12. The Kudulu allow to a victim all the revels, women and all, of the
Sacæan mock-king, and then cut a hole in him, and smear his blood over
an idol. This is sacrifice, not capital punishment.
13. The Khonds slew their revered and god-like victim in a variety of
ways, strangling him in a tree, _burning_, and chopping up, that his
flesh might be sown on the fields. The head, bowels, and bones were
_burned_.
Such are the examples of a real human victim slain for the good of
the crops. In six out of fourteen cases the victim's ashes, blood, or
flesh is used magically to fertilise the fields, and probably this is
done in several other instances. In seven cases burning occurs. In two
sacrifice to a god or idol occurs. In one only is the mode of death a
recognised form of capital punishment.
Therefore Mr. Frazer does not seem to me to be justified in taking for
and describing as 'sacrifice' the capital punishment inflicted at the
Sacæa on a mock-king who notoriously was a criminal condemned to death,
and who was hanged, not sacrificed.
To be sure Mr. Frazer tries to turn this point, and how? Perhaps
ancient kings of Lydia were once burned alive on pyres, 'as living
embodiments of their god.' For the Lydian, like the Macedonian and many
other royal houses, claimed descent from Heracles, who, being on fire
already under the shirt of Nessus, homeopathically burned himself.
Crœsus, defeated, was about to die by fire, but not out of his own
head. Cyrus was going to burn him alive, like Jeanne d'Arc, Cranmer,
Wishart, and others. This cruel infliction by a foreign enemy hardly
proves a Lydian custom, nor are Lydians exactly Babylonians. Again,
if an old Prussian king 'wished to leave a good name behind him,' he
burned himself before a holy oak. 'Crummies is not a Prussian,' nor
were the kings of Babylon. Once more Movers thought that the 'divine
pair who figured by deputy' at the Sacæa were Semiramis and Sandan
or Sardanapalus. (Which divine pair, the king's proxy and one of the
king's concubines, or the Tammuz man and the sacred harlot?) Sandan was
thought to be Heracles by the Greeks, and his effigy was perhaps burned
on a pyre at his festival in Tarsus. Now the Persians, according to
Agathias, worshipped Sandes (Sandan), and perhaps the Babylonians did
so also, though really that agreeable Byzantine minor poet, Agathias,
cannot be called a good witness. Next, K. O. Müller thinks that Sandan
(Sandes) may have been _burned_ in a mystery play in Nineveh, Müller
giving free licence to his fancy, as he admits. Movers, too, thought
that 'at the Sacæa the Zoganes represented a god, and paired with a
woman who personated a goddess.'[11] And Movers thinks that the Sacæan
victim was originally burned.[12]
For these 'exquisite reasons,' that the Lydian monarchs claimed descent
from Heracles, who was burned, that Cyrus wanted to burn Crœsus
alive, that old Prussian kings who wished to leave a good name burned
themselves, that Movers thought that Sandan or Sardanapalus might
have figured at the Sacæa as Zoganes, that Agathias mentioned Sandes
as a Babylonian deity, and that Movers thinks that the man who acted
the god was burned, Mr. Frazer suggests that perhaps the mock-king of
the Sacæa _was_ burned, once upon a time.[13] But we only know that
he was scourged and hanged. So perhaps, Mr. Frazer suggests, he was
_both_ scourged, hanged, and burned afterwards, or perhaps hanging or
crucifixion 'may have been a later mitigation of his sufferings'--a
pretty mitigation! And why was flogging added?[14] One had liefer
be burned, like a god and a king, than be first whipped and then
crucified, as a malefactor of the lowest and most servile kind, losing,
too, the necessary suggestion of sacrifice and divinity implied in
being burned. Besides, apart from this theory of a cruel and debasing
'mitigation,' there is no evidence at all except what proves that the
mock-king at the Sacæa was first stripped of his royal robes, then
whipped, then hanged. If he dies as god or king, why is he stripped of
his royal robes? The man was hanged, was capitally punished (which as a
condemned criminal he richly deserved), and 'there is an end on't,' as
Dr. Johnson rudely remarked. Now 'we must not forget' that Mr. Frazer
has announced this I sacrifice 'of a divine king as his theory, but we
need not, I may even say must not, accept the theory. Because, first,
Mr. Frazer gives many examples of persons believed each to contain a
god, either temporarily or permanently.[15] But in not one single case
is the person said to be killed for the benefit of the god whom he
contains.
Secondly, there was historically no sacrifice in the case of the Sacæan
mock-king.
The mock-king, then, if he has any divinity, has it not as a sacrifice,
for he is not sacrificed; nor as representing a king who incarnates
a god, for no kings or others thought to incarnate gods, whether
temporarily or permanently, are proved to be slain for the benefit of
that god. Nor are any kings who are actually slain, slain by hanging.
The death of a man, as a god, belongs, if to anything, to quite
another festival, that of Tammuz or Adonis, and to quite another set of
ideas. We have no proof indeed that a man was ever hanged or sacrificed
as an embodiment of Adonis or Tammuz. But Mr. Frazer's theory of the
reason for the Crucifixion on Calvary demands the _sacrifice_ of a
human victim, who is, _ex officio_, a god, is sacrificed in that
character, and is feigned to rise again. He must also be royal, to
account for the scarlet robe and crown of thorns of the great victim.