Lucian, the bright Greek thinker, who was born and trained in the East,
writing in the middle of the second century of our era, is explicit
as to the nature and method of this covenant as then practised in the
East. In his “Toxaris or Friendship,”[99] Mnesippus the Greek, and
Toxaris the Scythian, are discussing friendship. Toxaris declares: “It
can easily be shown that Scythian friends are much more faithful than
Greek friends; and that friendship is esteemed more highly among us
than among you.” Then Toxaris goes on to say[100]: “But first I wish
to tell you in what manner we [in Scythia] make friends; not in our
drinking bouts as you do, nor simply because a man is of the same age
[as ourselves], or because he is our neighbor. But, on the contrary,
when we see a good man, and one capable of great deeds, to him we all
hasten, and (as you do in the case of marrying, so we think it right
to do in the case of our friends) we court him, and we [who would be
friends] do all things together, so that we may not offend against
friendship, or seem worthy to be rejected. And whenever one decides to
be a friend, we [who would join in the covenant] make the greatest of
all oaths, to live with one another, and to die, if need be, the one
for the other. And this is the manner of it: Thereupon, cutting our
fingers, all simultaneously, we let the blood drop into a vessel, and
having dipped the points of our swords into it, both [of us] holding
them together,[101] we drink it. There is nothing which can loose us
from one another after that.”
Yet a little earlier than Lucian, Tacitus, foremost among Latin
historians, gives record of this rite of blood-brotherhood as practised
in the East. He is telling, in his Annals, of Rhadamistus, leader of
the Iberians, who pretends to seek a covenant with Mithradates, King of
the Armenians (yet farther east than Scythia), which should make firm
the peace between the two nations, “_diis testibus_,” “the gods being
witnesses.” Here Tacitus makes an explanation:[102] “It is the custom
of [Oriental] kings, as often as they come together to make covenant,
to join right hands, to tie the thumbs together, and to tighten them
with a knot. Then, when the blood is [thus] pressed to the finger tips,
they draw blood by a light stroke, and lick[103] it in turn. This they
regard as a divine[104] covenant, made sacred as it were, by mutual
blood [or blended lives].”
There are several references, by classical writers, to this
blood-friendship, or to this blood-covenanting, in connection with
Catiline’s conspiracy against the Roman Republic. Sallust, the
historian of that conspiracy, says: “There were those at that time
who said that Catiline, at this conference [with his accomplices]
when he inducted them into the oath of partnership in crime, carried
round in goblets human blood, mixed with wine; and that after all
had tasted of it, with an imprecatory oath, as is men’s wont in
solemn rites [in “_Sharb el ’Ahd_,”[105] as the Arabs would say] he
opened to them his plans.”[106] Florus, a later Latin historian,
describing this conspiracy, says: “There was added the pledge of the
league,--human blood,--which they drank as it was borne round to them
in goblets.”[107] And yet later, Tertullian suggests that it was
their own blood, mingled with wine, of which the fellow-conspirators
drank together. “Concerning the eating of blood and other such tragic
dishes,” he says, “you read (I do not know where), that blood drawn
from the arms, and tasted by one another, was the method of making
covenant among certain nations. I know not but that under Catiline such
blood was tasted.”[108]
In the Pitti Palace, in Florence, there is a famous painting of the
conspiracy of Catiline, by Salvator Rosa; it is, indeed, Salvator
Rosa’s masterpiece, in the line of historical painting. This painting
represents the covenanting by blood. Two conspirators stand face
to face, their right hands clasped above a votive altar. The bared
right arm of each is incised, a little below the elbow. The blood is
streaming from the arm of one, into a cup which he holds, with his left
hand, to receive it; while the dripping arm of the other conspirator
shows that his blood has already flowed into the commingling cup.[109]
The uplifted hand of the daysman between the conspirators seems to
indicate the imprecatory vows which the two are assuming, in the
presence of the gods, and of the witnesses who stand about the altar.
This is a clear indication of the traditional form of covenanting
between Catiline and his fellow conspirators.
As far back, even, as the fifth century before Christ, we find an
explicit description of this Oriental rite of blood-covenanting,
in the writings of “the Father of History.” “Now the Scythians,”
says Herodotus,[110] “make covenants in the following manner, with
whomsoever they make them. Having poured out wine into a great earthen
drinking-bowl, they mingle with it the blood of those cutting covenant,
striking the body [of each person having a part in it] with a small
knife, or cutting it slightly with a sword. Thereafter, they dip into
the bowl, sword, arrows, axe, and javelin.[111] But while they are
doing this, they utter many invokings [of curse upon a breach of this
covenant];[112] and, afterwards, not only those who make the covenant,
but those of their followers who are of the highest rank, drink off
[the wine mingled with blood].”
Again Herodotus says of this custom, in his day[113]: “Now the Arabians
reverence in a very high degree pledges between man and man. They make
these pledges in the following way. When they wish to make pledges to
one another, a third man, standing in the midst of the two, cuts with a
sharp stone the inside of the hands along the thumbs of the two making
the pledges. After that, plucking some woolen floss from the garments
of each of the two, he anoints with the blood seven stones [as the
“heap of witness”[114]] which are set in the midst. While he is doing
this he invokes Dionysus and Urania. When this rite is completed, he
that has made the pledges [to one from without] introduces the [former]
stranger to his friends[115]--or the fellow citizen [to his fellows] if
the rite was performed with a fellow-citizen.”
Thus it is clear, that the rite of blood-brotherhood, or of
blood-friendship, which is to-day a revered form of sacred covenanting
in the unchangeable East, was recognized as an established custom
among Oriental peoples twenty-three centuries ago. Its beginning must
certainly have been prior to that time; if not indeed long prior.
An indication of the extreme antiquity of this rite would seem to be
shown in a term employed in its designation by the Romans, early in our
Christian era; when both the meaning and the origin of the term itself
were already lost in the dim past. Festus,[116] a writer, of fifteen
centuries or more ago, concerning Latin antiquities, is reported[117]
as saying, of this drink of the covenant of blood: “A certain kind
of drink, of mingled wine and blood, was called _assiratum_ by the
ancients; for the ancient Latins called blood, _assir_.” Our modern
lexicons give this isolated claim, made by Festus, of the existence
of any such word as “assir” signifying “blood,” in “the ancient Latin
language;”[118] and some of them try to show the possibilities of its
origin;[119] but no convincing proof of any such word and meaning in
the Latin can be found.
Turning, however, to the languages of the East, where the binding vow
of blood-friendship was pledged in the drink of wine and blood, or of
blood alone, from time immemorial, we have no difficulty in finding the
meaning of “assir.” _Asar_ (אָסַר) is a common Hebrew word, signifying
“to bind together”--as in a mutual covenant. _Issar_ (אִסָּר), again,
is a vow of self-renunciation. Thus we have _Asar issar ’al nephesh_
(נֶפֶשׁ עַל אִסָּר אָסַר) “To bind a self-devoting vow upon one’s
life”[120]--upon one’s blood; “for the blood is the life.”[121] In
the Arabic, also, _asara_ (اسر) means “to bind,” or “to tie”; while
_asar_ (اسر) is “a covenant,” or “a compact”; and _aswâr_ (اسوار) is “a
bracelet”; which in itself is “a band,” and may be “a fetter.”[122] So,
again, in the Assyrian, _esiru_ ([Illustration]) is in its root form “to
bind”; and as a substantive it is “a bracelet,” or “a fetter.”[123] The
Syriac gives _esar_ ([Illustration]), “a bond,” or “a belt.”[124] All
these, with the root idea, “to bind”--as a covenant binds. In the light
of these disclosures, it is easy to see how the “issar” or the “assar,”
when it was a covenant of blood, came to be counted by the Latins the
blood which was a covenant.