that grew in its green thickets beside

the rippling river. Some of them he used to twine a wreath for his brows,

one of them he carried in his hand, doubtless in order that, guarded by

the sacred plant, he might escape the hobgoblins which dogged his steps.

So the boy, his human representative, did the same, and brought back to

Delphi wreaths of laurel from the same tree to be awarded to the victors

in the Pythian games. Hence the whole festival of the Slaying of the

Dragon at Delphi went by the name of the Festival of Crowning.(620) From

this it appears that at Delphi as well as at Olympia the boughs which were

used to crown the victors had to be cut from a sacred tree by a boy whose

parents must be both alive.

(M217) At Thebes a festival called the Laurel-bearing was held once in

every eight years, when branches of laurel were carried in procession to

the temple of Apollo. The principal part in the procession was taken by a

boy who held a laurel bough and bore the title of the Laurel-bearer: he

seems to have personated the god himself. His hair hung down on his

shoulders, and he wore a golden crown, a bright-coloured robe, and shoes

of a special shape: both his parents must be alive.(621) We may suppose

that the golden crown which he wore was fashioned in the shape of laurel

leaves and replaced a wreath of real laurel. Thus the boy with the laurel

wreath on his head and the laurel bough in his hand would resemble the

traditional equipment of Apollo when he purified himself for the slaughter

of the dragon. We may conjecture that at Thebes the Laurel-bearer

originally personated not Apollo but the local hero Cadmus, who slew the

dragon and had like Apollo to purify himself for the slaughter. The

conjecture is confirmed by vase-paintings which represent Cadmus crowned

with laurel preparing to attack the dragon or actually in combat with the

monster, while goddesses bend over him holding out wreaths of laurel as

the meed of victory.(622) On this hypothesis the octennial Delphic

Festival of Crowning and the octennial Theban Festival of Laurel-bearing

were closely akin: in both the prominent part played by the laurel was

purificatory or expiatory.(623) Thus at Olympia, Delphi, and Thebes a boy

whose parents were both alive was entrusted with the duty of cutting or

wearing a sacred wreath at a great festival which recurred at intervals of

several years.(624)

(M218) Why a boy of living parents should be chosen for such an office is

not at first sight clear; the reason might be more obvious if we

understood the ideas in which the custom of wearing wreaths and crowns had

its origin. Probably in many cases wreaths and crowns were amulets before

they were ornaments; in other words, their first intention may have been

not so much to adorn the head as to protect it from harm by surrounding it

with a plant, a metal, or any other thing which was supposed to possess

the magical virtue of banning baleful influences. Thus the Arabs of Moab

will put a circlet of copper on the head of a man who is suffering from

headache, for they believe that this will banish the pain; and if the pain

is in an arm or a leg, they will treat the ailing limb in like manner.

They think that red beads hung before the eyes of children who are

afflicted with ophthalmia will rid them of the malady, and that a red

ribbon tied to the foot will prevent it from stumbling on a stony

path.(625) Again, the Melanesians of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain

often deck their dusky bodies with flowers, leaves, and scented herbs not

only at festivals but on other occasions which to the European might seem

inappropriate for such gay ornaments. But in truth the bright blossoms and

verdant foliage are not intended to decorate the wearer but to endow him

with certain magical virtues, which are supposed to inhere in the flowers

and leaves. Thus one man may be seen strutting about with a wreath of

greenery which passes round his neck and droops over his shoulders, back,

and breast. He is not a mere dandy, but a lover who hopes that the wreath

will work as a charm on a woman’s heart. Again, another may be observed

with a bunch of the red dracaena leaves knotted round his neck and the

long stalk hanging down his back. He is a soldier, and these leaves are

supposed to make him invulnerable. But if the lover should fail to win the

affections of his swarthy mistress, if the warrior should be wounded in

battle, it never occurs to either of them to question the magical virtue

of the charm; they ascribe the failure either to the more potent charm of

another magician or to some oversight on their own part.(626) On the

theory that wreaths and garlands serve as amulets to protect the wearer

against the powers of evil we can understand not only why in antiquity

sacred persons such as priests and kings wore crowns, but also why dead

bodies, sacrificial victims, and in certain circumstances even inanimate

objects such as the implements of sacrifice, the doors of houses, and so

forth, were decorated or rather guarded by wreaths.(627) Further, on this

hypothesis we may perhaps perceive why children of living parents were

specially chosen to cut or wear sacred wreaths. Since such children were

apparently supposed to be endowed with a more than common share of vital

energy, they might be deemed peculiarly fitted to make or wear amulets

which were designed to protect the wearer from injury and death: the

current of life which circulated in their own veins overflowed, as it

were, and reinforced the magic virtue of the wreath. For the same reason

such children would naturally be chosen to personate gods, as they

seemingly were at Delphi and Thebes.

(M219) At Ephesus, if we may trust the evidence of the Greek

romance-writer, Heliodorus, a boy and girl of living parents used to hold

for a year the priesthood of Apollo and Artemis respectively. When their

period of office was nearly expired, they led a sacred embassy to Delos,

the birthplace of the divine brother and sister, where they superintended

the musical and athletic contests and laid down the priesthood.(628) At

Rome no girl might be chosen a Vestal Virgin unless both her father and

mother were living;(629) yet there is no evidence or probability that a

Vestal vacated office on the death of a parent; indeed she generally held

office for life.(630) This alone may suffice to prove that the custom of

entrusting certain sacred duties to children of living parents was not

based on any notion that orphans as such were ceremonially unclean. Again,

the dancing priests of Mars, the Salii, must be sons of living

parents;(631) but as in the case of the Vestals this condition probably

only applied at the date of their election, for they seem like the Vestals

to have held office for life. At all events we read of a lively old

gentleman who still skipped and capered about as a dancing priest with an

agility which threw the efforts of his younger colleagues into the

shade.(632) Again, at the public games in Rome boys of living parents had

to escort the images of the gods in their sacred cars, and it was a dire

omen if one of them relaxed his hold on the holy cart or let a strap slip

from his fingers.(633) And when the stout Roman heart was shaken by the

appalling news that somebody had been struck by lightning, that the sky

had somewhere been suddenly overcast, or that a she-mule had been safely

delivered of a colt, boys and girls whose fathers and mothers were still

alive used to be sought out and employed to help in expiating the terrific

prodigy.(634) Again, when the Capitol had been sacked and burned by the

disorderly troops of Vitellius, solemn preparations were made to rebuild

it. The whole area was enclosed by a cordon of fillets and wreaths. Then

soldiers chosen for their auspicious names entered within the barriers

holding branches of lucky trees in their hands; and afterwards the Vestal

Virgins, aided by boys and girls of living parents, washed the foundations

with water drawn from springs and rivers.(635) In this ceremony the choice

of such children seems to be based on the same idea as the choice of such

water; for as running water is deemed to be especially alive,(636) so the

vital current might be thought to flow without interruption in the

children of living parents but to stagnate in orphans. Hence the children

of living parents rather than orphans would naturally be chosen to pour

the living water over the foundations, and so to lend something of their

own vitality or endurance to a building that was designed to last for

ever.

(M220) On the same principle we can easily understand why the children of

living parents should be especially chosen to perform certain offices at

marriage. The motive of such a choice may be a wish to ensure by

sympathetic magic the life of the newly wedded pair and of their

offspring. Thus at Roman marriages the bride was escorted to her new home

by three boys whose parents were all living. Two of the boys held her, and

the third carried a torch of buckthorn or hawthorn in front of her,(637)

probably for the purpose of averting the powers of evil; for buckthorn or

hawthorn was credited with this magical virtue.(638) At marriages in

ancient Athens a boy whose parents were both living used to wear a wreath

of thorns and acorns and to carry about a winnowing-fan full of loaves,

crying, “I have escaped the bad, I have found the better.”(639) In modern

Greece on the Sunday before a marriage the bridegroom sends to the bride

the wedding cake by the hands of a boy, both of whose parents must be

living. The messenger takes great care not to stumble or to injure the

cake, for to do either would be a very bad omen. He may not enter the

bride’s house till she has taken the cake from him. For this purpose he

lays it down on the threshold of the door, and then both of them, the boy

and the bride, rush at it and try to seize the greater part of the cake.

And when cattle are being slaughtered for the marriage festivities, the

first beast killed for the bride’s house must be killed by a youth whose

parents are both alive. Further, a son of living parents must solemnly

fetch the water with which the bridegroom’s head is ceremonially washed by

women before marriage. And on the day after the marriage bride and

bridegroom go in procession to the well or spring from which they are

henceforth to fetch their water. The bride greets the spring, drinks of

the water from the hollow of her hand, and throws money and food into it.

Then follows a dance, accompanied by a song, round about the spring.

Lastly, a lad whose parents are both living draws water from the spring in

a special vessel and carries it to the house of the bridal pair without

speaking a word: this “unspoken water,” as it is called, is regarded as

peculiarly holy and wholesome. When the young couple return from the

spring, they fill their mouths with the “unspoken water” and try to spirt

it on each other inside the door of the house.(640) In Albania, when women

are baking cakes for a wedding, the first to put hand to the dough must be

a maiden whose parents are both alive and who has brothers, the more the

better; for only such a girl is deemed lucky. And when the bride has

dismounted from her horse at the bridegroom’s door, a small boy whose

parents are both alive (for only such a boy is thought to bring luck) is

passed thrice backwards and forwards under the horse’s belly, as if he

would girdle the beast.(641) Among the South Slavs of Bulgaria a little

child whose father and mother are both alive helps to bake the two bridal

cakes, pouring water and salt on the meal and stirring the mixture with a

spurtle of a special shape; then a girl lifts the child in her arms, and

the little one touches the roof-beam thrice with the spurtle, saying,

“Boys and girls.” And when the bride’s hair is to be dressed for the

wedding day, the work of combing and plaiting it must be begun by a child

of living parents.(642) Among the Eesa and Gadabursi, two Somali tribes,

on the morning after a marriage “the bride’s female relations bring

presents of milk, and are accompanied by a young male child whose parents

are living. The child drinks some of the milk before any one else tastes

it; and after him the bridegroom, if his parents are living; but if one or

both of his parents are dead, and those of the bride living, she drinks

after the child. By doing this they believe that if the newly-married

woman bears a child the father will be alive at the time.”(643) A slightly

different application of the same principle appears in the old Hindoo rule

that when a bride reached the house of her husband, she should be made to

descend from the chariot by women of good character whose husbands and

sons were living, and that afterwards these women should seat the bride on

a bull’s hide, while her husband recited the verse, “Here ye cows, bring

forth calves.”(644) Here the ceremony of seating the young wife on a

bull’s hide seems plainly intended to make her fruitful through the

generative virtue of the bull; while the attendance of women, whose

husbands and sons are living, is no doubt a device for ensuring, by

sympathetic magic, the life both of the bride’s husband and of her future

offspring.

(M221) In the Somali custom just described the part played by the child of

living parents is unambiguous and helps to throw light on the obscurer

cases which precede. Such a child is clearly supposed to impart the virtue

of longevity to the milk of which it partakes, and so to transmit it to

the newly married pair who afterwards drink of the milk. Similarly, we may

suppose that in all marriage rites at least, if not in religious rites

generally, the employment of children of living parents is intended to

diffuse by sympathy the blessings of life and longevity among all who

participate in the ceremonies. This intention seems to underlie the use

which the Malagasy make of the children of living parents in ritual. Thus,

when a child is a week old, it is dressed up in the finest clothes that

can be got, and is then carried out of the house by some person whose

parents are both still living; afterwards it is brought back to the

mother. In the act of being carried out and in, the infant must be twice

carefully lifted over the fire, which is placed near the door. If the

child is a boy, the axe, knife, and spear of the family, together with any

building tools that may be in the house, are taken out of it at the same

time. “The implements are perhaps used chiefly as emblems of the

occupations in which it is expected the infant will engage when it arrives

at maturer years; and the whole may be regarded as expressing the hopes

cherished of his activity, wealth, and enjoyments.”(645) On such an

occasion the service of a person whose parents are both alive seems

naturally calculated to promote the longevity of the infant. For a like

reason, probably, the holy water used at the Malagasy ceremony of

circumcision is drawn from a pool by a person whose parents are both still

living.(646) The same idea may explain a funeral custom observed by the

Sihanaka of Madagascar. After a burial the family of the deceased, with

their near relatives and dependents, meet in the house from which the

corpse was lately removed “to drink rum and to undergo a purifying and

preserving baptism called _fàfy rànom-bóahàngy_. Leaves of the lemon or

lime tree, and the stalks of two kinds of grass, are gathered and placed

in a vessel with water. A person, both of whose parents are living, is

chosen to perform the rite, and this ‘holy water’ is then sprinkled upon

the walls of the house and upon all assembled within them, and finally

around the house outside.”(647) Here a person whose parents are both

living appears to be credited with a more than common share of life and

longevity; from which it naturally follows that he is better fitted than

any one else to perform a ceremony intended to avert the danger of death

from the household.

(M222) The notion that a child of living parents is endowed with a higher

degree of vitality than an orphan probably explains all the cases of the

employment of such a child in ritual, whether the particular rite is

designed to ensure the fertility of the ground or the fruitfulness of

women, or to avert the danger of death and other calamities. Yet it might

be a mistake to suppose that this notion is always clearly apprehended by

the persons who practise the customs. In their minds the definite

conception of superabundant and overflowing vitality may easily dissolve

into a vague idea that the child of living parents is luckier than other

folk. No more than this seems to be at the bottom of the Masai rule that

when the warriors wish to select a chief, they must choose “a man whose

parents are still living, who owns cattle and has never killed anybody,

whose parents are not blind, and who himself has not a discoloured

eye.”(648) And nothing more is needed to explain the ancient Greek custom

which assigned the duty of drawing lots from an urn to a boy under puberty

whose father and mother were both in life.(649) At Athens it would appear

that registers of these boys were kept, perhaps in order that the lads

might discharge, as occasion arose, those offices of religion which

required the service of such auspicious youths.(650) The atrocious tyrant

Heliogabalus, one of the worst monsters who ever disgraced the human form,

caused search to be made throughout Italy for noble and handsome boys

whose parents were both alive, and he sacrificed them to his barbarous

gods, torturing them first and grabbling among their entrails afterwards

for omens. He seems to have thought that such victims would be peculiarly

acceptable to the Syrian deities whom he worshipped; so he encouraged the

torturers and butchers at their work, and thanked the gods for enabling

him to ferret out “their friends.”(651)

III. A Charm To Protect a Town.

(M223) The tradition that a Lydian king tried to make the citadel of

Sardes impregnable by carrying round it a lion(652) may perhaps be

illustrated by a South African custom. When the Bechuanas are about to

found a new town, they observe an elaborate ritual. They choose a bull

from the herd, sew up its eyelids with sinew, and then allow the blinded

animal to wander at will for four days. On the fifth day they track it

down and sacrifice it at sunset on the spot where it happens to be

standing. The carcase is then roasted whole and divided among the people.

Ritual requires that every particle of the flesh should be consumed on the

spot. When the sacrificial meal is over, the medicine-men take the hide

and mark it with appropriate medicines, the composition of which is a

professional secret. Then with one long spiral cut they convert the whole

hide into a single thong. Having done so they cut up the thong into

lengths of about two feet and despatch messengers in all directions to peg

down one of those strips in each of the paths leading to the new town.

“After this,” it is said, “if a foreigner approaches the new town to

destroy it with his charms, he will find that the town has prepared itself

for his coming.”(653) Thus it would seem that the pastoral Bechuanas

attempt to place a new town under the protection of one of their sacred

cattle(654) by distributing pieces of its hide at all points where an

enemy could approach it, just as the Lydian king thought to place the

citadel of his capital under the protection of the lion-god by carrying

the animal round the boundaries.

(M224) Further, the Bechuana custom may throw light on a widespread legend

which relates how a wily settler in a new country bought from the natives

as much land as could be covered with a hide, and how he then proceeded to

cut the hide into thongs and to claim as much land as could be enclosed by

the thongs. It was thus, according to the Hottentots, that the first

European settlers obtained a footing in South Africa.(655) But the most

familiar example of such stories is the tradition that Dido procured the

site of Carthage in this fashion, and that the place hence received the

name of Byrsa or “hide.”(656) Similar tales occur in the legendary history

of Saxons and Danes,(657) and they meet us in India, Siberia, Burma,

Cambodia, Java, and Bali.(658) The wide diffusion of such stories confirms

the conjecture of Jacob Grimm that in them we have a reminiscence of a

mode of land measurement which was once actually in use, and of which the

designation is still retained in the English _hide_.(659) The Bechuana

custom suggests that the mode of measuring by a hide may have originated

in a practice of encompassing a piece of land with thongs cut from the

hide of a sacrificial victim in order to place the ground under the

guardianship of the sacred animal.

(M225) But why do the Bechuanas sew up the eyelids of the bull which is to

be used for this purpose? The answer appears to be given by the ceremonies

which the same people observe when they are going out to war. On that

occasion a woman rushes up to the army with her eyes shut and shakes a

winnowing-fan, while she cries out, “The army is not seen! The army is not

seen!” And a medicine-man at the same time sprinkles medicine over the

spears, crying out in like manner, “The army is not seen! The army is not

seen!” After that they seize a bull, sew up its eyelids with a hair of its

tail, and drive it for some distance along the road which the army is to

take. When it has preceded the army a little way, the bull is sacrificed,

roasted whole, and eaten by the warriors. All the flesh must be consumed

on the spot. Such parts as cannot be eaten are burnt with fire. Only the

contents of the stomach are carefully preserved as a charm which is to

lead the warriors to victory. Chosen men carry the precious guts in front

of the army, and it is deemed most important that no one should precede

them. When they stop, the army stops, and it will not resume the march

till it sees that the men with the bull’s guts have gone forward.(660) The

meaning of these ceremonies is explained by the cries of the woman and the

priest, “The army is not seen! The army is not seen!” Clearly it is

desirable that the army should not be perceived by the enemies until it is

upon them. Accordingly on the principles of homoeopathic magic the

Bechuanas apparently imagine that they can make themselves invisible by

eating of the flesh of a blind bull, blindness and invisibility being to

their simple minds the same thing. For the same reason the bowels of the

blind ox are carried in front of the army to hide its advance from hostile

eyes. In like manner the custom of sacrificing and eating a blind ox on

the place where a new town is to be built may be intended to render the

town invisible to enemies. At all events the Bawenda, a South African

people who belong to the same Bantu stock as the Bechuanas, take great

pains to conceal their kraals from passers-by. The kraals are built in the

forest or bush, and the long winding footpaths which lead to them are

often kept open only by the support of a single pole here and there.

Indeed the paths are so low and narrow that it is very difficult to bring

a horse into such a village. In time of war the poles are removed and the

thorny creepers fall down, forming a natural screen or bulwark which the

enemy can neither penetrate nor destroy by fire. The kraals are also

surrounded by walls of undressed stones with a filling of soil; and to

hide them still better from the view of the enemy the tops of the walls

are sown with Indian corn or planted with tobacco. Hence travellers

passing through the country seldom come across a Bawenda kraal. To see

where the Bawenda dwell you must climb to the tops of mountains and look

down on the roofs of their round huts peeping out of the surrounding green

like clusters of mushrooms in the woods.(661) The object which the Bawenda

attain by these perfectly rational means, the Bechuanas seek to compass by

the sacrifice and consumption of a blind bull.

(M226) This explanation of the use of a blinded ox in sacrifice is

confirmed by the reasons alleged by a Caffre for the observance of a

somewhat similar custom in purificatory ceremonies after a battle. On

these occasions the Bechuanas and other Caffre tribes of South Africa kill

a black ox and cut out the tip of its tongue, an eye, a piece of the

ham-string, and a piece of the principal sinew of the shoulder. These

parts are fried with certain herbs and rubbed into the joints of the

warriors. By cutting out the tongue of the ox they think to prevent the

enemy from wagging his tongue against them; by severing the sinews of the

ox they hope to cause the enemy’s sinews to fail him in the battle; and by

removing the eye of the ox they imagine that they prevent the enemy from

casting a covetous eye on their cattle.(662)

IV. Some Customs Of The Pelew Islanders.

We have seen that the state of society and religion among the Pelew

Islanders in modern times presents several points of similarity to the

condition of the peoples about the Eastern Mediterranean in

antiquity.(663) Here I propose briefly to call attention to certain other

customs of the Pelew Islanders which may serve to illustrate some of the

institutions discussed in this volume.

§ 1. Priests dressed as Women.

(M227) In the Pelew Islands it often happens that a goddess chooses a man,

not a woman, for her minister and inspired mouthpiece. When that is so,

the favoured man is thenceforth regarded and treated as a woman. He wears

female attire, he carries a piece of gold on his neck, he labours like a

woman in the taro fields, and he plays his new part so well that he earns

the hearty contempt of his fellows.(664) The pretended change of sex under

the inspiration of a female spirit perhaps explains a custom widely spread

among savages, in accordance with which some men dress as women and act as

women through life. These unsexed creatures often, perhaps generally,

profess the arts of sorcery and healing, they communicate with spirits,

and are regarded sometimes with awe and sometimes with contempt, as beings

of a higher or lower order than common folk. Often they are dedicated and

trained to their vocation from childhood. Effeminate sorcerers or priests

of this sort are found among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo,(665) the Bugis of

South Celebes,(666) the Patagonians of South America,(667) and the

Aleutians and many Indian tribes of North America.(668) In the island of

Rambree, off the coast of Aracan, a set of vagabond “conjurors,” who

dressed and lived as women, used to dance round a tall pole, invoking the

aid of their favourite idol on the occasion of any calamity.(669) Male

members of the Vallabha sect in India often seek to win the favour of the

god Krishna, whom they specially revere, by wearing their hair long and

assimilating themselves to women; even their spiritual chiefs, the

so-called Maharajas, sometimes simulate the appearance of women when they

lead the worship of their followers.(670) In Madagascar we hear of

effeminate men who wore female attire and acted as women, thinking thereby

to do God service.(671) In the kingdom of Congo there was a sacrificial

priest who commonly dressed as a woman and gloried in the title of the

Grandmother. The post of Grandmother must have been much coveted, for the

incumbent might not be put to death, whatever crimes or rascalities he

committed; and to do him justice he appears commonly to have taken full

advantage of this benefit of clergy. When he died, his fortunate successor

dissected the body of the deceased Grandmother, extracting his heart and

other vital organs, and amputating his fingers and toes, which he kept as

priceless relics, and sold as sovereign remedies for all the ills that

flesh is heir to.(672)

(M228) We may conjecture that in many of these cases the call to this

strange form of the religious life came in the shape of a dream or vision,

in which the dreamer or visionary imagined himself to be a woman or to be

possessed by a female spirit; for with many savage races the disordered

fancies of sleep or ecstasy are accepted as oracular admonitions which it

would be perilous to disregard. At all events we are told that a dream or

a revelation of some sort was the reason which in North America these

men-women commonly alleged for the life they led; it had been thus brought

home to them, they said, that their medicine or their salvation lay in

living as women, and when once they had got this notion into their head

nothing could drive it out again. Many an Indian father attempted by

persuasion, by bribes, by violence, to deter his son from obeying the

mysterious call, but all to no purpose.(673) Among the Sauks, an Indian

tribe of North America, these effeminate beings were always despised, but

sometimes they were pitied “as labouring under an unfortunate destiny

which they cannot avoid, being supposed to be impelled to this course by a

vision from the female spirit that resides in the moon.”(674) Similarly

the Omahas, another Indian tribe of North America, “believe that the

unfortunate beings, called _Min-qu-ga_, are mysterious or sacred because

they have been affected by the Moon Being. When a young Omaha fasted for

the first time on reaching puberty, it was thought that the Moon Being

appeared to him, holding in one hand a bow and arrows and in the other a

pack strap, such as the Indian women use. When the youth tried to grasp

the bow and arrows the Moon Being crossed his hands very quickly, and if

the youth was not very careful he seized the pack strap instead of the bow

and arrows, thereby fixing his lot in after life. In such a case he could

not help acting the woman, speaking, dressing, and working just as Indian

women used to do.”(675) Among the Ibans or Sea Dyaks of Borneo the highest

class of sorcerers or medicine-men (_manangs_) are those who are believed

to have been transformed into women. Such a man is therefore called a

“changed medicine-man” (_manang bali_) on account of his supposed change

of sex. The call to transform himself into a woman is said to come as a

supernatural command thrice repeated in dreams; to disregard the command

would mean death. Accordingly he makes a feast, sacrifices a pig or two to

avert evil consequences from the tribe, and then assumes the garb of a

woman. Thenceforth he is treated as a woman and occupies himself in

feminine pursuits. His chief aim is to copy female manners and habits as

accurately as possible. He is employed for the same purposes as an

ordinary medicine-man and his methods are similar, but he is paid much

higher fees and is often called in when others have been unable to effect

a cure.(676) Similarly among the Chukchees of North-Eastern Asia there are

shamans or medicine-men who assimilate themselves as far as possible to

women, and who are believed to be called to this vocation by spirits in a

dream. The call usually comes at the critical age of early youth when the

shamanistic inspiration, as it is called, first manifests itself. But the

call is much dreaded by the youthful adepts, and some of them prefer death

to obedience. There are, however, various stages or degrees of

transformation. In the first stage the man apes a woman only in the manner

of braiding and arranging the hair of his head. In the second he dons

female attire; in the third stage he adopts as far as possible the life

and characteristics of the female sex. A young man who is undergoing this

final transformation abandons all masculine occupations and manners. He

throws away the rifle and the lance, the lasso of the reindeer herdsman,

and the harpoon of the seal-hunter, and betakes himself to the needle and

the skin-scraper instead. He learns the use of them quickly, because the

spirits are helping him all the time. Even his pronunciation changes from

the male to the female mode. At the same time his body alters, if not in

outward appearance, at least in its faculties and forces. He loses

masculine strength, fleetness of foot, endurance in wrestling, and falls

into the debility and helplessness of a woman. Even his mental character

undergoes a change. His old brute courage and fighting spirit are gone; he

grows shy and bashful before strangers, fond of small talk and of dandling

little children. In short he becomes a woman with the appearance of a man,

and as a woman he is often taken to wife by another man, with whom he

leads a regular married life. Extraordinary powers are attributed to such

transformed shamans. They are supposed to enjoy the special protection of

spirits who play the part of supernatural husbands to them. Hence they are

much dreaded even by their colleagues in the profession who remain mere

men; hence, too, they excel in all branches of magic, including

ventriloquism.(677) Among the Teso of Central Africa medicine-men often

dress as women and wear feminine ornaments, such as heavy chains of beads

and shells round their heads and necks.(678)

(M229) And just as a man inspired by a goddess may adopt female attire, so

conversely a woman inspired by a god may adopt male costume. In Uganda the

great god Mukasa, the deity of the Victoria Nyanza Lake and of abundance,

imparted his oracles through a woman, who in ordinary life dressed like

the rest of her sex in a bark cloth wrapped round the body and fastened

with a girdle, so as to leave the arms and shoulders bare; but when she

prophesied under the inspiration of the god, she wore two bark cloths

knotted in masculine style over her shoulders and crossing each other on

her breast and back.(679) When once the god had chosen her, she retained

office for life; she might not marry or converse with any man except one

particular priest, who was always present when she was possessed by the

deity.(680)

(M230) Perhaps this assumed change of sex under the inspiration of a

goddess may give the key to the legends of the effeminate Sardanapalus and

the effeminate Hercules,(681) as well as to the practice of the effeminate

priests of Cybele and the Syrian goddess. In all such cases the pretended

transformation of a man into a woman would be intelligible if we supposed

that the womanish priest or king thought himself animated by a female

spirit, whose sex, accordingly, he felt bound to imitate. Certainly the

eunuch priests of Cybele seem to have bereft themselves of their manhood

under the supposed inspiration of the Great Goddess.(682) The priest of

Hercules at Antimachia, in Cos, who dressed as a woman when he offered

sacrifice, is said to have done so in imitation of Hercules who disguised

himself as a woman to escape the pursuit of his enemies.(683) So the

Lydian Hercules wore female attire when he served for three years as the

purchased slave of the imperious Omphale, Queen of Lydia.(684) If we

suppose that Queen Omphale, like Queen Semiramis, was nothing but the

great Asiatic goddess,(685) or one of her Avatars, it becomes probable

that the story of the womanish Hercules of Lydia preserves a reminiscence

of a line or college of effeminate priests who, like the eunuch priests of

the Syrian goddess, dressed as women in imitation of their goddess and

were supposed to be inspired by her. The probability is increased by the

practice of the priests of Hercules at Antimachia, in Cos, who, as we have

just seen, actually wore female attire when they were engaged in their

sacred duties. Similarly at the vernal mysteries of Hercules in Rome the

men were draped in the garments of women;(686) and in some of the rites

and processions of Dionysus also men wore female attire.(687) In legend

and art there are clear traces of an effeminate Dionysus, who perhaps

figured in a strange ceremony for the artificial fertilization of the

fig.(688) Among the Nahanarvals, an ancient German tribe, a priest garbed

as a woman presided over a sacred grove.(689) These and similar

practices(690) need not necessarily have any connexion with the social

system of mother-kin. Wherever a goddess is revered and the theory of

inspiration is held, a man may be thought to be possessed by a female

spirit, whether society be organized on mother-kin or on father-kin. Still

the chances of such a transformation of sex will be greater under

mother-kin than under father-kin if, as we have found reason to believe, a

system of mother-kin is more favourable to the development and

multiplication of goddesses than of gods. It is therefore, perhaps, no

mere accident that we meet with these effeminate priests in regions like

the Pelew Islands and Western Asia, where the system of mother-kin either

actually prevails or has at least left traces of it behind in tradition

and custom. Such traces, for example, are to be found in Lydia and

Cos,(691) in both of which the effeminate Hercules had his home.

(M231) But the religious or superstitious interchange of dress between men

and women is an obscure and complex problem, and it is unlikely that any

single solution would apply to all the cases. Probably the custom has been

practised from many different motives. For example, the practice of

dressing boys as girls has certainly been sometimes adopted to avert the

Evil Eye;(692) and it is possible that the custom of changing garments at

marriage, the bridegroom disguising himself as a woman, or the bride

disguising herself as a man, may have been resorted to for the same

purpose. Thus in Cos, where the priest of Hercules wore female attire, the

bridegroom was in like manner dressed as a woman when he received his

bride.(693) Spartan brides had their hair shaved, and were clad in men’s

clothes and booted on their wedding night.(694) Argive brides wore false

beards when they slept with their husbands for the first time.(695) In

Southern Celebes a bridegroom at a certain point of the long and elaborate

marriage ceremonies puts on the garments which his bride has just put

off.(696) Among the Jews of Egypt in the Middle Ages the bride led the

wedding dance with a helmet on her head and a sword in her hand, while the

bridegroom adorned himself as a woman and put on female attire.(697) At a

Brahman marriage in Southern India “the bride is dressed up as a boy, and

another girl is dressed up to represent the bride. They are taken in

procession through the street, and, on returning, the pseudo-bridegroom is

made to speak to the real bridegroom in somewhat insolent tones, and some

mock play is indulged in. The real bridegroom is addressed as if he was

the syce (groom) or gumasta (clerk) of the pseudo-bridegroom, and is

sometimes treated as a thief, and judgment passed on him by the

latter.”(698) Among the Bharias of the Central Provinces of India “the

bridegroom puts on women’s ornaments and carries with him an iron

nut-cutter or dagger to keep off evil spirits.”(699) Similarly among the

Khangars, a low Hindustani caste of the same region, “the bridegroom is

dressed in a yellow gown and overcloth, with trousers of red chintz, red

shoes, and a marriage crown of date-palm leaves. He has the silver

ornaments usually worn by women on his neck, as the _khang-wāri_ or silver

ring and the _hamel_ or necklace of rupees. In order to avert the evil eye

he carries a dagger or nut-cracker, and a smudge of lampblack is made on

his forehead to disfigure him and thus avert the evil eye, which, it is

thought, would otherwise be too probably attracted by his exquisitely

beautiful appearance in his wedding garments.”(700) These examples render

it highly probable that, like the dagger or nut-cracker which he holds in

his hand, the woman’s ornaments which he wears are intended to protect the

bridegroom against demons or the evil eye at this critical moment of his

life, the protection apparently consisting in a disguise which enables him

to elude the unwelcome attentions of malignant beings.(701)

(M232) A similar explanation probably accounts for the similar exchange of

costume between other persons than the bride and bridegroom at marriage.

For example, after a Bharia wedding, “the girl’s mother gets the dress of

the boy’s father and puts it on, together with a false beard and

moustaches, and dances holding a wooden ladle in one hand and a packet of

ashes in the other. Every time she approaches the bridegroom’s father on

her rounds she spills some of the ashes over him and occasionally gives

him a crack on the head with her ladle, these actions being accompanied by

bursts of laughter from the party and frenzied playing by the musicians.

When the party reach the bridegroom’s house on their return, his mother

and the other women come out, and burn a little mustard and human hair in

a lamp, the unpleasant smell emitted by these articles being considered

potent to drive away evil spirits.”(702) Again, after a Khangar wedding

the father of the bridegroom, dressed in women’s clothes, dances with the

mother of the bride, while the two throw turmeric mixed with water on each

other.(703) Similarly after a wedding of the Bharbhunjas, another

Hindustani caste of the Central Provinces, the bridegroom’s father dances

before the family in women’s clothes which have been supplied by the

bride’s father.(704) Such disguises and dances may be intended either to

protect the disguised dancer himself against the evil eye or perhaps

rather to guard the principal personages of the ceremony, the bride and

bridegroom, by diverting the attention of demons from them to the

guiser.(705) However, when at marriage the bride alone assumes the costume

and appearance of the other sex, the motive for the disguise may perhaps

be a notion that on the principle of homoeopathic magic she thereby

ensures the birth of a male heir. Similarly in Sweden there is a popular

superstition that “on the night preceding her nuptials the bride should

have a baby-boy to sleep with her, in which case her first-born will be a

son”;(706) and among the Kabyles, when a bride dismounts from her mule at

her husband’s house, a young lad leaps into the saddle before she touches

the ground, in order that her first child may be a boy.(707)

(M233) Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the assumption of woman’s

dress is sometimes intended to disguise a man for the purpose of deceiving

a demon. Thus among the Boloki or Bangala on the Upper Congo a man was

long afflicted with an internal malady. When all other remedies had

failed, a witch-doctor informed the sufferer that the cause of his trouble

was an evil spirit, and that the best thing he could do was to go far away

where the devil could not get at him, and to remain there till he had

recovered his health. The patient followed the prescription. At dead of

night he left his house, taking only two of his wives with him and telling

no one of his destination, lest the demon should hear it and follow him.

So he went far away from his town, donned a woman’s dress, and speaking in

a woman’s voice he pretended to be other than he was, in order that the

devil should not be able to find him at his new address. Strange to say,

these sage measures failed to effect a cure, and wearying of exile he at

last returned home, where he continued to dress and speak as a woman.(708)

Again, the Kuki-Lushai of Assam believe that if a man kills an enemy or a

wild beast, the ghost of the dead man or animal will haunt him and drive

him mad. The only way of averting this catastrophe is to dress up as a

woman and pretend to be one. For example, a man who had shot a tiger and

was in fear of being haunted by the animal’s ghost, dressed himself up in

a woman’s petticoat and cloth, wore ivory earrings, and wound a mottled

cloth round his head like a turban. Then smoking a woman’s pipe, carrying

a little basket, and spinning a cotton spindle, he paraded the village

followed by a crowd roaring and shrieking with laughter, while he

preserved the gravity of a judge, for a single smile would have been

fatal. To guard against the possibility of unseasonable mirth, he carried

a porcupine in his arms, and if ever, tickled beyond the pitch of

endurance, he burst into a guffaw, the crowd said, “It was the porcupine

that laughed.” All this was done to mortify the pride of the tiger’s ghost

by leading him to believe that he had been shot by a woman.(709)

(M234) The same dread of attracting the attention of dangerous spirits at

critical times perhaps explains the custom observed by some East African

tribes of wearing the costume of the opposite sex at circumcision. Thus,

when Masai boys have been circumcised they dress as women, wearing

earrings in their ears and long garments that reach to the ground. They

also whiten their swarthy faces with chalk. This costume they retain till

their wounds are healed, whereupon they are shaved and assume the skins

and ornaments of warriors.(710) Among the Nandi, a tribe of British East

Africa, before boys are circumcised they receive a visit from young girls,

who give them some of their own garments and ornaments. These the boys put

on and wear till the operation of circumcision is over, when they exchange

the girls’ clothes for the garments of women, which, together with

necklaces, are provided for them by their mothers; and these women’s

garments the newly circumcised lads must continue to wear for months

afterwards. Girls are also circumcised among the Nandi, and before they

submit to the operation they attire themselves in men’s garments and carry

clubs in their hands.(711)

(M235) If such interchange of costume between men and women is intended to

disguise the wearers against demons, we may compare the practice of the

Lycian men, who regularly wore women’s dress in mourning;(712) for this

might be intended to conceal them from the ghost, just as perhaps for a

similar reason some peoples of antiquity used to descend into pits and

remain there for several days, shunning the light of the sun, whenever a

death had taken place in the family.(713) A similar desire to deceive

spirits may perhaps explain a device to which the Loeboes, a primitive

tribe of Sumatra, resort when they wish to obtain male or female

offspring. If parents have several sons and desire that the next child

shall be a girl, they dress the boys as girls, cut their hair after the

girlish fashion, and hang necklaces round their necks. On the contrary,

when they have many daughters and wish to have a son, they dress the girls

up as boys.(714)

(M236) On the whole we conclude that the custom of men dressing as women

and of women dressing as men has been practised from a variety of

superstitious motives, among which the principal would seem to be the wish

to please certain powerful spirits or to deceive others.

§ 2. Prostitution of Unmarried Girls.

(M237) Like many peoples of Western Asia in antiquity, the Pelew Islanders

systematically prostitute their unmarried girls for hire. Hence, just as

in Lydia and Cyprus of old, the damsels are a source of income to their

family, and women wait impatiently for the time when their young daughters

will be able to help the household by their earnings. Indeed the mother

regularly anticipates the time by depriving the girl of her virginity with

her own hands.(715) Hence the theory that the prostitution of unmarried

girls is a device to destroy their virginity without risk to their

husbands is just as inapplicable to the Pelew Islanders as we have seen it

to be to the peoples of Western Asia in antiquity. When a Pelew girl has

thus been prepared for her vocation by her mother, she sells her favours

to all the men of her village who can pay for them and who do not belong

to her own exogamous clan; but she never grants her favours to the same

man twice. Accordingly in every village of the Pelew Islands it may be

taken as certain that the men and women know each other carnally, except

that members of the same clan are debarred from each other by the rule of

exogamy.(716) Thus a well-marked form of sexual communism, limited only by

the exogamous prohibitions which attach to the clans, prevails among these

people. Nor is this communism restricted to the inhabitants of the same

village, for the girls of each village are regularly sent away to serve as

prostitutes (_armengols_) in another village. There they live with the men

of one of the many clubs or associations (_kaldebekels_) in the clubhouse

(_blay_), attending to the house, consorting freely with the men, and

receiving pay for their services. A girl leading this life in the

clubhouse of another village is well treated by the men: a wrong done to

her is a wrong done to the whole club; and in her own village her value is

increased, not diminished, by the time she thus spends as a prostitute in

a neighbouring community. After her period of service is over she may

marry either in the village where she has served or in her own. Sometimes

many or all of the young women of a village go together to act as

prostitutes (_armengols_) in a neighbouring village, and for this they are

well paid by the community which receives them. The money so earned is

divided among the chiefs of the village to which the damsels belong. Such

a joint expedition of the unmarried girls of a village is called a

_blolobol_. But the young women never act as _armengols_ in any clubhouse

of their own village.(717)

(M238) Thus, while the Pelew custom of prostituting the unmarried girls to

all the men of their own village, but not of their own clan, is a form of

sexual communism practised within a local group, the custom of

prostituting them to men of other villages is a form of sexual communism

practised between members of different local groups; it is a kind of

group-marriage. These customs of the Pelew Islanders therefore support by

analogy the hypothesis that among the ancient peoples of Western Asia also

the systematic prostitution of unmarried women may have been derived from

an earlier period of sexual communism.(718)

(M239) A somewhat similar custom prevails in Yap, one of the western group

of the Caroline Islands, situated to the north of the Pelew group. In each

of the men’s clubhouses “are kept three or four unmarried girls or

_Mespil_, whose business it is to minister to the pleasures of the men of

the particular clan or brotherhood to which the building belongs. As with

the Kroomen on the Gold Coast, each man, married or single, takes his turn

by rotation in the rites through which each girl must pass before she is

deemed ripe for marriage. The natives say it is an ordeal or preliminary

trial to fit them for the cares and burden of maternity. She is rarely a

girl of the same village, and, of course, must be sprung from a different

sept. Whenever she wishes to become a _Langin_ or respectable married

woman, she may, and is thought none the less of for her frailties as a

_Mespil_.... But I believe this self-immolation before marriage is

confined to the daughters of the inferior chiefs and commons. The supply

of _Mespil_ is generally kept up by the purchase of slave girls from the

neighbouring districts.”(719) According to another account a _mespil_

“must always be stolen, by force or cunning, from a district at some

distance from that wherein her captors reside. After she has been fairly,

or unfairly, captured and installed in her new home, she loses no shade of

respect among her own people; on the contrary, have not her beauty and her

worth received the highest proof of her exalted perfection, in the

devotion, not of one, but of a whole community of lovers?”(720) However,

though the girl is nominally stolen from another district, the matter is

almost always arranged privately with the local chief, who consents to

wink hard at the theft in consideration of a good round sum of shell money

and stone money, which serves “to salve the wounds of a disrupted family

and dispel all thoughts of a bloody retaliation. Nevertheless, the whole

proceeding is still carried out with the greatest possible secrecy and

stealth.”(721)

§ 3. Custom of slaying Chiefs.

(M240) In the Pelew Islands when the chief of a clan has reigned too long

or has made himself unpopular, the heir has a formal right to put him to

death, though for reasons which will appear this right is only exercised

in some of the principal clans. The practice of regicide, if that word may

be extended to the assassination of chiefs, is in these islands a national

institution regulated by exact rules, and every high chief must lay his

account with it. Indeed so well recognized is the custom that when the

heir-apparent, who under the system of mother-kin must be a brother, a

nephew, or a cousin on the mother’s side, proves himself precocious and

energetic, the people say, “The cousin is a grown man. The chief’s

_tobolbel_ is nigh at hand.”(722)

(M241) In such cases the plot of death is commonly so well hushed up that

it seldom miscarries. The first care of the conspirators is to discover

where the doomed man keeps his money. For this purpose an old woman will

sleep for some nights in the house and make inquiries quietly, till like a

sleuth-hound she has nosed the hoard. Then the conspirators come, and the

candidate for the chieftainship despatches his predecessor either with his

own hand or by the hand of a young cousin. Having done the deed he takes

possession of the official residence, and applies to the widow of the

deceased the form of persuasion technically known as _meleket_. This

consists of putting a noose round her neck, and drawing it tighter and

tighter till she consents to give up her late husband’s money. After that

the murderer and his friends have nothing further to do for the present,

but to remain quietly in the house and allow events to take their usual

course.

(M242) Meantime the chiefs assemble in the council-house, and the loud

droning notes of the triton-shell, which answers the purpose of a tocsin,

summon the whole population to arms. The warriors muster, and surrounding

the house where the conspirators are ensconced they shower spears and

stones at it, as if to inflict condign punishment on the assassins. But

this is a mere blind, a sham, a legal fiction, intended perhaps to throw

dust in the eyes of the ghost and make him think that his death is being

avenged. In point of fact the warriors take good care to direct their

missiles at the roof or walls of the house, for if they threw them at the

windows they might perhaps hurt the murderer. After this formality has

been satisfactorily performed, the regicide steps out of the house and

engages in the genial task of paying the death duties to the various

chiefs assembled. When he has observed this indispensable ceremony, the

law is satisfied: all constitutional forms have been carried out: the

assassin is now the legitimate successor of his victim and reigns in his

stead without any further trouble.

(M243) But if he has omitted to massacre his predecessor and has allowed

him to die a natural death, he suffers for his negligence by being

compelled to observe a long series of complicated and irksome formalities

before he can make good his succession in the eyes of the law. For in that

case the title of chief has to be formally withdrawn from the dead man and

conferred on his successor by a curious ceremony, which includes the

presentation of a coco-nut and a taro plant to the new chief. Moreover, at

first he may not enter the chief’s house, but has to be shut up in a tiny

hut for thirty or forty days during all the time of mourning, and even

when that is over he may not come out till he has received and paid for a

human head brought him by the people of a friendly state. After that he

still may not go to the sea-shore until more formalities have been fully

observed. These comprise a very costly fishing expedition, which is

conducted by the inhabitants of another district and lasts for weeks. At

the end of it a net full of fish is brought to the chief’s house, and the

people of the neighbouring communities are summoned by the blast of

trumpets. As soon as the stranger fishermen have been publicly paid for

their services, a relative of the new chief steps across the net and

solemnly splits a coco-nut in two with an old-fashioned knife made of a

Tridacna shell, while at the same time he bans all the evils that might

befall his kinsman. Then, without looking at the nut, he throws the pieces

on the ground, and if they fall so that the two halves lie with the

opening upwards, it is an omen that the chief will live long. The pieces

of the nut are then tied together and taken to the house of another chief,

the friend of the new ruler, and there they are kept in token that the

ceremony has been duly performed. Thereupon the fish are divided among the

people, the strangers receiving half. This completes the legal ceremonies

of accession, and the new chief may now go about freely. But these tedious

formalities and others which I pass over are dispensed with when the new

chief has proved his title by slaying his predecessor. In that case the

procedure is much simplified, but on the other hand the death duties are

so very heavy that only rich men can afford to indulge in the luxury of

regicide. Hence in the Pelew Islands of to-day, or at least of yesterday,

the old-fashioned mode of succession by slaughter is now restricted to a

few families of the bluest blood and the longest purses.(723)

(M244) If this account of the existing or recent usage of the Pelew

Islanders sheds little light on the motives for putting chiefs to death,

it well illustrates the business-like precision with which such a custom

may be carried out, and the public indifference, if not approval, with

which it may be regarded as an ordinary incident of constitutional

government. So far, therefore, the Pelew custom bears out the view that a

systematic practice of regicide, however strange and revolting it may seem

to us, is perfectly compatible with a state of society in which human

conduct and human life are estimated by a standard very different from

ours. If we would understand the early history of institutions, we must

learn to detach ourselves from the prepossessions of our own time and

country, and to place ourselves as far as possible at the standpoint of

men in distant lands and distant ages.

INDEX.

Aban, a Persian month, ii. 68

Abd-Hadad, priestly king of Hierapolis, i. 163 _n._ 3

Aberdeenshire, All Souls’ Day in, ii. 79 _sq._

Abi-baal, i. 51 _n._ 4

Abi-el, i. 51 _n._ 4

Abi-jah, King, his family, i. 51 _n._ 2;

“father of Jehovah,” 51 _n._ 4

Abi-melech, “father of a king,” i. 51 _n._ 4

Abi-milk (Abi-melech), king of Tyre, i. 16 _n._ 5

Abimelech massacres his seventy brothers, i. 51 _n._ 2

Abipones, of South America, their worship of the Pleiades, i. 258 _n._ 2

Abraham, his attempted sacrifice of Isaac, ii. 219 _n._ 1

Abruzzi, gossips of St. John in the, i. 245 _n._ 2;

marvellous properties attributed to water on St. John’s Night in the,

246;

Easter ceremonies in the, 256;

the feast of All Souls in the, ii. 77 _sq._;

rules as to sowing seed and cutting timber in the, 133 _n._ 3

Abu Rabah, resort of childless wives in Palestine, i. 78, 79

Abydos, head of Osiris at, ii. 11;

the favourite burial-place of the Egyptians, 18 _sq._;

specially associated with Osiris, 18, 197;

tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings at, 19;

the ritual of, 86;

hall of the Osirian mysteries at, 108;

representations of the Sed festival at, 151;

inscriptions at, 153;

temple of Osiris at, 198

Acacia, Osiris in the, ii. 111

Achaia, subject to earthquakes, i. 202

Acharaca, cave of Pluto at, i. 205 _sq._

Acilisena, temple of Anaitis at, i. 38

Adad, Syrian king, i. 15;

Babylonian and Assyrian god of thunder and lightning, 163

Adana in Cilicia, i. 169 _n._ 3

Addison, Joseph, on the grotto _dei cani_ at Naples, i. 205 _n._ 1

Adhar, a Persian month, ii. 68

Adom-melech or Uri-melech, king of Byblus, i. 14, 17

_Adon_, a Semitic title, i. 6 _sq._, 16 _sq._, 20, 49 _n._ 7

Adonai, title of Jehovah, i. 6 _sq._

Adoni, “my lord,” Semitic title, i. 7;

names compounded with, 17

Adoni-bezek, king of Jerusalem, i. 17

Adoni-jah, elder brother of King Solomon, i. 51 _n._ 2

Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, i. 17

Adonis, myth of, i. 3 _sqq._;

Greek worship of, 6;

in Greek mythology, 10 _sqq._;

in Syria, 13 _sqq._;

monuments of, 29;

in Cyprus, 31 _sqq._, 49;

identified with Osiris, 32;

mourning for, at Byblus, 38;

said to be the fruit of incest, 43;

his mother Myrrha, 43;

son of Theias, 43 _n._ 4, 55 _n._ 4;

the son of Cinyras, 49;

the title of the sons of Phoenician kings in Cyprus, 49;

his violent death, 55;

music in the worship of, 55;

sacred prostitution in the worship of, 57;

inspired prophets in worship of, 76;

human representatives of, perhaps burnt, 110;

doves burned in honour of, 147;

personated by priestly kings, 223;

the ritual of, 223 _sqq._;

his death and resurrection represented in his rites, 224 _sq._;

festivals of, 224 _sqq._;

flutes played in the laments for, 225 _n._ 3;

the ascension of, 225;

images of, thrown into the sea or springs, 225, 227 _n._ 3, 236;

born from a myrrh-tree, 227, ii. 110;

bewailed by Argive women, i. 227 _n._;

analogy of his rites to Indian and European ceremonies, 227;

his death and resurrection interpreted as representations of the decay

and revival of vegetation, 227 _sqq._;

interpreted as the sun, 228;

interpreted by the ancients as the god of the reaped and sprouting corn,

229;

as a corn-spirit, 230 _sqq._;

hunger the root of the worship of, 231;

perhaps originally a personification of wild vegetation, especially

grass and trees, 233;

the gardens of, 236 _sqq._;

rain-charm in the rites of, 237;

resemblance of his rites to the festival of Easter, 254 _sqq._, 306;

worshipped at Bethlehem, 257 _sqq._;

and the planet Venus as the Morning Star, 258 _sq._;

sometimes identified with Attis, 263;

swine not eaten by worshippers of, 265;

rites of, among the Greeks, 298;

lamented by women at Byblus, ii. 23

Adonis and Aphrodite, i. 11 _sq._, 29, 280;

their marriage celebrated at Alexandria, 224

—— and Attis identified with Dionysus, ii. 127 _n._

—— and Osiris, similarity between their rites, ii. 127

——, Attis, Osiris, their mythical similarity, i. 6, ii. 201

——, the river, its valley, i. 28 _sqq._;

annual discoloration of the, 30, 225

Aedepsus, hot springs of Hercules at, i. 211 _sq._

Aedesius, Sextilius Agesilaus, dedicates altar to Attis, i. 275 _n._ 1

Aegipan and Hermes, i. 157

Aelian, on impregnation of Judean maid by serpent, i. 81

Aeneas and Dido, i. 114 _n._ 1

Aeschylus, on Typhon, i. 156

Aesculapius, in relation to serpents, i. 80 _sq._;

reputed father of Aratus, 80 _sq._;

his shrines at Sicyon and Titane, 81;

his dispute with Hercules, 209 _sq._

Aeson and Medea, i. 181 _n._ 1

_Aetna_, Latin poem, i. 221 _n._ 4

Africa, serpents as reincarnations of the dead in, i. 82 _sqq._;

infant burial in, 91 _sq._;

reincarnation of the dead in, 91 _sq._;

annual festivals of the dead in, ii. 66;

worship of dead kings and chiefs in, 160 _sqq._;

supreme gods in, 165, 173 _sq._, 174, 186, with _n._ 5, 187 _n._ 1, 188

_sq._, 190;

worship of ancestral spirits among the Bantu tribes of, 174 _sqq._;

inheritance of the kingship under mother-kin in, 211

——, North, custom of bathing at Midsummer among the Mohammedan peoples of,

i. 249

——, West, sacred men and women in, i. 65 _sqq._;

human sacrifices in, ii. 99 _n._ 2

Afterbirth or placenta regarded as a person’s double or twin, ii. 169

_sq._

See _also_ Placenta

Afterbirths buried in banana groves, i. 93;

regarded as twins of the children, 93;

Shilluk kings interred where their afterbirths are buried, ii. 162

Agbasia, West African god, i. 79

Agdestis, a man-monster in the myth of Attis, i. 269

Agesipolis, King of Sparta, his conduct in an earthquake, i. 196

Agraulus, daughter of Cecrops, worshipped at Salamis in Cyprus, i. 145,

146

Agricultural peoples worship the moon, ii. 138 _sq._

Agriculture, religious objections to, i. 88 _sqq._;

in the hands of women in the Pelew Islands, ii. 206 _sq._;

its tendency to produce a conservative character, 217 _sq._

Ahts of Vancouver Island regard the moon as the husband of the sun, ii.

139 _n._ 1

Airi, a deity of North-West India, i. 170

Aiyar, N. Subramhanya, on Indian dancing-girls, i. 63 _sqq._

Ajax and Teucer, names of priestly kings of Olba, i. 144 _sq._, 161

Akhetaton (Tell-el-Amarna), the capital of Amenophis IV., ii. 123 _n._ 1

Akikuyu of British East Africa, their worship of snakes, i. 67 _sq._;

their belief in serpents as reincarnations of the dead, 82, 85

Alaska, the Esquimaux of, ii. 51;

the Koniags of, 106

Albania, marriage custom in, ii. 246

Albanians of the Caucasus, their worship of the moon, i. 73

Albinoes the offspring of the moon, i. 91

Albiruni, Arab geographer, on the Persian festival of the dead, ii. 68

Alcman on dew, ii. 137

Aleutians, effeminate sorcerers among the, ii. 254

Alexander Severus, at festival of Attis, i. 273

Alexander the Great expels a king of Paphos, i. 42;

his fabulous birth, 81;

assumes costumes of deities, 165;

sacrifices to Megarsian Athena, 169 _n._ 3

Alexandria, festival of Adonis at, i. 224;

the Serapeum at, ii. 119 _n._, 217

Alexandrian calendar, used by Plutarch, ii. 84

—— year, the fixed, ii. 28, 92;

Plutarch’s use of the, 49

All Saints, feast of, perhaps substituted for an old pagan festival of the

dead, ii. 82 _sq._

All Souls, feast of, ii. 51 _sqq._;

originally a pagan festival of the dead, 81;

instituted by Odilo, abbot of Clugny, 82

Allatu, Babylonian goddess, i. 9

Allifae in Samnium, baths of Hercules at, i. 213 _n._ 2

Almo, procession to the river, in the rites of Attis, i. 273.

Almond causes virgin to conceive, i. 263;

the father of all things, 263 _sq._

Alyattes, king of Lydia, i. 133 _n._ 1

Alynomus, king of Paphos, i. 43

Amambwe, a Bantu tribe of Northern Rhodesia, its head chief reincarnated

in a lion, ii. 193

Amasis, king of Egypt, his body burnt by Cambyses, i. 176 _n._ 2

Amathus, in Cyprus, Adonis and Melcarth at, i. 32, 117;

statue of lion-slaying god found at, 117

Amatongo, ancestral spirits (Zulu term), i. 74 _n._ 4, ii. 184

Ambabai, an Indian goddess, i. 243

Ambala District, Punjaub, i. 94

Amélineau, E., discovers the tomb of King Khent, ii. 21 _n._ 1

Amenophis IV., king of Egypt, his attempt to abolish all gods but the

sun-god, ii. 123 _sqq._

America, reincarnation of the dead in, i. 91;

the moon worshipped by the agricultural Indians of tropical, ii. 138

Amestris, wife of Xerxes, her sacrifice of children, ii. 220 _sq._

Ammon, Milcom, the god of, i. 19

Ammon (the Egyptian) at Thebes, his human wives, i. 72;

of Thebes identified with the sun, ii. 123;

rage of King Amenophis IV. against the god, 124

Amoor, Gilyaks of the, i. 278 _n._ 2

Amorites, their law as to fornication, i. 37 _sq._

Amsanctus, the valley of, i. 204 _sq._

Amulets, crowns and wreaths as, ii. 242 _sq._

Amyclae, in the vale of Sparta, i. 313, 314, 315

Amyclas, father of Hyacinth, i. 313

Anacreon, on Cinyras, i. 55

Anacyndaraxes, father of Sardanapalus, i. 172

Anaitis, sacred prostitution in the worship of, i. 38

_Anassa_, “Queen,” title of goddess, i. 35 _n._ 2

Anazarba or Anazarbus, in Cilicia, i. 167 _n._ 1

Ancestor-worship among the Khasis of Assam, ii. 203;

combined with mother-kin tends to a predominance of goddesses over gods

in religion, 211 _sq._

Ancestors, propitiation of deceased, i. 46;

the worship of, the main practical religion of the Bantu tribes, ii. 176

_sqq._

Ancestral spirits on shoulders of medicine-men, i. 74 _n._ 4;

incarnate in serpents, 82 _sqq._;

in the form of animals, 83;

worshipped by the Bantu tribes of Africa, ii. 174 _sqq._;

prayers to, 175 _sq._, 178 _sq._, 183 _sq._;

sacrifices to, 175, 178 _s.q._, 180, 181 _sq._, 183 _sq._, 190;

on the father’s and on the mother’s side, the two distinguished, 180,

181.

_See also_ Dead

Anchiale in Cilicia, i. 144; monument of Sardanapalus at, 172

Andania in Messenia, sacred men and women at, i. 76 _n._ 3

Andriamasinavalona, a Hova king, vicarious sacrifice for, ii. 221

Anemone, the scarlet, sprung from the blood of Adonis, i. 226

Angel, the Destroying, over Jerusalem, i. 24

Angus, belief as to the weaning of children in, ii. 148

Anhalt, custom at sowing in, i. 239

Animals sacrificed by being hanged, i. 289 _sq._, 292;

and plants, edible, savage lamentations for, ii. 43 _sq._;

dead kings and chiefs incarnate in, 162, 163 _sq._, 173, 193;

sacrificed to prolong the life of kings, 222

Anje-a, a mythical being who brings children to women, i. 103

Anklets made of human sinews worn by king of Uganda, ii. 224 _sq._

Ankole, in Central Africa, the Bahima of, ii. 190

Anna, sister of Dido, i. 114 _n._ 1

Annam, offerings to the dead in spring in, i. 235 _n._ 1;

annual festivals of the dead in, ii. 62 _sqq._

Annual death and resurrection of gods, i. 6

Anointing as a ceremony of consecration, i. 21 _n._ 2 and 3, 68, 74

—— sacred stones, custom of, i. 36

Antelopes, soul of a dead king incarnate in, ii. 163

_Anthesteria_, festival of the dead at Athens, i. 234 _sq._

Antigonus, King, i. 212

Antimachia in Cos, priest of Hercules at, ii. 258

Antioch, destroyed by an earthquake, i. 222 _n._ 1;

festival of Adonis at, 227, 257 _sq._

Antiochus, Greek calendar of, i. 303 _n._ 3

Antwerp, feast of All Souls in, ii. 70

Anubis, Egyptian jackal-headed god, ii. 15, 18 _n._ 3, 22 _n._ 2;

finds the body of Osiris, 85

Apameia, worship of Poseidon at, i. 195

Aphaca in Syria, sanctuary of Astarte at, i. 28, 259;

meteor as signal for festival at, 259

Aphrodite, her sacred doves, i. 33, 147;

sanctuary of, at Paphos, 33 _sqq._;

the month of, 145;

her blood dyes white roses red, 226;

name applied to summer, ii. 41

—— and Adonis, i. 11 _sq._, 29, 280;

their marriage celebrated at Alexandria, 224

—— and Cinyras, i. 48 _sq._

—— and Pygmalion, i. 49 _sq._

—— of the Lebanon, the mourning, i. 29 _sq._

Apinagos Indians of Brazil, their dances and presentation of children to

the moon, ii. 145 _sqq._

Apis, sacred Egyptian bull, ii. 11, 119 _n._;

mourning for the death of, i. 225;

held to be an image of the soul of Osiris, ii. 130

Apollo, the friend of Cinyras, i. 54;

music in the worship of, 54 _sq._;

reputed father of Augustus, 81;

the Catalonian, 147 _n._ 3;

his musical contest with Marsyas, 288;

purified at Tempe, ii. 240

—— and Artemis, their priesthood at Ephesus, ii. 243 _sq._

—— and Marsyas, i. 55

—— at Delphi, sacrifices of Croesus to, i. 180 _n._ 1;

and the Dragon at Delphi, ii. 240

—— of the Golden Sword, i. 176

—— the Four-handed, ii. 250 _n._ 2

Apotheosis by being burnt alive, i. 179 _sq._

Appian, on the costume of a priest of Isis, ii. 85 _n._ 3

Apples forbidden to worshippers of Cybele and Attis, i. 280 _n._ 7

Apuleius, on the worship of Isis, ii. 119 _n._

Arab name for the scarlet anemone, i. 226

Arabic writer on the mourning for Tá-uz (Tammuz) in Harran, i. 230

Arabs resort to the springs of Callirrhoe in Moab, i. 215 _sq._

—— of Moab, their custom at harvest, ii. 48, 96;

their remedies for ailments, 242

Aratus of Sicyon, deemed a son of Aesculapius, i. 81

Araucanian Indians of South America eat fruit of Araucanian pine, i. 278

_n._ 2

Araunah, the threshing-floor of, i. 24

Arcadians sacrifice to thunder and lightning, i. 157

Archigallus, high-priest of Attis, i. 268, 279;

prophesies, 271 _n._

Arctic origin, alleged, of the Aryans, i. 229 _n._ 1

Arenna or Arinna, i. 136 _n._ 1;

the sun-goddess of, 136

Arensdorf, custom at sowing in, i. 239

Argaeus, Mount, in Cappadocia, i. 190 _sq._

Argive brides wore false beards, ii. 260

—— women bewail Adonis, i. 227 _n._

Aristomenes, Messenian hero, his fabulous birth, i. 81

Aristophanes, on the Spartan envoy, i. 196 _n._ 4;

on Hercules as patron of hot springs, 209

Aristotelian philosophy, revival of the, i. 301

Aristotle on the political institutions of Cyprus, i. 49 _n._ 7;

on earthquakes, 211 _n._ 3

_Armengols_, in the Pelew Islands, ii. 265

Armenia, sacred prostitution of girls before marriage in, i. 38, 58

Armenians, their festivals of the dead, ii. 65 _sq._;

their opinion of the baleful influence of the moon on children, 148

Arrian on Attis, i. 282

Artemis at Perga, i. 35;

name given by Greeks to Asiatic Mother Goddesses, 169

—— and Apollo, their priesthood at Ephesus, ii. 243

—— of Ephesus served by eunuch priests, i. 269

—— the Hanged, i. 291

——, Laphrian, at Patrae, i. 126 _n._ 2

——, Perasian, at Castabala, i. 115, 167 _sqq._

——, Sarpedonian, in Cilicia, i. 167, 171

—— Tauropolis, i. 275 _n._ 1

——, the Tauric, human sacrifices to the, i. 115

Artemision, a Greek month, ii. 239 _n._ 1

Arunta of Central Australia, their belief in the reincarnation of the

dead, i. 99, 100

Arval Brethren, their wreaths of corn, i. 44 _n._;

a Roman college of priests, ii. 239

Aryan family, marriage customs of the, ii. 235

Aryans, their alleged Arctic origin, i. 229 _n._ 1;

annual festivals of the dead among the, ii. 67 _sqq._

Aryenis, daughter of Alyattes, i. 133 _n._ 1

Ascalon, the goddess Derceto at, i. 34 _n._ 3

Ascension of Adonis, i. 225

Ashantee, human sacrifices at earthquakes in, i. 201;

kings of, their human sacrifices, ii. 97 _n._ 7

_Asherim_, sacred poles, i. 18, 18 _n._ 2, 107, 108

Ashes of human victims scattered by winnowing-fans, ii. 97, 106

Ashtoreth (Astarte), i. 18 _n._ 2 _See_ Astarte

Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, i. 144;

confused with the legendary Sardanapalus, 173 _sq._;

carries off the bones of the kings of Elam, ii. 103

Ashvin, an Indian month, i. 243

Asia Minor, priestly dynasties of, i. 140 _sq._;

subject to volcanic forces, 190;

subject to earthquakes, 202

Asiatic goddesses of fertility served by eunuch priests, i. 269 _sq._

Asopus, the river, i. 81

“A-souling,” custom of, in England, ii. 79

Aspalis, a form of Artemis, i. 292

Assam, the Khasis of, i. 46, ii. 202 _sqq._;

the Tangkul Nagas of, ii. 57 _sqq._

Assumption of the Virgin and the festival of Diana, i. 308, 309

Assyrian cavalry, i. 25 _n._ 3

Assyrians in Cilicia, i. 173

Astarte at Byblus, i. 13 _sq._;

and the _asherim_, 18;

kings as priests of, 26;

at Paphos, 33 _sqq._;

doves sacred to, 147;

identified with the planet Venus, 258;

of the Syrian Hierapolis served by eunuch priests, 269 _sq._;

called by Lucian the Assyrian Hera, 280 _n._ 5;

the Heavenly Goddess, 303;

the planet Venus her star, ii. 35

—— Aphrodite, i. 304 _n._

Asteria, mother of the Tyrian Hercules (Melcarth), i. 112

Astyages, king of the Medes, i. 133 _n._ 1

_Asvattha_ tree, i. 82

Atargatis, Syrian goddess, i. 34 _n._ 3, 137;

worshipped at Hierapolis-Bambyce, 162 _sq._;

derivation of the name, 162;

her husband-god, 162 _sq._

Ates, a Phrygian, i. 286

Athamas, the dynasty of, i. 287

Athanasius, on the mourning for Osiris, ii. 217

’Atheh, Cilician goddess, i. 162

Athena, temple of, at Salamis in Cyprus, i. 145;

and hot springs, 209, 210

——, Magarsian, a Cilician goddess, i. 169 _n._ 3

—— Sciras, sanctuary of, ii. 238

Athenian boys, race of, at the vintage, ii. 238;

boy carrying an olive-branch in procession, 238

Athenians, their superstition as to an eclipse of the moon, ii. 141

Athens, sacred serpent at, i. 87;

the Commemoration of the Dead at, 234;

sacrifice of an ox at, 296 _sq._;

marriage custom at, ii. 245

Athribis, heart of Osiris at, ii. 11

Athyr, Egyptian month, ii. 8, 41, 49 _n._ 1;

Osiris murdered on the seventeenth day of, 8, 84;

festival of Osiris in the month of, 84 _sqq._, 91

Atonga, tribe of Lake Nyassa, their theory of earthquakes, i. 199

Attica, summer festival of Adonis in, i. 226

Attis, priests of Cybele called, i. 140;

sometimes identified with Adonis, 263;

myth and ritual of, 263 _sqq._;

beloved by Cybele, 263, 282;

legends of his death, 264;

his legend at Pessinus, 264;

his self-mutilation, 264 _sq._;

and the pine-tree, 264, 265, 267, 271, 277 _sq._, 285, ii. 98 _n._ 5;

his eunuch priests, i. 265, 266;

festival of his death and resurrection in March, 267 _sqq._, 272 _sq._,

307 _sq._;

violets sprung from the blood of, 267;

the mourning for, 272;

bath of bull’s blood in the rites of, 274 _sqq._;

mysteries of, 274 _sq._;

as a god of vegetation, 277 _sqq._, 279;

as the Father God, 281 _sqq._;

identified with Zeus, 282;

as a sky-god, 282 _sqq._;

emasculation of, suggested explanation of myth, 283;

his star-spangled cap, 284;

identified with Phrygian moon-god Men Tyrannus, 284;

human representatives of, 285 _sqq._;

title borne by priests of Cybele, 285, 287

——, Adonis, Osiris, their mythical similarity, i. 6, ii. 201

Atys, son of Croesus, his death, i. 286;

early king of Lydia, 286

Aubrey, John, on soul-cakes, ii. 78

Augustine on the effeminate priests of the Great Mother, i. 298;

on the heathen origin of Christmas, 305;

on the discovery of corn by Isis, ii. 116;

on Salacia as the wife of Neptune, 233

Augustodunum (Autun), worship of Cybele at, i. 279

Augustus reputed a son of Apollo, i. 81

Aulus Gellius on the influence of the moon, ii. 132

Aun, or On, King of Sweden, sacrifices his sons to Odin, ii. 220

Aunis, feast of All Souls in, ii. 69 _sq._

Aurelia Aemilia, a sacred harlot, i. 38

Aurohuacas, Indians of Colombia, i. 23 _n._ 2

Aust, E., on the marriage of the Roman gods, ii. 236 _n._ 1

Australia, belief as to the reincarnation of the dead in, i. 99 _sqq._

Australian aborigines, their preparation for marriage, i. 60;

their belief in conception without sexual intercourse, 99 _sqq._;

their cuttings for the dead, 268

Austria, leaping over Midsummer fires in, i. 251

“Awakening of Hercules,” festival at Tyre, i. 111

Awemba, Bantu tribe of Rhodesia, ii. 174;

their worship of ancestral spirits, 175;

their prayers to dead kings before going to war, 191 _sq._

Axe, emblem of Hittite god of thundering sky, i. 134;

as divine emblem, 163;

symbol of Asiatic thunder-god, 183

——, double-headed, symbol of Sandan, i. 127;

carried by Lydian kings, 182;

a palladium of the Heraclid sovereignty, 182;

figured on coins, 183 _n._

Ba-bwende, a tribe of the Congo, i. 271 _n._

Ba-sundi, a tribe of the Congo, i. 271 _n._

Baal, Semitic god, i. 15, 16;

royal names compounded with, 16;

as the god of fertility, 26 _sq._;

conceived as god who fertilizes land by subterranean water, 159

—— and Sandan at Tarsus, i. 142 _sq._, 161

—— of the Lebanon, i. 32

—— of Tarsus, i. 117 _sqq._, 162 _sq._

Baalath or Astarte, i. 26, 34

—— and Baal, i. 27

—— Gebal, i. 14

Baalbec, i. 28;

sacred prostitution at, 37;

image of Hadad at, 163

Baalim, firstlings and first-fruits offered to the, i. 27;

called lovers, 75 _n._

Babylon, early kings of, worshipped as gods, i. 15;

worship of Mylitta at, 36;

religious prostitution at, 58;

human wives of Marduk at, 71;

sanctuary of Serapis at, ii. 119 _n._

Babylonia, worship of Tammuz in, i. 6 _sqq._;

the moon-god took precedence of the sun-god in ancient, ii. 138 _sq._

Babylonian hymns to Tammuz, i. 9

Bacchanals tear Pentheus in pieces, ii. 98

Bacchic orgies suppressed by Roman government, i. 301 _n._ 2

Bacchylides as to Croesus on the pyre, i. 175 _sq._

Backbone of Osiris represented by the _ded_ pillar, ii. 108 _sq._

Baden, feast of All Souls in, ii. 74

Baethgen, F., on goddess ’Hatheh, i. 162 _n._ 2

Baganda, their worship of the python, i. 86;

rebirth of the dead among the, 92 _sq._;

their theory of earthquakes, 199;

their presentation of infants to the new moon, ii. 144, 145;

ceremony observed by the king at new moon, 147;

their worship of dead kings, 167 _sqq._;

their veneration for the ghosts of dead relations, 191 _n._ 1;

their pantheon, 196;

human sacrifices offered to prolong the life of their kings, 223 _sqq._

Bagishu (Bageshu) of Mount Elgon, reincarnation of the dead among the, i.

92

Bagobos of the Philippine Islands, their theory of earthquakes, i. 200;

of Mindanao, their custom of hanging and spearing human victims, 290

_sq._

Baharutsis, a Bantu tribe of South Africa, ii. 179

Bahima, their belief as to dead kings and chiefs, i. 83 _n._ 1

—— of Ankole in Central Africa, their worship of the dead, ii. 190 _sq._;

their belief in a supreme god Lugaba, 190

—— of Kiziba, ii. 173

Baigas, Dravidian tribe of India, their objection to agriculture, i. 89

Bailly, French astronomer, on the Arctic origin of the rites of Adonis, i.

229

Bairu, the, of Kiziba, ii. 173

Baku, on the Caspian, perpetual fires at, i. 192

Balinese, their conduct in an earthquake, i. 198

_Baloi_, witches and wizards, ii. 104

Banana, women impregnated by the flower of the, i. 93

Bangalas of the Congo, rebirth of dead among the, i. 92. _See also_ Boloki

Bantu tribes, their belief in serpents as reincarnations of the dead, i.

82 _sqq._;

their worship of ancestral spirits, ii. 174 _sqq._;

their main practical religion a worship of ancestors, 176 _sqq._;

their worship of the dead, 176 _sqq._, 191 _sqq._

Banyoro, their worship of serpents, i. 86 _n._ 1