(M127) A point to notice about the temporary kings described in the
foregoing chapter is that in two places (Cambodia and Jambi) they come of
a stock which is believed to be akin to the royal family. If the view here
taken of the origin of these temporary kingships is correct, we can easily
understand why the king’s substitute should sometimes be of the same race
as the king. When the king first succeeded in getting the life of another
accepted as a sacrifice instead of his own, he would have to shew that the
death of that other would serve the purpose quite as well as his own would
have done. Now it was as a god or demigod that the king had to die;
therefore the substitute who died for him had to be invested, at least for
the occasion, with the divine attributes of the king. This, as we have
just seen, was certainly the case with the temporary kings of Siam and
Cambodia; they were invested with the supernatural functions, which in an
earlier stage of society were the special attributes of the king. But no
one could so well represent the king in his divine character as his son,
who might be supposed to share the divine afflatus of his father. No one,
therefore, could so appropriately die for the king and, through him, for
the whole people, as the king’s son.
(M128) According to tradition, Aun or On, King of Sweden, sacrificed nine
of his sons to Odin at Upsala in order that his own life might be spared.
After he had sacrificed his second son he received from the god an answer
that he should live so long as he gave him one of his sons every ninth
year. When he had sacrificed his seventh son, he still lived, but was so
feeble that he could not walk but had to be carried in a chair. Then he
offered up his eighth son, and lived nine years more, lying in his bed.
After that he sacrificed his ninth son, and lived another nine years, but
so that he drank out of a horn like a weaned child. He now wished to
sacrifice his only remaining son to Odin, but the Swedes would not allow
him. So he died and was buried in a mound at Upsala. The poet Thiodolf
told the king’s history in verse:—
“In Upsal’s town the cruel king
Slaughtered his sons at Odin’s shrine—
Slaughtered his sons with cruel knife,
To get from Odin length of life.
He lived until he had to turn
His toothless mouth to the deer’s horn;
And he who shed his children’s blood
Sucked through the ox’s horn his food.
At length fell Death has tracked him down,
Slowly but sure, in Upsal’s town.”(427)
(M129) In ancient Greece there seems to have been at least one kingly
house of great antiquity of which the eldest sons were always liable to be
sacrificed in room of their royal sires. When Xerxes was marching through
Thessaly at the head of his mighty host to attack the Spartans at
Thermopylae, he came to the town of Alus. Here he was shewn the sanctuary
of Laphystian Zeus, about which his guides told him a strange tale. It ran
somewhat as follows. Once upon a time the king of the country, by name
Athamas, married a wife Nephele, and had by her a son called Phrixus and a
daughter named Helle. Afterwards he took to himself a second wife called
Ino, by whom he had two sons, Learchus and Melicertes. But his second wife
was jealous of her step-children, Phrixus and Helle, and plotted their
death. She went about very cunningly to compass her bad end. First of all
she persuaded the women of the country to roast the seed corn secretly
before it was committed to the ground. So next year no crops came up and
the people died of famine. Then the king sent messengers to the oracle at
Delphi to enquire the cause of the dearth. But the wicked step-mother
bribed the messenger to give out as the answer of the god that the dearth
would never cease till the children of Athamas by his first wife had been
sacrificed to Zeus. When Athamas heard that, he sent for the children, who
were with the sheep. But a ram with a fleece of gold opened his lips, and
speaking with the voice of a man warned the children of their danger. So
they mounted the ram and fled with him over land and sea. As they flew
over the sea, the girl slipped from the animal’s back, and falling into
water was drowned. But her brother Phrixus was brought safe to the land of
Colchis, where reigned a child of the Sun. Phrixus married the king’s
daughter, and she bore him a son Cytisorus. And there he sacrificed the
ram with the golden fleece to Zeus the God of Flight; but some will have
it that he sacrificed the animal to Laphystian Zeus. The golden fleece
itself he gave to his wife’s father, who nailed it to an oak tree, guarded
by a sleepless dragon in a sacred grove of Ares. Meanwhile at home an
oracle had commanded that King Athamas himself should be sacrificed as an
expiatory offering for the whole country. So the people decked him with
garlands like a victim and led him to the altar, where they were just
about to sacrifice him when he was rescued either by his grandson
Cytisorus, who arrived in the nick of time from Colchis, or by Hercules,
who brought tidings that the king’s son Phrixus was yet alive. Thus
Athamas was saved, but afterwards he went mad, and mistaking his son
Learchus for a wild beast shot him dead. Next he attempted the life of his
remaining son Melicertes, but the child was rescued by his mother Ino, who
ran and threw herself and him from a high rock into the sea. Mother and
son were changed into marine divinities, and the son received special
homage in the isle of Tenedos, where babes were sacrificed to him. Thus
bereft of wife and children the unhappy Athamas quitted his country, and
on enquiring of the oracle where he should dwell was told to take up his
abode wherever he should be entertained by wild beasts. He fell in with a
pack of wolves devouring sheep, and when they saw him they fled and left
him the bleeding remnants of their prey. In this way the oracle was
fulfilled. But because King Athamas had not been sacrificed as a
sin-offering for the whole country, it was divinely decreed that the
eldest male scion of his family in each generation should be sacrificed
without fail, if ever he set foot in the town-hall, where the offerings
were made to Laphystian Zeus by one of the house of Athamas. Many of the
family, Xerxes was informed, had fled to foreign lands to escape this
doom; but some of them had returned long afterwards, and being caught by
the sentinels in the act of entering the town-hall were wreathed as
victims, led forth in procession, and sacrificed.(428) These instances
appear to have been notorious, if not frequent; for the writer of a
dialogue attributed to Plato, after speaking of the immolation of human
victims by the Carthaginians, adds that such practices were not unknown
among the Greeks, and he refers with horror to the sacrifices offered on
Mount Lycaeus and by the descendants of Athamas.(429)
(M130) The suspicion that this barbarous custom by no means fell into
disuse even in later days is strengthened by a case of human sacrifice
which occurred in Plutarch’s time at Orchomenus, a very ancient city of
Boeotia, distant only a few miles across the plain from the historian’s
birthplace. Here dwelt a family of which the men went by the name of
Psoloeis or “Sooty,” and the women by the name of Oleae or “Destructive.”
Every year at the festival of the Agrionia the priest of Dionysus pursued
these women with a drawn sword, and if he overtook one of them he had the
right to slay her. In Plutarch’s lifetime the right was actually exercised
by a priest Zoilus. Now the family thus liable to furnish at least one
human victim every year was of royal descent, for they traced their
lineage to Minyas, the famous old king of Orchomenus, the monarch of
fabulous wealth, whose stately treasury, as it is called, still stands in
ruins at the point where the long rocky hill of Orchomenus melts into the
vast level expanse of the Copaic plain. Tradition ran that the king’s
three daughters long despised the other women of the country for yielding
to the Bacchic frenzy, and sat at home in the king’s house scornfully
plying the distaff and the loom, while the rest, wreathed with flowers,
their dishevelled locks streaming to the wind, roamed in ecstasy the
barren mountains that rise above Orchomenus, making the solitude of the
hills to echo to the wild music of cymbals and tambourines. But in time
the divine fury infected even the royal damsels in their quiet chamber;
they were seized with a fierce longing to partake of human flesh, and cast
lots among themselves which should give up her child to furnish a cannibal
feast. The lot fell on Leucippe, and she surrendered her son Hippasus, who
was torn limb from limb by the three. From these misguided women sprang
the Oleae and the Psoloeis, of whom the men were said to be so called
because they wore sad-coloured raiment in token of their mourning and
grief.(430)
(M131) Now this practice of taking human victims from a family of royal
descent at Orchomenus is all the more significant because Athamas himself
is said to have reigned in the land of Orchomenus even before the time of
Minyas, and because over against the city there rises Mount Laphystius, on
which, as at Alus in Thessaly, there was a sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus,
where, according to tradition, Athamas purposed to sacrifice his two
children Phrixus and Helle.(431) On the whole, comparing the traditions
about Athamas with the custom that obtained with regard to his descendants
in historical times, we may fairly infer that in Thessaly and probably in
Boeotia there reigned of old a dynasty of which the kings were liable to
be sacrificed for the good of the country to the god called Laphystian
Zeus, but that they contrived to shift the fatal responsibility to their
offspring, of whom the eldest son was regularly destined to the altar. As
time went on, the cruel custom was so far mitigated that a ram was
accepted as a vicarious sacrifice in room of the royal victim, provided
always that the prince abstained from setting foot in the town-hall where
the sacrifices were offered to Laphystian Zeus by one of his kinsmen.(432)
But if he were rash enough to enter the place of doom, to thrust himself
wilfully, as it were, on the notice of the god who had good-naturedly
winked at the substitution of a ram, the ancient obligation which had been
suffered to lie in abeyance recovered all its force, and there was no help
for it but he must die. The tradition which associated the sacrifice of
the king or his children with a great dearth points clearly to the belief,
so common among primitive folk, that the king is responsible for the
weather and the crops, and that he may justly pay with his life for the
inclemency of the one or the failure of the other. Athamas and his line,
in short, appear to have united divine or magical with royal functions;
and this view is strongly supported by the claims to divinity which
Salmoneus, the brother of Athamas, is said to have set up. We have seen
that this presumptuous mortal professed to be no other than Zeus himself,
and to wield the thunder and lightning, of which he made a trumpery
imitation by the help of tinkling kettles and blazing torches.(433) If we
may judge from analogy, his mock thunder and lightning were no mere scenic
exhibition designed to deceive and impress the beholders; they were
enchantments practised by the royal magician for the purpose of bringing
about the celestial phenomena which they feebly mimicked.(434)
(M132) Among the Semites of Western Asia the king, in a time of national
danger, sometimes gave his own son to die as a sacrifice for the people.
Thus Philo of Byblus, in his work on the Jews, says: “It was an ancient
custom in a crisis of great danger that the ruler of a city or nation
should give his beloved son to die for the whole people, as a ransom
offered to the avenging demons; and the children thus offered were slain
with mystic rites. So Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call Israel, being king
of the land and having an only-begotten son called Jeoud (for in the
Phoenician tongue Jeoud signifies ‘only-begotten’), dressed him in royal
robes and sacrificed him upon an altar in a time of war, when the country
was in great danger from the enemy.”(435) When the king of Moab was
besieged by the Israelites and hard beset, he took his eldest son, who
should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering on
the wall.(436)
But amongst the Semites the practice of sacrificing their children was not
confined to kings.(437) In times of great calamity, such as pestilence,
drought, or defeat in war, the Phoenicians used to sacrifice one of their
dearest to Baal. “Phoenician history,” says an ancient writer, “is full of
such sacrifices.”(438) The writer of a dialogue ascribed to Plato observes
that the Carthaginians immolated human beings as if it were right and
lawful to do so, and some of them, he adds, even sacrificed their own sons
to Baal.(439) When Gelo, tyrant of Syracuse, defeated the Carthaginians in
the great battle of Himera he required as a condition of peace that they
should sacrifice their children to Baal no longer.(440) But the barbarous
custom was too inveterate and too agreeable to Semitic modes of thought to
be so easily eradicated, and the humane stipulation of the Greek despot
probably remained a dead letter. At all events the history of this
remarkable people, who combined in so high a degree the spirit of
commercial enterprise with a blind attachment to a stern and gloomy
religion, is stained in later times with instances of the same cruel
superstition. When the Carthaginians were defeated and besieged by
Agathocles, they ascribed their disasters to the wrath of Baal; for
whereas in former times they had been wont to sacrifice to him their own
offspring, they had latterly fallen into the habit of buying children and
rearing them to be victims. So, to appease the angry god, two hundred
children of the noblest families were picked out for sacrifice, and the
tale of victims was swelled by not less than three hundred more who
volunteered to die for the fatherland. They were sacrificed by being
placed, one by one, on the sloping hands of the brazen image, from which
they rolled into a pit of fire.(441) Childless people among the
Carthaginians bought children from poor parents and slaughtered them, says
Plutarch, as if they were lambs or chickens; and the mother had to stand
by and see it done without a tear or a groan, for if she wept or moaned
she lost all the credit and the child was sacrificed none the less. But
all the place in front of the image was filled with a tumultuous music of
fifes and drums to drown the shrieks of the victims.(442) Infants were
publicly sacrificed by the Carthaginians down to the proconsulate of
Tiberius, who crucified the priests on the trees beside their temples. Yet
the practice still went on secretly in the lifetime of Tertullian.(443)
(M133) Among the Canaanites or aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine, whom
the invading Israelites conquered but did not exterminate, the grisly
custom of burning their children in honour of Baal or Moloch seems to have
been regularly practised.(444) To the best representatives of the Hebrew
people, the authors of their noble literature, such rites were abhorrent,
and they warned their fellow-countrymen against participating in them.
“When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou
shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall
not be found with thee any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass
through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury,
or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a
familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these
things is an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations
the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”(445) Again we
read: “And thou shalt not give any of thy seed to pass through the fire to
Molech.”(446) Whatever effect these warnings may have had in the earlier
days of Israelitish history, there is abundant evidence that in later
times the Hebrews lapsed, or rather perhaps relapsed, into that congenial
mire of superstition from which the higher spirits of the nation
struggled—too often in vain—to rescue them. The Psalmist laments that his
erring countrymen “mingled themselves with the nations, and learned their
works: and they served their idols; which became a snare unto them: yea,
they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons, and shed
innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom
they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with
blood.”(447) When the Hebrew annalist has recorded how Shalmaneser, king
of Assyria, besieged Samaria for three years and took it and carried
Israel away into captivity, he explains that this was a divine punishment
inflicted on his people for having fallen in with the evil ways of the
Canaanites. They had built high places in all their cities, and set up
pillars and sacred poles (_asherim_) upon every high hill and under every
green tree; and there they burnt incense after the manner of the heathen.
“And they forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made
them molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshipped
all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and
their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and
enchantments.”(448) At Jerusalem in these days there was a regularly
appointed place where parents burned their children, both boys and girls,
in honour of Baal or Moloch. It was in the valley of Hinnom, just outside
the walls of the city, and bore the name, infamous ever since, of Tophet.
The practice is referred to again and again with sorrowful indignation by
the prophets.(449) The kings of Judah set an example to their people by
burning their own children at the usual place. Thus of Ahaz, who reigned
sixteen years at Jerusalem, we are told that “he burnt incense in the
valley of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire.”(450) Again, King
Manasseh, whose long reign covered fifty-five years, “made his children to
pass through the fire in the valley of Hinnom.”(451) Afterwards in the
reign of the good king Josiah the idolatrous excesses of the people were
repressed, at least for a time, and among other measures of reform Tophet
was defiled by the King’s orders, “that no man might make his son or his
daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.”(452) Whether the place was
ever used again for the same dark purpose as before does not appear. Long
afterwards, under the sway of a milder faith, there was little in the
valley to recall the tragic scenes which it had so often witnessed. Jerome
describes it as a pleasant and shady spot, watered by the rills of Siloam
and laid out in delightful gardens.(453)
(M134) It would be interesting, though it might be fruitless, to enquire
how far the Hebrew prophets and psalmists were right in their opinion that
the Israelites learned these and other gloomy superstitions only through
contact with the old inhabitants of the land, that the primitive purity of
faith and morals which they brought with them from the free air of the
desert was tainted and polluted by the grossness and corruption of the
heathen in the fat land of Canaan. When we remember, however, that the
Israelites were of the same Semitic stock as the population they conquered
and professed to despise,(454) and that the practice of human sacrifice is
attested for many branches of the Semitic race, we shall, perhaps, incline
to surmise that the chosen people may have brought with them into
Palestine the seeds which afterwards sprang up and bore such ghastly fruit
in the valley of Hinnom. It is at least significant of the prevalence of
such customs among the Semites that no sooner were the native
child-burning Israelites carried off by King Shalmaneser to Assyria than
their place was taken by colonists who practised precisely the same rites
in honour of deities who probably differed in little but name from those
revered by the idolatrous Hebrews. “The Sepharvites,” we are told, “burnt
their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of
Sepharvaim.”(455) The pious Jewish historian, who saw in Israel’s exile
God’s punishment for sin, has suggested no explanation of that mystery in
the divine economy which suffered the Sepharvites to continue on the same
spot the very same abominations for which the erring Hebrews had just been
so signally chastised.
(M135) We have still to ask which of their children the Semites picked out
for sacrifice; for that a choice was made and some principle of selection
followed, may be taken for granted. A people who burned all their children
indiscriminately would soon extinguish themselves, and such an excess of
piety is probably rare, if not unknown. In point of fact it seems, at
least among the Hebrews, to have been only the firstborn child that was
doomed to the flames. The prophet Micah asks, in a familiar passage,
“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high
God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year
old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten
thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” These were
the questions which pious and doubting hearts were putting to themselves
in the days of the prophet. The prophet’s own answer is not doubtful. “He
hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of
thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?”(456) It is a noble answer and one which only elect spirits in that
or, perhaps, in any age have given. In Israel the vulgar answer was given
on bloody altars and in the smoke and flames of Tophet, and the form in
which the prophet’s question is cast—“Shall I give my firstborn for my
transgression?”—shews plainly on which of the children the duty of atoning
for the sins of their father was supposed to fall. A passage in Ezekiel
points no less clearly to the same conclusion. The prophet represents God
as saying, “I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments wherein
they should not live; and I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they
caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might
make them desolate.” That the writer was here thinking specially of the
sacrifice of children is proved by his own words a little later on. “When
ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, do
ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, unto this day?”(457) Further,
that by the words “to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb” he
referred only to the firstborn can easily be shewn by the language of
Scripture in reference to that law of the consecration of firstlings which
Ezekiel undoubtedly had in his mind when he wrote this passage. Thus we
find that law enunciated in the following terms: “And the Lord spake unto
Moses, saying, Sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the
womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is
mine.”(458) Again, it is written: “Thou shalt set apart unto the Lord all
that openeth the womb, and every firstling which thou hast that cometh of
a beast; the males shall be the Lord’s.”(459) Once more: “All that openeth
the womb is mine; and all thy cattle that is male, the firstlings of ox
and sheep.”(460) This ancient Hebrew custom of the consecration to God of
all male firstlings, whether of man or beast, was merely the application
to the animal kingdom of the law that all first fruits whatsoever belong
to the deity and must be made over to him or his representatives. That
general law is thus stated by the Hebrew legislator: “Thou shalt not delay
to offer of the abundance of thy fruits, and of thy liquors. The firstborn
of thy sons shalt thou give unto me. Likewise shalt thou do with thine
oxen, and with thy sheep: seven days it shall be with its dam; and on the
eighth day thou shalt give it me.”(461)
(M136) Thus the god of the Hebrews plainly regarded the first-born of men
and the firstlings of animals as his own, and required that they should be
made over to him. But how? Here a distinction was drawn between sheep,
oxen, and goats on the one hand and men and asses on the other; the
firstlings of the former were always sacrificed, the firstlings of the
latter were generally redeemed. “The firstling of an ox, or the firstling
of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou shalt not redeem; they are
holy: thou shalt sprinkle their blood upon the altar, and shalt burn their
fat for an offering made by fire for a sweet savour unto the Lord.” The
flesh went to the Levites,(462) who consumed it, no doubt, instead of the
deity whom they represented. On the other hand, the ass was not sacrificed
by the Israelites, probably because they did not eat the animal
themselves, and hence concluded that God did not do so either. In the
matter of diet the taste of gods generally presents a striking resemblance
to that of their worshippers. Still the firstling ass, like all other
firstlings, was sacred to the deity, and since it was not sacrificed to
him, he had to receive an equivalent for it. In other words, the ass had
to be redeemed, and the price of the redemption was a lamb which was burnt
as a vicarious sacrifice instead of the ass, on the hypothesis,
apparently, that roast lamb is likely to be more palatable to the Supreme
Being than roast donkey. If the ass was not redeemed, it had to be killed
by having its neck broken.(463) The firstlings of other unclean animals
and of men were redeemed for five shekels a head, which were paid to the
Levites.(464)
(M137) We can now readily understand why so many of the Hebrews, at least
in the later days of their history, sacrificed their firstborn children,
and why tender-hearted parents, whose affection for their offspring
exceeded their devotion to the deity, may often have been visited with
compunction, and even tormented with feelings of bitter self-reproach and
shame at their carnal weakness in suffering the beloved son to live, when
they saw others, with an heroic piety which they could not emulate, calmly
resigning their dear ones to the fire, through which, as they firmly
believed, they passed to God, to reap, perhaps, in endless bliss in heaven
the reward of their sharp but transient sufferings on earth. From infancy
they had been bred up in the belief that the firstborn was sacred to God,
and though they knew that he had waived his right to them in consideration
of the receipt of five shekels a head, they could, hardly view this as
anything but an act of gracious condescension, of generous liberality on
the part of the divinity who had stooped to accept so trifling a sum
instead of the life which really belonged to him. “Surely,” they might
argue, “God would be better pleased if we were to give him not the money
but the life, not the poor paltry shekels, but what we value most, our
first and best-loved child. If we hold that life so dear, will not he
also? It is his. Why should we not give him his own?” It was in answer to
anxious questions such as these, and to quite truly conscientious scruples
of this sort that the prophet Micah declared that what God required of his
true worshippers was not sacrifice but justice and mercy and humility. It
is the answer of morality to religion—of the growing consciousness that
man’s duty is not to propitiate with vain oblations those mysterious
powers of the universe of which he can know little or nothing, but to be
just and merciful in his dealings with his fellows and to humbly trust,
though he cannot know, that by acting thus he will best please the higher
powers, whatever they may be.
(M138) But while morality ranges itself on the side of the prophet, it may
be questioned whether history and precedent were not on the side of his
adversaries. If the firstborn of men and cattle were alike sacred to God,
and the firstborn of cattle were regularly sacrificed, while the firstborn
of men were ransomed by a money payment, has not this last provision the
appearance of being a later mitigation of an older and harsher custom
which doomed firstborn children, like firstling lambs and calves and
goats, to the altar or the fire? The suspicion is greatly strengthened by
the remarkable tradition told to account for the sanctity of the
firstborn. When Israel was in bondage in Egypt, so runs the tradition, God
resolved to deliver them from captivity, and to lead them to the Promised
Land. But the Egyptians were loth to part with their bondmen and thwarted
the divine purpose by refusing to let the Israelites go. Accordingly God
afflicted these cruel taskmasters with one plague after another, but all
in vain, until at last he made up his mind to resort to a strong measure,
which would surely have the desired effect. At dead of night he would pass
through the land killing all the firstborn of the Egyptians, both man and
beast; not one of them would be left alive in the morning. But the
Israelites were warned of what was about to happen and told to keep
indoors that night, and to put a mark on their houses, so that when he
passed down the street on his errand of slaughter, God might know them at
sight from the houses of the Egyptians and not turn in and massacre the
wrong children and animals. The mark was to be the blood of a lamb smeared
on the lintel and side posts of the door. In every house the lamb, whose
red blood was to be the badge of Israel that night, as the white scarves
were the badge of the Catholics on the night of St. Bartholomew, was to be
killed at evening and eaten by the household, with very peculiar rites,
during the hours of darkness while the butchery was proceeding: none of
the flesh was to see the morning light: whatever the family could not eat
was to be burned with fire. All this was done. The massacre of Egyptian
children and animals was successfully perpetrated and had the desired
effect; and to commemorate this great triumph God ordained that all the
firstborn of man and beast among the Israelites should be sacred to him
ever afterwards in the manner already described, the edible animals to be
sacrificed, and the uneatable, especially men and asses, to be ransomed by
a substitute or by a pecuniary payment of so much a head. And a festival
was to be celebrated every spring with rites exactly like those which were
observed on the night of the great slaughter. The divine command was
obeyed, and the festival thus instituted was the Passover.(465)
(M139) The one thing that looms clear through the haze of this weird
tradition is the memory of a great massacre of firstborn. This was the
origin, we are told, both of the sanctity of the firstborn and of the
feast of the Passover. But when we are further told that the people whose
firstborn were slaughtered on that occasion were not the Hebrews but their
enemies, we are at once met by serious difficulties. Why, we may ask,
should the Israelites kill the firstlings of their cattle for ever because
God once killed those of the Egyptians? and why should every Hebrew father
have to pay God a ransom for his firstborn child because God once slew all
the firstborn children of the Egyptians? In this form the tradition offers
no intelligible explanation of the custom. But it at once becomes clear
and intelligible when we assume that in the original version of the story
it was the Hebrew firstborn that were slain; that in fact the slaughter of
the firstborn children was formerly, what the slaughter of the firstborn
cattle always continued to be, not an isolated butchery but a regular
custom, which with the growth of more humane sentiments was afterwards
softened into the vicarious sacrifice of a lamb and the payment of a
ransom for each child. Here the reader may be reminded of another Hebrew
tradition in which the sacrifice of the firstborn child is indicated still
more clearly. Abraham, we are informed, was commanded by God to offer up
his firstborn son Isaac as a burnt sacrifice, and was on the point of
obeying the divine command, when God, content with this proof of his faith
and obedience, substituted for the human victim a ram, which Abraham
accordingly sacrificed instead of his son.(466) Putting the two traditions
together and observing how exactly they dovetail into each other and into
the later Hebrew practice of actually sacrificing the firstborn children
by fire to Baal or Moloch, we can hardly resist the conclusion that,
before the practice of redeeming them was introduced, the Hebrews, like
the other branches of the Semitic race, regularly sacrificed their
firstborn children by the fire or the knife. The Passover, if this view is
right, was the occasion when the awful sacrifice was offered; and the
tradition of its origin has preserved in its main outlines a vivid memory
of the horrors of these fearful nights. They must have been like the
nights called Evil on the west coast of Africa, when the people kept
indoors, because the executioners were going about the streets and the
heads of the human victims were falling in the king’s palace.(467) But
seen in the lurid light of superstition or of legend they were no common
mortals, no vulgar executioners, who did the dreadful work at the first
Passover. The Angel of Death was abroad that night; into every house he
entered, and a sound of lamentation followed him as he came forth with his
dripping sword. The blood that bespattered the lintel and door-posts would
at first be the blood of the firstborn child of the house; and when the
blood of a lamb was afterwards substituted, we may suppose that it was
intended not so much to appease as to cheat the ghastly visitant. Seeing
the red drops in the doorway he would say to himself, “That is the blood
of their child. I need not turn in there. I have many yet to slay before
the morning breaks grey in the east.” And he would pass on in haste. And
the trembling parents, as they clasped their little one to their breast,
might fancy that they heard his footfalls growing fainter and fainter down
the street. In plain words, we may surmise that the slaughter was
originally done by masked men, like the Mumbo Jumbos and similar figures
of west Africa, who went from house to house and were believed by the
uninitiated to be the deity or his divine messengers come in person to
carry off the victims. When the leaders had decided to allow the sacrifice
of animals instead of children, they would give the people a hint that if
they only killed a lamb and smeared its blood on the door-posts, the
bloodthirsty but near-sighted deity would never know the difference.
(M140) The attempt to outwit a malignant and dangerous spirit is common,
and might be illustrated by many examples. Some instances will be noticed
in a later part of this work. Here a single one may suffice. The Malays
believe in a Spectral Huntsman, who ranges the forest with a pack of
ghostly dogs, and whose apparition bodes sickness or death. Certain birds
which fly in flocks by night uttering a loud and peculiar note are
supposed to follow in his train. Hence when Perak peasants hear the weird
sound, they run out and make a clatter with a knife on a wooden platter,
crying, “Great-grandfather, bring us their hearts!” The Spectral Huntsman,
hearing these words, will take the supplicants for followers of his own
asking to share his bag. So he will spare the household and pass on, and
the tumult of the wild hunt will die away in the darkness and the
distance.(468)
(M141) If this be indeed the origin of the Passover and of the sanctity of
the firstborn among the Hebrews, the whole of the Semitic evidence on the
subject is seen to fall into line at once. The children whom the
Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Canaanites, Moabites, Sepharvites, and
probably other branches of the Semitic race burnt in the fire would be
their firstborn only, although in general ancient writers have failed to
indicate this limitation of the custom. For the Moabites, indeed, the
limitation is clearly indicated, if not expressly stated, when we read
that the king of Moab offered his eldest son, who should have reigned
after him, as a burnt sacrifice on the wall.(469) For the Phoenicians it
comes out less distinctly in the statement of Porphyry that the
Phoenicians used to sacrifice one of their dearest to Baal, and in the
legend recorded by Philo of Byblus that Cronus sacrificed his
only-begotten son.(470) We may suppose that the custom of sacrificing the
firstborn both of men and animals was a very ancient Semitic institution,
which many branches of the race kept up within historical times; but that
the Hebrews, while they maintained the custom in regard to domestic
cattle, were led by their loftier morality to discard it in respect of
children, and to replace it by a merciful law that firstborn children
should be ransomed instead of sacrificed.(471)
(M142) The conclusion that the Hebrew custom of redeeming the firstborn is
a modification of an older custom of sacrificing them has been mentioned
by some very distinguished scholars only to be rejected on the ground,
apparently, of its extreme improbability.(472) To me the converging lines
of evidence which point to this conclusion seem too numerous and too
distinct to be thus lightly brushed aside. And the argument from
improbability can easily be rebutted by pointing to other peoples who are
known to have practised or to be still practising a custom of the same
sort. In some tribes of New South Wales the firstborn child of every woman
was eaten by the tribe as part of a religious ceremony.(473) Among the
aborigines on the lower portions of the Paroo and Warrego rivers, which
join the Darling River in New South Wales, girls used to become wives when
they were mere children and to be mothers at fourteen, and the old custom
was to kill the firstborn child by strangulation.(474) Again, among the
tribes about Maryborough in Queensland a girl’s first child was almost
always exposed and left to perish.(475) In the tribes about Beltana, in
South Australia, girls were married at fourteen, and it was customary to
destroy their firstborn.(476) The natives of Rook, an island off the east
coast of New Guinea, used to kill all their firstborn children; they
prided themselves on their humanity in burying the murdered infants
instead of eating them as their barbarous neighbours did. They spared the
second child but killed the third, and so on alternately with the rest of
their offspring.(477) Chinese history reports that in a state called
Khai-muh, to the east of Yueh, it was customary to devour the firstborn
sons,(478) and further, that to the west of Kiao-chi or Tonquin “there was
a realm of man-eaters, where the firstborn son was, as a rule, chopped
into pieces and eaten, and his younger brothers were nevertheless regarded
to have fulfilled their fraternal duties towards him. And if he proved to
be appetizing food, they sent some of his flesh to their chieftains, who,
exhilarated, gave the father a reward.”(479) In India, down to the
beginning of the nineteenth century, the custom of sacrificing a firstborn
child to the Ganges was common.(480) Again, we are told that among the
Hindoos “the firstborn has always held a peculiarly sacred position,
especially if born in answer to a vow to parents who have long been
without offspring, in which case sacrifice of the child was common in
India. The Mairs used to sacrifice a firstborn son to Mata, the small-pox
goddess.”(481)
(M143) The Borans, on the southern borders of Abyssinia, propitiate a
sky-spirit called Wak by sacrificing their children and cattle to him.
Among them when a man of any standing marries, he becomes a Raba, as it is
called, and for a certain period after marriage, probably four to eight
years, he must leave any children that are born to him to die in the bush.
No Boran cares to contemplate the fearful calamities with which Wak would
visit him if he failed to discharge this duty. After he ceases to be a
Raba, a man is circumcised and becomes a Gudda. The sky-spirit has no
claim on the children born after their father’s circumcision, but they are
sent away at a very early age to be reared by the Wata, a low caste of
hunters. They remain with these people till they are grown up, and then
return to their families.(482) In this remarkable custom it would appear
that the circumcision of the father is regarded as an atoning sacrifice
which redeems the rest of his children from the spirit to whom they would
otherwise belong. The obscure story told by the Israelites to explain the
origin of circumcision seems also to suggest that the custom was supposed
to save the life of the child by giving the deity a substitute for
it.(483) Again, the Kerre, Banna, and Bashada, three tribes in the valley
of the Omo River, to the south of Abyssinia, are in the habit of
strangling their firstborn children and throwing the bodies away. The
Kerre cast the bodies into the river Omo, where they are devoured by
crocodiles; the other two tribes leave them in the forest to be eaten by
the hyaenas. The only explanation they give of the custom is that it was
decreed by their ancestors. Captain C. H. Stigand enquired into the
practice very carefully and was told that “for a certain number of years
after marriage children would be thrown away, and after that they would be
kept. The number of the first children who were strangled, and the period
of years during which this was done, appears to be variable, but I could
not understand what regulated it. There was one point, however, about
which they were certain, and that was that the first-born of all, rich,
poor, high and low, had to be strangled and thrown away. The chief of the
Kerre said, ‘If I had a child now, it would have to be thrown away,’
laughing as if it were a great joke. What amused him really was that I
should be so interested in their custom.” So far as Captain Stigand could
ascertain, there is no idea of sacrificing the children to the crocodiles
by throwing them into the river. If a Kerre man has a first child born to
him while he is on a journey away from the river, he will throw the infant
away in the forest.(484) In Uganda if the firstborn child of a chief or
any important person is a son, the midwife strangles it and reports that
the infant was still-born. “This is done to ensure the life of the father;
if he has a son born first he will soon die, and the child inherit all he
has.”(485) Amongst the people of Senjero in eastern Africa we are told
that many families must offer up their firstborn sons as sacrifices,
because once upon a time, when summer and winter were jumbled together in
a bad season, and the fruits of the earth would not ripen, the soothsayers
enjoined it. At that time a great pillar of iron is said to have stood at
the entrance of the capital, which in accordance with the advice of the
soothsayers was broken down by order of the king, whereupon the seasons
became regular again. To avert the recurrence of such a calamity the
wizards commanded the king to pour human blood once a year on the base of
the broken shaft of the pillar, and also upon the throne. Since then
certain families have been obliged to deliver up their firstborn sons, who
were sacrificed at an appointed time.(486) Among some tribes of
south-eastern Africa there is a rule that when a woman’s husband has been
killed in battle and she marries again, the first child she gives birth to
after her second marriage must be put to death, whether she has it by her
first or her second husband. Such a child is called “the child of the
assegai,” and if it were not killed, death or an accident would be sure to
befall the second spouse, and the woman herself would be barren. The
notion is that the woman must have had some share in the misfortune that
overtook her first husband, and that the only way of removing the malign
influence is to slay “the child of the assegai.”(487)
(M144) The heathen Russians often sacrificed their firstborn to the god
Perun.(488) It is said that on Mag Slacht or “plain of prostrations,” near
the present village of Ballymagauran, in the County Cavan, there used to
stand a great idol called Cromm Cruach, covered with gold, to which the
ancient Irish sacrificed “the firstlings of every issue and the chief
scions of every clan” in order to obtain plenty of corn, honey, and milk.
Round about the golden image, which was spoken of as the king idol of
Erin, stood twelve other idols of stone.(489) The Kutonaqa Indians of
British Columbia worship the sun and sacrifice their firstborn children to
him. When a woman is with child she prays to the sun, saying, “I am with
child. When it is born I shall offer it to you. Have pity upon us.” Thus
they expect to secure health and good fortune for their families.(490)
Among the Coast Salish Indians of the same region the first child is often
sacrificed to the sun in order to ensure the health and prosperity of the
whole family.(491) The Indians of Florida sacrificed their firstborn male
children.(492) Among the Indians of north Carolina down to the early part
of the eighteenth century a remarkable ceremony was performed, which seems
to be most naturally interpreted as a modification of an older custom of
putting the king’s son to death, perhaps as a substitute for his father.
It is thus described by a writer of that period: “They have a strange
custom or ceremony amongst them, to call to mind the persecutions and
death of the kings their ancestors slain by their enemies at certain
seasons, and particularly when the savages have been at war with any
nation, and return from their country without bringing home some prisoners
of war, or the heads of their enemies. The king causes as a perpetual
remembrance of all his predecessors to beat and wound the best beloved of
all his children with the same weapons wherewith they had been kill’d in
former times, to the end that by renewing the wound, their death should be
lamented afresh. The king and his nation being assembled on these
occasions, a feast is prepared, and the Indian who is authorised to wound
the king’s son, runs about the house like a distracted person crying and
making a most hideous noise all the time with the weapon in his hand,
wherewith he wounds the king’s son; this he performs three several times,
during which interval he presents the king with victuals or _cassena_, and
it is very strange to see the Indian that is thus struck never offers to
stir till he is wounded the third time, after which he falls down
backwards stretching out his arms and legs as if he had been ready to
expire; then the rest of the king’s sons and daughters, together with the
mother and vast numbers of women and girls, fall at his feet and lament
and cry most bitterly. During this time the king and his retinue are
feasting, yet with such profound silence for some hours, that not one word
or even a whisper is to be heard amongst them. After this manner they
continue till night, which ends in singing, dancing, and the greatest joy
imaginable.”(493) In this account the description of the frantic manner
assumed by the person whose duty it was to wound the king’s son reminds us
of the frenzy of King Athamas when he took or attempted the lives of his
children.(494) The same feature is said to have characterised the
sacrifice of children in Peru. “When any person of note was sick and the
priest said he must die, they sacrificed his son, desiring the idol to be
satisfied with him and not to take away his father’s life. The ceremonies
used at these sacrifices were strange, for they behaved themselves like
mad men. They believed that all calamities were occasioned by sin, and
that sacrifices were the remedy.”(495) An early Spanish historian of the
conquest of Peru, in describing the Indians of the Peruvian valleys
between San-Miguel and Caxamalca, records that “they have disgusting
sacrifices and temples of idols which they hold in great veneration; they
offer them their most precious possessions. Every month they sacrifice
their own children and smear with the blood of the victims the face of the
idols and the doors of the temples.”(496) In Puruha, a province of Quito,
it used to be customary to sacrifice the firstborn children to the gods.
Their remains were dried, enclosed in vessels of metal or stone, and kept
in the houses.(497) The Ximanas and Cauxanas, two Indian tribes in the
upper valley of the Amazon, kill all their firstborn children.(498) If the
firstborn is a girl, the Lengua Indians invariably put it to death.(499)
(M145) Among the ancient Italian peoples, especially of the Sabine stock,
it was customary in seasons of great peril or public calamity, as when the
crops had failed or a pestilence was raging, to vow that they would
sacrifice to the gods every creature, whether man or beast, that should be
born in the following spring. To the creatures thus devoted to sacrifice
the name of “the sacred spring” was applied. “But since,” says Festus, “it
seemed cruel to slay innocent boys and girls, they were kept till they had
grown up, then veiled and driven beyond the boundaries.”(500) Several
Italian peoples, for example the Piceni, Samnites, and Hirpini, traced
their origin to a “sacred spring,” that is, to the consecrated youth who
had swarmed off from the parent stock in consequence of such a vow.(501)
When the Romans were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Hannibal
after their great defeat at the Trasimene Lake, they vowed to offer a
“sacred spring” if victory should attend their arms and the commonwealth
should retrieve its shattered fortunes. But the vow extended only to all
the offspring of sheep, goats, oxen, and swine that should be brought
forth on Italian mountains, plains, and meadows the following spring.(502)
On a later occasion, when the Romans pledged themselves again by a similar
vow, it was decided that by the “sacred spring” should be meant all the
cattle born between the first day of March and the last day of April.(503)
Although in later times the Italian peoples appear to have resorted to
measures of this sort only in special emergencies, there was a tradition
that in former times the consecration of the firstborn to the gods had
been an annual custom.(504) Accordingly, it seems not impossible that
originally the Italians may, like the Hebrews and perhaps the Semites in
general, have been in the habit of dedicating all the firstborn, whether
of man or beast, and sacrificing them at a great festival in spring.(505)
The custom of the “sacred spring” was not confined to the Italians, but
was practised by many other peoples, both Greeks and barbarians, in
antiquity.(506)
(M146) Thus it would seem that a custom of putting to death all firstborn
children has prevailed in many parts of the world. What was the motive
which led people to practise a custom which to us seems at once so cruel
and so foolish? It cannot have been the purely prudential consideration of
adjusting the numbers of the tribe to the amount of the food-supply; for,
in the first place, savages do not take such thought for the morrow,(507)
and, in the second place, if they did, they would be likely to kill the
later born children rather than the firstborn. The foregoing evidence
suggests that the custom may have been practised by different peoples from
different motives. With the Semites, the Italians, and their near kinsmen
the Irish the sacrifice or at least the consecration of the firstborn
seems to have been viewed as a tribute paid to the gods, who were thus
content to receive a part though they might justly have claimed the whole.
In some cases the death of the child appears to be definitely regarded as
a substitute for the death of the father, who obtains a new lease of life
by the sacrifice of his offspring. This comes out clearly in the tradition
of Aun, King of Sweden, who sacrificed one of his sons every nine years to
Odin in order to prolong his own life.(508) And in Peru also the son died
that the father might live.(509) But in some cases it would seem that the
child has been killed, not so much as a substitute for the father, as
because it is supposed to endanger his life by absorbing his spiritual
essence or vital energy. In fact, a belief in the transmigration or
rebirth of souls has operated to produce a regular custom of infanticide,
especially infanticide of the firstborn. At Whydah, on the Slave coast of
West Africa, where the doctrine of reincarnation is firmly held, it has
happened that a child has been put to death because the fetish doctors
declared it to be the king’s father come to life again. The king naturally
could not submit to be pushed from the throne by his predecessor in this
fashion; so he compelled his supposed parent to return to the world of the
dead from which he had very inopportunely effected his escape.(510) The
Hindoos are of opinion that a man is literally reborn in the person of his
son. Thus in the _Laws of Manu_ we read that “the husband, after
conception by his wife, becomes an embryo and is born again of her; for
that is the wifehood of a wife, that he is born again by her.”(511) Hence
after the birth of a son the father is clearly in a very delicate
position. Since he is his own son, can he himself, apart from his son, be
said to exist? Does he not rather die in his own person as soon as he
comes to life in the person of his son? This appears to be the opinion of
the subtle Hindoo, for in some sections of the Khatris, a mercantile caste
of the Punjaub, funeral rites are actually performed for the father in the
fifth month of his wife’s pregnancy. But apparently he is allowed, by a
sort of legal fiction, to come to life again in his own person; for after
the birth of his first son he is formally remarried to his wife, which may
be regarded as a tacit admission that in the eye of the law at least he is
alive.(512)
(M147) Now to people who thus conceive the relation of father and son it
is plain that fatherhood must appear a very dubious privilege; for if you
die in begetting a son, can you be quite sure of coming to life again? His
existence is at the best a menace to yours, and at the worst it may
involve your extinction. The danger seems to lie especially in the birth
of your first son; if only you can tide that over, you are, humanly
speaking, safe. In fact, it comes to this, Are you to live? or is he? It
is a painful dilemma. Parental affection urges you to die that he may
live. Self-love whispers, “Live and let him die. You are in the flower of
your age. You adorn the circle in which you move. You are useful, nay,
indispensable, to society. He is a mere babe. He never will be missed.”
Such a train of thought, preposterous as it seems to us, might easily lead
to a custom of killing the firstborn.(513)
(M148) Further, the same notion of the rebirth of the father in his eldest
son would explain the remarkable rule of succession which prevailed in
Polynesia and particularly in Tahiti, where as soon as the king had a son
born to him he was obliged to abdicate the throne in favour of the infant.
Whatever might be the king’s age, his influence in the state, or the
political situation of affairs, no sooner was the child born than the
monarch became a subject: the infant was at once proclaimed the sovereign
of the people: the royal name was conferred upon him, and his father was
the first to do him homage, by saluting his feet and declaring him king.
All matters, however, of importance which concerned either the internal
welfare or the foreign relations of the country continued to be transacted
by the father and his councillors; but every edict was issued in the name
and on the behalf of the youthful monarch, and though the whole of the
executive government might remain in the hands of the father, he only
acted as regent for his son, and was regarded as such by the nation. The
lands and other sources of revenue were appropriated to the maintenance of
the infant ruler, his household, and his attendants; the insignia of royal
authority were transferred to him, and his father rendered him all those
marks of humble respect which he had hitherto exacted from his subjects.
This custom of succession was not confined to the family of the sovereign,
it extended also to the nobles and the landed gentry; they, too, had to
resign their rank, honours, and possessions on the birth of a son. A man
who but yesterday was a baron, not to be approached by his inferiors till
they had ceremoniously bared the whole of the upper part of their bodies,
was to-day reduced to the rank of a mere commoner with none to do him
reverence, if in the night time his wife had given birth to a son, and the
child had been suffered to live. The father indeed still continued to
administer the estate, but he did so for the benefit of the infant, to
whom it now belonged, and to whom all the marks of respect were at once
transferred.(514)
(M149) This singular usage becomes intelligible if the spirit of the
father was supposed to quit him at the birth of his first son and to
reappear in the infant. Such a belief and such a practice would, it is
obvious, supply a powerful motive to infanticide, since a father could not
rear his firstborn son without thereby relinquishing the honours and
possessions to which he had been accustomed. The sacrifice was a heavy
one, and we need not wonder if many men refused to make it. Certainly
infanticide was practised in Polynesia to an extraordinary extent. The
first missionaries estimated that not less than two-thirds of the children
were murdered by their parents, and this estimate has been confirmed by a
careful enquirer. It would seem that before the introduction of
Christianity there was not a single mother in the islands who was not also
a murderess, having imbrued her hands in the blood of her offspring. Three
native women, the eldest not more than forty years of age, happened once
to be in a room where the conversation turned on infanticide, and they
confessed to having destroyed not less than twenty-one infants between
them.(515) It would doubtless be a gross mistake to lay the whole blame of
these massacres on the doctrine of reincarnation, but we can hardly doubt
that it instigated a great many. Once more we perceive the fatal
consequences that may flow in practice from a theoretical error.
(M150) In some places the abdication of the father does not take place
until the son is grown up. This was the general practice in Fiji.(516) In
Raratonga as soon as a son reached manhood, he would fight and wrestle
with his father for the mastery, and if he obtained it he would take
forcible possession of the farm and drive his parent in destitution from
home.(517) Among the Corannas of South Africa the youthful son of a chief
is hardly allowed to walk, but has to idle away his time in the hut and to
drink much milk in order that he may grow strong. When he has attained to
manhood his father produces two short, bullet-headed sticks and presents
one to his son, while he keeps the other for himself. Armed with these
weapons the two often fight, and when the son succeeds in knocking his
parent down he is acknowledged chief of the kraal.(518) But such customs
probably do not imply the theory of rebirth; they may only be applications
of the principle that might is right. Still they would equally supply the
father with a motive for killing the infant son who, if suffered to live,
would one day strip him of his rank and possessions.
(M151) Perhaps customs of this sort have left traces of themselves in
Greek myth and legend. Cronus or Saturn, as the Romans called him, is said
to have been the youngest son of the sky-god Uranus, and to have mutilated
his father and reigned in his stead as king of gods and men. Afterwards he
was warned by an oracle that he himself should be deposed by his son. To
prevent that catastrophe Cronus swallowed his children, one after the
other, as soon as they were born. Only the youngest of them, Zeus, was
saved through a trick of his mother’s, and in time he fulfilled the oracle
by banishing his father and sitting on his throne. But Zeus in his turn
was told that his wife Metis would give birth to a son who would supplant
him in the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, to rid himself of his future
rival he resorted to a device like that which his father Cronus had
employed for a similar purpose. Only instead of waiting till the child was
born and then devouring it, he made assurance doubly sure by swallowing
his wife with the unborn babe in her womb.(519) Such barbarous myths
become intelligible if we suppose that they took their rise among people
who were accustomed to see grown-up sons supplanting their fathers by
force, and fathers murdering and perhaps eating their infants in order to
secure themselves against their future rivalry. We have met with instances
of savage tribes who are said to devour their firstborn children.(520)
(M152) The legend that Laius, king of Thebes, exposed his infant son
Oedipus, who afterwards slew his father and sat on the throne, may well be
a reminiscence of a state of things in which father and son regularly
plotted against each other. The other feature of the story, to wit the
marriage of Oedipus with the widowed queen, his mother, fits in very well
with the rule which has prevailed in some countries that a valid title to
the throne is conferred by marriage with the late king’s widow. That
custom probably arose, as I have endeavoured to shew,(521) in an age when
the blood-royal ran in the female line, and when the king was a man of
another family, often a stranger and foreigner, who reigned only in virtue
of being the consort of a native princess, and whose sons never succeeded
him on the throne. But in process of time, when fathers had ceased to
regard the birth of a son as a menace to their life, or at least to their
regal power, kings would naturally scheme to secure the succession for
their own male offspring, and this new practice could be reconciled with
the old one by marrying the king’s son either to his own sister or, after
his father’s decease, to his stepmother. We have seen marriage with a
stepmother actually enjoined for this very purpose by some of the Saxon
kings.(522) And on this hypothesis we can understand why the custom of
marriage with a full or a half sister has prevailed in so many royal
families.(523) It was introduced, we may suppose, for the purpose of
giving the king’s son the right of succession hitherto enjoyed, under a
system of female kinship, either by the son of the king’s sister or by the
husband of the king’s daughter; for under the new rule the heir to the
throne united both these characters, being at once the son of the king’s
sister and, through marriage with his own sister, the husband of the
king’s daughter. Thus the custom of brother and sister marriage in royal
houses marks a transition from female to male descent of the crown.(524)
In this connexion it may be significant that Cronus and Zeus themselves
married their full sisters Rhea and Hera, a tradition which naturally
proved a stone of stumbling to generations who had forgotten the ancient
rule of policy which dictated such incestuous unions, and who had so far
inverted the true relations of gods and men as to expect their deities to
be edifying models of the new virtues instead of warning examples of the
old vices.(525) They failed to understand that men create their gods in
their own likeness, and that when the creator is a savage, his creatures
the gods are savages also.
(M153) With the preceding evidence before us we may safely infer that a
custom of allowing a king to kill his son, as a substitute or vicarious
sacrifice for himself, would be in no way exceptional or surprising, at
least in Semitic lands, where indeed religion seems at one time to have
recommended or enjoined every man, as a duty that he owed to his god, to
take the life of his eldest son. And it would be entirely in accordance
with analogy if, long after the barbarous custom had been dropped by
others, it continued to be observed by kings, who remain in many respects
the representatives of a vanished world, solitary pinnacles that topple
over the rising waste of waters under which the past lies buried. We have
seen that in Greece two families of royal descent remained liable to
furnish human victims from their number down to a time when the rest of
their fellow countrymen and countrywomen ran hardly more risk of being
sacrificed than passengers in Cheapside at present run of being hurried
into St. Paul’s or Bow Church and immolated on the altar. A final
mitigation of the custom would be to substitute condemned criminals for
innocent victims. Such a substitution is known to have taken place in the
human sacrifices annually offered in Rhodes to Baal,(526) and we have seen
good grounds for believing that the criminal, who perished on the cross or
the gallows at Babylon, died instead of the king in whose royal robes he
had been allowed to masquerade for a few days.