Well, the Sacæa was such a period of licence. Each household was then
ruled by a slave, the Zoganes, as Athenæus quotes Berosus. The royal
household was not an exception. Now to rule the royal household, in
the royal robes, and above all to take liberties with the royal harem
(compare Fijian and Australian licence), is treason; one of the two
crimes excepted from the Saturnalian amnesty in Tonquin. To overlook
treason would be, for a Persian monarch, to set a dangerous precedent.
Therefore the royal Zoganes, or slave-king of the five days' revel,
unlike the Zoganes of private houses, would deserve death, technically
speaking. At this point let me adopt Mr. Frazer's theory of a
substitute. A criminal already condemned to death is employed instead
of a harmless slave, as Zoganes of the royal household, and is then
hanged.
In dozens of cases of summer gambols, in European folklore, 'the
Whitsuntide representatives of the tree spirit' are put to a mock
death.[26] These are in one or two instances called 'kings.' The
regular May Kings and May Queens seem to escape: the Grass King merely
'hands his crown to the mayor.'[27] These mock slayings of folklore
actors may (I think), like handing the crown to the mayor, merely mean
that the actor's reign is over. This is not Mr. Frazer's opinion: the
summer monarchs when killed in sport are killed, he thinks, as their
precursors were really slain, for the god of vegetation. O vegetation,
what crimes are wrought in thy name!
In any case the royal Zoganes, or criminal substitute for the
slave-king of the royal household in Babylon, deserved a hanging,
to discourage the precedent of treason set by him in the period of
licence. Only in the king's house was the reign of the Zoganes high
treason.
Now, before hanging him, it was actually necessary to demonstrate
by symbolic action that he was no real king, but a common slave or
criminal. He was reduced to his true level by being stripped of his
royal robes, and by being whipped, a specially servile punishment. He
was then hanged.
But to treat a real slave thus merely because, as in every other
household, he played the Zoganes or slave as master, would be a shame.
The man's only fault was the accident, thrust on him by custom, of
playing lord in the royal household of a jealous monarch. So a criminal
already condemned took the part, and, as the slave would have been, he
was finally reduced to his level by being stripped of his royal robes
and scourged, before suffering death; technically for treason, really
for the crime on which he was originally condemned.
This mere guess at the origin of a unique custom has certain
advantages. It explains (and I fail to see that Mr. Frazer explains)
why the Sacæan mock-king (unlike the Saturn victim) was stripped of
his royal robes and whipped. These sufferings proclaimed the man no
king, but a slave. Again, his hanging was just what, as condemned on
a capital charge, a low-born malefactor might expect. With the best
will in the world, no Babylonian could follow Mr. Frazer and take a
hanged felon for a god or a divine sacrifice. Why only one man was
thus treated, though there was a Zoganes or slave-lord in every house,
is explained by the fact that there was only one royal house, only one
household in which the slave-lord's conduct was treason.
With paternal fondness I contemplate my own little guess. But, alas!
we are not told that the other slave-lords at the Sacæa actually
invaded the ladies of the house. So why should the slave-lord of the
royal household be allowed to do so? How is my conjecture to weather
this point of danger? Well, we are never told (as far as I am aware)
that a subject in the East enfeoffed himself of private demesne by
invading the harem of the man to whose estate he was a pretender. But
in the case of royal demesne to invade the harem was the first step of
a young pretender, like Absalom, 'for the purpose of making known and
strengthening his claim to the throne,' says Movers.[28]
Remembering the tenacity of traditional usage, sanctioning deadly
sexual crimes in some periods of licence, remembering that, in them,
the 'primitive' Arunta deliberately break, as did the Jews at Purim,
and the Fijians, the most sacred and stringent of their taboos, shall
we not allow Sacæan custom to encroach, for the purpose of making
the royalty of the king's Zoganes indisputable, on the king's harem?
For in that way was Oriental royalty proclaimed and asserted. Sir
Alfred Lyall says: 'We believe that a few unfortunate concubines would
have been of no account at all for the due performance of a popular
Babylonian masquerade, which might just as well mimic earthly kingship
as symbolise divine mysteries.'
And now we see a simple and conceivable reason why the mock-king of
the Sacæa invaded the king's harem, ruled all royally, was crowned,
robed in the king's robes, and then, to restore his servile status and
wipe away his royalty, was stripped of the royal robes, whipped as a
slave was whipped, and hanged as a condemned criminal deserved to be.
My guess, unlike Mr. Frazer's hypothesis, colligates all the facts. It
explains the stripping, which Mr. Frazer does not, I think, explain.
It explains the scourging and hanging, which Mr. Frazer is obliged
to account for as a mitigation of burning. It does not require us
to believe (what is incredible) that of old the Persian kings were
sacrificed annually. It accounts for the occurrence of the execution at
a season of secular licence just as in Ashanti. It involves us in no
double, and, to my thinking, contradictory theory, that the sufferer is
both king's proxy and also a representative of Tammuz, or Marduk, or
Humman, or Gilgamesh, or Eabani.
But my guess is only a guess, and is offered chiefly to prove that
guessing is easy. We cannot be certain about any explanation of a
custom so remote, so unparalleled, and reported on evidence so late and
so dubious as that of Dio Chrysostom.
Some student may point out that, though I boast of my theory as
colligating all the facts, I have left out the sacred harlot. But she
was only the child of an hypothesis of Mr. Frazer's. A scientific
hypothesis is not required to colligate more than the known facts in
each case. And I am by no means certain that the facts given by our
only authority, Dio, were facts of history.
[1] See Appendix B, 'Martyrdom of Dasius.'
[2] _G. B_. iii. 76, 78, 84, 85, 86, 138, 119, note I; ii. 326; iii.
139; iii. 141, 143; iii. 145; iii. 147.
[3] _G. B_. iii. 139; Horace, _Sat_. ii. 7, 4; Macrobius, i. 7, 26;
Justin, xliii. i. 4; Plutarch, _Sulla_, 18; Lucian, _Sat_. 5, 7.
[4] _G. B_. iii. 145.
[5] _G. B_. iii. 84.
[6] _G. B_. iii. 119, note 1.
[7] _G. B_. iii. 119.
[8] _G. B_. ii. 326.
[9] _G. B_. ii. 327.
[10] _G. B_. ii. 460; Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 229.
[11] Hyde, _Hist. Rel. Pers_. pp. 260-267.
[12] _G. B_. iii. 120, 121.
[13] _G. B_. iii. 122, 123.
[14] _G. B_. iii. 125-128.
[15] _G. B_. iii. p. 179.
[16] The italics are mine.
[17] When explaining the flogging of the Sacæan victim, Mr. Frazer does
not say that the purpose was 'to stimulate his reproductive powers.' He
speaks of a 'mitigation' of burning.
[18] Spencer and Gill en regard these authorised and enforced breaches
of sacred laws as testifying to the existence in the past of a time
when no such laws existed, when promiscuity was universal, or at least
as pointing in the direction of wider marital relations 'than exist at
present' (_op. cit._ 111). In the same way the Romans thought that the
Saturnalia pointed back to a golden age when there was no law.
[19] _G. B_. iii. 156.
[20] Strabo, 511.
[21] _G. B_. iii. 84.
[22] _G. B_. ii. p. 327.
[23] _G. B_. iii. 139.
[24] _G. B_. ii. p. 326.
[25] Fison, _J. A. I_. xiv. p. 28.
[26] _G. B_. ii. 60-66.
[27] _G. B_. i. 218.
[28] _G. B_. iii. 160, note I, citing Movers, _Die Phœnizier_, i. 490,
_seq.;_ 2 Samuel xvi. 21; cf. xii. 8; Herodotus, iii. 68; Josephus,
_Contra Apion._ i. 15.
X
_CALVARY_
It is, fortunately, not needful to dwell long on the disproval of
Mr. Frazer's theory that his facts 'seem to shed fresh light on some
of the causes which contributed to the remarkably rapid diffusion
of Christianity in Asia Minor.... The new faith had elements in it
which appealed powerfully to the Asiatic mind.... We have seen that
the conception of the dying and risen god was no new one in these
regions.... A man whom the fond imagination of his worshippers invested
with the attributes of a god gave his life for the life of the
world.... A chain of causes which, because we cannot follow them, might
in the loose language of daily life be called an accidents determined
that the part of the dying god in this annual play should be thrust on
Jesus of Nazareth....' His death as the Haman of the annual mystery
play of the dying god' impressed upon what had been hitherto mainly an
ethical mission the character of a divine revelation culminating in
the passion and death of the incarnate Son of a heavenly Father. In
this form the story of the life and death of Jesus exerted an influence
which it could never have had if the great teacher had died the death
of a vulgar malefactor. It shed round the Cross on Calvary a halo of
divinity,' &C.[1]
But all this halo could only be shed if the victim was recognised by
the world as dying in the character of a god, and as rising again in
the person of Barabbas, the Mordecai of the year. We know on the best
historical evidence that there was no such recognition. 'To the Greeks
foolishness, and to the Jews a stumbling block,' was the Cross, as St.
Paul assures us. Moreover, we know that ribaldry, not reverence, marked
the multitude at the Crucifixion. By Mr. Frazer's theory Barabbas
represented the re-arisen god, 'The Son of the Father.' Was Barabbas
revered? No; 'some pretended to salute his mock majesty, and others
belaboured the donkey on which he rode.'[2] Therefore, by Mr. Frazer's
own explicit statement, the divine facts about Barabbas were not
recognised. Yet he was the counterpart of the sacred Victim.
Mr. Frazer's theory demands, I think, the general recognition of the
godhead of the yearly victim, who gave Christ's mission 'the influence
which it could never have had if the great teacher had died the death
of a vulgar malefactor.'[3]
Yet Mr. Frazer himself assures us that the idea of the divinity of the
victim may have been forgotten; that his 'sacrifice' might seem 'the
execution of a criminal.' I cite the passage: 'The divine character of
the animal or man is forgotten, and he comes to be regarded merely as
an ordinary victim. This is especially the case when it is a divine man
who is killed. For when a nation becomes civilised, if it does not drop
human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such
wretches as would be put to death at any rate. Thus, as in the Sacæan
festival at Babylon, the killing of a god may come to be confounded
with the execution of a criminal.'[4] Yet within eighty pages Mr.
Frazer attributes the 'halo of divinity' to the happy accident which
enabled the victim to die as a _recognised_ representative of a dying
god.[5]
Mr. Frazer puts forth his hypothesis 'with great diffidence.'[6]
He thinks that he may 'have perhaps been led by the interest
and importance of the subject somewhat deeper than the evidence
warrants.'[7]
That is certain. We have shown that the evidence, in our opinion,
warrants none of the hypotheses; no, not one.
It is not proved that magic is older than religion.
It is disproved that general belief (as distinguished from local
legend) in any age regards gods as mortal.
There is no evidence, or none is given, to show that a man has ever
been sacrificed for the benefit of a god whom he incarnates.
There is no evidence that a real king was ever yearly sacrificed to
benefit a god at Babylon, or in every city-state of early Italy, or
anywhere. The idea is incredible.
The evidence for any sacrifice of mock-kings is, historically, of the
weakest conceivable kind.
The deaths of the Sacæan mock-kings were infamous executions of
criminals; they were not sacrifices, if they ever occurred at all.
The date of the festival at which, if at all, they perished cannot be
made to fit in with Purim or Easter.
There is no evidence that the Jews borrowed the custom of killing a
yearly human victim, or practised the habit.