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Title: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 05 of 12)

Author: James George Frazer

Release date: August 30, 2013 [eBook #43605]

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN BOUGH: A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION (THIRD EDITION, VOL. 05 OF 12) *** 












The Golden Bough


Studies in the History of Oriental
        Religion


By


James George Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D.,
        Litt.D.


Fellow of Trinity
        College, Cambridge


Professor of Social
        Anthropology in the University of Liverpool


Vol. V. of XII.


Part IV: Adonis Attis Osiris.


Vol. 1 of 2.


New York and London


MacMillan and Co.


1914









Contents














Cover Art


[Transcriber's
        Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter at
        Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public
        domain.]


[pg v]




 


Preface to the First
        Edition.


These studies are
        an expansion of the corresponding sections in my book The Golden
        Bough, and they will form part of the third edition of
        that work, on the preparation of which I have been engaged for some
        time. By far the greater portion of them is new, and they make by
        themselves a fairly complete and, I hope, intelligible whole. I shall
        be glad if criticisms passed on the essays in their present shape
        should enable me to correct and improve them when I come to
        incorporate them in my larger work.


In studying afresh
        these three Oriental worships, akin to each other in character, I
        have paid more attention than formerly to the natural features of the
        countries in which they arose, because I am more than ever persuaded
        that religion, like all other institutions, has been profoundly
        influenced by physical environment, and cannot be understood without
        some appreciation of those aspects of external nature which stamp
        themselves indelibly on the thoughts, the habits, the whole life of a
        people. It is a matter of great regret to me that I have never
        visited the East, and so cannot describe from personal knowledge the
        native lands of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. But I have sought to
        remedy the defect by comparing the descriptions of eye-witnesses, and
        painting from them what may be called composite pictures of some of
        the scenes on which I have been led to touch in the course of this
        [pg vi] volume. I shall not have wholly
        failed if I have caught from my authorities and conveyed to my
        readers some notion, however dim, of the scenery, the atmosphere, the
        gorgeous colouring of the East.


J. G. Frazer.


Trinity College,
        Cambridge,

22nd July
        1906.


[pg vii]




 


Preface to the Second
        Edition.


In this second
        edition some minor corrections have been made and some fresh matter
        added. Where my views appear to have been misunderstood, I have
        endeavoured to state them more clearly; where they have been
        disputed, I have carefully reconsidered the evidence and given my
        reasons for adhering to my former opinions. Most of the additions
        thus made to the volume are comprised in a new chapter (“Sacred Men and Women”), a new section
        (“Influence of Mother-kin on
        Religion”), and three new appendices (“Moloch the King,” “The
        Widowed Flamen,” and “Some Customs of
        the Pelew Islanders”). Among the friends and correspondents
        who have kindly helped me with information and criticisms of various
        sorts I wish to thank particularly Mr. W. Crooke, Professor W. M.
        Flinders Petrie, Mr. G. F. Hill of the British Museum, the Reverend
        J. Roscoe of the Church Missionary Society, and Mr. W. Wyse. Above
        all I owe much to my teacher the Reverend Professor R. H. Kennett,
        who, besides initiating me into the charms of the Hebrew language and
        giving me a clearer insight into the course of Hebrew history, has
        contributed several valuable suggestions to the book and enhanced the
        kindness by reading and criticizing some of the proofs.


J. G. Frazer.


Trinity College,
        Cambridge,

22nd
        September 1907.


[pg ix]




 


Preface to the Third
        Edition.


In revising the
        book for this third edition I have made use of several important
        works which have appeared since the last edition was published. Among
        these I would name particularly the learned treatises of Count
        Baudissin on Adonis, of Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge on Osiris, and of my
        colleague Professor J. Garstang on the civilization of the Hittites,
        that still mysterious people, who begin to loom a little more
        distinctly from the mists of the past. Following the example of Dr.
        Wallis Budge, I have indicated certain analogies which may be traced
        between the worship of Osiris and the worship of the dead, especially
        of dead kings, among the modern tribes of Africa. The conclusion to
        which these analogies appear to point is that under the mythical pall
        of the glorified Osiris, the god who died and rose again from the
        dead, there once lay the body of a dead man. Whether that was so or
        not, I will not venture to say. The longer I occupy myself with
        questions of ancient mythology the more diffident I become of success
        in dealing with them, and I am apt to think that we who spend our
        years in searching for solutions of these insoluble problems are like
        Sisyphus perpetually rolling his stone up hill only to see it revolve
        again into the valley, or like the daughters of Danaus doomed for
        ever to pour water into broken jars that can hold no water. If we are
        taxed with wasting life in seeking to know what can never be known,
        and what, if it could be discovered, would not be worth knowing, what
        [pg x] can we plead in our defence? I
        fear, very little. Such pursuits can hardly be defended on the ground
        of pure reason. We can only say that something, we know not what,
        drives us to attack the great enemy Ignorance wherever we see him,
        and that if we fail, as we probably shall, in our attack on his
        entrenchments, it may be useless but it is not inglorious to fall in
        leading a Forlorn Hope.


J. G. Frazer


Cambridge,

16th
        January 1914.


[pg 001]




 


Book First.
        Adonis.
[pg
        003]




 


Chapter I. The Myth of
          Adonis.







The changes of the seasons
              explained by the life and death of gods.





The spectacle of
          the great changes which annually pass over the face of the earth
          has powerfully impressed the minds of men in all ages, and stirred
          them to meditate on the causes of transformations so vast and
          wonderful. Their curiosity has not been purely disinterested; for
          even the savage cannot fail to perceive how intimately his own life
          is bound up with the life of nature, and how the same processes
          which freeze the stream and strip the earth of vegetation menace
          him with extinction. At a certain stage of development men seem to
          have imagined that the means of averting the threatened calamity
          were in their own hands, and that they could hasten or retard the
          flight of the seasons by magic art. Accordingly they performed
          ceremonies and recited spells to make the rain to fall, the sun to
          shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of the earth to grow. In
          course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled
          so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful
          portion of mankind that the alternations of summer and winter, of
          spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical
          rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work
          behind the shifting scenes of nature. They now pictured to
          themselves the growth and decay of vegetation, the birth and death
          of living creatures, as effects of the waxing or waning strength of
          divine beings, of gods and goddesses, who were born and died, who
          married and begot children, on the pattern of human
          life.
[pg
          004]






Magical ceremonies to revive the
              failing energies of the gods.





Thus the old
          magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather
          supplemented, by a religious theory. For although men now
          attributed the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding
          changes in their deities, they still thought that by performing
          certain magical rites they could aid the god, who was the principle
          of life, in his struggle with the opposing principle of death. They
          imagined that they could recruit his failing energies and even
          raise him from the dead. The ceremonies which they observed for
          this purpose were in substance a dramatic representation of the
          natural processes which they wished to facilitate; for it is a
          familiar tenet of magic that you can produce any desired effect by
          merely imitating it. And as they now explained the fluctuations of
          growth and decay, of reproduction and dissolution, by the marriage,
          the death, and the rebirth or revival of the gods, their religious
          or rather magical dramas turned in great measure on these themes.
          They set forth the fruitful union of the powers of fertility, the
          sad death of one at least of the divine partners, and his joyful
          resurrection. Thus a religious theory was blended with a magical
          practice. The combination is familiar in history. Indeed, few
          religions have ever succeeded in wholly extricating themselves from
          the old trammels of magic. The inconsistency of acting on two
          opposite principles, however it may vex the soul of the
          philosopher, rarely troubles the common man; indeed he is seldom
          even aware of it. His affair is to act, not to analyse the motives
          of his action. If mankind had always been logical and wise, history
          would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.1
[pg 005]






The principles of animal and of
              vegetable life confused in these ceremonies.





Of the changes
          which the seasons bring with them, the most striking within the
          temperate zone are those which affect vegetation. The influence of
          the seasons on animals, though great, is not nearly so manifest.
          Hence it is natural that in the magical dramas designed to dispel
          winter and bring back spring the emphasis should be laid on
          vegetation, and that trees and plants should in them more
          prominently than beasts and birds. Yet the two sides of life, the
          vegetable and the animal, were not dissociated in the minds of
          those who observed the ceremonies. Indeed they commonly believed
          that the tie between the animal and the vegetable world was even
          closer than it really is; hence they often combined the dramatic
          representation of reviving plants with a real or a dramatic union
          of the sexes for the purpose of furthering at the same time and by
          the same act the multiplication of fruits, of animals, and of men.
          To them the principle of life and fertility, whether animal or
          vegetable, was one and indivisible. To live and to cause to live,
          to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary wants of
          men in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in the
          future so long as the world lasts. Other things may be added to
          enrich and beautify human life, but unless these wants are first
          satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things,
          therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to
          procure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of
          the seasons.







Prevalence of these rites in
              Western Asia and Egypt.





Nowhere,
          apparently, have these rites been more widely [pg 006] and solemnly celebrated than in the
          lands which border the Eastern Mediterranean. Under the names of
          Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western
          Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially
          of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who annually
          died and rose again from the dead. In name and detail the rites
          varied from place to place: in substance they were the same. The
          supposed death and resurrection of this oriental deity, a god of
          many names but of essentially one nature, is the subject of the
          present inquiry. We begin with Tammuz or Adonis.2







Tammuz or Adonis in Babylonia. His
              worship seems to have originated with the Sumerians.





The worship of
          Adonis was practised by the Semitic peoples of Babylonia and Syria,
          and the Greeks borrowed it from them as early as the seventh
          century before Christ.3 The
          true name of the deity was Tammuz: the appellation of Adonis is
          merely the Semitic Adon,
          “lord,” a title of honour by which
          his worshippers addressed him.4 In the
          Hebrew text of the Old Testament the same name Adonai, [pg 007] originally perhaps Adoni, “my lord,” is often applied to Jehovah.5 But the
          Greeks through a misunderstanding converted the title of honour
          into a proper name. While Tammuz or his equivalent Adonis enjoyed a
          wide and lasting popularity among peoples of the Semitic stock,
          there are grounds for thinking that his worship originated with a
          race of other blood and other speech, the Sumerians, who in the
          dawn of history inhabited the flat alluvial plain at the head of
          the Persian Gulf and created the civilization which was afterwards
          called Babylonian. The origin and affinities of this people are
          unknown; in physical type and language they differed from all their
          neighbours, and their isolated position, wedged in between alien
          races, presents to the student of mankind problems of the same sort
          as the isolation of the Basques and Etruscans among the Aryan
          peoples of Europe. An ingenious, but unproved, hypothesis would
          represent them as immigrants driven from central Asia by that
          gradual desiccation which for ages seems to have been converting
          once fruitful lands into a waste and burying the seats of ancient
          civilization under a sea of shifting sand. Whatever their place of
          origin may have been, it is certain that in Southern Babylonia the
          Sumerians attained at a very early period to a considerable pitch
          of civilization; for they tilled the soil, reared cattle, built
          cities, dug canals, and even invented a system of writing, which
          their Semitic neighbours in time borrowed from them.6 In the
          pantheon [pg
          008]
          of this ancient people Tammuz appears to have been one of the
          oldest, though certainly not one of the most important
          figures.7 His
          name consists of a Sumerian phrase meaning “true son” or, in a fuller form, “true son of the deep water,”8 and
          among the inscribed Sumerian texts which have survived the wreck of
          empires are a number of hymns in his honour, which were written
          down not later than about two thousand years before our era but
          were almost certainly composed at a much earlier time.9







Tammuz the lover of Ishtar.
              Descent of Ishtar to the nether world to recover Tammuz.





In the religious
          literature of Babylonia Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or
          lover of Ishtar, the great mother goddess, the embodiment of the
          reproductive energies of nature. The references to their connexion
          with each other in myth and ritual are both fragmentary and
          obscure, but we gather from them that every year Tammuz was
          believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy
          subterranean world, and that every year his divine mistress
          journeyed in quest of him “to the land from
          which there is no returning, to the house of darkness, where dust
          lies on door and bolt.” During her absence the passion of
          love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce
          their kinds: all life was threatened with extinction. So
          [pg 009] intimately bound up
          with the goddess were the sexual functions of the whole animal
          kingdom that without her presence they could not be discharged. A
          messenger of the great god Ea was accordingly despatched to rescue
          the goddess on whom so much depended. The stern queen of the
          infernal regions, Allatu or Eresh-Kigal by name, reluctantly
          allowed Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of Life and to
          depart, in company probably with her lover Tammuz, that the two
          might return together to the upper world, and that with their
          return all nature might revive.







Laments for Tammuz.





Laments for the
          departed Tammuz are contained in several Babylonian hymns, which
          liken him to plants that quickly fade. He is







“A tamarisk that in the
                garden has drunk no water,





                Whose crown in the field has brought forth no
                blossom.





                A willow that rejoiced not by the watercourse,





                A willow whose roots were torn up.




A herb that in the
                garden had drunk no water.”







His death
          appears to have been annually mourned, to the shrill music of
          flutes, by men and women about midsummer in the month named after
          him, the month of Tammuz. The dirges were seemingly chanted over an
          effigy of the dead god, which was washed with pure water, anointed
          with oil, and clad in a red robe, while the fumes of incense rose
          into the air, as if to stir his dormant senses by their pungent
          fragrance and wake him from the sleep of death. In one of these
          dirges, inscribed Lament of the Flutes for Tammuz,
          we seem still to hear the voices of the singers chanting the sad
          refrain and to catch, like far-away music, the wailing notes of the
          flutes:—







“At his vanishing away
                she lifts up a lament,




‘Oh my
                child!’
at his
                vanishing away she lifts up a lament;




‘My
                Damu!’
at his
                vanishing away she lifts up a lament.




‘My enchanter and
                priest!’
at his
                vanishing away she lifts up a lament,





                At the shining cedar, rooted in a spacious
                place,





                In Eanna, above and below, she lifts up a
                lament.





                Like the lament that a house lifts up for its master, lifts
                she up a lament,





                Like the lament that a city lifts up for its lord, lifts she
                up a lament.

[pg
              010]



                Her lament is the lament for a herb that grows not in the
                bed,





                Her lament is the lament for the corn that grows not in the
                ear.





                Her chamber is a possession that brings not forth a
                possession,





                A weary woman, a weary child, forspent.





                Her lament is for a great river, where no willows
                grow,





                Her lament is for a field, where corn and herbs grow
                not.





                Her lament is for a pool, where fishes grow
                not.





                Her lament is for a thicket of reeds, where no reeds
                grow.





                Her lament is for woods, where tamarisks grow
                not.





                Her lament is for a wilderness where no cypresses (?)
                grow.





                Her lament is for the depth of a garden of trees, where honey
                and wine grow not.





                Her lament is for meadows, where no plants
                grow.




Her lament is for a
                palace, where length of life grows
                not.”10












Adonis in Greek mythology merely a
              reflection of the Oriental Tammuz.





The tragical
          story and the melancholy rites of Adonis are better known to us
          from the descriptions of Greek writers than from the fragments of
          Babylonian literature or [pg
          011]
          the brief reference of the prophet Ezekiel, who saw the women of
          Jerusalem weeping for Tammuz at the north gate of the temple.11
          Mirrored in the glass of Greek mythology, the oriental deity
          appears as a comely youth beloved by Aphrodite. In his infancy the
          goddess hid him in a chest, which she gave in charge to Persephone,
          queen of the nether world. But when Persephone opened the chest and
          beheld the beauty of the babe, she refused to give him back to
          Aphrodite, though the goddess of love went down herself to hell to
          ransom her dear one from the power of the grave. The dispute
          between the two goddesses of love and death was settled by Zeus,
          who decreed that Adonis should abide with Persephone in the under
          world for one part of the year, and with Aphrodite in the upper
          world for another part. At last the fair youth was killed in
          hunting by a wild boar, or by the jealous Ares, who turned himself
          into the likeness of a boar in order to compass the death of his
          rival. Bitterly did Aphrodite lament her loved and lost
          Adonis.12 The
          strife between the divine rivals for the possession of Adonis
          appears to be depicted on an Etruscan mirror. The two goddesses,
          identified by inscriptions, are stationed on either side of
          Jupiter, who occupies the seat of judgment and lifts an admonitory
          finger as he looks sternly towards Persephone. Overcome with grief
          the goddess of love buries her face in her mantle, while her
          pertinacious rival, grasping a branch in one hand, points with the
          other at a closed coffer, which probably contains the youthful
          Adonis.13 In
          [pg 012] this form of the
          myth, the contest between Aphrodite and Persephone for the
          possession of Adonis clearly reflects the struggle between Ishtar
          and Allatu in the land of the dead, while the decision of Zeus that
          Adonis is to spend one part of the year under ground and another
          part above ground is merely a Greek version of the annual
          disappearance and reappearance of Tammuz.


[pg 013]




 


Chapter II. Adonis in
          Syria.







Worship of Adonis and Astarte at
              Byblus, the kingdom of Cinyras. The kings of Byblus.





The myth of
          Adonis was localized and his rites celebrated with much solemnity
          at two places in Western Asia. One of these was Byblus on the coast
          of Syria, the other was Paphos in Cyprus. Both were great seats of
          the worship of Aphrodite, or rather of her Semitic counterpart,
          Astarte;14 and of
          both, if we accept the legends, Cinyras, the father of Adonis, was
          king.15 Of the
          two cities Byblus was the more ancient; indeed it claimed to be the
          oldest city in Phoenicia, and to have been founded in the early
          ages of the world by the great god El, whom Greeks and Romans
          identified with Cronus and Saturn respectively.16
          However that may have been, in historical times it ranked as a holy
          place, the religious capital of the country, the Mecca or Jerusalem
          of the Phoenicians.17 The
          city stood on a height beside the sea,18 and
          contained a great sanctuary of Astarte,19 where
          [pg 014] in the midst of a
          spacious open court, surrounded by cloisters and approached from
          below by staircases, rose a tall cone or obelisk, the holy image of
          the goddess.20 In
          this sanctuary the rites of Adonis were celebrated.21 Indeed
          the whole city was sacred to him,22 and
          the river Nahr Ibrahim, which falls into the sea a little to the
          south of Byblus, bore in antiquity the name of Adonis.23 This
          was the kingdom of Cinyras.24 From
          the earliest to the latest times the city appears to have been
          ruled by kings, assisted perhaps by a senate or council of
          elders.25 The
          first of the kings of whom we have historical evidence was a
          certain Zekar-baal. He reigned about a century before Solomon; yet
          from that dim past his figure stands out strangely fresh and
          lifelike in the journal of an Egyptian merchant or official named
          Wen-Ammon, which has fortunately been preserved in a papyrus. This
          man spent some time with the king at Byblus, and received from him,
          in return for rich presents, a supply of timber felled in the
          forests of Lebanon.26
          Another king of Byblus, who bore the name of Sibitti-baal, paid
          tribute to Tiglath-pileser III., king of Assyria, about the year
          739 b.c.27
          Further, from an inscription of the fifth or fourth century before
          our era we learn that a king of Byblus, by name Yehaw-melech, son
          of Yehar-baal, and grandson of Adom-melech or Uri-melech, dedicated
          a pillared portico with a carved work of gold and a bronze altar to
          the goddess, whom he worshipped under the name of Baalath Gebal,
          that is, the female Baal of Byblus.28
[pg 015]






Divinity of Semitic kings.





The names of
          these kings suggest that they claimed affinity with their god Baal
          or Moloch, for Moloch is only a corruption of melech, that is, “king.” Such a claim at all events appears to
          have been put forward by many other Semitic kings.29 The
          early monarchs of Babylon were worshipped as gods in their
          lifetime.30 Mesha,
          king of Moab, perhaps called himself the son of his god
          Kemosh.31 Among
          the Aramean sovereigns of Damascus, mentioned in the Bible, we find
          more than one Ben-hadad, that is, “son of
          the god Hadad,” the chief male deity of the Syrians;32 and
          Josephus tells us that down to his own time, in the first century
          of our era, Ben-hadad I., whom he calls simply Adad, and his
          successor, Hazael, continued to be worshipped as gods by the people
          of Damascus, who held processions daily in their honour.33 Some
          of the kings of Edom seem to have gone a step farther and
          identified themselves with the god in their lifetime; at all events
          they bore his name Hadad without any qualification.34 King
          Bar-rekub, who [pg
          016]
          reigned over Samal in North-Western Syria in the time of
          Tiglath-pileser (745-727 b.c.) appears from his
          name to have reckoned himself a son of Rekub-el, the god to whose
          favour he deemed himself indebted for the kingdom.35 The
          kings of Tyre traced their descent from Baal,36 and
          apparently professed to be gods in their own person.37
          Several of them bore names which are partly composed of the names
          of Baal and Astarte; one of them bore the name of Baal pure and
          simple.38 The
          Baal whom they personated was no doubt Melcarth, “the king of the city,” as his name signifies,
          the great god whom the Greeks identified with Hercules; for the
          equivalence of the Baal of Tyre both to Melcarth and to Hercules is
          placed beyond the reach of doubt by a bilingual inscription, in
          Phoenician and Greek, which was found in Malta.39







Divinity of the Phoenician kings
              of Byblus and the Canaanite kings of Jerusalem. The
“sacred
              men”
at Jerusalem.





In like manner
          the kings of Byblus may have assumed the style of Adonis; for
          Adonis was simply the divine Adon [pg 017] or “lord” of
          the city, a title which hardly differs in sense from Baal
          (“master”) and Melech (“king”). This conjecture would be confirmed if
          one of the kings of Byblus actually bore, as Renan believed, the
          name of Adom-melech, that is, Adonis Melech, the Lord King. But,
          unfortunately, the reading of the inscription in which the name
          occurs is doubtful.40 Some
          of the old Canaanite kings of Jerusalem appear to have played the
          part of Adonis in their lifetime, if we may judge from their names,
          Adoni-bezek and Adoni-zedek,41 which
          are divine rather than human titles. Adoni-zedek means “lord of righteousness,” and is therefore
          equivalent to Melchizedek, that is, “king
          of righteousness,” the title of that mysterious king of
          Salem and priest of God Most High, who seems to have been neither
          more nor less than one of these same Canaanitish kings of
          Jerusalem.42 Thus
          if the old priestly kings of Jerusalem regularly played the part of
          Adonis, we need not wonder that in later times the women of
          Jerusalem used to weep for Tammuz, that is, for Adonis, at the
          north gate of the temple.43 In
          doing so they may only have been continuing a custom which had been
          observed in the same place by the Canaanites long before the
          Hebrews invaded the land. Perhaps the “sacred men,” as they were called, who lodged
          within the walls of the temple at Jerusalem down almost to the end
          of the Jewish kingdom,44 may
          have acted the part of the living Adonis to the living Astarte of
          the women. At all events we know that in the cells of [pg 018] these strange clergy women wove
          garments for the asherim,45 the
          sacred poles which stood beside the altar and which appear to have
          been by some regarded as embodiments of Astarte.46
          Certainly these “sacred men” must
          have discharged some function which was deemed religious in the
          temple at Jerusalem; and we can hardly doubt that the prohibition
          to bring the wages of prostitution into the house of God, which was
          published at the very same time that the men were expelled from the
          temple,47 was
          directed against an existing practice. In Palestine as in other
          Semitic lands the hire of sacred prostitutes was probably dedicated
          to the deity as one of his regular dues: he took tribute of men and
          women as of flocks and herds, of fields and vineyards and
          oliveyards.







David as heir of the old sacred
              kings of Jerusalem.





But if Jerusalem
          had been from of old the seat of a dynasty of spiritual potentates
          or Grand Lamas, who held the keys of heaven and were revered far
          and wide as kings and gods in one, we can easily understand why the
          upstart David chose it for the capital of the new kingdom which he
          had won for himself at the point of the sword. The central position
          and the natural strength of the virgin fortress need not have been
          the only or the principal inducements which [pg 019] decided the politic monarch to transfer
          his throne from Hebron to Jerusalem.48 By
          serving himself heir to the ancient kings of the city he might
          reasonably hope to inherit their ghostly repute along with their
          broad acres, to wear their nimbus as well as their crown.49 So at
          a later time when he had conquered Ammon and captured the royal
          city of Rabbah, he took the heavy gold crown of the Ammonite god
          Milcom and placed it on his own brows, thus posing as the deity in
          person.50 It can
          hardly, therefore, be unreasonable to suppose that he pursued
          precisely the same policy at the conquest of Jerusalem. And on the
          other side the calm confidence with which the Jebusite inhabitants
          of that city awaited his attack, jeering at the besiegers from the
          battlements,51 may
          well have been born of a firm trust in the local deity rather than
          in the height and thickness of their grim old walls. Certainly the
          obstinacy [pg
          020]
          with which in after ages the Jews defended the same place against
          the armies of Assyria and Rome sprang in large measure from a
          similar faith in the God of Zion.







Traces of the divinity of Hebrew
              kings.





Be that as it
          may, the history of the Hebrew kings presents some features which
          may perhaps, without straining them too far, be interpreted as
          traces or relics of a time when they or their predecessors played
          the part of a divinity, and particularly of Adonis, the divine lord
          of the land. In life the Hebrew king was regularly addressed as
          Adoni-ham-melech, “My Lord the King,”52 and
          after death he was lamented with cries of Hoi ahi! Hoi Adon! “Alas my brother! alas Lord!”53 These
          exclamations of grief uttered for the death of a king of Judah
          were, we can hardly doubt, the very same cries which the weeping
          women of Jerusalem uttered in the north porch of the temple for the
          dead Tammuz.54
          However, little stress can be laid on such forms of address, since
          Adon in Hebrew, like
          “lord” in English, was a secular as
          well as a religious title. But whether identified with Adonis or
          not, the Hebrew kings certainly seem to have been regarded as in a
          sense divine, as representing and to [pg 021] some extent embodying Jehovah on earth. For
          the king's throne was called the throne of Jehovah;55 and
          the application of the holy oil to his head was believed to impart
          to him directly a portion of the divine spirit.56 Hence
          he bore the title of Messiah, which with its Greek equivalent
          Christ means no more than “the Anointed
          One.” Thus when David had cut off the skirt of Saul's robe
          in the darkness of a cave where he was in hiding, his heart smote
          him for having laid sacrilegious hands upon Adoni Messiah Jehovah,
          “my Lord the Anointed of
          Jehovah.”57







The Hebrew kings seem to have been
              held responsible for drought and famine.





Like other
          divine or semi-divine rulers the Hebrew kings were apparently held
          answerable for famine and pestilence. When a dearth, caused perhaps
          by a failure of the winter rains, had visited the land for three
          years, King David inquired of the oracle, which discreetly laid the
          blame not on him but on his predecessor Saul. The dead king was
          indeed beyond the reach of punishment, but his sons were
          [pg 022] not. So David had
          seven of them sought out, and they were hanged before the Lord at
          the beginning of barley harvest in spring: and all the long summer
          the mother of two of the dead men sat under the gallows-tree,
          keeping off the jackals by night and the vultures by day, till with
          the autumn the blessed rain came at last to wet their dangling
          bodies and fertilize the barren earth once more. Then the bones of
          the dead were taken down from the gibbet and buried in the
          sepulchre of their fathers.58 The
          season when these princes were put to death, at the beginning of
          barley harvest, and the length of time they hung on the gallows,
          seem to show that their execution was not a mere punishment, but
          that it partook of the nature of a rain-charm. For it is a common
          belief that rain can be procured by magical ceremonies performed
          with dead men's bones,59 and it
          would be natural to ascribe a special virtue in this respect to the
          bones of princes, who are often expected to give rain in their
          life. When the Israelites demanded of Samuel that he should give
          them a king, the indignant prophet, loth to be superseded by the
          upstart Saul, called on the Lord to send thunder and rain, and the
          Lord did so at once, though the season was early summer and the
          reapers were at work in the wheat-fields, a time when in common
          years no rain falls from the cloudless Syrian sky.60 The
          pious historian who records the miracle seems to have regarded it
          as a mere token of the wrath of the deity, whose voice was heard in
          the roll of thunder; but we may surmise that in giving this
          impressive proof of his control of the weather Samuel meant to hint
          gently at the naughtiness of asking for a king to do for the
          fertility of the land what could be done quite as well and far more
          cheaply by a prophet.







Excessive rain set down to the
              wrath of the deity.





In Israel the
          excess as well as the deficiency of rain seems to have been set
          down to the wrath of the [pg
          023]
          deity.61 When
          the Jews returned to Jerusalem from the great captivity and
          assembled for the first time in the square before the ruined
          temple, it happened that the weather was very wet, and as the
          people sat shelterless and drenched in the piazza they trembled at
          their sin and at the rain.62 In all
          ages it has been the strength or the weakness of Israel to read the
          hand of God in the changing aspects of nature, and we need not
          wonder that at such a time and in so dismal a scene, with a
          lowering sky overhead, the blackened ruins of the temple before
          their eyes, and the steady drip of the rain over all, the returned
          exiles should have been oppressed with a double sense of their own
          guilt and of the divine anger. Perhaps, though they hardly knew it,
          memories of the bright sun, fat fields, and broad willow-fringed
          rivers of Babylon,63 which
          had been so long their home, lent a deeper shade of sadness to the
          austerity of the Judean landscape, with its gaunt grey hills
          stretching away, range beyond range, to the horizon, or dipping
          eastward to the far line of sombre blue which marks the sullen
          waters of the Dead Sea.64







Hebrew kings apparently supposed
              to heal disease and stop epidemics.





In the days of
          the Hebrew monarchy the king was apparently credited with the power
          of making sick and making whole. Thus the king of Syria sent a
          leper to the king of Israel to be healed by him, just as scrofulous
          patients [pg
          024]
          used to fancy that they could be cured by the touch of a French or
          English king. However, the Hebrew monarch, with more sense than has
          been shown by his royal brothers in modern times, professed himself
          unable to work any such miracle. “Am I
          God,” he asked, “to kill and to make
          alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his
          leprosy?”65 On
          another occasion, when pestilence ravaged the country and the
          excited fancy of the plague-stricken people saw in the clouds the
          figure of the Destroying Angel with his sword stretched out over
          Jerusalem, they laid the blame on King David, who had offended the
          touchy and irascible deity by taking a census. The prudent monarch
          bowed to the popular storm, acknowledged his guilt, and appeased
          the angry god by offering burnt sacrifices on the threshing-floor
          of Araunah, one of the old Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem. Then
          the angel sheathed his flashing sword, and the shrieks of the dying
          and the lamentations for the dead no longer resounded in the
          streets.66







The rarity of references to the
              divinity of Hebrew kings in the historical books may be
              explained by the circumstances in which these works were
              composed or edited.





To this theory
          of the sanctity, nay the divinity of the Hebrew kings it may be
          objected that few traces of it survive in the historical books of
          the Bible. But the force of the objection is weakened by a
          consideration of the time and the circumstances in which these
          books assumed their final shape. The great prophets of the eighth
          and the [pg
          025]
          seventh centuries by the spiritual ideals and the ethical fervour
          of their teaching had wrought a religious and moral reform perhaps
          unparalleled in history. Under their influence an austere
          monotheism had replaced the old sensuous worship of the natural
          powers: a stern Puritanical spirit, an unbending rigour of mind,
          had succeeded to the old easy supple temper with its weak
          compliances, its wax-like impressionability, its proclivities to
          the sins of the flesh. And the moral lessons which the prophets
          inculcated were driven home by the political events of the time,
          above all by the ever-growing pressure of the great Assyrian empire
          on the petty states of Palestine. The long agony of the siege of
          Samaria67 must
          have been followed with trembling anxiety by the inhabitants of
          Judea, for the danger was at their door. They had only to lift up
          their eyes and look north to see the blue hills of Ephraim, at
          whose foot lay the beleaguered city. Its final fall and the
          destruction of the northern kingdom could not fail to fill every
          thoughtful mind in the sister realm with sad forebodings. It was as
          if the sky had lowered and thunder muttered over Jerusalem.
          Thenceforth to the close of the Jewish monarchy, about a century
          and a half later, the cloud never passed away, though once for a
          little it seemed to lift, when Sennacherib raised the siege of
          Jerusalem68 and
          the watchers on the walls beheld the last of the long line of
          spears and standards disappearing, the last squadron of the
          blue-coated Assyrian cavalry sweeping, in a cloud of dust, out of
          sight.69







The historical books were composed
              or edited under the influence of the prophetic
              reformation.





It was in this
          period of national gloom and despondency that the two great
          reformations of Israel's religion were accomplished, the first by
          king Hezekiah, the second a century later by king Josiah.70 We
          need not wonder then [pg
          026]
          that the reformers who in that and subsequent ages composed or
          edited the annals of their nation should have looked as sourly on
          the old unreformed paganism of their forefathers as the fierce
          zealots of the Commonwealth looked on the far more innocent
          pastimes of Merry England; and that in their zeal for the glory of
          God they should have blotted many pages of history lest they should
          perpetuate the memory of practices to which they traced the
          calamities of their country. All the historical books passed
          through the office of the Puritan censor,71 and we
          can hardly doubt that they emerged from it stript of many gay
          feathers which they had flaunted when they went in. Among the shed
          plumage may well have been the passages which invested human
          beings, whether kings or commoners, with the attributes of deity.
          Certainly no pages could seem to the censor more rankly
          blasphemous; on none, therefore, was he likely to press more firmly
          the official sponge.







The Baal and his female Baalath
              the sources of all fertility.





But if Semitic
          kings in general and the kings of Byblus in particular often
          assumed the style of Baal or Adonis, it follows that they may have
          mated with the goddess, the Baalath or Astarte of the city.
          Certainly we hear of kings of Tyre and Sidon who were priests of
          Astarte.72 Now to
          the agricultural Semites the Baal or god of a land was the author
          of all its fertility; he it was who produced the corn, the wine,
          the figs, the oil, and the flax, by means of his quickening waters,
          which in the arid parts of the Semitic world are oftener springs,
          streams, and underground flow than the rains of heaven.73
          Further, “the life-giving power of the god
          was not limited to vegetative nature, but to him also was ascribed
          the increase of animal life, the [pg 027] multiplication of flocks and herds, and, not
          least, of the human inhabitants of the land. For the increase of
          animate nature is obviously conditioned, in the last resort, by the
          fertility of the soil, and primitive races, which have not learned
          to differentiate the various kinds of life with precision, think of
          animate as well as vegetable life as rooted in the earth and sprung
          from it. The earth is the great mother of all things in most
          mythological philosophies, and the comparison of the life of
          mankind, or of a stock of men, with the life of a tree, which is so
          common in Semitic as in other primitive poetry, is not in its
          origin a mere figure. Thus where the growth of vegetation is
          ascribed to a particular divine power, the same power receives the
          thanks and homage of his worshippers for the increase of cattle and
          of men. Firstlings as well as first-fruits were offered at the
          shrines of the Baalim, and one of the commonest classes of personal
          names given by parents to their sons or daughters designates the
          child as the gift of the god.” In short, “the Baal was conceived as the male principle of
          reproduction, the husband of the land which he
          fertilised.”74 So
          far, therefore, as the Semite personified the reproductive energies
          of nature as male and female, as a Baal and a Baalath, he appears
          to have identified the male power especially with water and the
          female especially with earth. On this view plants and trees,
          animals and men, are the offspring or children of the Baal and
          Baalath.







Personation of the Baal by the
              king.





If, then, at
          Byblus and elsewhere, the Semitic king was allowed, or rather
          required, to personate the god and marry the goddess, the intention
          of the custom can only have been to ensure the fertility of the
          land and the increase of men and cattle by means of homoeopathic
          magic. There is reason to think that a similar custom was observed
          from a similar motive in other parts of the ancient world, and
          particularly at Nemi, where both the male and the female powers,
          the Dianus and Diana, were in one aspect of their nature
          personifications of the life-giving waters.75







Cinyras, king of Byblus. Aphaca
              and the vale of the Adonis. Monuments of Adonis.





The last king of
          Byblus bore the ancient name of Cinyras, and was beheaded by Pompey
          the Great for his [pg
          028]
          tyrannous excesses.76 His
          legendary namesake Cinyras is said to have founded a sanctuary of
          Aphrodite, that is, of Astarte, at a place on Mount Lebanon,
          distant a day's journey from the capital.77 The
          spot was probably Aphaca, at the source of the river Adonis,
          half-way between Byblus and Baalbec; for at Aphaca there was a
          famous grove and sanctuary of Astarte which Constantine destroyed
          on account of the flagitious character of the worship.78 The
          site of the temple has been discovered by modern travellers near
          the miserable village which still bears the name of Afka at the
          head of the wild, romantic, wooded gorge of the Adonis. The hamlet
          stands among groves of noble walnut-trees on the brink of the lyn.
          A little way off the river rushes from a cavern at the foot of a
          mighty amphitheatre of towering cliffs to plunge in a series of
          cascades into the awful depths of the glen. The deeper it descends,
          the ranker and denser grows the vegetation, which, sprouting from
          the crannies and fissures of the rocks, spreads a green veil over
          the roaring or murmuring stream in the tremendous chasm below.
          There is something delicious, almost intoxicating, in the freshness
          of these tumbling waters, in the sweetness and purity of the
          mountain air, in the vivid green of the vegetation. The temple, of
          which some massive hewn blocks and a fine column of Syenite granite
          still mark the site, occupied a terrace facing the source of the
          river and commanding a magnificent prospect. Across the foam and
          the roar of the waterfalls you look up to the cavern and away to
          the top of the sublime precipices above. So lofty is the cliff that
          the goats which creep along its ledges to browse on the bushes
          appear like ants to the spectator hundreds of feet below. Seaward
          the view is especially impressive when the sun floods the profound
          gorge with golden light, revealing all the fantastic buttresses and
          rounded towers of its mountain rampart, and falling softly on the
          varied green of the woods which clothe its depths.79 It was
          here that, according [pg
          029]
          to the legend, Adonis met Aphrodite for the first or the last
          time,80 and
          here his mangled body was buried.81 A
          fairer scene could hardly be imagined for a story of tragic love
          and death. Yet, sequestered as the valley is and must always have
          been, it is not wholly deserted. A convent or a village may be
          observed here and there standing out against the sky on the top of
          some beetling crag, or clinging to the face of a nearly
          perpendicular cliff high above the foam and the din of the river;
          and at evening the lights that twinkle through the gloom betray the
          presence of human habitations on slopes which might seem
          inaccessible to man. In antiquity the whole of the lovely vale
          appears have been dedicated to Adonis, and to this day it is
          haunted by his memory; for the heights which shut it in are crested
          at various points by ruined monuments of his worship, some of them
          overhanging dreadful abysses, down which it turns the head dizzy to
          look and see the eagles wheeling about their nests far below. One
          such monument exists at Ghineh. The face of a great rock, above a
          roughly hewn recess, is here carved with figures of Adonis and
          Aphrodite. He is portrayed with spear in rest, awaiting the attack
          of a bear, while she is seated in an attitude of sorrow.82 Her
          grief-stricken figure may well be the mourning [pg 030] Aphrodite of the Lebanon described by
          Macrobius,83 and
          the recess in the rock is perhaps her lover's tomb. Every year, in
          the belief of his worshippers, Adonis was wounded to death on the
          mountains, and every year the face of nature itself was dyed with
          his sacred blood. So year by year the Syrian damsels lamented his
          untimely fate,84 while
          the red anemone, his flower, bloomed among the cedars of Lebanon,
          and the river ran red to the sea, fringing the winding shores of
          the blue Mediterranean, whenever the wind set inshore, with a
          sinuous, band of crimson.


[pg 031]




 


Chapter III. Adonis in
          Cyprus.







Phoenician colonies in
              Cyprus.





The island of
          Cyprus lies but one day's sail from the coast of Syria. Indeed, on
          fine summer evenings its mountains may be descried looming low and
          dark against the red fires of sunset.85 With
          its rich mines of copper and its forests of firs and stately
          cedars, the island naturally attracted a commercial and maritime
          people like the Phoenicians; while the abundance of its corn, its
          wine, and its oil must have rendered it in their eyes a Land of
          Promise by comparison with the niggardly nature of their own rugged
          coast, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea.86
          Accordingly they settled in Cyprus at a very early date and
          remained there long after the Greeks had also established
          themselves on its shores; for we know from inscriptions and coins
          that Phoenician kings reigned at Citium, the Chittim of the
          Hebrews, down to the time of Alexander the Great.87
[pg 032] Naturally the
          Semitic colonists brought their gods with them from the
          mother-land. They worshipped Baal of the Lebanon,88 who
          may well have been Adonis, and at Amathus on the south coast they
          instituted the rites of Adonis and Aphrodite, or rather
          Astarte.89 Here,
          as at Byblus, these rites resembled the Egyptian worship of Osiris
          so closely that some people even identified the Adonis of Amathus
          with Osiris.90 The
          Tyrian Melcarth or Moloch was also worshipped at Amathus,91 and
          the tombs discovered in the neighbourhood prove that the city
          remained Phoenician to a late period.92







Kingdom of Paphos. Sanctuary of
              Aphrodite at Paphos.





But the great
          seat of the worship of Aphrodite and Adonis in Cyprus was Paphos on
          the south-western side of the island. Among the petty kingdoms into
          which Cyprus was divided from the earliest times until the end of
          the fourth century before our era Paphos must have ranked with the
          best. It is a land of hills and billowy ridges, diversified by
          fields and vineyards and intersected by rivers, which in the course
          of ages have carved for themselves beds of such tremendous depth
          that travelling in the interior is difficult and tedious. The lofty
          range of Mount Olympus (the modern Troodos), capped with snow the
          greater part of the year, screens Paphos from the northerly and
          easterly winds and cuts it off from the rest of the island. On the
          slopes of the range the last pine-woods of Cyprus linger,
          sheltering here and there monasteries [pg 033] in scenery not unworthy of the Apennines. The
          old city of Paphos occupied the summit of a hill about a mile from
          the sea; the newer city sprang up at the harbour some ten miles
          off.93 The
          sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos (the modern Kuklia) was one of
          the most celebrated shrines in the ancient world. From the earliest
          to the latest times it would seem to have preserved its essential
          features unchanged. For the sanctuary is represented on coins of
          the Imperial age,94 and
          these representations agree closely with little golden models of a
          shrine which were found in two of the royal graves at
          Mycenae.95 Both
          on the coins and in the models we see a façade surmounted by a pair
          of doves and divided into three compartments or chapels, of which
          the central one is crowned by a lofty superstructure. In the golden
          models each chapel contains a pillar standing in a pair of horns:
          the central superstructure is crowned by two pairs of horns, one
          within the other; and the two side chapels are in like manner
          crowned each with a pair of horns and a single dove perched on the
          outer horn of each pair. On the coins each of the side chapels
          contains a pillar or candelabra-like object: the central chapel
          contains a cone and is flanked by two high columns, each
          terminating in a pair of ball-topped pinnacles, with a star and
          crescent appearing between the tops of the columns. The doves are
          doubtless the sacred doves of Aphrodite or Astarte,96 and
          the [pg 034] horns and pillars
          remind us of the similar religious emblems which have been found in
          the great prehistoric palace of Cnossus in Crete, as well as on
          many monuments of the Mycenaean or Minoan age of Greece.97 If
          antiquaries are right in regarding the golden models as copies of
          the Paphian shrine, that shrine must have suffered little outward
          change for more than a thousand years; for the royal graves at
          Mycenae, in which the models were found, can hardly be of later
          date than the twelfth century before our era.







The Aphrodite of Paphos a
              Phoenician or aboriginal deity. Her conical image.





Thus the
          sanctuary of Aphrodite at Paphos was apparently of great
          antiquity.98
          According to Herodotus, it was founded by Phoenician colonists from
          Ascalon;99 but it
          is possible that a native goddess of fertility was worshipped on
          the spot before the arrival of the Phoenicians, and that the
          newcomers identified her with their own Baalath or Astarte, whom
          she may have closely resembled. If two deities were thus fused in
          one, we may suppose that they were both varieties of that great
          goddess of motherhood and fertility whose worship appears to have
          been spread all over Western Asia from a very early time. The
          supposition is confirmed as well by the archaic shape of her image
          as by the licentious character of her rites; for both that shape
          and those rites were shared by her with other Asiatic deities. Her
          image was simply a white cone or pyramid.100
[pg 035] In like manner, a
          cone was the emblem of Astarte at Byblus,101 of
          the native goddess whom the Greeks called Artemis at Perga in
          Pamphylia,102 and
          of the sun-god Heliogabalus at Emesa in Syria.103
          Conical stones, which apparently served as idols, have also been
          found at Golgi in Cyprus, and in the Phoenician temples of
          Malta;104 and
          cones of sandstone came to light at the shrine of the “Mistress of Torquoise” among the barren hills
          and frowning precipices of Sinai.105 The
          precise significance of such [pg 036] an emblem remains as obscure as it was in the
          time of Tacitus.106 It
          appears to have been customary to anoint the sacred cone with olive
          oil at a solemn festival, in which people from Lycia and Caria
          participated.107 The
          custom of anointing a holy stone has been observed in many parts of
          the world; for example, in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi.108 To
          this day the old custom appears to survive at Paphos, for
          “in honour of the Maid of Bethlehem the
          peasants of Kuklia anointed lately, and probably still anoint each
          year, the great corner-stones of the ruined Temple of the Paphian
          Goddess. As Aphrodite was supplicated once with cryptic rites, so
          is Mary entreated still by Moslems as well as Christians, with
          incantations and passings through perforated stones, to remove the
          curse of barrenness from Cypriote women, or increase the manhood of
          Cypriote men.”109 Thus
          the ancient worship of the goddess of fertility is continued under
          a different name. Even the name of the old goddess is retained in
          some parts of the island; for in more than one chapel the Cypriote
          peasants adore the mother of Christ under the title Panaghia
          Aphroditessa.110







Sacred prostitution in the worship
              of the Paphian Aphrodite and of other Asiatic goddesses.





In Cyprus it
          appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by
          custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of
          the goddess, whether she went by the name of Aphrodite, Astarte, or
          what not.111
          Similar customs prevailed in many parts of Western Asia. Whatever
          its motive, the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of
          lust, but as a solemn religious duty performed in the service of
          that great Mother Goddess of Western Asia whose name varied, while
          her type remained constant, from place to place. Thus at Babylon
          every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her life to submit
          to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is, of
          Ishtar or [pg
          037]
          Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this
          sanctified harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women
          waiting to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for
          years.112 At
          Heliopolis or Baalbec in Syria, famous for the imposing grandeur of
          its ruined temples, the custom of the country required that every
          maiden should prostitute herself to a stranger at the temple of
          Astarte, and matrons as well as maids testified their devotion to
          the goddess in the same manner. The emperor Constantine abolished
          the custom, destroyed the temple, and built a church in its
          stead.113 In
          Phoenician temples women prostituted themselves for hire in the
          service of religion, believing that by this conduct they
          propitiated the goddess and won her favour.114
“It was a law of the Amorites, that
          [pg 038] she who was about to
          marry should sit in fornication seven days by the
          gate.”115 At
          Byblus the people shaved their heads in the annual mourning for
          Adonis. Women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give
          themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and
          the money which they thus earned was devoted to the goddess.116 This
          custom may have been a mitigation of an older rule which at Byblus
          as elsewhere formerly compelled every woman without exception to
          sacrifice her virtue in the service of religion. I have already
          suggested a reason why the offering of a woman's hair was accepted
          as an equivalent for the surrender of her person.117 We
          are told that in Lydia all girls were obliged to prostitute
          themselves in order to earn a dowry;118 but
          we may suspect that the real motive of the custom was devotion
          rather than economy. The suspicion is confirmed by a Greek
          inscription found at Tralles in Lydia, which proves that the
          practice of religious prostitution survived in that country as late
          as the second century of our era. It records of a certain woman,
          Aurelia Aemilia by name, not only that she herself served the god
          in the capacity of a harlot at his express command, but that her
          mother and other female ancestors had done the same before her; and
          the publicity of the record, engraved on a marble column which
          supported a votive offering, shows that no stain attached to such a
          life and such a parentage.119 In
          Armenia the noblest families dedicated their daughters to the
          service of the goddess Anaitis in her temple at Acilisena, where
          the damsels acted as prostitutes for a long time before they were
          given in marriage. Nobody scrupled to take one of these girls to
          wife when her period of service was over.120
[pg 039] Again, the goddess
          Ma was served by a multitude of sacred harlots at Comana in Pontus,
          and crowds of men and women flocked to her sanctuary from the
          neighbouring cities and country to attend the biennial festivals or
          to pay their vows to the goddess.121







The Asiatic Mother Goddess a
              personification of all the reproductive energies of nature. Her
              worship perhaps reflects a period of sexual communism.





If we survey the
          whole of the evidence on this subject, some of which has still to
          be laid before the reader, we may conclude that a great Mother
          Goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of
          nature, was worshipped under different names but with a substantial
          similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of Western Asia; that
          associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine
          yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being
          deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in
          their several kind;122 and
          further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated
          and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary,
          union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the
          sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the
          increase of man and beast.123 And
          if the [pg
          040]
          conception of such a Mother Goddess dates, as seems probable, from
          a time when the institution of marriage was either unknown or at
          most barely tolerated as an immoral infringement of old communal
          rights, we can understand both why the goddess herself was
          regularly supposed to be at once unmarried and unchaste, and why
          her worshippers were obliged to imitate her more or less completely
          in these respects. For had she been a divine wife united to a
          divine husband, the natural counterpart of their union would have
          been the lawful marriage of men and women, and there would have
          been no need to resort to a system of prostitution or promiscuity
          in order to effect those purposes which, on the principles of
          homoeopathic magic, might in that case have been as well or better
          attained by the legitimate intercourse of the sexes in matrimony.
          Formerly, perhaps, every woman was obliged to submit at least once
          in her life to the exercise of those marital rights which at a
          still earlier period had theoretically belonged in permanence to
          all the males of the tribe. But in course of time, as the
          institution of individual marriage grew in favour, and the old
          communism fell more and more into discredit, the revival of the
          ancient practice even for a single occasion in a woman's life
          became ever more repugnant to the moral sense of the people, and
          accordingly they resorted to various expedients for evading in
          practice the obligation which they still acknowledged in theory.
          One of these evasions was to let the woman offer her hair instead
          of her person; another apparently was to substitute an obscene
          symbol for the obscene act.124 But
          while the majority of women thus contrived to observe the forms of
          religion without sacrificing their virtue, it was still thought
          necessary to the general welfare that a certain number of them
          should discharge the old obligation in the old way. These became
          prostitutes either for life or for a term of years at one of the
          temples: dedicated to the service of religion, they were invested
          with [pg 041] a sacred
          character,125 and
          their vocation, far from being deemed infamous, was probably long
          regarded by the laity as an exercise of more than common virtue,
          and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder, reverence, and pity,
          not unlike that which in some parts of the world is still paid to
          women who seek to honour their Creator in a different way by
          renouncing the natural functions of their sex and the tenderest
          relations of humanity. It is thus that the folly of mankind finds
          vent in opposite extremes alike harmful and deplorable.







The daughters of Cinyras.





At Paphos the
          custom of religious prostitution is said to have been instituted by
          King Cinyras,126 and
          to have been practised by his daughters, the sisters of Adonis,
          who, having incurred the wrath of Aphrodite, mated with strangers
          and ended their days in Egypt.127 In
          this form of the tradition the wrath of Aphrodite is probably a
          feature added by a later authority, who could only regard conduct
          which shocked his own moral sense as a punishment inflicted by the
          goddess instead of as a sacrifice regularly enjoined by her on all
          her devotees. At all events the story indicates that the princesses
          of Paphos had to conform to the custom as well as women of humble
          birth.







The Paphian dynasty of the
              Cinyrads.





The legendary
          history of the royal and priestly family of the Cinyrads is
          instructive. We are told that a Syrian man, by name Sandacus,
          migrated to Cilicia, married Pharnace, daughter of Megassares, king
          of Hyria, and founded the city of Celenderis. His wife bore him a
          son, Cinyras, who in time crossed the sea with a company of people
          to Cyprus, wedded Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of the
          island, and founded Paphos.128 These
          legends [pg
          042]
          seem to contain reminiscences of kingdoms in Cilicia and Cyprus
          which passed in the female line, and were held by men, sometimes
          foreigners, who married the hereditary princesses. There are some
          indications that Cinyras was not in fact the founder of the temple
          at Paphos. An older tradition ascribed the foundation to a certain
          Aerias, whom some regarded as a king, and others as the goddess
          herself.129
          Moreover, Cinyras or his descendants at Paphos had to reckon with
          rivals. These were the Tamirads, a family of diviners who traced
          their descent from Tamiras, a Cilician augur. At first it was
          arranged that both families should preside at the ceremonies, but
          afterwards the Tamirads gave way to the Cinyrads.130 Many
          tales were told of Cinyras, the founder of the dynasty. He was a
          priest of Aphrodite as well as a king,131 and
          his riches passed into a proverb.132 To
          his descendants, the Cinyrads, he appears to have bequeathed his
          wealth and his dignities; at all events, they reigned as kings of
          Paphos and served the goddess as priests. Their dead bodies, with
          that of Cinyras himself, were buried in the sanctuary.133 But
          by the fourth century before our era the family had declined and
          become nearly extinct. When Alexander the Great expelled a king of
          Paphos for injustice and wickedness, his envoys made search for a
          member of the ancient house to set on the throne of his fathers. At
          last they found one of [pg
          043]
          them living in obscurity and earning his bread as a market
          gardener. He was in the very act of watering his beds when the
          king's messengers carried him off, much to his astonishment, to
          receive the crown at the hands of their master.134 Yet
          if the dynasty decayed, the shrine of the goddess, enriched by the
          offerings of kings and private persons, maintained its reputation
          for wealth down to Roman times.135 When
          Ptolemy Auletes, king of Egypt, was expelled by his people in 57
          b.c., Cato offered him the
          priesthood of Paphos as a sufficient consolation in money and
          dignity for the loss of a throne.136







Incest of Cinyras with his
              daughter Myrrha, and birth of Adonis. Legends of royal incest—a
              suggested explanation.





Among the
          stories which were told of Cinyras, the ancestor of these priestly
          kings and the father of Adonis, there are some that deserve our
          attention. In the first place, he is said to have begotten his son
          Adonis in incestuous intercourse with his daughter Myrrha at a
          festival of the corn-goddess, at which women robed in white were
          wont to offer corn-wreaths as first-fruits of the harvest and to
          observe strict chastity for nine days.137
          Similar cases of incest with [pg 044] a daughter are reported of many ancient
          kings.138 It
          seems unlikely that such reports are without foundation, and
          perhaps equally improbable that they refer to mere fortuitous
          outbursts of unnatural lust. We may suspect that they are based on
          a practice actually observed for a definite reason in certain
          special circumstances. Now in countries where the royal blood was
          traced through women only, and where consequently the king held
          office merely in virtue of his marriage with an hereditary
          princess, who was the real sovereign, it appears to have often
          happened that a prince married his own sister, the princess royal,
          in order to obtain with her hand the crown which otherwise would
          have gone to another man, perhaps to a stranger.139 May
          not the same rule of descent have furnished a motive for incest
          with a daughter? For it seems a natural corollary from such a rule
          that the king was bound to vacate the throne on the death of his
          wife, the queen, since he occupied it only by virtue of his
          marriage with her. When that marriage terminated, his right to the
          throne terminated with it and passed at once to his daughter's
          husband. Hence if the king desired to reign after his wife's death,
          the only way in which he could legitimately continue to do so was
          by marrying his daughter, and thus prolonging through her the title
          which had formerly been his through her mother.
[pg 045]






The Flamen Dialis and his
              Flaminica at Rome.





In this
          connexion it is worth while to remember that at Rome the Flamen
          Dialis was bound to vacate his priesthood on the death of his wife,
          the Flaminica.140 The
          rule would be intelligible if the Flaminica had originally been the
          more important functionary of the two, and if the Flamen held
          office only by virtue of his marriage with her.141
          Elsewhere I have shown reason to suppose that he and his wife
          represented an old line of priestly kings and queens, who played
          the parts of Jupiter and Juno, or perhaps rather Dianus and Diana,
          respectively.142 If
          the supposition is correct, the custom which obliged him to resign
          his priesthood on the death of his wife seems to prove that of the
          two deities whom they personated, the goddess, whether named Juno
          or Diana, was indeed the better half. But at Rome the goddess Juno
          always played an insignificant part; whereas at Nemi her old
          double, Diana, was all-powerful, casting her mate, Dianus or
          Virbius, into deep shadow. Thus a rule which points to the
          superiority of the Flaminica over the Flamen, appears to indicate
          that the divine originals of the two were Dianus and Diana rather
          than Jupiter and Juno; and further, that if Jupiter and Juno at
          Rome stood for the principle of father-kin, or the predominance of
          the husband over the wife, Dianus and Diana at Nemi stood for the
          older principle of mother-kin, or the predominance of the wife in
          matters of inheritance over the husband. If, then, I am right in
          holding that the kingship at Rome was originally a plebeian
          institution and descended through women,143 we
          must conclude that the people who founded the sanctuary of Diana at
          Nemi were of the same plebeian stock as the Roman kings, that they
          traced descent in the female line, and that they worshipped a great
          Mother Goddess, not a great Father God. That goddess was Diana; her
          maternal functions are abundantly proved by the votive offerings
          found at her ancient shrine among the wooded hills.144 On
          the other hand, the [pg
          046]
          patricians, who afterwards invaded the country, brought with them
          father-kin in its strictest form, and consistently enough paid
          their devotions rather to Father Jove than to Mother Juno.







Priestesses among the Khasis of
              Assam.





A parallel to
          what I conjecture to have been the original relation of the
          Flaminica to her husband the Flamen may to a certain extent be
          found among the Khasis of Assam, who preserve to this day the
          ancient system of mother-kin in matters of inheritance and
          religion. For among these people the propitiation of deceased
          ancestors is deemed essential to the welfare of the community, and
          of all their ancestors they revere most the primaeval ancestress of
          the clan. Accordingly in every sacrifice a priest must be assisted
          by a priestess; indeed, we are told that he merely acts as her
          deputy, and that she “is without doubt a
          survival of the time when, under the matriarchate, the priestess
          was the agent for the performance of all religious
          ceremonies.” It does not appear that the priest need be the
          husband of the priestess; but in the Khyrim State, where each
          division has its own goddess to whom sacrifices are offered, the
          priestess is the mother, sister, niece, or other maternal relation
          of the priest. It is her duty to prepare all the sacrificial
          articles, and without her assistance the sacrifice cannot take
          place.145 Here,
          then, as among the ancient Romans on my hypothesis, we have the
          superiority of the priestess over the priest based on a
          corresponding superiority of the goddess or divine ancestress over
          the god or divine ancestor; and here, as at Rome, a priest would
          clearly have to vacate office if he had no woman of the proper
          relationship to assist him in the performance of his sacred
          duties.







Sacred marriage of a priest and
              priestess as representatives of the Sun-god and the
              Earth-goddess. Marriage of the Sun-god and Earth-goddess acted
              by a priest and his wife.





Further, I have
          conjectured that as representatives of Jupiter and Juno
          respectively the Flamen and Flaminica at Rome may have annually
          celebrated a Sacred Marriage for the purpose of ensuring the
          fertility of the powers of nature.146 This
          conjecture also may be supported by an analogous custom which is
          still observed in India. We have seen how among the Oraons, a
          primitive hill-tribe of Bengal, the [pg 047] marriage of the Sun and the Earth is annually
          celebrated by a priest and priestess who personate respectively the
          god of the Sun and the goddess of the Earth.147 The
          ceremony of the Sacred Marriage has been described more fully by a
          Jesuit missionary, who was intimately acquainted with the people
          and their native religion. The rite is celebrated in the month of
          May, when the sal tree is in bloom, and the
          festival takes its native name (khaddi) from the flower of the
          tree. It is the greatest festival of the year. “The object of this feast is to celebrate the mystical
          marriage of the Sun-god (Bhagawan) with the Goddess-earth
          (Dharti-mai), to induce them to
          be fruitful and give good crops.” At the same time all the
          minor deities or demons of the village are propitiated, in order
          that they may not hinder the beneficent activity of the Sun God and
          the Earth Goddess. On the eve of the appointed day no man may
          plough his fields, and the priest, accompanied by some of the
          villagers, repairs to the sacred grove, where he beats a drum and
          invites all the invisible guests to the great feast that will await
          them on the morrow. Next morning very early, before cock-crow, an
          acolyte steals out as quietly as possible to the sacred spring to
          fetch water in a new earthen pot. This holy water is full of all
          kinds of blessings for the crops. The priest has prepared a place
          for it in the middle of his house surrounded by cotton threads of
          diverse colours. So sacred is the water that it would be defiled
          and lose all its virtue, were any profane eye to fall on it before
          it entered the priest's house. During the morning the acolyte and
          the priest's deputy go round from house to house collecting victims
          for the sacrifice. In the afternoon the people all gather at the
          sacred grove, and the priest proceeds to consummate the sacrifice.
          The first victims to be immolated are a white cock for the Sun God
          and a black hen for the Earth Goddess; and as the feast is the
          marriage of these great deities the marriage service is performed
          over the two fowls before they are hurried into eternity. Amongst
          other things both birds are marked with vermilion just as a bride
          and bridegroom are marked at a human marriage; and the earth is
          also smeared with vermilion, as if it were a real bride, on the
          spot where [pg
          048]
          the sacrifice is offered. Sacrifices of fowls or goats to the minor
          deities or demons follow. The bodies of the victims are collected
          by the village boys, who cook them on the spot; all the heads go to
          the sacrificers. The gods take what they can get and are more or
          less thankful. Meantime the acolyte has collected flowers of the
          sal tree and set them round the
          place of sacrifice, and he has also fetched the holy water from the
          priest's house. A procession is now formed and the priest is
          carried in triumph to his own abode. There his wife has been
          watching for him, and on his arrival the two go through the
          marriage ceremony, applying vermilion to each other in the usual
          way “to symbolise the mystical marriage of
          the Sun-god with the Earth-goddess.” Meantime all the women
          of the village are standing on the thresholds of their houses each
          with a winnowing-fan in her hand. In the fan are two cups, one
          empty to receive the holy water, and the other full of rice-beer
          for the consumption of the holy man. As he arrives at each house,
          he distributes flowers and holy water to the happy women, and
          enriches them with a shower of blessings, saying, “May your rooms and granary be filled with rice, that
          the priest's name may be great.” The holy water which he
          leaves at each house is sprinkled on the seeds that have been kept
          to sow next year's crop. Having thus imparted his benediction to
          the household the priest swigs the beer; and as he repeats his
          benediction and his potation at every house he is naturally
          dead-drunk by the time he gets to the end of the village.
          “By that time every one has taken copious
          libations of rice-beer, and all the devils of the village seem to
          be let loose, and there follows a scene of debauchery baffling
          description—all these to induce the Sun and the Earth to be
          fruitful.”148


Thus the people
          of Cyprus and Western Asia in antiquity were by no means singular
          in their belief that the profligacy of the human sexes served to
          quicken the fruits of the earth.149







Cinyras beloved by Aphrodite.
              Pygmalion and Aphrodite. The Phoenician kings of Cyprus or
              their sons appear to have been hereditary lovers of the
              goddess. Sacred marriage of the kings of Paphos. Sons and
              daughters, fathers and mothers of a god.





Cinyras is said
          to have been famed for his exquisite [pg 049] beauty150 and
          to have been wooed by Aphrodite herself.151 Thus
          it would appear, as scholars have already observed,152 that
          Cinyras was in a sense a duplicate of his handsome son Adonis, to
          whom the inflammable goddess also lost her heart. Further, these
          stories of the love of Aphrodite for two members of the royal house
          of Paphos can hardly be dissociated from the corresponding legend
          told of Pygmalion, the Phoenician king of Cyprus, who is said to
          have fallen in love with an image of Aphrodite and taken it to his
          bed.153 When
          we consider that Pygmalion was the father-in-law of Cinyras, that
          the son of Cinyras was Adonis, and that all three, in successive
          generations, are said to have been concerned in a love-intrigue
          with Aphrodite, we can hardly help concluding that the early
          Phoenician kings of Paphos, or their sons, regularly claimed to be
          not merely the priests of the goddess154 but
          also her lovers, in other words, that in their official capacity
          they personated Adonis. At all events Adonis is said to have
          reigned in Cyprus,155 and
          it appears to be certain that the title of Adonis was regularly
          borne by the sons of all the Phoenician kings of the island.156 It is
          true that the title strictly signified no more than “lord”; yet the legends which connect these
          Cyprian princes with the goddess of love make it probable that they
          claimed the [pg
          050]
          divine nature as well as the human dignity of Adonis. The story of
          Pygmalion points to a ceremony of a sacred marriage in which the
          king wedded the image of Aphrodite, or rather of Astarte. If that
          was so, the tale was in a sense true, not of a single man only, but
          of a whole series of men, and it would be all the more likely to be
          told of Pygmalion, if that was a common name of Semitic kings in
          general, and of Cyprian kings in particular. Pygmalion, at all
          events, is known as the name of the famous king of Tyre from whom
          his sister Dido fled;157 and a
          king of Citium and Idalium in Cyprus, who reigned in the time of
          Alexander the Great, was also called Pygmalion, or rather
          Pumiyathon, the Phoenician name which the Greeks corrupted into
          Pygmalion.158
          Further, it deserves to be noted that the names Pygmalion and
          Astarte occur together in a Punic inscription on a gold medallion
          which was found in a grave at Carthage; the characters of the
          inscription are of the earliest type.159 As
          the custom of religious prostitution at Paphos is said to have been
          founded by King Cinyras and observed by his daughters,160 we
          may surmise that the kings of Paphos played the part of the divine
          bridegroom in a less innocent rite than the form of marriage with a
          statue; in fact, that at certain festivals each of them had to mate
          with one or more of the sacred harlots of the temple, who played
          Astarte to his Adonis. If that was so, there is more truth than has
          commonly been supposed in the reproach cast by the Christian
          fathers that the Aphrodite worshipped [pg 051] by Cinyras was a common whore.161 The
          fruit of their union would rank as sons and daughters of the deity,
          and would in time become the parents of gods and goddesses, like
          their fathers and mothers before them. In this manner Paphos, and
          perhaps all sanctuaries of the great Asiatic goddess where sacred
          prostitution was practised, might be well stocked with human
          deities, the offspring of the divine king by his wives, concubines,
          and temple harlots. Any one of these might probably succeed his
          father on the throne162 or be
          sacrificed in his stead whenever stress of war or other grave
          junctures called, as they sometimes did,163 for
          the death of a royal victim. Such a tax, levied occasionally on the
          king's numerous progeny for the good of the country, would neither
          extinguish the divine stock nor break the father's heart, who
          divided his paternal affection among so many. At all events, if, as
          there seems reason to believe, Semitic kings were often regarded at
          the same time as hereditary deities, it is easy to understand the
          frequency of Semitic personal names which imply that the bearers of
          them were the sons or daughters, the brothers or sisters, the
          fathers or mothers of a god, and we need not resort to the shifts
          employed by some scholars to evade the plain sense of the
          words.164 This
          interpretation is confirmed by a parallel [pg 052] Egyptian usage; for in Egypt, where the kings
          were worshipped as divine,165 the
          queen was called “the wife of the
          god” or “the mother of the
          god,”166 and
          the title “father of the god” was
          borne not only by the king's real father but also by his
          father-in-law.167
          Similarly, perhaps, among the Semites any man who sent his daughter
          to swell the royal harem may have been allowed to call himself
          “the father of the god.”







Cinyras, like King David, a
              harper. The use of music as a means of prophetic inspiration
              among the Hebrews.





If we may judge
          by his name, the Semitic king who bore the name of Cinyras was,
          like King David, a harper; for the name of Cinyras is clearly
          connected with the Greek cinyra, “a lyre,” which in its turn comes from the
          Semitic kinnor,
          “a lyre,” the very word applied to
          the instrument on which David played before Saul.168 We
          shall probably not err in assuming that at Paphos as at Jerusalem
          the music of the lyre or harp was not a mere pastime designed to
          while away an idle hour, but formed part of the service of
          religion, the moving influence of its melodies being perhaps set
          down, like the effect of wine, to the direct inspiration of a
          deity. Certainly at Jerusalem the regular clergy of the temple
          prophesied to the music of harps, of psalteries, and of
          cymbals;169 and
          it appears that the irregular clergy also, as we may call the
          prophets, depended on some such stimulus for inducing the ecstatic
          state which they took for immediate converse with the
          divinity.170 Thus
          we read of a band of prophets coming down from a high place with a
          psaltery, a timbrel, a pipe, and a harp before them, and
          prophesying as they went.171
          Again, when the united forces of Judah and Ephraim were traversing
          the wilderness of Moab in pursuit of the enemy, they could find no
          water for [pg
          053]
          three days, and were like to die of thirst, they and the beasts of
          burden. In this emergency the prophet Elisha, who was with the
          army, called for a minstrel and bade him play. Under the influence
          of the music he ordered the soldiers to dig trenches in the sandy
          bed of the waterless waddy through which lay the line of march.
          They did so, and next morning the trenches were full of the water
          that had drained down into them underground from the desolate,
          forbidding mountains on either hand. The prophet's success in
          striking water in the wilderness resembles the reported success of
          modern dowsers, though his mode of procedure was different.
          Incidentally he rendered another service to his countrymen. For the
          skulking Moabites from their lairs among the rocks saw the red sun
          of the desert reflected in the water, and taking it for the blood,
          or perhaps rather for an omen of the blood, of their enemies, they
          plucked up heart to attack the camp and were defeated with great
          slaughter.172







The influence of music on
              religion.





Again, just as
          the cloud of melancholy which from time to time darkened the moody
          mind of Saul was viewed as an evil spirit from the Lord vexing him,
          so on the other hand the solemn strains of the harp, which soothed
          and composed his troubled thoughts,173 may
          well have seemed to the hag-ridden king the very voice of God or of
          his good angel whispering peace. Even in our own day a great
          religious writer, himself deeply sensitive to the witchery of
          music, has said that musical notes, with all their power to fire
          the blood and melt the heart, cannot be mere empty sounds and
          nothing more; no, they have escaped from some higher sphere, they
          are outpourings of eternal harmony, the voice of angels, the
          Magnificat of saints.174 It is
          thus that the rude imaginings of primitive man are transfigured and
          his feeble lispings echoed with a rolling reverberation in the
          musical prose of Newman. Indeed the influence of music on the
          development [pg
          054]
          of religion is a subject which would repay a sympathetic study. For
          we cannot doubt that this, the most intimate and affecting of all
          the arts, has done much to create as well as to express the
          religious emotions, thus modifying more or less deeply the fabric
          of belief to which at first sight it seems only to minister. The
          musician has done his part as well as the prophet and the thinker
          in the making of religion. Every faith has its appropriate music,
          and the difference between the creeds might almost be expressed in
          musical notation. The interval, for example, which divides the wild
          revels of Cybele from the stately ritual of the Catholic Church is
          measured by the gulf which severs the dissonant clash of cymbals
          and tambourines from the grave harmonies of Palestrina and Handel.
          A different spirit breathes in the difference of the music.175







The function of string music in
              Greek and Semitic ritual.





The legend which
          made Apollo the friend of Cinyras176 may
          be based on a belief in their common devotion to the lyre. But what
          function, we may ask, did string music perform in the Greek and the
          Semitic ritual? Did it serve to rouse the human mouthpiece of the
          god to prophetic ecstasy? or did it merely ban goblins and demons
          from the holy places and the holy service, drawing as it were
          around the worshippers a magic circle within which no evil thing
          might intrude? In short, did it aim at summoning good or banishing
          evil spirits? was its object inspiration or exorcism? The examples
          drawn from the lives or legends of Elisha and David prove that with
          the Hebrews the music of the lyre might be used for either purpose;
          for while Elisha employed it to tune himself to the prophetic
          pitch, David resorted to it for the sake of exorcising the foul
          fiend from Saul. With the Greeks, on the other hand, in historical
          times, it does not appear that string music served as a means of
          inducing the condition of trance or ecstasy in the human
          mouthpieces of Apollo and the other oracular gods; on the contrary,
          its sobering and composing influence, as contrasted with the
          exciting influence of flute music, is the aspect which chiefly
          impressed [pg
          055]
          the Greek mind.177 The
          religious or, at all events, the superstitious man might naturally
          ascribe the mental composure wrought by grave, sweet music to a
          riddance of evil spirits, in short to exorcism; and in harmony with
          this view, Pindar, speaking of the lyre, says that all things
          hateful to Zeus in earth and sea tremble at the sound of
          music.178 Yet
          the association of the lyre with the legendary prophet Orpheus as
          well as with the oracular god Apollo seems to hint that in early
          days its strains may have been employed by the Greeks, as they
          certainly were by the Hebrews, to bring on that state of mental
          exaltation in which the thick-coming fancies of the visionary are
          regarded as divine communications.179 Which
          of these two functions of music, the positive or the negative, the
          inspiring or the protective, predominated in the religion of Adonis
          we cannot say; perhaps the two were not clearly distinguished in
          the minds of his worshippers.







Traditions as to the death of
              Cinyras.





A constant
          feature in the myth of Adonis was his premature and violent death.
          If, then, the kings of Paphos regularly personated Adonis, we must
          ask whether they imitated their divine prototype in death as in
          life. Tradition varied as to the end of Cinyras. Some thought that
          he slew himself on discovering his incest with his daughter;180
          others alleged that, like Marsyas, he was defeated by Apollo in a
          musical contest and put to death by the victor.181 Yet
          he cannot strictly be said to have perished in the flower of his
          youth if he lived, as Anacreon averred, to the ripe age of one
          hundred and sixty.182 If we
          must choose between the two stories, it is perhaps more likely that
          he died a violent death than that he survived to an age which
          surpassed that of [pg
          056]
          Thomas Parr by eight years,183
          though it fell far short of the antediluvian standard. The life of
          eminent men in remote ages is exceedingly elastic and may be
          lengthened or shortened, in the interests of history, at the taste
          and fancy of the historian.


[pg 057]




 


Chapter IV. Sacred Men and
          Women.



 


§ 1. An Alternative
            Theory.







Sacred prostitution of Western
                Asia.





In the
            preceding chapter we saw that a system of sacred prostitution was
            regularly carried on all over Western Asia, and that both in
            Phoenicia and in Cyprus the practice was specially associated
            with the worship of Adonis. As the explanation which I have
            adopted of the custom has been rejected in favour of another by
            writers whose opinions are entitled to be treated with respect, I
            shall devote the present chapter to a further consideration of
            the subject, and shall attempt to gather, from a closer scrutiny
            and a wider survey of the field, such evidence as may set the
            custom and with it the worship of Adonis in a clearer light. At
            the outset it will be well to examine the alternative theory
            which has been put forward to explain the facts.







Theory of its secular
                origin.





It has been
            proposed to derive the religious prostitution of Western Asia
            from a purely secular and precautionary practice of destroying a
            bride's virginity before handing her over to her husband in order
            that “the bridegroom's intercourse should
            be safe from a peril that is much dreaded by men in a certain
            stage of culture.”184
            Among [pg
            058]
            the objections which may be taken to this view are the
            following:—







The theory does not account for
                the religious character of the custom,





(1) The theory
            fails to account for the deeply religious character of the
            customs as practised in antiquity all over Western Asia. That
            religious character appears from the observance of the custom at
            the sanctuaries of a great goddess, the dedication of the wages
            of prostitution to her, the belief of the women that they earned
            her favour by prostituting themselves,185 and
            the command of a male deity to serve him in this manner.186







Nor for the prostitution of
                married women.





(2) The theory
            fails to account for the prostitution of married women at
            Heliopolis187 and
            apparently also at Babylon and Byblus; for in describing the
            practice at the two latter places our authorities, Herodotus and
            Lucian, speak only of women, not of virgins.188 In
            Israel also we know from Hosea that young married women
            prostituted themselves at the sanctuaries on the hilltops under
            the shadow of the sacred oaks, poplars, and terebinths.189 The
            prophet makes no mention of virgins participating in these
            orgies. They may have done so, but his language does not imply
            it: he speaks only of “your
            daughters” and “your
            daughters-in-law.” The prostitution of married women is
            wholly inexplicable on the hypothesis here criticized. Yet it can
            hardly be separated from the prostitution of virgins, which in
            some places at least was carried on side by side with it.







Nor for the repeated
                prostitution of the same women.





(3) The theory
            fails to account for the repeated and professional prostitution
            of women in Lydia, Pontus, Armenia, and apparently all over
            Palestine.190 Yet
            this habitual prostitution can in its turn hardly be separated
            [pg 059] from the first
            prostitution in a woman's life. Or are we to suppose that the
            first act of unchastity is to be explained in one way and all the
            subsequent acts in quite another? that the first act was purely
            secular and all the subsequent acts purely religious?







Nor for the “sacred men” beside the “sacred women”.





(4) The theory
            fails to account for the Ḳedeshim (“sacred men”) side by side with the
            Ḳedeshoth
            (“sacred women”) at the
            sanctuaries;191 for
            whatever the religious functions of these “sacred men” may have been, it is highly
            probable that they were analogous to those of the “sacred women” and are to be explained in the
            same way.







And is irreconcilable with the
                payment of the women.





(5) On the
            hypothesis which I am considering we should expect to find the
            man who deflowers the maid remunerated for rendering a dangerous
            service; and so in fact we commonly find him remunerated in
            places where the supposed custom is really practised.192 But
            in Western Asia it was just the contrary. It was the woman who
            was paid, not the man; indeed, so well was she paid that in Lydia
            and Cyprus the girls earned dowries for themselves in this
            fashion.193
            This clearly shows that it was the woman, and not the man, who
            was believed to render the service. Or are we to suppose that the
            man had to pay for rendering a dangerous service?194


These
            considerations seem to prove conclusively that whatever the
            remote origin of these Western Asiatic customs may have been,
            they cannot have been observed in historical [pg 060] times from any such motive as
            is assumed by the hypothesis under discussion. At the period when
            we have to do with them the customs were to all appearance purely
            religious in character, and a religious motive must accordingly
            be found for them. Such a motive is supplied by the theory I have
            adopted, which, so far as I can judge, adequately explains all
            the known facts.







The practice of destroying
                virginity has sometimes had a religious character.





At the same
            time, in justice to the writers whose views I have criticized, I
            wish to point out that the practice from which they propose to
            derive the sacred prostitution of Western Asia has not always
            been purely secular in character. For, in the first place, the
            agent employed is sometimes reported to be a priest;195
            and, in the second place, the sacrifice of virginity has in some
            places, for example at Rome and in parts of India, been made
            directly to the image of a male deity.196 The
            meaning of these practices is very obscure, and in the present
            state of our ignorance on the subject it is unsafe to build
            conclusions on them. It is possible that what seems to be a
            purely secular precaution may be only a degenerate form of a
            religious rite; and on the other hand it is possible that the
            religious rite may go back to a purely physical preparation for
            marriage, such as is still observed among the aborigines of
            Australia.197 But
            even if such an [pg
            061]
            historical origin could be established, it would not explain the
            motives from which the customs described in this volume were
            practised by the people of Western Asia in historical times. The
            true parallel to these customs is the sacred prostitution which
            is carried on to this day by dedicated women in India and Africa.
            An examination of these modern practices may throw light on the
            ancient customs.





 


§ 2. Sacred Women in
            India.







Sacred women in the Tamil
                temples of Southern India. Such women are sometimes married
                to the god and possessed by him.





In India the
            dancing-girls dedicated to the service of the Tamil temples take
            the name of deva-dasis, “servants or slaves of the gods,” but in
            common parlance they are spoken of simply as harlots. Every Tamil
            temple of note in Southern India has its troop of these sacred
            women. Their official duties are to dance twice a day, morning
            and evening, in the temple, to fan the idol with Tibetan
            ox-tails, to dance and sing before it when it is borne in
            procession, and to carry the holy light called Kúmbarti. Inscriptions show
            that in a.d. 1004 the great
            temple of the Chola king Rajaraja at Tanjore had attached to it
            four hundred “women of the
            temple,” who lived at free quarters in the streets round
            about it and were allowed land free of taxes out of its
            endowment. From infancy they are trained to dance and sing. In
            order to obtain a safe delivery expectant mothers will often vow
            to dedicate their child, if she should prove to be a girl, to the
            service of God. Among the weavers of Tiru-kalli-kundram, a little
            town in the Madras Presidency, the eldest daughter of every
            family is devoted to the temple. Girls thus made over to the
            deity are formally married, sometimes to the idol, sometimes to a
            sword, before they enter on their duties; from which it appears
            that they are often, if not regularly, regarded as the wives of
            the god.198
[pg 062] Among the
            Kaikolans, a large caste of Tamil weavers who are spread all over
            Southern India, at least one girl in every family should be
            dedicated to the temple service. The ritual, as it is observed at
            the initiation of one of these girls in Coimbatore, includes
            “a form of nuptial ceremony. The
            relations are invited for an auspicious day, and the maternal
            uncle, or his representative, ties a gold band on the girl's
            forehead, and, carrying her, places her on a plank before the
            assembled guests. A Brahman priest recites the mantrams, and prepares the
            sacred fire (hōmam). The uncle is presented
            with new cloths by the girl's mother. For the actual nuptials a
            rich Brahman, if possible, and, if not, a Brahman of more lowly
            status is invited. A Brahman is called in, as he is next in
            importance to, and the representative of the idol. It is said
            that, when the man who is to receive her first favours, joins the
            girl, a sword must be placed, at least for a few minutes, by her
            side.” When one of these dancing-girls dies, her body is
            covered with a new cloth which has been taken for the purpose
            from the idol, and flowers are supplied from the temple to which
            she belonged. No worship is performed in the temple until the
            last rites have been performed over her body, because the idol,
            being deemed her husband, is held to be in that state of
            ceremonial pollution common to human mourners which debars him
            from the offices of religion.199 In
            Mahratta such a female devotee is called Murli. Common folk
            believe that from time to time the shadow of the god falls on her
            and [pg 063] possesses her
            person. At such times the possessed woman rocks herself to and
            fro, and the people occasionally consult her as a soothsayer,
            laying money at her feet and accepting as an oracle the words of
            wisdom or folly that drop from her lips.200 Nor
            is the profession of a temple prostitute adopted only by girls.
            In Tulava, a district of Southern India, any woman of the four
            highest castes who wearies of her husband or, as a widow and
            therefore incapable of marriage, grows tired of celibacy, may go
            to a temple and eat of the rice offered to the idol. Thereupon,
            if she is a Brahman, she has the right to live either in the
            temple or outside of its precincts, as she pleases. If she
            decides to live in it, she gets a daily allowance of rice, and
            must sweep the temple, fan the idol, and confine her amours to
            the Brahmans. The male children of these women form a special
            class called Moylar, but are fond of assuming the title of
            Stanikas. As many of them as can find employment hang about the
            temple, sweeping the areas, sprinkling them with cow-dung,
            carrying torches before the gods, and doing other odd jobs. Some
            of them, debarred from these holy offices, are reduced to the
            painful necessity of earning their bread by honest work. The
            daughters are either brought up to live like their mothers or are
            given in marriage to the Stanikas. Brahman women who do not
            choose to live in the temples, and all the women of the three
            lower castes, cohabit with any man of pure descent, but they have
            to pay a fixed sum annually to the temple.201







In Travancore the dancing-girls
                are regularly married to the god.





In Travancore
            a dancing-girl attached to a temple is known as a Dâsî, or Dêvadâsî, or Dêvaratiâl, “a servant of God.” The following account of
            her dedication and way of life deserves to be quoted because,
            while it ignores the baser side of her vocation, it brings
            clearly out the idea of her marriage to the deity. “Marriage in the case of a Dêvaratiâl in its original
            import is a renunciation of ordinary family life and a
            consecration to the service of God. With a lady-nurse at a
            Hospital, or a sister at a Convent, a Dêvadâsî at a Hindu shrine,
            such as she probably was in the early ages of Hindu [pg 064] spirituality, would have
            claimed favourable comparison. In the ceremonial of the
            dedication-marriage of the Dâsî, elements are not wanting
            which indicate a past quite the reverse of disreputable. The girl
            to be married is generally from six to eight years in age. The
            bridegroom is the presiding deity of the local temple. The
            ceremony is done at his house. The expenses of the celebration
            are supposed to be partly paid from his funds. To instance the
            practice at the Suchîndram temple, a Yôga or meeting of the chief
            functionaries of the temple arranges the preliminaries. The girl
            to be wedded bathes and goes to the temple with two pieces of
            cloth, a tâli, betel, areca-nut, etc.
            These are placed by the priest at the feet of the image. The girl
            sits with the face towards the deity. The priest kindles the
            sacred fire and goes through all the rituals of the Tirukkalyânam festival. He
            then initiates the bride into the Panchâkshara
            mantra, if in a Saiva temple, and the Ashtâkshara, if in a Vaishnava
            temple. On behalf of the divine bridegroom, he presents one of
            the two cloths she has brought as offering and ties the
            Tâli around her neck. The
            practice, how old it is not possible to say, is then to take her
            to her house where the usual marriage festivities are celebrated
            for four days. As in Brahminical marriages, the Nalunku ceremony, i.e.
            the rolling of a cocoanut by the bride to the bridegroom and
            vice
            versa a number of times to the accompaniment of
            music, is gone through, the temple priest playing the
            bridegroom's part. Thenceforth she becomes the wife of the deity
            in the sense that she formally and solemnly dedicates the rest of
            her life to his service with the same constancy and devotion that
            a faithful wife united in holy matrimony shows to her wedded
            lord. The life of a Dêvadâsî bedecked with all the
            accomplishments that the muses could give was one of spotless
            purity. Even now she is maintained by the temple. She undertakes
            fasts in connection with the temple festivals, such as the seven
            days' fast for the Apamârgam ceremony. During the
            period of this fast, strict continence is enjoined; she is
            required to take only one meal, and that within the temple—in
            fact to live and behave at least for a term, in the manner
            ordained for her throughout life. Some of the details of her
            daily work seem interesting; she attends [pg 065] the Dîpâradhana, the waving of
            lighted lamps in front of the deity at sunset every day; sings
            hymns in his praise, dances before his presence, goes round with
            him in his processions with lights in hand. After the procession,
            she sings a song or two from Jayadêva's Gîtagôvinda and with a few
            lullaby hymns, her work for the night is over. When she grows
            physically unfit for these duties, she is formally invalided by a
            special ceremony, i.e. Tôtuvaikkuka, or the laying
            down of the ear-pendants. It is gone through at the Maha Raja's
            palace, whereafter she becomes a Tâikkizhavi (old mother),
            entitled only to a subsistence-allowance. When she dies, the
            temple contributes to the funeral expenses. On her death-bed, the
            priest attends and after a few ceremonies immediately after
            death, gets her bathed with saffron-powder.”202





 


§ 3. Sacred Men and Women in West
            Africa.







Among the Ewe peoples of West
                Africa the sacred prostitutes are regarded as the wives of
                the god.





Still more
            instructive for our present purpose are the West African customs.
            Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast “recruits for the priesthood are obtained in two
            ways, viz. by the affiliation of young persons, and by the direct
            consecration of adults. Young people of either sex dedicated or
            affiliated to a god are termed kosio, from kono, ‘unfruitful,’ because a child dedicated to a
            god passes into his service and is practically lost to his
            parents, and si, ‘to run away.’ As the females become the
            ‘wives’ of the god to whom they
            are dedicated, the termination si in võdu-si [another name for
            these dedicated women], has been translated ‘wife’ by some Europeans; but it is never used
            in the general acceptation of that term, being entirely
            restricted to persons consecrated to the gods. The chief business
            of the female kosi is prostitution, and in
            every town there is at least one institution in which the
            best-looking girls, between ten and twelve years of age, are
            received. Here they remain for three years, learning the chants
            and dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and prostituting
            themselves to the [pg
            066]
            priests and the inmates of the male seminaries; and at the
            termination of their novitiate they become public prostitutes.
            This condition, however, is not regarded as one for reproach;
            they are considered to be married to the god, and their excesses
            are supposed to be caused and directed by him. Properly speaking,
            their libertinage should be confined to the male worshippers at
            the temple of the god, but practically it is indiscriminate.
            Children who are born from such unions belong to the
            god.”203
            These women are not allowed to marry since they are deemed the
            wives of a god.204







The human wives of the
                python-god.





Again, in this
            part of Africa “the female Kosio of Dañh-gbi, or
            Dañh-sio, that is, the wives,
            priestesses, and temple prostitutes of Dañh-gbi, the python-god,
            have their own organization. Generally they live together in a
            group of houses or huts inclosed by a fence, and in these
            inclosures the novices undergo their three years of initiation.
            Most new members are obtained by the affiliation of young girls;
            but any woman whatever, married or single, slave or free, by
            publicly simulating possession, and uttering the conventional
            cries recognized as indicative of possession by the god, can at
            once join the body, and be admitted to the habitations of the
            order. The person of a woman who has joined in this manner is
            inviolable, and during the period of her novitiate she is
            forbidden, if single, to enter the house of her parents, and, if
            married, that of her husband. This inviolability, while it gives
            women opportunities of gratifying an illicit passion, at the same
            time serves occasionally to save the persecuted slave, or
            neglected wife, from the ill-treatment of the lord and master;
            for she has only to go through the conventional form of
            possession and an asylum is assured.”205 The
            python-god marries these women secretly in his temple, and they
            father their offspring on him; but it is the priests who
            consummate the union.206







Supposed connexion between the
                fertility of the soil and the marriage of women to the
                serpent.





For our
            purpose it is important to note that a close [pg 067] connexion is apparently
            supposed to exist between the fertility of the soil and the
            marriage of these women to the serpent. For the time when new
            brides are sought for the reptile-god is the season when the
            millet is beginning to sprout. Then the old priestesses, armed
            with clubs, run frantically through the streets shrieking like
            mad women and carrying off to be brides of the serpent any little
            girls between the ages of eight and twelve whom they may find
            outside of the houses. Pious people at such times will sometimes
            leave their daughters at their doors on purpose that they may
            have the honour of being dedicated to the god.207 The
            marriage of wives to the serpent-god is probably deemed necessary
            to enable him to discharge the important function of making the
            crops to grow and the cattle to multiply; for we read that these
            people “invoke the snake in excessively
            wet, dry, or barren seasons; on all occasions relating to their
            government and the preservation of their cattle; or rather, in
            one word, in all necessities and difficulties, in which they do
            not apply to their new batch of gods.”208
            Once in a bad season the Dutch factor Bosman found the King of
            Whydah in a great rage. His Majesty explained the reason of his
            discomposure by saying “that that year he
            had sent much larger offerings to the snake-house than usual, in
            order to obtain a good crop; and that one of his vice-roys (whom
            he shewed me) had desired him afresh, in the name of the priests,
            who threatened a barren year, to send yet more. To which he
            answered that he did not intend to make any further offerings
            this year; and if the snake would not bestow a plentiful harvest
            on them, he might let it alone; for (said he) I cannot be more
            damaged thereby, the greatest part of my corn being already
            rotten in the field.”209







Human wives of a snake-god among
                the Akikuyu.





The Akikuyu of
            British East Africa “have a custom which
            reminds one of the West African python-god and his wives. At
            intervals of, I believe, several years the medicine-men order
            huts to be built for the purpose of worshipping a river snake.
            The snake-god requires wives, and women or [pg 068] more especially girls go to
            the huts. Here the union is consummated by the medicine-men. If
            the number of females who go to the huts voluntarily is not
            sufficient, girls are seized and dragged there. I believe the
            offspring of such a union is said to be fathered by God (Ngai):
            at any rate there are children in Kikuyu who are regarded as the
            children of God.”210







Sacred men as well as women in
                West Africa: they are thought to be possessed by the
                deity.





Among the
            negroes of the Slave Coast there are, as we have seen, male
            kosio as well as female
            kosio; that is, there are
            dedicated men as well as dedicated women, priests as well as
            priestesses, and the ideas and customs in regard to them seem to
            be similar. Like the women, the men undergo a three years'
            novitiate, at the end of which each candidate has to prove that
            the god accepts him and finds him worthy of inspiration. Escorted
            by a party of priests he goes to a shrine and seats himself on a
            stool that belongs to the deity. The priests then anoint his head
            with a mystic decoction and invoke the god in a long and wild
            chorus. During the singing the youth, if he is acceptable to the
            deity, trembles violently, simulates convulsions, foams at the
            mouth, and dances in a frenzied style, sometimes for more than an
            hour. This is the proof that the god has taken possession of him.
            After that he has to remain in a temple without speaking for
            seven days and nights. At the end of that time, he is brought
            out, a priest opens his mouth to show that he may now use his
            tongue, a new name is given him, and he is fully ordained.211
            Henceforth he is regarded as the priest and medium of the deity
            whom he serves, and the words which he utters in that morbid
            state of mental excitement which passes for divine inspiration,
            are accepted by the hearers as the very words of the god spoken
            by the mouth of the man.212 Any
            crime which a priest committed in a state of frenzy used to
            remain unpunished, no doubt because the act was thought to be the
            act of the god. But this benefit of clergy was so much abused
            that under King Gezo the law had to be altered; and although,
            while he is still possessed [pg 069] by the god, the inspired criminal is safe,
            he is now liable to punishment as soon as the divine spirit
            leaves him. Nevertheless on the whole among these people
            “the person of a priest or priestess is
            sacred. Not only must a layman not lay hands on or insult one; he
            must be careful not even to knock one by accident, or jostle
            against one in the street. The Abbé Bouche relates213
            that once when he was paying a visit to the chief of Agweh, one
            of the wives of the chief was brought into the house by four
            priestesses, her face bloody, and her body covered with stripes.
            She had been savagely flogged for having accidentally trodden
            upon the foot of one of them; and the chief not only dared not
            give vent to his anger, but had to give them a bottle of rum as a
            peace-offering.”214







Similarly among the Tshi peoples
                of the Gold Coast there are sacred men and women, who are
                supposed to be inspired by the deity.





Among the
            Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, who border on the
            Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast to the west, the customs
            and beliefs in regard to the dedicated men and dedicated women,
            the priests and priestesses, are very similar. These persons are
            believed to be from time to time possessed or inspired by the
            deity whom they serve; and in that state they are consulted as
            oracles. They work themselves up to the necessary pitch of
            excitement by dancing to the music of drums; each god has his
            special hymn, sung to a special beat of the drum, and accompanied
            by a special dance. It is while thus dancing to the drums that
            the priest or priestess lets fall the oracular words in a
            croaking or guttural voice which the hearers take to be the voice
            of the god. Hence dancing has an important place in the education
            of priests and priestesses; they are trained in it for months
            before they may perform in public. These mouthpieces of the deity
            are consulted in almost every concern of life and are handsomely
            paid for their services.215
“Priests marry like any other members of
            the community, and purchase wives; but priestesses are never
            married, nor can any ‘head money’
            be paid for a priestess. The reason appears to be that a
            priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot
            become the property of a man, as would [pg 070] be the case if she married one. This
            prohibition extends to marriage only, and a priestess is not
            debarred from sexual commerce. The children of a priest or
            priestess are not ordinarily educated for the priestly
            profession, one generation being usually passed over, and the
            grandchildren selected. Priestesses are ordinarily most
            licentious, and custom allows them to gratify their passions with
            any man who may chance to take their fancy.”216 The
            ranks of the hereditary priesthood are constantly recruited by
            persons who devote themselves or who are devoted by their
            relations or masters to the profession. Men, women, and even
            children can thus become members of the priesthood. If a mother
            has lost several of her children by death, she will not
            uncommonly vow to devote the next born to the service of the
            gods; for in this way she hopes to save the child's life. So when
            the child is born it is set apart for the priesthood, and on
            arriving at maturity generally fulfils the vow made by the mother
            and becomes a priest or priestess. At the ceremony of ordination
            the votary has to prove his or her vocation for the sacred life
            in the usual way by falling into or simulating convulsions,
            dancing frantically to the beat of drums, and speaking in a
            hoarse unnatural voice words which are deemed to be the utterance
            of the deity temporarily lodged in the body of the man or
            woman.217





 


§ 4. Sacred Women in Western
            Asia.







In like manner the sacred
                prostitutes of Western Asia may have been viewed as possessed
                by the deity and married to the god.





Thus in
            Africa, and sometimes if not regularly in India, the sacred
            prostitutes attached to temples are regarded as the wives of the
            god, and their excesses are excused on the ground that the women
            are not themselves, but that they act under the influence of
            divine inspiration. This is in substance the explanation which I
            have given of the custom of sacred prostitution as it was
            practised in antiquity by the peoples [pg 071] of Western Asia. In their licentious
            intercourse at the temples the women, whether maidens or matrons
            or professional harlots, imitated the licentious conduct of a
            great goddess of fertility for the purpose of ensuring the
            fruitfulness of fields and trees, of man and beast; and in
            discharging this sacred and important function the women were
            probably supposed, like their West African sisters, to be
            actually possessed by the goddess. The hypothesis at least
            explains all the facts in a simple and natural manner; and in
            assuming that women could be married to gods it assumes a
            principle which we know to have been recognized in Babylon,
            Assyria, and Egypt.218 At
            Babylon a woman regularly slept in the great bed of Bel or
            Marduk, which stood in his temple on the summit of a lofty
            pyramid; and it was believed that the god chose her from all the
            women of Babylon and slept with her in the bed. However, unlike
            the Indian and West African wives of gods, this spouse of the
            Babylonian deity is reported by Herodotus to have been
            chaste.219 Yet
            we may doubt whether she was so; for these wives or perhaps
            paramours of Bel are probably to be identified with the wives or
            votaries of Marduk mentioned in the code of Hammurabi, and we
            know from the code that female votaries of the gods might be
            mothers and married to men.220 At
            Babylon the sun-god Shamash as well as Marduk had human wives
            formerly dedicated to his service, and they like the votaries of
            Marduk might have children.221 It
            is significant that a name for these Babylonian votaries was
            ḳadishtu, which is the same
            word as ḳedesha, “consecrated woman,” the regular Hebrew word
            for a temple harlot.222 It
            is true that the law [pg
            072]
            severely punished any disrespect shown to these sacred
            women;223 but
            the example of West Africa warns us that a formal respect shown
            to such persons, even when it is enforced by severe penalties,
            need be no proof at all of their virtuous character.224 In
            Egypt a woman used to sleep in the temple of Ammon at Thebes, and
            the god was believed to visit her.225
            Egyptian texts often mention her as “the
            divine consort,” and in old days she seems to have usually
            been the Queen of Egypt herself.226 But
            in the time of Strabo, at the beginning of our era, these
            consorts or concubines of Ammon, as they were called, were
            beautiful young girls of noble birth, who held office only till
            puberty. During their term of office they prostituted themselves
            freely to any man who took their fancy. After puberty they were
            given in marriage, and a ceremony of mourning was performed for
            them as if they were dead.227
            When they died in good earnest, their bodies were laid in special
            graves.228





 


§ 5. Sacred Men in Western
            Asia.







Similarly the sacred men
                (ḳedeshim)
                of Western Asia may have been regarded as possessed by the
                deity and as acting and speaking in his name.





As in West
            Africa the dedicated women have their counterpart in the
            dedicated men, so it was in Western Asia; for there the sacred
            men (ḳedeshim)
            clearly corresponded to the sacred women (ḳedeshoth), in other words,
            the sacred male slaves229 of
            the temples were the complement of the sacred female slaves. And
            as the characteristic feature of the dedicated men in West Africa
            is their supposed possession or inspiration by the deity, so we
            may conjecture was it with the sacred male slaves (the
            ḳedeshim) of
            Western Asia; they, too, may have been regarded as temporary or
            permanent embodiments of the deity, possessed from time to time
            by [pg 073] his divine spirit,
            acting in his name, and speaking with his voice.230 At
            all events we know that this was so at the sanctuary of the Moon
            among the Albanians of the Caucasus. The sanctuary owned church
            lands of great extent peopled by sacred slaves, and it was ruled
            by a high-priest, who ranked next after the king. Many of these
            slaves were inspired by the deity and prophesied; and when one of
            them had been for some time in this state of divine frenzy,
            wandering alone in the forest, the high-priest had him caught,
            bound with a sacred chain, and maintained in luxury for a year.
            Then the poor wretch was led out, anointed with unguents, and
            sacrificed with other victims to the Moon. The mode of sacrifice
            was this. A man took a sacred spear, and thrust it through the
            victim's side to the heart. As he staggered and fell, the rest
            observed him closely and drew omens from the manner of his fall.
            Then the body was dragged or carried away to a certain place,
            where all his fellows stood upon it by way of purification.231 In
            this custom the prophet, or rather the maniac, was plainly
            supposed to be moon-struck in the most literal sense, that is,
            possessed or inspired by the deity of the Moon, who was perhaps
            thought by the Albanians, as by the Phrygians,232 to
            be a male god, since his chosen minister and mouthpiece was a
            man, not a woman.233 It
            can hardly therefore be deemed improbable that at other
            sanctuaries of Western Asia, where sacred men were kept, these
            ministers of religion should have discharged a similar prophetic
            function, even though they did not share the tragic [pg 074] fate of the moon-struck
            Albanian prophet. Nor was the influence of these Asiatic prophets
            confined to Asia. In Sicily the spark which kindled the
            devastating Servile War was struck by a Syrian slave, who
            simulated the prophetic ecstasy in order to rouse his
            fellow-slaves to arms in the name of the Syrian goddess. To
            inflame still more his inflammatory words this ancient Mahdi
            ingeniously interlarded them with real fire and smoke, which by a
            common conjurer's trick he breathed from his lips.234







Resemblance of the Hebrew
                prophets to the sacred men of Western Africa.





In like manner
            the Hebrew prophets were believed to be temporarily possessed and
            inspired by a divine spirit who spoke through them, just as a
            divine spirit is supposed by West African negroes to speak
            through the mouth of the dedicated men his priests. Indeed the
            points of resemblance between the prophets of Israel and West
            Africa are close and curious. Like their black brothers, the
            Hebrew prophets employed music in order to bring on the prophetic
            trance;235
            like them, they received the divine spirit through the
            application of a magic oil to their heads;236
            like them, they were apparently distinguished from common people
            by certain marks on the face;237 and
            like [pg
            075]
            them they were consulted not merely in great national emergencies
            but in the ordinary affairs of everyday life, in which they were
            expected to give information and advice for a small fee. For
            example, Samuel was consulted about lost asses,238
            just as a Zulu diviner is consulted about lost cows;239 and
            we have seen Elisha acting as a dowser when water ran
            short.240
            Indeed, we learn that the old name for a prophet was a
            seer,241 a
            word which may be understood to imply that his special function
            was divination rather than prophecy in the sense of prediction.
            Be that as it may, prophecy of the Hebrew type has not been
            limited to Israel; it is indeed a phenomenon of almost world-wide
            occurrence; in many lands and in many ages the wild, whirling
            words of frenzied men and women have been accepted as the
            utterances of an indwelling deity.242
            What does distinguish Hebrew prophecy from all others is that the
            genius of a few members of the profession wrested this vulgar but
            powerful instrument from baser uses, and by wielding it in the
            interest of a high morality rendered a service of incalculable
            value to humanity. That is indeed the glory of Israel, but it is
            not the side of prophecy with which we are here concerned.







Inspired prophets at
                Byblus.





More to our
            purpose is to note that prophecy of the ordinary sort appears to
            have been in vogue at Byblus, the sacred city of Adonis,
            centuries before the life-time of the earliest Hebrew prophet
            whose writings have come down to us. When the Egyptian traveller,
            Wen-Ammon, was lingering in the port of Byblus, under the King's
            orders to quit the place, the spirit of God came on one of the
            royal [pg
            076]
            pages or henchmen, and in a prophetic frenzy he announced that
            the King should receive the Egyptian stranger as a messenger sent
            from the god Ammon.243 The
            god who thus took possession of the page and spoke through him
            was probably Adonis, the god of the city. With regard to the
            office of these royal pages we have no information; but as
            ministers of a sacred king and liable to be inspired by the
            deity, they would naturally be themselves sacred; in fact they
            may have belonged to the class of sacred slaves or ḳedeshim. If that was so it
            would confirm the conclusion to which the foregoing investigation
            points, namely, that originally no sharp line of distinction
            existed between the prophets and the ḳedeshim; both were
            “men of God,” as the prophets were
            constantly called;244 in
            other words, they were inspired mediums, men in whom the god
            manifested himself from time to time by word and deed, in short
            temporary incarnations of the deity. But while the prophets roved
            freely about the country, the ḳedeshim appear to have been
            regularly attached to a sanctuary; and among the duties which
            they performed at the shrines there were clearly some which
            revolted the conscience of men imbued with a purer morality. What
            these duties were, we may surmise partly from the behaviour of
            the sons of Eli to the women who came to the tabernacle,245
            partly from the beliefs and practices [pg 077] as to “holy
            men” which survive to this day among the Syrian
            peasantry.







“Holy
                men”
in modern Syria.





Of these
            “holy men” we are told that
            “so far as they are not impostors, they
            are men whom we would call insane, known among the Syrians as
            mejnûn, possessed by a
            jinn or spirit. They often go
            in filthy garments, or without clothing. Since they are regarded
            as intoxicated by deity, the most dignified men, and of the
            highest standing among the Moslems, submit to utter indecent
            language at their bidding without rebuke, and ignorant Moslem
            women do not shrink from their approach, because in their
            superstitious belief they attribute to them, as men possessed by
            God, a divine authority which they dare not resist. Such an
            attitude of compliance may be exceptional, but there are more
            than rumours of its existence. These ‘holy men’ differ from the ordinary derwishes
            whom travellers so often see in Cairo, and from the ordinary
            madmen who are kept in fetters, so that they may not do injury to
            themselves and others. But their appearance, and the expressions
            regarding them, afford some illustrations of the popular estimate
            of ancient seers, or prophets, in the time of Hosea: ‘The prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit
            is mad’;246 and
            in the time of Jeremiah,247 the
            man who made himself a prophet was considered as good as a
            madman.”248 To
            complete the parallel these vagabonds “are also believed to be possessed of prophetic
            power, so that they are able to foretell the future, and warn the
            people among whom they live of impending danger.”249
[pg 078]






The licence accorded to
                such “holy
                men”
may be explained by the desire
                of women for offspring.





We may
            conjecture that with women a powerful motive for submitting to
            the embraces of the “holy men” is
            a hope of obtaining offspring by them. For in Syria it is still
            believed that even dead saints can beget children on barren
            women, who accordingly resort to their shrines in order to obtain
            the wish of their hearts. For example, at the Baths of Solomon in
            Northern Palestine, blasts of hot air escape from the ground; and
            one of them, named Abu Rabah, is a famous resort of childless
            wives who wish to satisfy their maternal longings. They let the
            hot air stream up over their bodies and really believe that
            children born to them after such a visit are begotten by the
            saint of the shrine.250 But
            the saint who enjoys the highest reputation in this respect is
            St. George. He reveals himself at his shrines which are scattered
            all over the country; at each of them there is a tomb or the
            likeness of a tomb. The most celebrated of these sanctuaries is
            at Kalat el Hosn in Northern Syria. Barren women of all sects,
            including Moslems, resort to it. “There
            are many natives who shrug their shoulders when this shrine is
            mentioned in connection with women. But it is doubtless true that
            many do not know what seems to be its true character, and who
            think that the most puissant saint, as they believe, in the world
            can give them sons.” “But the true
            character of the place is beginning to be recognized, so that
            many Moslems have forbidden their wives to visit
            it.”251





 


§ 6. Sons of God.







Belief that men and women may be
                the offspring of a god.





Customs like
            the foregoing may serve to explain the belief, which is not
            confined to Syria, that men and women may be in fact and not
            merely in metaphor the sons and [pg 079] daughters of a god; for these modern
            saints, whether Christian or Moslem, who father the children of
            Syrian mothers, are nothing but the old gods under a thin
            disguise. If in antiquity as at the present day Semitic women
            often repaired to shrines in order to have the reproach of
            barrenness removed from them—and the prayer of Hannah is a
            familiar example of the practice,252 we
            could easily understand not only the tradition of the sons of God
            who begat children on the daughters of men,253 but
            also the exceedingly common occurrence of the divine titles in
            Hebrew names of human beings.254
            Multitudes of men and women, in fact, whose mothers had resorted
            to holy places in order to procure offspring, would be regarded
            as the actual children of the god and would be named accordingly.
            Hence Hannah called her infant Samuel, which means “name of God” or “his
            name is God”;255 and
            probably she sincerely believed that the child was actually
            begotten in her womb by the deity.256 The
            dedication of such children to the service of God at the
            sanctuary was merely giving back the divine son to the divine
            father. Similarly in West Africa, when a woman has got a child at
            the shrine of Agbasia, the god who alone bestows offspring on
            women, she dedicates him or her as a sacred slave to the
            deity.257







The saints in modern Syria are
                the equivalents of the ancient Baal or Adonis.





Thus in the
            Syrian beliefs and customs of to-day we probably have the clue to
            the religious prostitution practised in the very same regions in
            antiquity. Then as now women looked to the local god, the Baal or
            Adonis of old, the Abu Rabah or St. George of to-day, to satisfy
            the natural craving of a woman's heart; and then as now,
            apparently, the part [pg
            080]
            of the local god was played by sacred men, who in personating him
            may often have sincerely believed that they were acting under
            divine inspiration, and that the functions which they discharged
            were necessary for the fertility of the land as well as for the
            propagation of the human species. The purifying influence of
            Christianity and Mohammedanism has restricted such customs within
            narrow limits; even under Turkish rule they are now only carried
            on in holes and corners. Yet if the practice has dwindled, the
            principle which it embodies appears to be fundamentally the same;
            it is a desire for the continuance of the species, and a belief
            that an object so natural and legitimate can be accomplished by
            divine power manifesting itself in the bodies of men and
            women.







Belief in the physical
                fatherhood of God not confined to Syria. Sons of the
                serpent-god.





The belief in
            the physical fatherhood of God has not been confined to Syria in
            ancient and modern times. Elsewhere many men have been counted
            the sons of God in the most literal sense of the word, being
            supposed to have been begotten by his holy spirit in the wombs of
            mortal women. Here I shall merely illustrate the creed by a few
            examples drawn from classical antiquity.258
            Thus in order to obtain offspring women used to resort to the
            great sanctuary of Aesculapius, situated in a beautiful upland
            valley, to which a path, winding through a long wooded gorge,
            leads from the bay of Epidaurus. Here the women slept in the holy
            place and were visited in dreams by a serpent; and the children
            to whom they afterwards gave birth were believed to have been
            begotten by the reptile.259
            That the serpent was supposed to be the god himself seems
            certain; for Aesculapius repeatedly appeared in the form of a
            serpent,260 and
            live serpents were kept and fed in his sanctuaries for the
            healing of the sick, being no doubt regarded as his
            incarnations.261
            Hence the children born to women who had [pg 081] thus visited a sanctuary of Aesculapius
            were probably fathered on the serpent-god. Many celebrated men in
            classical antiquity were thus promoted to the heavenly hierarchy
            by similar legends of a miraculous birth. The famous Aratus of
            Sicyon was certainly believed by his countrymen to be a son of
            Aesculapius; his mother is said to have got him in intercourse
            with a serpent.262
            Probably she slept either in the shrine of Aesculapius at Sicyon,
            where a figurine of her was shown seated on a serpent,263 or
            perhaps in the more secluded sanctuary of the god at Titane, not
            many miles off, where the sacred serpents crawled among ancient
            cypresses on the hill-top which overlooks the narrow green valley
            of the Asopus with the white turbid river rushing in its
            depths.264
            There, under the shadow of the cypresses, with the murmur of the
            Asopus in her ears, the mother of Aratus may have conceived, or
            fancied she conceived, the future deliverer of his country.
            Again, the mother of Augustus is said to have got him by
            intercourse with a serpent in a temple of Apollo; hence the
            emperor was reputed to be the son of that god.265
            Similar tales were told of the Messenian hero Aristomenes,
            Alexander the Great, and the elder Scipio: all of them were
            reported to have been begotten by snakes.266 In
            the time of Herod a serpent, according to Aelian, in like manner
            made love to a Judean maid.267 Can
            the story be a distorted rumour of the parentage of Christ?







Women fertilized by stone
                serpents in India.





In India even
            stone serpents are credited with a power of bestowing offspring
            on women. Thus the Komatis of Mysore “worship Nága or the serpent god. This
            worship is generally confined to women and is carried on on a
            large [pg
            082]
            scale once a year on the fifth day of the bright fortnight of
            Srávana (July and August). The representations of serpents are
            cut in stone slabs and are set up round an Asvattha tree on a platform,
            on which is also generally planted a margosa tree. These snakes
            in stones are set up in performance of vows and are said to be
            specially efficacious in curing bad sores and other skin diseases
            and in giving children. The women go to such places for worship
            with milk, fruits, and flowers on the prescribed day which is
            observed as a feast day.” They wash the stones, smear them
            with turmeric, and offer them curds and fruits. Sometimes they
            search out the dens of serpents and pour milk into the holes for
            the live reptiles.268





 


§ 7. Reincarnation of the
            Dead.







Belief that the dead come to
                life in the form of serpents.





The reason why
            snakes were so often supposed to be the fathers of human beings
            is probably to be found in the common belief that the dead come
            to life and revisit their old homes in the shape of serpents.


This notion is
            widely spread in Africa, especially among tribes of the Bantu
            stock. It is held, for example, by the Zulus, the Thonga, and
            other Caffre tribes of South Africa;269 by
            the Ngoni of British Central Africa;270 by
            the Wabondei,271 the
            Masai,272 the
            Suk,273 the
            Nandi,274 and
            the Akikuyu of German and British East Africa;275 and
            by the Dinkas of [pg
            083]
            the Upper Nile.276 It
            prevails also among the Betsileo and other tribes of
            Madagascar.277
            Among the Iban or Sea Dyaks of Borneo a man's guardian spirit
            (Tua) “has its external manifestation in a snake, a leopard
            or some other denizen of the forest. It is supposed to be the
            spirit of some ancestor renowned for bravery or some other virtue
            who at death has taken an animal form. It is a custom among the
            Iban when a person of note in the tribe dies, not to bury the
            body but to place it on a neighbouring hill or in some solitary
            spot above ground. A quantity of food is taken to the place every
            day, and if after a few days the body disappears, the deceased is
            said to have become a Tua or guardian spirit. People
            who have been suffering from some chronic complaint often go to
            such a tomb, taking with them an offering to the soul of the
            deceased to obtain his help. To such it is revealed in a dream
            what animal form the honoured dead has taken. The most frequent
            form is that of a snake. Thus when a snake is found in a Dyak
            house it is seldom killed or driven away; food is offered to it,
            for it is a guardian spirit who has come to inquire after the
            welfare of its clients and bring them good luck. Anything that
            may be found in the mouth of such a snake is taken and kept as a
            charm.”278
            Similarly in [pg
            084]
            Kiriwina, an island of the Trobriands Group, to the east of New
            Guinea, “the natives regarded the snake
            as one of their ancestral chiefs, or rather as the abode of his
            spirit, and when one was seen in a house it was believed that the
            chief was paying a visit to his old home. The natives considered
            this as an ill omen and so always tried to persuade the animal to
            depart as soon as possible. The honours of a chief were paid to
            the snake: the natives passed it in a crouching posture, and as
            they did so, saluted it as a chief of high rank. Native property
            was presented to it as an appeasing gift, accompanied by prayers
            that it would not do them any harm, but would go away quickly.
            They dared not kill the snake, for its death would bring disease
            and death upon those who did so.”279







Serpents which are viewed as
                ancestors come to life are treated with respect and often fed
                with milk.





Where serpents
            are thus viewed as ancestors come to life, the people naturally
            treat them with great respect and often feed them with milk,
            perhaps because milk is the food of human babes and the reptiles
            are treated as human beings in embryo, who can be born again from
            women. Thus “the Zulu-Caffres imagine
            that their ancestors generally visit them under the form of
            serpents. As soon, therefore, as one of these reptiles appears
            near their dwellings, they hasten to salute it by the name of
            father, place bowls of milk in
            its way, and turn it back gently, and with the greatest
            respect.”280
            Among the Masai of East Africa, “when a
            medicine-man or a rich person dies and is buried, his soul turns
            into a snake as soon as his body rots; and the snake goes to his
            children's kraal to look after them. The Masai in consequence do
            not kill their sacred snakes, and if a woman sees one in her hut,
            she pours some milk on the ground for it to lick, after which it
            will go away.”281
            Among [pg
            085]
            the Nandi of British East Africa, “if a
            snake goes on to the woman's bed, it may not be killed, as it is
            believed that it personifies the spirit of a deceased ancestor or
            relation, and that it has been sent to intimate to the woman that
            her next child will be born safely. Milk is put on the ground for
            it to drink, and the man or his wife says: ‘... If thou wantest the call, come, thou art being
            called.’ It is then allowed to leave the house. If a snake
            enters the houses of old people they give it milk, and say:
            ‘If thou wantest the call, go to the huts
            of the children,’ and they drive it away.”282
            This association of the serpent, regarded as an incarnation of
            the dead, both with the marriage bed and with the huts of young
            people, points to a belief that the deceased person who is
            incarnate in the snake may be born again as a human child into
            the world. Again, among the Suk of British East Africa
            “it seems to be generally believed that a
            man's spirit passes into a snake at death. If a snake enters a
            house, the spirit of the dead man is believed to be very hungry.
            Milk is poured on to its tracks, and a little meat and tobacco
            placed on the ground for it to eat. It is believed that if no
            food is given to the snake one or all of the members of the
            household will die. It, however, may none the less be killed if
            encountered outside the house, and if at the time of its death it
            is inhabited by the spirit of a dead man, ‘that spirit dies also.’ ”283 The
            Akikuyu of British East Africa, who similarly believe that snakes
            are ngoma or spirits of the
            departed, “do not kill a snake but pour
            out honey and milk for it to drink, which they say it licks up
            and then goes its way. If a man causes the death of a snake he
            must without delay summon the senior Elders in the village and
            slaughter a sheep, which they eat and cut a rukwaru from the skin of its
            right shoulder for the offender to wear on his right wrist; if
            this ceremony is neglected he, his wife and his children will
            die.”284
            Among [pg
            086]
            the Baganda the python god Selwanga had his temple on the shore
            of the lake Victoria Nyanza, where he dwelt in the form of a live
            python. The temple was a hut of the ordinary conical shape with a
            round hole in the wall, through which the sinuous deity crawled
            out and in at his pleasure. A woman lived in the temple, and it
            was her duty to feed the python daily with fresh milk from a
            wooden bowl, which she held out to the divine reptile while he
            drained it. The serpent was thought to be the giver of children;
            hence young couples living in the neighbourhood always came to
            the shrine to ensure the blessing of the god on their union, and
            childless women repaired from long distances to be relieved by
            him from the curse of barrenness.285 It
            is not said that this python god embodied the soul of a dead
            ancestor, but it may have been so; his power of bestowing
            offspring on women suggests it.







The Greeks and Romans seem to
                have shared the belief that the souls of the dead can be
                reincarnated in serpents.





The Romans and
            Greeks appear to have also believed that the souls of the dead
            were incarnate in the bodies of serpents. Among the Romans the
            regular symbol of the genius or guardian spirit of
            every man was a serpent,286 and
            in Roman houses serpents were lodged and fed in such numbers that
            if their swarms had not been sometimes reduced by conflagrations
            there would have been no living for them.287 In
            Greek legend Cadmus and his wife Harmonia [pg 087] were turned at death into
            snakes.288
            When the Spartan king Cleomenes was slain and crucified in Egypt,
            a great serpent coiled round his head on the cross and kept off
            the vultures from his face. The people regarded the prodigy as a
            proof that Cleomenes was a son of the gods.289
            Again, when Plotinus lay dying, a snake crawled from under his
            bed and disappeared into a hole in the wall, and at the same
            moment the philosopher expired.290
            Apparently superstition saw in these serpents the souls of the
            dead men. In Greek religion the serpent was indeed the regular
            symbol or attribute of the worshipful dead,291 and
            we can hardly doubt that the early Greeks, like the Zulus and
            other African tribes at the present day, really believed the soul
            of the departed to be lodged in the reptile. The sacred serpent
            which lived in the Erechtheum at Athens, and was fed with
            honey-cakes once a month, may have been supposed to house the
            soul of the dead king Erechtheus, who had reigned in his lifetime
            on the same spot.292
            Perhaps the libations of milk which the Greeks poured upon
            graves293
            were intended to be drunk by serpents as the embodiments of the
            deceased; on two tombstones found at Tegea a man and a woman are
            respectively represented holding out to a serpent a cup which may
            be supposed to contain milk.294 We
            have seen that various African tribes feed serpents with milk
            because they imagine the reptiles to be incarnations of their
            dead kinsfolk;295 and
            the Dinkas, who practise the custom, also pour milk on the graves
            of their friends for some time after the burial.296 It
            is possible that a common type in Greek art, which exhibits a
            woman feeding a serpent out of [pg 088] a saucer, may have been borrowed from a
            practice of thus ministering to the souls of the departed.297







The serpents fed at the
                Thesmophoria may have been deemed incarnations of the dead.
                Reluctance to disturb the Earth Goddess or the spirits of the
                earth by the operations of digging and ploughing. Hence
                agricultural operations are sometimes forbidden.





Further, at
            the sowing festival of the Thesmophoria, held by Greek women in
            October, it was customary to throw cakes and pigs to serpents,
            which lived in caverns or vaults sacred to the corn-goddess
            Demeter.298 We
            may guess that the serpents thus propitiated were deemed to be
            incarnations of dead men and women, who might easily be
            incommoded in their earthy beds by the operations of husbandry.
            What indeed could be more disturbing than to have the roof of the
            narrow house shaken and rent over their heads by clumsy oxen
            dragging a plough up and down on the top of it? No wonder that at
            such times it was thought desirable to appease them with
            offerings. Sometimes, however, it is not the dead but the Earth
            Goddess herself who is disturbed by the husbandman. An Indian
            prophet at Priest Rapids, on the Middle Columbia River, dissuaded
            his many followers from tilling the ground because “it is a sin to wound or cut, tear up or scratch our
            common mother by agricultural pursuits.”299
“You ask me,” said this Indian
            sage, “to plough the ground. Shall I take
            a knife and tear my mother's bosom? You ask me to dig for stone.
            Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? You ask me to cut grass
            and hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But [pg 089] how dare I cut off my
            mother's hair?”300 The
            Baigas, a primitive Dravidian tribe of the Central Provinces in
            India, used to practise a fitful and migratory agriculture,
            burning down patches of jungle and sowing seed in the soil
            fertilized by the ashes after the breaking of the rains.
            “One explanation of their refusal to till
            the ground is that they consider it a sin to lacerate the breast
            of their mother earth with a ploughshare.”301 In
            China the disturbance caused to the earth-spirits by the
            operations of digging and ploughing was so very serious that
            Chinese philosophy appears to have contemplated a plan for
            allowing the perturbed spirits a close time by forbidding the
            farmer to put his spade or his plough into the ground except on
            certain days, when the earth-spirits were either not at home or
            kindly consented to put up with some temporary inconvenience for
            the good of man. This we may infer from a passage in a Chinese
            author who wrote in the first century of our era. “If it is true,” he says, “that the spirits who inhabit the soil object to it
            being disturbed and dug up, then it is proper for us to select
            special good days for digging ditches and ploughing our fields.
            (But this is never done); it therefore follows that the spirits
            of the soil, even though really annoyed when it is disturbed,
            pass over such an offence if man commits it without evil intent.
            As he commits it merely to ensure his rest and comfort, the act
            cannot possibly excite any anger against him in the perfect heart
            of those spirits; and this being the case, they will not visit
            him with misfortune even if he do not choose auspicious days for
            it. But if we believe that the earth-spirits cannot excuse man on
            account of the object he pursues, and detest him for annoying
            them by disturbing the ground, what advantage then can he derive
            from selecting proper days for doing so?”302
            What advantage indeed? In that case the only logical conclusion
            is, with the Indian prophet, to forbid agriculture altogether, as
            an impious encroachment on the spiritual world. Few peoples,
            however, who have once contracted the habit of agriculture
            [pg 090] are willing to
            renounce it out of a regard for the higher powers; the utmost
            concession which they are willing to make to religion in the
            matter is to prohibit agricultural operations at certain times
            and seasons, when the exercise of them would be more than usually
            painful to the earth-spirits. Thus in Bengal the chief festival
            in honour of Mother Earth is held at the end of the hot season,
            when she is supposed to suffer from the impurity common to women,
            and during that time all ploughing, sowing, and other work
            cease.303 On
            a certain day of the year, when offerings are made to the Earth,
            the Ewe farmer of West Africa will not hoe the ground, and the
            Ewe weaver will not drive a sharp stake into it, “because the hoe and the stake would wound the Earth
            and cause her pain.”304
            When Ratumaimbulu, the god who made fruit-trees to blossom and
            bear fruit, came once a year to Fiji, the people had to live very
            quietly for a month lest they should disturb him at his important
            work. During this time they might not plant nor build nor sail
            about nor go to war; indeed most kinds of work were forbidden.
            The priests announced the time of the god's arrival and
            departure.305
            These periods of rest and quiet would seem to be the Indian and
            Fijian Lent.







Graves as places of conception
                for women.





Thus behind
            the Greek notion that women may conceive by a serpent-god306
            seems to lie the belief that they can conceive by the dead in the
            form of serpents. If such a belief was ever held, it would be
            natural that barren women should resort to graves in order to
            have their wombs quickened, and this may explain why they visited
            the shrine of the serpent-god Aesculapius for that purpose; the
            shrine was perhaps at first a grave. It is significant that in
            Syria the shrines of St. George, to which childless women go to
            get offspring, always include a tomb or the likeness of
            one;307 and
            further, [pg
            091]
            that in the opinion of Syrian peasants at the present day women
            may, without intercourse with a living man, bear children to a
            dead husband, a dead saint, or a jinnee.308 In
            the East Indies also it is still commonly believed that spirits
            can consort with women and beget children on them. The Olo
            Ngadjoe of Borneo imagine that albinoes are the offspring of the
            spirit of the moon by mortal women, the pallid hue of the human
            children naturally reflecting the pallor of their heavenly
            father.309







Reincarnation of the dead in
                America and Africa.





Such beliefs
            are closely akin to the idea, entertained by many peoples, that
            the souls of the dead may pass directly into the wombs of women
            and be born again as infants. Thus the Hurons used to bury little
            children beside the paths in the hope that their souls might
            enter the passing squaws and be born again;310 and
            similarly some negroes of West Africa throw the bodies of infants
            into the bush in order that their souls may choose a new mother
            from the women who pass by.311
            Among the tribes of the Lower Congo “a
            baby is always buried near the house of its mother, never in the
            bush. They think that, if the child is not buried near its
            mother's house, she will be unlucky and never have any more
            children.” The notion probably is that the dead child,
            buried near its mother's house, will enter into her womb and be
            born again, for these people believe in the reincarnation of the
            dead. They think that “the only new thing
            about a child is its body. The spirit is old and formerly
            belonged to some deceased person, or it may have the spirit of
            some living person.” For example, if a child is like its
            mother, father, or uncle, they imagine that it must [pg 092] have the spirit of the
            relative whom it resembles, and that therefore the person whose
            soul has thus been abstracted by the infant will soon die.312
            Among the Bangalas, a tribe of cannibals in Equatorial Africa, to
            the north of the Congo, a woman was one day seen digging a hole
            in the public road. Her husband entreated a Belgian officer to
            let her alone, promising to mend the road afterwards, and
            explaining that his wife wished to become a mother. The
            good-natured officer complied with his request and watched the
            woman. She continued to dig till she had uncovered a little
            skeleton, the remains of her first-born, which she tenderly
            embraced, humbly entreating the dead child to enter into her and
            give her again a mother's joy. The officer rightly did not
            smile.313 The
            Bagishu, a Bantu tribe of Mount Elgon, in the Uganda
            Protectorate, practise the custom of throwing out their dead
            “except in the case of the youngest child
            or the old grandfather or grandmother, for whom, like the child,
            a prolonged life on earth is desired.... When it is desired to
            perpetuate on the earth the life of some old man or woman, or
            that of some young baby, the corpse is buried inside the house or
            just under the eaves, until another child is born to the nearest
            relation of the corpse. This child, male or female, takes the
            name of the corpse, and the Bagishu firmly believe that the
            spirit of the dead has passed into this new child and lives again
            on earth. The remains are then dug up and thrown out into the
            open.”314







Measures taken to prevent the
                rebirth of undesirable spirits. Belief of the Baganda that a
                woman can be impregnated by the flower of the banana.





Again, just as
            measures are adopted to facilitate the rebirth of good ghosts, so
            on the other hand precautions are taken to prevent the rebirth of
            bad ones. Thus, with regard to the Baganda of Central Africa we
            read that, “while the present generation
            know the cause of pregnancy, the people in the earlier times were
            uncertain as to its real cause, and thought that it was possible
            to conceive without any intercourse with the male sex. Hence
            their precautions in passing places where [pg 093] either a suicide had been
            burnt, or a child born feet first had been buried. Women were
            careful to throw grass or sticks on such a spot, for by so doing
            they thought that they could prevent the ghost of the dead from
            entering into them, and being reborn.”315 The
            fear of being got with child by such ghosts was not confined to
            married women, it was shared by all women alike, whether young or
            old, whether married or single; and all of them sought to avert
            the danger in the same way.316 And
            Baganda women imagined that without the help of the other sex
            they could be impregnated not only by these unpleasant ghosts but
            also by the flower of the banana. If while a woman was busy in
            her garden under the shadow of the banana trees, a great purple
            bloom chanced to fall from one of the trees on her back or
            shoulders, it was quite enough, in the opinion of the Baganda, to
            get her with child; and were a wife accused of adultery because
            she gave birth to a child who could not possibly have been
            begotten by her husband, she had only to father the infant on a
            banana flower to be honourably acquitted of the charge. The
            reason why this remarkable property was ascribed to the bloom of
            the banana would seem to be that ghosts of ancestors were thought
            to haunt banana groves, and that the afterbirths of children,
            which the Baganda regarded as twins of the children, were
            commonly buried at the root of the trees.317
            What more natural than that a ghost should lurk in each flower,
            and dropping adroitly in the likeness of a blossom on a woman's
            back effect a lodgment in her womb?







Reincarnation of the dead in
                India. Means taken to facilitate the rebirth of dead
                children.





Again, when a
            child dies in Northern India it is usually buried under the
            threshold of the house, “in the belief
            that as [pg
            094]
            the parents tread daily over its grave, its soul will be reborn
            in the family. Here, as Mr. Rose suggests, we reach an
            explanation of the rule that children of Hindus are buried, not
            cremated. Their souls do not pass into the ether with the smoke
            of the pyre, but remain on earth to be reincarnated in the
            household.”318 In
            the Punjaub this belief in the reincarnation of dead infants
            gives rise to some quaint or pathetic customs. Thus, “in the Hissar District, Bishnois bury dead infants
            at the threshold, in the belief that it would facilitate the
            return of the soul to the mother. The practice is also in vogue
            in the Kangra District, where the body is buried in front of the
            back door. In some places it is believed that, if the child dies
            in infancy and the mother drops her milk for two or three days on
            the ground, the soul of the child comes back to be born again.
            For this purpose milk diluted with water is placed in a small
            earthen pot and offered to the dead child's spirit for three
            consecutive evenings. There is also a belief in the Ambala and
            Gujrat Districts that if jackals and dogs dig out the dead body
            of the child and bring it towards the town or village, it means
            that the child will return to its mother, but if they take it to
            some other side, the soul will reincarnate in some other family.
            For this purpose, the second day after the infant's death, the
            mother goes out early in the morning to see whether the dogs have
            brought the body towards the village. When the child is being
            taken away for burial the mother cuts off and preserves a piece
            of its garment with a view to persuade the soul to return to her.
            Barren women or those who have lost children in infancy tear a
            piece off the clothing of a dead child and stitch it to their
            wearing apparel, believing that the soul of the child will return
            to them instead of its own mother. On this account, people take
            great care not to lose the clothes of dead children, and some
            bury them in the house.”319 In
            Bilaspore “a still-born child, or one who
            has passed away before the Chhatti (the sixth day, the
            day of purification) is not taken out of the [pg 095] house for burial, but is
            placed in an earthen vessel and is buried in the doorway or in
            the yard of the house. Some say that this is done in order that
            the mother may bear another child.”320
            Here in Bilaspore the people have devised a very simple way of
            identifying a dead person when he or she is born again as an
            infant. When anybody dies, they mark the body with soot or oil,
            and the next baby born in the family with a similar mark is
            hailed as the departed come to life again.321
            Among the Kois of the Godavari district, in Southern India, the
            dead are usually burnt, but the bodies of children and of young
            men and women are buried. If a child dies within a month of its
            birth, it is generally buried close to the house “so that the rain, dripping from the eaves, may fall
            upon the grave, and thereby cause the parents to be blessed with
            another child.”322
            Apparently it is supposed that the soul of the dead child,
            refreshed and revived by the rain, will pass again into the
            mother's womb. Indian criminal records contain many cases in
            which “the ceremonial killing of a male
            child has been performed as a cure for barrenness, the theory
            being that the soul of the murdered boy becomes reincarnated in
            the woman, who performs the rite with a desire to secure
            offspring. Usually she effects union with the spirit of the child
            by bathing over its body or in the water in which the corpse has
            been washed. Cases have recently occurred in which the woman
            actually bathed in the blood of the child.”323







Bringing back the soul of the
                dead in a fish or insect. Stories of the Virgin Birth.
                Reincarnation of the dead among the South Slavs.





On the fifth
            day after a death the Gonds perform the ceremony of bringing back
            the soul. They go to the bank of a river, call aloud the name of
            the deceased, and entering the water catch a fish or an insect.
            This creature they then take home and place among the sainted
            dead of the family, supposing that in this manner the spirit of
            the departed has been brought back to the house. Sometimes the
            fish or [pg
            096]
            insect is eaten in the belief that it will be thus reborn as a
            child.324
            This last custom explains the widely diffused story of virgins
            who have conceived by eating of a plant or an animal or merely by
            taking it to their bosom.325 In
            all such cases we may surmise that the plant or animal was
            thought to contain the soul of a dead person, which thus passed
            into the virgin's womb and was born again as an infant. Among the
            South Slavs childless women often resort to a grave in which a
            pregnant woman is buried. There they bite some grass from the
            grave, invoke the deceased by name, and beg her to give them the
            fruit of her womb. After that they take a little of the mould
            from the grave and carry it about with them thenceforth under
            their girdle.326
            Apparently they imagine that the soul of the unborn infant is in
            the grass or the mould and will pass from it into their body.







Belief of the Kai that women may
                be impregnated without sexual intercourse. Belief in the
                island of Mota that a woman can conceive through the entrance
                into her of a spirit animal or fruit.





Among the Kai
            of German New Guinea, “impossible as it
            may be thought, it is yet a fact that women here and there deny
            in all seriousness the connexion between sexual intercourse and
            pregnancy. Of course most people are clear as to the process. The
            ignorance of some individuals is perhaps based on the
            consideration that not uncommonly married women remain childless
            for years or for life. Finally, the animistic faith contributes
            its share to support the [pg 097] ignorance.”327 In
            some islands of Southern Melanesia the natives appear similarly
            to believe that sexual intercourse is not necessary to
            impregnation, and that a woman can conceive through the simple
            passage into her womb of a spirit-animal or a spirit-fruit
            without the help of a man. In the island of Mota, one of the
            Banks' group, “the course of events is
            usually as follows: a woman sitting down in her garden or in the
            bush or on the shore finds an animal or fruit in her loincloth.
            She takes it up and carries it to the village, where she asks the
            meaning of the appearance. The people say that she will give
            birth to a child who will have the characters of this animal or
            even, it appeared, would be himself or herself the animal. The
            woman then takes the creature back to the place where she had
            found it and places it in its proper home; if it is a land animal
            on the land; if a water animal in the pool or stream from which
            it had probably come. She builds up a wall round it and goes to
            feed and visit it every day. After a time the animal will
            disappear, and it is believed that that is because the animal has
            at the time of its disappearance entered into the woman. It
            seemed quite clear that there was no belief in physical
            impregnation on the part of the animal, nor of the entry of a
            material object in the form of the animal into her womb, but so
            far as I could gather, an animal found in this way was regarded
            as more or less supernatural, a spirit animal and not one
            material, from the beginning. It has happened in the memory of an
            old man now living in Mota that a woman who has found an animal
            in her loincloth has carried it carefully in her closed hands to
            the village, but that when she opened her hands to show it to the
            people, the animal has gone, and in this case it was believed
            that the entry had taken place while the woman was on her way
            from the bush to the village.... When the child is born it is
            regarded as being in some sense the animal or fruit which had
            been found and tended by the mother. The child may not eat the
            animal during the whole of its life, and if it does so, will
            suffer serious illness, if not death. If it is a fruit which has
            been found, the child may not eat this fruit or touch the tree
            [pg 098] on which it grows,
            the latter restriction remaining in those cases in which the
            fruit is inedible.... I inquired into the idea at the bottom of
            the prohibition of the animal as food, and it appeared to be that
            the person would be eating himself. It seemed that the act would
            be regarded as a kind of cannibalism. It was evident that there
            is a belief in the most intimate relation between the person and
            all individuals of the species with which he is
            identified.


“A further aspect of the belief in the animal nature
            of a child is that it partakes of the physical and mental
            characters of the animal with which it is identified. Thus, if
            the animal found has been a sea-snake, and this is a frequent
            occurrence, the child would be weak, indolent and slow; if an
            eel, there will be a similar disposition; if a hermit crab, the
            child will be hot-tempered; if a flying fox, it will also be
            hot-tempered and the body will be dark; if a brush turkey, the
            disposition will be good; if a lizard, the child will be soft and
            gentle; if a rat, thoughtless, hasty and intemperate. If the
            object found has been a fruit, here also the child will partake
            of its nature. In the case of a wild Malay apple (malmalagaviga) the child will
            have a big belly, and a person with this condition will be asked,
            ‘Do you come from the malmalagaviga?’ Again,
            if the fruit is one called womarakaraqat, the child will
            have a good disposition.







Similar belief in the island of
                Motlav.





“In the island of Motlav not far from Mota they have
            the same belief that if a mother has found an animal in her
            dress, the child will be identified with that animal and will not
            be allowed to eat it. Here again the child is believed to have
            the characters of the animal, and two instances given were that a
            child identified with a yellow crab will have a good disposition
            and be of a light colour, while if a hermit crab has been found,
            the child will be angry and disagreeable. In this island a woman
            who desires her child to have certain characters will frequent a
            place where she will be likely to encounter the animal which
            causes the appearance of these characters. Thus, if she wants to
            have a light coloured child, she will go to a place where there
            are light coloured crabs.”328
[pg 099]






Australian beliefs as to the
                birth of children. Reincarnation of the dead in Central
                Australia.





Throughout a
            large part of Australia, particularly in the Centre, the North,
            and the West, the aborigines hold that the commerce of the human
            sexes is not necessary to the production of children; indeed many
            of them go further and deny that sexual intercourse is the real
            cause of the propagation of the species. Among the Arunta,
            Kaitish, Luritcha, Ilpirra and other tribes, who roam the barren
            steppes of Central Australia, it appears to be a universal
            article of belief that every person is the reincarnation of a
            deceased ancestor, and that the souls of the dead pass directly
            into the wombs of women, who give them birth without the need of
            commerce with the other sex. They think that the spirits of the
            departed gather and dwell at particular spots, marked by a
            natural feature such as a rock or a tree, and that from these
            lurking-places they dart out and enter the bodies of passing
            women or girls. When a woman feels her womb quickened, she knows
            that a spirit has made its way into her from the nearest abode of
            the dead. This is their regular explanation of conception and
            childbirth. “The natives, one and all in
            these tribes, believe that the child is the direct result of the
            entrance into the mother of an ancestral spirit individual. They
            have no idea of procreation as being associated with sexual
            intercourse, and firmly believe that children can be born without
            this taking place.”329 The
            spots where the souls thus congregate waiting [pg 100] to be born again are usually
            the places where the remote ancestors of the dream-time are said
            to have passed into the ground; that is, they are the places
            where the forefathers of the tribe are supposed to have died or
            to have been buried. For example, in the Warramunga tribe the
            ancestor of the Black-snake clan is said to have left many
            spirits of Black-snake children in the rocks and trees which
            border a certain creek. Hence no woman at the present day dares
            to strike one of these trees with an axe, being quite convinced
            that the blow would release one of the spirit-children, who would
            at once enter her body. They imagine that the spirit is no larger
            than a grain of sand, and that it enters the woman through her
            navel and grows into a child in her womb.330
            Again, at several places in the wide territory of the Arunta
            tribe there are certain stones which are in like manner thought
            to be the abode of souls awaiting rebirth. Hence the stones are
            called “child-stones.” In one of
            them there is a hole through which the spirit-children look out
            for passing women, and it is firmly believed that a visit to the
            stone would result in conception. If a young woman is obliged to
            pass near the stone and does not wish to have a child, she will
            carefully disguise her youth, pulling a wry face and hobbling
            along on a stick. She will bend herself double like a very old
            woman, and imitating the cracked voice of age she will say,
            “Don't come to me, I am an old
            woman.” Nay, it is thought that women may conceive by the
            stone without visiting it. If a man and his wife both wish for a
            child, the husband will tie his hair-girdle round the stone, rub
            it, and mutter a direction to the spirits to give heed to his
            wife. And it is believed that by performing a similar ceremony a
            malicious man can cause women and even children at a distance to
            be pregnant.331







Reincarnation of the dead in
                Northern Australia.





Such beliefs
            are not confined to the tribes of Central Australia but prevail
            among all the tribes from Lake Eyre northwards to the sea and the
            Gulf of Carpentaria.332
            Thus [pg
            101]
            the Mungarai say that in the far past time their old ancestors
            walked about the country, making all the natural features of the
            landscape and leaving spirit-children behind them where they
            stopped. These children emanated from the bodies of the
            ancestors, and they still wait at various spots looking out for
            women into whom they may go and be born. For example, near
            McMinn's bar on the Roper River there is a large gum tree full of
            spirit-children, who all belong to one particular totem and are
            always agog to enter into women of that totem. Again, at Crescent
            Lagoon an ancestor, who belonged to the thunder totem, deposited
            numbers of spirit-children; and if a woman of the Gnaritjbellan
            subclass so much as dips her foot in the water, one of the
            spirit-children passes up her leg and into her body and in due
            time is born as a child, who has thunder for its totem. Or if the
            woman stoops and drinks water, one of the sprites will enter her
            through the mouth. Again, there are lagoons along the Roper River
            where red lilies grow; and the water is full of spirit-children
            which were deposited there by a kangaroo man. So when women of
            the Gnaritjbellan subclass wade into the water to gather lilies,
            little sprites swarm up their legs and are born as kangaroo
            children. Again, in the territory of the Nullakun tribe there is
            a certain spring where a man once deposited spirit-children of
            the rainbow totem; and to this day when a woman of the right
            totem comes to drink at the spring, the spirit of a rainbow child
            will dart into her and be born. Once more, in the territory of
            the Yungman tribe the trees and stones near Elsey Creek are full
            of spirit-children who belong to the sugar-bag (honeycomb) totem;
            and these sugar-bag children are constantly entering into the
            right women and being born into the world.333
[pg 102]






Theories as to the birth of
                children among the tribes of Queensland.





The natives of
            the Tully River in Queensland do not recognize sexual intercourse
            as a cause of conception in women, though curiously enough they
            do recognize it as the cause of conception in all animals, and
            pride themselves on their superiority to the brutes in that they
            are not indebted for the continuance of their species to such low
            and vulgar means. The true causes of conception in a woman,
            according to them, are four in number. First, she may have
            received a particular species of black bream from a man whom the
            European in his ignorance would call the father; this she may
            have roasted and sat over the fire inhaling the savoury smell of
            the roast fish. That is quite sufficient to get her with child.
            Or, secondly, she may have gone out on purpose to catch a certain
            kind of bull-frog, and if she succeeds in capturing it, that
            again is a full and satisfactory explanation of her pregnancy.
            Thirdly, some man may have told her to conceive a child, and the
            mere command produces the desired effect. Or, fourth and lastly,
            she may have simply dreamed that the child was put into her, and
            the dream necessarily works its own fulfilment. Whatever white
            men may think about the matter, these are the real causes why
            babies are born among the blacks on the Tully River.334
            About Cape Bedford in Queensland the natives believe that babies
            are sent by certain long-haired spirits, with two sets of eyes in
            the front and back of their heads, who live in the dense scrub
            and underwood. The children are made in the far west where the
            sun goes down, and they are made not in the form of infants but
            full grown; but on their passage from the sunset land to the
            wombs they are changed into the shape of spur-winged plovers, if
            they are girls, or of pretty snakes, if they are boys. So when
            the cry of a plover is heard by night, the blacks prick up their
            ears and say, “Hallo! there is a baby
            somewhere about.” And if a woman is out in the bush
            searching for food and sees one of the pretty snakes, which are
            really baby boys on the look out for mothers, she will call out
            to her mates, and [pg
            103]
            they will come running and turn over stones, and leaves, and logs
            in the search for the snake; and if they cannot find it they know
            that it has gone into the woman and that she will soon give birth
            to a baby boy.335 On
            the Pennefather River in Queensland the being who puts babies
            into women is called Anje-a. He takes a lump of mud out of one of
            the mangrove swamps, moulds it into the shape of an infant, and
            insinuates it into a woman's womb. You can never see him, for he
            lives in the depths of the woods, among the rocks, and along the
            mangrove swamps; but sometimes you can hear him laughing there to
            himself, and when you hear him you may know that he has got a
            baby ready for somebody.336
            Among the tribes of the Cairns district in North Queensland
            “the acceptance of food from a man by a
            woman was not merely regarded as a marriage ceremony, but as the
            actual cause of conception.”337







Theories as to the birth of
                children in Northern and Western Australia. Belief that
                conception in women is caused by the food they eat.





Similarly
            among the Australian tribes of the Northern Territory, about Port
            Darwin and the Daly River, especially among the Larrekiya and
            Wogait, “conception is not regarded as a
            direct result of cohabitation.” The old men of the Wogait
            say that there is an evil spirit who takes babies from a big fire
            and puts them in the wombs of women, who must give birth to them.
            In the ordinary course of events, when a man is out hunting and
            kills game or collects other food, he gives it to his wife and
            she eats it, believing that the game or other food will cause her
            to conceive and bring forth a child. When the child is born, it
            may on no account partake of the food [pg 104] which caused conception in the mother until
            it has got its first teeth.338 A
            similar belief that conception is caused by the food which a
            woman eats is held by some tribes of Western Australia. On this
            subject Mr. A. R. Brown reports as follows: “In the Ingarda tribe at the mouth of the Gascoyne
            River, I found a belief that a child is the product of some food
            of which the mother has partaken just before her first sickness
            in pregnancy. My principal informant on this subject told me that
            his father had speared a small animal called bandaru, probably a bandicoot,
            but now extinct in this neighbourhood. His mother ate the animal,
            with the result that she gave birth to my informant. He showed me
            the mark in his side where, as he said, he had been speared by
            his father before being eaten by his mother. A little girl was
            pointed out to me as being the result of her mother eating a
            domestic cat, and her brother was said to have been produced from
            a bustard.... The bustard was one of the totems of the father of
            these two children and, therefore, of the children themselves.
            This, however, seems to have been purely accidental. In most
            cases the animal to which conception is due is not one of the
            father's totems. The species that is thus connected with an
            individual by birth is not in any way sacred to him. He may kill
            or eat it; he may marry a woman whose conceptional animal is of
            the same species, and he is not by the accident of his birth
            entitled to take part in the totemic ceremonies connected with
            it.


“I found traces of this same belief in a number of
            tribes north of the Ingarda, but everywhere the belief seemed to
            be sporadic; that is to say, some persons believed in it and
            others did not. Some individuals could tell the animal or plant
            from which they or others were descended, while others did not
            know or in some cases denied that conception was so caused. There
            were to be met with, however, some beliefs of the same character.
            A woman of the Buduna tribe said that native women nowadays bear
            half-caste children because they eat bread made of white flour.
            Many [pg
            105]
            of the men believed that conception is due to sexual intercourse,
            but as these natives have been for many years in contact with the
            whites this cannot be regarded as satisfactory evidence of the
            nature of their original beliefs.







Conception supposed to be caused
                by a man who is not the father.





“In some tribes further to the north I found a more
            interesting and better organised system of beliefs. In the
            Kariera, Ñamal, and Injibandi tribes the conception of a child is
            believed to be due to the agency of a particular man, who is not
            the father. This man is the wororu of the child when it is
            born. There were three different accounts of how the wororu produces conception,
            each of them given to me on several different occasions.
            According to the first, the man gives some food, either animal or
            vegetable, to the woman, and she eats this and becomes pregnant.
            According to the second, the man when he is out hunting kills an
            animal, preferably a kangaroo or an emu, and as it is dying he
            tells its spirit or ghost to go to a particular woman. The spirit
            of the dead animal goes into the woman and is born as a child.
            The third account is very similar to the last. A hunter, when he
            has killed a kangaroo or an emu, takes a portion of the fat of
            the dead animal which he places on one side. This fat turns into
            what we may speak of as a spirit-baby, and follows the man to his
            camp. When the man is asleep at night the spirit-baby comes to
            him and he directs it to enter a certain woman who thus becomes
            pregnant. When the child is born the man acknowledges that he
            sent it, and becomes its wororu. In practically every
            case that I examined, some forty in all, the wororu of a man or woman was a
            person standing to him or her in the relation of father's brother
            own or tribal. In one case a man had a wororu who was his father's
            sister. The duties of a man to his wororu are very vaguely
            defined. I was told that a man ‘looks
            after’ his wororu, that is, performs
            small services for him, and, perhaps, gives him food. The
            conceptional animal or plant is not the totem of either the child
            or the wororu. The child has no
            particular magical connection with the animal from which he is
            derived. In a very large number of cases that animal is either
            the kangaroo or the emu.”339
[pg 106]






Some rude races still ignorant
                as to the cause of procreation.





Thus it
            appears that a childlike ignorance as to the physical process of
            procreation still prevails to some extent among certain rude
            races of mankind, who are accordingly driven to account for it in
            various fanciful ways such as might content the curiosity of
            children. We may safely assume that formerly a like ignorance was
            far more widely spread than it is now; indeed in the long ages
            which elapsed before any portion of mankind emerged from
            savagery, it is probable that the true cause of childbirth was
            universally unknown, and that people made shift to explain the
            mystery by some such theories as are still current among the
            savage or barbarous races of Central Africa, Melanesia, and
            Australia. A little reflection on the conditions of savage life
            may satisfy us that the ignorance is by no means so surprising as
            it may seem at first sight to a civilized observer, or, to put it
            otherwise, that the true cause of the birth of children is not
            nearly so obvious as we are apt to think. Among low savages, such
            as all men were originally, it is customary for boys and girls to
            cohabit freely with each other under the age of puberty, so that
            they are familiar with a commerce of the sexes which is not and
            cannot be attended with the birth of children. It is, therefore,
            not very wonderful that they should confidently deny the
            connexion of sexual intercourse with the production of offspring.
            Again, the long interval of time which divides the act of
            conception from the first manifest symptoms of pregnancy might
            easily disguise from the heedless savage the vital relation
            between the two. These considerations may remove or lessen the
            hesitation which civilized man naturally feels at admitting that
            a considerable part or even the whole of his species should ever
            have doubted or denied what seems to him one of the most obvious
            and elementary truths of nature.340







Legends of virgin
                mothers.





In the light
            of the foregoing evidence, stories of the [pg 107] miraculous birth of gods and
            heroes from virgin mothers lose much of the glamour that
            encircled them in days of old, and we view them simply as relics
            of superstition surviving like fossils to tell us of a bygone age
            of childlike ignorance and credulity.





 


§ 8. Sacred Stocks and Stones among
            the Semites.







Procreative virtue apparently
                ascribed to the sacred stocks and stones at Semitic
                sanctuaries.





Traces of
            beliefs and customs like the foregoing may perhaps be detected
            among the ancient Semites. When the prophet Jeremiah speaks of
            the Israelites who said to a stock or to a tree (for in Hebrew
            the words are the same), “Thou art my
            father,” and to a stone, “Thou
            hast brought me forth,”341 it
            is probable that he was not using vague rhetorical language, but
            denouncing real beliefs current among his contemporaries. Now we
            know that at all the old Canaanite sanctuaries, including the
            sanctuaries of Jehovah down to the reformations of Hezekiah and
            Josiah, the two regular objects of worship were a sacred stock
            and a sacred stone,342 and
            that these sanctuaries were the seats of profligate rites
            performed by sacred men (ḳedeshim) and sacred women
            (ḳedeshoth).
            Is it not natural to suppose that the stock and stone which the
            superstitious Israelites regarded as their father and mother were
            the sacred stock (asherah) and the sacred stone
            (massebah) of
            the sanctuary, and that the children born of the loose
            intercourse of the sexes at these places were believed to be the
            offspring or emanations of these uncouth but worshipful idols in
            which, as in the sacred trees and stones of Central Australia,
            the souls of the dead may have been supposed to await rebirth? On
            this view the sacred men and women who actually begot
            [pg 108] or bore the
            children were deemed the human embodiments of the two divinities,
            the men perhaps personating the sacred stock, which appears to
            have been a tree stripped of its branches, and the women
            personating the sacred stone, which seems to have been in the
            shape of a cone, an obelisk, or a pillar.343







These conclusions confirmed by
                the excavation of a sanctuary at the Canaanitish city of
                Gezer. The infants buried in the sanctuary may have been
                expected to be born again.





These
            conclusions are confirmed by the result of recent researches at
            Gezer, an ancient Canaanitish city, which occupied a high,
            isolated point on the southern border of Ephraim, between
            Jerusalem and the sea. Here the English excavations have laid
            bare the remains of a sanctuary with the sacred stone pillars or
            obelisks (masseboth)
            still standing in a row, while between two of them is set a large
            socketed stone, beautifully squared, which perhaps contained the
            sacred stock or pole (asherah). In the soil which
            had accumulated over the floor of the temple were found vast
            numbers of male emblems rudely carved out of soft limestone; and
            tablets of terra-cotta, representing in low relief the
            mother-goddess, were discovered throughout the strata. These
            objects were no doubt votive-offerings presented by the
            worshippers to the male and female deities who were represented
            by the sacred stock and the sacred stones; and their occurrence
            in large quantities raises a strong presumption that the
            divinities of the sanctuary were a god and goddess regarded as
            above all sources of fertility. The supposition is further
            strengthened by a very remarkable discovery. Under the floor of
            the temple were found the bones of many new-born children, none
            more than a week old, buried in large jars. None of these little
            bodies showed any trace of mutilation or violence; and in the
            light of the customs practised in many other lands344 we
            seem to be justified in [pg
            109]
            conjecturing that the infants were still-born or died soon after
            birth, and that they were buried by their parents in the
            sanctuary in the hope that, quickened by the divine power, they
            might enter again into the mother's womb and again be born into
            the world.345 If
            the souls of these buried babes were supposed to pass into the
            sacred stocks and stones and to dart from them into the bodies of
            would-be mothers who resorted to the sanctuary, the analogy with
            Central Australia would be complete. That the analogy is real and
            not fanciful is strongly suggested by the modern practice of
            Syrian women who still repair to the shrines of saints to procure
            offspring, and who still look on “holy
            men” as human embodiments of divinity. In this, as in many
            other dark places of superstition, the present is the best guide
            to the interpretation of the past; for while the higher forms of
            religious faith pass away like clouds, the lower stand firm and
            indestructible like rocks. The “sacred
            men” of one age are the dervishes of the next, the Adonis
            of yesterday is the St. George of to-day.




[pg 110]




 


Chapter V. The Burning of
          Melcarth.







Semitic custom of sacrificing a
              member of the royal family. The burning of Melcarth at Tyre.
              Festival of “the
              awakening of Hercules”at
              Tyre.





If a custom of
          putting a king or his son to death in the character of a god has
          left small traces of itself in Cyprus, an island where the fierce
          zeal of Semitic religion was early tempered by Greek humanity, the
          vestiges of that gloomy rite are clearer in Phoenicia itself and in
          the Phoenician colonies, which lay more remote from the highways of
          Grecian commerce. We know that the Semites were in the habit of
          sacrificing some of their children, generally the first-born,
          either as a tribute regularly due to the deity or to appease his
          anger in seasons of public danger and calamity.346 If
          commoners did so, is it likely that kings, with all their heavy
          responsibilities, could exempt themselves from this dreadful
          sacrifice for the fatherland? In point of fact, history informs us
          that kings steeled themselves to do as others did.347 It
          deserves to be noticed that if Mesha, king of Moab, who sacrificed
          his eldest son by fire, claimed to be a son of his god,348 he
          would no doubt transmit his divinity to his offspring; and further,
          that the same sacrifice is said to have been performed in the same
          way by the divine founder of Byblus, the great seat of the worship
          of Adonis.349 This
          suggests that the human representatives of Adonis formerly perished
          in the flames. At all events, a custom of periodically burning the
          chief god of the city in effigy appears to have prevailed
          [pg 111] at Tyre and in the
          Tyrian colonies down to a late time, and the effigy may well have
          been a later substitute for a man. For Melcarth, the great god of
          Tyre, was identified by the Greeks with Hercules,350 who
          is said to have burned himself to death on a great pyre, ascending
          up to heaven in a cloud and a peal of thunder.351 The
          common Greek legend, immortalized by Sophocles, laid the scene of
          the fiery tragedy on the top of Mount Oeta, but another version
          transferred it significantly to Tyre itself.352
          Combined with the other evidence which I shall adduce, this latter
          tradition raises a strong presumption that an effigy of Hercules,
          or rather of Melcarth, was regularly burned at a great festival in
          Tyre. That festival may have been the one known as “the awakening of Hercules,” which was held in
          the month of Peritius, answering nearly to January.353 The
          name of the festival suggests that the dramatic representation of
          the death of the god on the pyre was followed by a semblance of his
          resurrection. The mode in which the resurrection was supposed to be
          effected is perhaps indicated by the statement of a Greek writer
          that the Phoenicians used to sacrifice quails to Hercules, because
          Hercules on his journey to Libya had been slain by Typhon and
          brought to life again by Iolaus, who held a quail under his nose:
          the dead god snuffed at the bird and revived.354
          According to another account Iolaus burnt a quail alive, and the
          dead hero, who [pg
          112]
          loved quails, came to life again through the savoury smell of the
          roasted bird.355 This
          latter tradition seems to point to a custom of burning the quails
          alive in the Phoenician sacrifices to Melcarth.356 A
          festival of the god's resurrection might appropriately be held in
          spring, when the quails migrate northwards across the Mediterranean
          in great bands, and immense numbers of them are netted for the
          market.357 In
          the month of March the birds return to Palestine by myriads in a
          single night, and remain to breed in all the open plains, marshes,
          and cornfields.358
          Certainly a close connexion seems to have subsisted between quails
          and Melcarth; for legend ran that Asteria, the mother of the Tyrian
          Hercules, that is, of Melcarth, was transformed into a quail.359 It
          was probably to this annual festival of the death and resurrection
          of Melcarth that the Carthaginians were wont to send ambassadors
          every year to Tyre, their mother-city.360







Worship of Melcarth at Gades, and
              trace of a custom of burning him there in effigy.





In Gades, the
          modern Cadiz, an early colony of Tyre on the Atlantic coast of
          Spain,361 there
          was an ancient, famous, and wealthy sanctuary of Hercules, the
          Tyrian Melcarth. Indeed the god was said to be buried on the spot.
          No image stood in his temple, but a perpetual fire burned on the
          altar, and incense was offered by white-robed priests, with bare
          feet and shorn heads, who were bound to chastity. Neither women nor
          pigs might pollute the holy place by their presence. In later times
          many distinguished Romans went on pilgrimage to this remote shrine
          on the Atlantic shore when they were about to embark on some
          perilous [pg
          113]
          enterprise, and they returned to it to pay their vows when their
          petitions had been granted.362 One
          of the last things Hannibal himself did before he marched on Italy
          was to repair to Gades and offer up to Melcarth prayers which were
          never to be answered. Soon after he dreamed an ominous dream.363 Now
          it would appear that at Gades, as at Tyre, though no image of
          Melcarth stood in the temple, an effigy of him was made up and
          burned at a yearly festival. For a certain Cleon of Magnesia
          related how, visiting Gades, he was obliged to sail away from the
          island with the rest of the multitude in obedience to the command
          of Hercules, that is, of Melcarth, and how on their return they
          found a monstrous man of the sea stranded on the beach and burning;
          for the god, they were told, had struck him with a
          thunderbolt.364 We
          may conjecture that at the annual festival of Melcarth strangers
          were obliged to quit the city, and that in their absence the
          mystery of burning the god was consummated. What Cleon and the rest
          saw on their return to Gades would, on this hypothesis, be the
          smouldering remains of a gigantic effigy of Melcarth in the
          likeness of a man riding on a sea-horse, just as he is represented
          on coins of Tyre.365 In
          like manner the Greeks portrayed the sea-god Melicertes, whose name
          is only a slightly altered form of Melcarth, riding on a dolphin or
          stretched on the beast's back.366







Evidence of a custom of burning a
              god or goddess at Carthage. The fire-walk at Tyre. The
              fire-walk at Castabala. The Carthaginian king Hamilcar
              sacrifices himself in the fire.





At Carthage, the
          greatest of the Tyrian colonies, a [pg 114] reminiscence of the custom of burning a deity
          in effigy seems to linger in the story that Dido or Elissa, the
          foundress and queen of the city, stabbed herself to death upon a
          pyre, or leaped from her palace into the blazing pile, to escape
          the fond importunities of one lover or in despair at the cruel
          desertion of another.367 We
          are told that Dido was worshipped as a goddess at Carthage so long
          as the country maintained its independence.368 Her
          temple stood in the centre of the city shaded by a grove of solemn
          yews and firs.369 The
          two apparently contradictory views of her character as a queen and
          a goddess may be reconciled if we suppose that she was both the one
          and the other; that in fact the queen of Carthage in early days,
          like the queen of Egypt down to historical times, was regarded as
          divine, and had, like human deities elsewhere, to die a violent
          death either at the end of a fixed period or whenever her bodily
          and mental powers began to fail. In later ages the stern old custom
          might be softened down into a pretence by substituting an effigy
          for the queen or by allowing her to pass through the fire
          unscathed. A similar modification of the ancient rule appears to
          have been allowed at Tyre itself, the mother-city of Carthage. We
          have seen reason to think that the kings of Tyre, from whom Dido
          was descended, claimed to personate the god Melcarth, and that the
          deity was burned either in effigy or in the person of a man at an
          annual festival.370 Now
          in the same chapter in which Ezekiel charges the king of Tyre with
          claiming to be a god, the prophet describes him as walking
          “up and down amidst the stones of
          fire.”371 The
          description becomes at once intelligible [pg 115] if we suppose that in later times the king of
          Tyre compounded for being burnt in the fire by walking up and down
          on hot stones, thereby saving his life at the expense perhaps of a
          few blisters on his feet. It is possible that when all went well
          with the commonwealth, children whom strict law doomed to the
          furnace of Moloch may also have been mercifully allowed to escape
          on condition of running the fiery gauntlet. At all events, a
          religious rite of this sort has been and is still practised in many
          parts of the world: the performers solemnly pace through a furnace
          of heated stones or glowing wood-ashes in the presence of a
          multitude of spectators. Examples of the custom have been adduced
          in another part of this work.372 Here
          I will cite only one. At Castabala, in Southern Cappadocia, there
          was worshipped an Asiatic goddess whom the Greeks called the
          Perasian Artemis. Her priestesses used to walk barefoot over a fire
          of charcoal without sustaining any injury. That this rite was a
          substitute for burning human beings alive or dead is suggested by
          the tradition which placed the adventure of Orestes and the Tauric
          Artemis at Castabala;373 for
          the men or women sacrificed to the Tauric Artemis were first put to
          the sword and then burned in a pit of sacred fire.374 Among
          the Carthaginians another trace of such a practice may perhaps be
          detected in the story that at the desperate battle of Himera,
          fought from dawn of day till late in the evening, the Carthaginian
          king Hamilcar remained in the camp and kept sacrificing holocausts
          of victims on a huge pyre; but when he saw his army giving
          [pg 116] way before the
          Greeks, he flung himself into the flames and was burned to death.
          Afterwards his countrymen sacrificed to him and erected a great
          monument in his honour at Carthage, while lesser monuments were
          reared to his memory in all the Punic colonies.375 In
          public emergencies which called for extraordinary measures a king
          of Carthage may well have felt bound in honour to sacrifice himself
          in the old way for the good of his country. That the Carthaginians
          regarded the death of Hamilcar as an act of heroism and not as a
          mere suicide of despair, is proved by the posthumous honours they
          paid him.







The death of Hercules a Greek
              version of the burning of Melcarth.





The foregoing
          evidence, taken altogether, raises a strong presumption, though it
          cannot be said to amount to a proof, that a practice of burning a
          deity, and especially Melcarth, in effigy or in the person of a
          human representative, was observed at an annual festival in Tyre
          and its colonies. We can thus understand how Hercules, in so far as
          he represented the Tyrian god, was believed to have perished by a
          voluntary death on a pyre. For on many a beach and headland of the
          Aegean, where the Phoenicians had their trading factories, the
          Greeks may have watched the bale-fires of Melcarth blazing in the
          darkness of night, and have learned with wonder that the strange
          foreign folk were burning their god. In this way the legend of the
          voyages of Hercules and his death in the flames may be supposed to
          have originated. Yet with the legend the Greeks borrowed the custom
          of burning the god; for at the festivals of Hercules a pyre used to
          be kindled in memory of the hero's fiery death on Mount Oeta.376 We
          may surmise, though we are not expressly told, that an effigy of
          Hercules was regularly burned on the pyre.


[pg 117]




 


Chapter VI. The Burning of
          Sandan.



 


§ 1. The Baal of
            Tarsus.







The Tyrian Melcarth in Cyprus.
                The lion-slaying god.





In Cyprus the
            Tyrian Melcarth was worshipped side by side with Adonis at
            Amathus,377 and
            Phoenician inscriptions prove that he was revered also at Idalium
            and Larnax Lapethus. At the last of these places he seems to have
            been regarded by the Greeks as a marine deity and identified with
            Poseidon.378 A
            remarkable statue found at Amathus may represent Melcarth in the
            character of the lion-slayer, a character which the Greeks
            bestowed on Hercules. The statue in question is of colossal size,
            and exhibits a thick-set, muscular, hirsute deity of almost
            bestial aspect, with goggle eyes, huge ears, and a pair of stumpy
            horns on the top of his head. His beard is square and curly: his
            hair falls in three pigtails on his shoulders: his brawny arms
            appear to be tattooed. A lion's skin, clasped by a buckle, is
            knotted round his loins; and he holds the skin of a lioness in
            front of him, grasping a hind paw with each hand, while the head
            of the beast, which is missing, hung down between his legs. A
            fountain must have issued from the jaws of the lioness, for a
            rectangular hole, where the beast's head should be, communicates
            by a channel with another hole in the back of the statue. Greek
            artists working on this or a similar barbarous model produced the
            refined type of the Grecian Hercules with the lion's scalp thrown
            like a cowl over [pg
            118]
            his head. Statues of him have been found in Cyprus, which
            represent intermediate stages in this artistic evolution.379 But
            there is no proof that in Cyprus the Tyrian Melcarth was burned
            either in effigy or in the person of a human
            representative.380







The Baal of Tarsus, an Oriental
                god of corn and grapes.





On the other
            hand, there is clear evidence of the observance of such a custom
            in Cilicia, the country which lies across the sea from Cyprus,
            and from which the worship of Adonis, according to tradition, was
            derived.381
            Whether the Phoenicians ever colonized Cilicia or not is
            doubtful,382 but
            at all events the natives of the country, down to late times,
            worshipped a male deity who, in spite of a superficial
            assimilation to a fashionable Greek god, appears to have been an
            Oriental by birth and character. He had his principal seat at
            Tarsus, in a plain of luxuriant fertility and almost tropical
            climate, tempered by breezes from the snowy range of Tarsus on
            the north and from the sea on the south.383
            Though Tarsus boasted of a school of Greek philosophy which at
            the beginning of our era surpassed those of Athens and
            Alexandria,384 the
            city apparently remained in manners and spirit essentially
            Oriental. The women went about the streets muffled up to the eyes
            in Eastern fashion, and Dio Chrysostom reproaches the natives
            with resembling the most dissolute of the Phoenicians rather than
            the Greeks [pg
            119]
            whose civilization they aped.385 On
            the coins of the city they assimilated their native deity to Zeus
            by representing him seated on a throne, the upper part of his
            body bare, the lower limbs draped in a flowing robe, while in one
            hand he holds a sceptre, which is topped sometimes with an eagle
            but often with a lotus flower. Yet his foreign nature is
            indicated both by his name and his attributes; for in Aramaic
            inscriptions on the coins he bears the name of the Baal of
            Tarsus, and in one hand he grasps an ear of corn and a bunch of
            grapes.386
            These attributes clearly mark him out as a god of fertility in
            general, who conferred on his worshippers the two things which
            they prized above all other gifts of nature, the corn and the
            wine. He was probably therefore a Semitic, or at all events an
            Oriental, rather than a Greek deity. For while the Semite cast
            all his gods more or less in the same mould, and expected them
            all to render him nearly the same services, the Greek, with his
            keener intelligence and more pictorial imagination, invested his
            deities with individual characteristics, allotting to each of
            them his or her separate function in the divine economy of the
            world. Thus he assigned the production of the corn to Demeter,
            and that of the grapes to Dionysus; he was not so unreasonable as
            to demand both from the same hard-worked deity.





 


§ 2. The God of Ibreez.







The Baal of Tarsus has his
                counterpart at Ibreez in Cappadocia. The pass of the Cilician
                Gates.





Now the
            suspicion that the Baal of Tarsus, for all his posing in the
            attitude of Zeus, was really an Oriental is confirmed by a
            remarkable rock-hewn monument which is to be seen at Ibreez in
            Southern Cappadocia. Though the [pg 120] place is distant little more than fifty
            miles from Tarsus as the crow flies, yet the journey on horseback
            occupies five days; for the great barrier of the Taurus mountains
            rises like a wall between. The road runs through the famous pass
            of the Cilician Gates, and the scenery throughout is of the
            grandest Alpine character. On all sides the mountains tower
            skyward, their peaks sheeted in a dazzling pall of snow, their
            lower slopes veiled in the almost inky blackness of dense
            pine-forests, torn here and there by impassable ravines, or
            broken into prodigious precipices of red and grey rock which
            border the narrow valley for miles. The magnificence of the
            landscape is enhanced by the exhilarating influence of the brisk
            mountain air, all the more by contrast with the sultry heat of
            the plain of Tarsus which the traveller has left behind. When he
            emerges from the defile on the wide open tableland of Anatolia he
            feels that in a sense he has passed out of Asia, and that the
            highroad to Europe lies straight before him. The great mountains
            on which he now looks back formed for centuries the boundary
            between the Christian West and the Mohammedan East; on the
            southern side lay the domain of the Caliphs, on the northern side
            the Byzantine Empire. The Taurus was the dam that long repelled
            the tide of Arab invasion; and though year by year the waves
            broke through the pass of the Cilician Gates and carried havoc
            and devastation through the tableland, the refluent waters always
            retired to the lower level of the Cilician plains. A line of
            beacon lights stretching from the Taurus to Constantinople
            flashed to the Byzantine capital tidings of the approach of the
            Moslem invaders.387







The rock-sculptures at Ibreez
                represent a god of corn and grapes adored by his worshipper,
                a priest or king.





The village of
            Ibreez is charmingly situated at the northern foot of the Taurus,
            some six or seven miles south of the town of Eregli, the ancient
            Cybistra, From the town to the village the path goes through a
            richly cultivated district of wheat and vines along green lanes
            more lovely than those of Devonshire, lined by thick hedges and
            rows of willow, poplar, hazel, hawthorn, and huge old
            walnut-trees, where in early summer the nightingales warble on
            [pg 121] every side. Ibreez
            itself is embowered in the verdure of orchards, walnuts, and
            vines. It stands at the mouth of a deep ravine enclosed by great
            precipices of red rock. From the western of these precipices a
            river clear as crystal, but of a deep blue tint, bursts in a
            powerful jet, and being reinforced by a multitude of springs
            becomes at once a raging impassable torrent foaming and leaping
            with a roar of waters over the rocks in its bed. A little way
            from the source a branch of the main stream flows in a deep
            narrow channel along the foot of a reddish weather-stained rock
            which rises sheer from the water. On its face, which has been
            smoothed to receive them, are the sculptures. They consist of two
            colossal figures, representing a god adored by his worshipper.
            The deity, some fourteen feet high, is a bearded male figure,
            wearing on his head a high pointed cap adorned with several pairs
            of horns, and plainly clad in a short tunic, which does not reach
            his knees and is drawn in at the waist by a belt. His legs and
            arms are bare; the wrists are encircled by bangles or bracelets.
            His feet are shod in high boots with turned-up toes. In his right
            hand he holds a vine-branch laden with clusters of grapes, and in
            his raised left hand he grasps a bunch of bearded wheat, such as
            is still grown in Cappadocia; the ears of corn project above his
            fingers, while the long stalks hang down to his feet. In front of
            him stands the lesser figure, some eight feet high. He is clearly
            a priest or king, more probably perhaps both in one. His rich
            vestments contrast with the simple costume of the god. On his
            head he wears a round but not pointed cap, encircled by flat
            bands and ornamented in front with a rosette or bunch of jewels,
            such as is still worn by Eastern princes. He is draped from the
            neck to the ankles in a long robe heavily fringed at the bottom,
            over which is thrown a shawl or mantle secured at the breast by a
            clasp of precious stones. Both robe and shawl are elaborately
            carved with patterns in imitation of embroidery. A heavy necklace
            of rings or beads encircles the neck; a bracelet or bangle clasps
            the one wrist that is visible; the feet are shod in boots like
            those of the god. One or perhaps both hands are raised in the act
            of adoration. The large aquiline nose, like the beak of a hawk,
            is a conspicuous [pg
            122]
            feature in the face both of the god and of his worshipper; the
            hair and beard of both are thick and curly.388







The fertility of Ibreez
                contrasted with the desolation of the surrounding
                country.





The situation
            of this remarkable monument resembles that of Aphaca on the
            Lebanon;389 for
            in both places we see a noble river issuing abruptly from the
            rock to spread fertility through the rich vale below. Nowhere,
            perhaps, could man more appropriately revere those great powers
            of nature to whose favour he ascribes the fruitfulness of the
            earth, and through it the life of animate creation. With its cool
            bracing air, its mass of verdure, its magnificent stream of pure
            ice-cold water—so grateful in the burning heat of summer—and its
            wide stretch of fertile land, the valley may well have been the
            residence of an ancient prince or high-priest, who desired to
            testify by this monument his devotion and gratitude to the god.
            The seat of this royal or priestly potentate may have been at
            Cybistra,390 the
            modern Eregli, now a decayed and miserable place straggling amid
            orchards and gardens full of luxuriant groves of walnut, poplar,
            willow, mulberry, and oak. The place is a paradise of birds. Here
            [pg 123] the thrush and the
            nightingale sing full-throated, the hoopoe waves his crested
            top-knot, the bright-hued woodpeckers flit from bough to bough,
            and the swifts dart screaming by hundreds through the air. Yet a
            little way off, beyond the beneficent influence of the springs
            and streams, all is desolation—in summer an arid waste broken by
            great marshes and wide patches of salt, in winter a broad sheet
            of stagnant water, which as it dries up with the growing heat of
            the sun exhales a poisonous malaria. To the west, as far as the
            eye can see, stretches the endless expanse of the dreary
            Lycaonian plain, barren, treeless, and solitary, till it fades
            into the blue distance, or is bounded afar off by abrupt ranges
            of jagged volcanic mountains, on which in sunshiny weather the
            shadows of the clouds rest, purple and soft as velvet.391 No
            wonder that the smiling luxuriance of the one landscape, sharply
            contrasting with the bleak sterility of the other, should have
            rendered it in the eyes of primitive man a veritable garden of
            God.







The horned god.





Among the
            attributes which mark out the deity of Ibreez as a power of
            fertility the horns on his high cap should not be overlooked.
            They are probably the horns of a bull; for to primitive
            cattle-breeders the bull is the most natural emblem of generative
            force. At Carchemish, the great Hittite capital on the Euphrates,
            a relief has been discovered which represents a god or a priest
            clad in a rich robe, and wearing on his head a tall horned cap
            surmounted by a disc.392
            Sculptures found at the palace of Euyuk in North-Western
            Cappadocia prove that the Hittites worshipped the bull and
            sacrificed rams to it.393
            Similarly the Greeks conceived the vine-god Dionysus in the form
            of a bull.394


[pg 124]


 


§ 3. Sandan of Tarsus.







The god of Ibreez a Hittite
                deity.





That the god
            of Ibreez, with the grapes and corn in his hands, is identical
            with the Baal of Tarsus, who bears the same emblems, may be taken
            as certain.395 But
            what was his name? and who were his worshippers? The Greeks
            apparently called him Hercules; at least in Byzantine times the
            neighbouring town of Cybistra adopted the name of Heraclea, which
            seems to show that Hercules was deemed the principal deity of the
            place.396 Yet
            the style and costume of the figures at Ibreez prove
            unquestionably that the god was an Oriental. If any confirmation
            of this view were needed, it is furnished by the inscriptions
            carved on the rock beside the sculptures, for these inscriptions
            are composed in the peculiar system of hieroglyphics now known as
            Hittite. It follows, therefore, that the deity worshipped at
            Tarsus and Ibreez was a god of the Hittites, that ancient and
            little-known people who occupied the centre of Asia Minor,
            invented a system of writing, and extended their influence, if
            not their dominion, at one time from the Euphrates to the Aegean.
            From the lofty and arid tablelands of the interior, a
            prolongation of the great plateau of Central Asia, with a climate
            ranging from the most burning heat in summer to the most piercing
            cold in winter,397
            these hardy highlanders seem to have swept down through the
            mountain-passes and established themselves at a very early date
            in the rich southern lowlands of Syria and Cilicia.398
[pg 125] Their language and
            race are still under discussion, but a great preponderance of
            opinion appears to declare that neither the one nor the other was
            Semitic.399







The burning of Sandan or
                Hercules at Tarsus.





In the
            inscription attached to the colossal figure of the god at Ibreez
            two scholars have professed to read the name of Sandan or
            Sanda.400 Be
            that as it may, there are independent grounds for thinking that
            Sandan, Sandon, or Sandes may have been the name of the
            Cappadocian and Cilician god of fertility. For the god of Ibreez
            in Cappadocia appears, as we saw, to have been identified by the
            Greeks with Hercules, and we are told that a Cappadocian and
            Cilician name of Hercules was Sandan or Sandes.401
[pg 126] Now this Sandan or
            Hercules is said to have founded Tarsus, and the people of the
            city commemorated him at an annual or, at all events, periodical
            festival by erecting a fine pyre in his honour.402
            Apparently at this festival, as at the festival of Melcarth, the
            god was burned in effigy on his own pyre. For coins of Tarsus
            often exhibit the pyre as a conical structure resting on a
            garlanded altar or basis, with the figure of Sandan himself in
            the midst of it, while an eagle with spread wings perches on the
            top of the pyre, as if about to bear the soul of the burning god
            in the pillar of smoke and fire to heaven.403 In
            like manner when a Roman emperor died leaving a son to succeed
            him on the [pg
            127]
            throne, a waxen effigy was made in the likeness of the deceased
            and burned on a huge pyramidal pyre, which was reared upon a
            square basis of wood; and from the summit of the blazing pile an
            eagle was released for the purpose of carrying to heaven the soul
            of the dead and deified emperor.404 The
            Romans may have borrowed from the East a grandiose custom which
            savours of Oriental adulation rather than of Roman
            simplicity.405







Sandan of Tarsus an Asiatic god
                with the symbols of the lion and the double axe.





The type of
            Sandan or Hercules, as he is portrayed on the coins of Tarsus, is
            that of an Asiatic deity standing on a lion. It is thus that he
            is represented on the pyre, and it is thus that he appears as a
            separate figure without the pyre. From these representations we
            can form a fairly accurate conception of the form and attributes
            of the god. They exhibit him as a bearded man standing on a
            horned and often winged lion. Upon his head he wears a high
            pointed cap or mitre, and he is clad sometimes in a long robe,
            sometimes in a short tunic. On at least one coin his feet are
            shod in high boots with flaps. At his side or over his shoulder
            are slung a sword, a bow-case, and a quiver, sometimes only one
            or two of them. His right hand is raised and sometimes holds a
            flower. His left hand grasps a double-headed axe, and sometimes a
            wreath either in addition to the axe or instead of it; but the
            double-headed axe is one of Sandan's most constant
            attributes.406


[pg 128]


 


§ 4. The Gods of
            Boghaz-Keui.







Boghaz-Keui the ancient capital
                of a Hittite kingdom in Cappadocia.





Now a deity of
            almost precisely the same type figures prominently in the
            celebrated group of Hittite sculptures which is carved on the
            rocks at Boghaz-Keui in North-Western Cappadocia. The village of
            Boghaz-Keui, that is, “the village of the
            defile,” stands at the mouth of a deep, narrow, and
            picturesque gorge in a wild upland valley, shut in by rugged
            mountains of grey limestone. The houses are built on the lower
            slopes of the hills, and a stream issuing from the gorge flows
            past them to join the Halys, which is distant about ten hours'
            journey to the west. Immediately above the modern village a great
            ancient city, enclosed by massive fortification walls, rose on
            the rough broken ground of the mountainside, culminating in two
            citadels perched on the tops of precipitous crags. The walls are
            still standing in many places to a height of twelve feet or more.
            They are about fourteen feet thick and consist of an outer and
            inner facing built of large blocks with a core of rubble between
            them. On the outer side they are strengthened at intervals of
            about a hundred feet by projecting towers or buttresses, which
            seem designed rather as architectural supports than as military
            defences. The masonry, composed of large stones laid in roughly
            parallel courses, resembles in style that of the walls of
            Mycenae, with which it may be contemporary; and the celebrated
            Lion-gate at Mycenae has its counterpart in the southern gate of
            Boghaz-Keui, which is flanked by a pair of colossal stone lions
            executed in the best style of Hittite art. The eastern gate is
            adorned on its inner side with the figure of a Hittite warrior or
            Amazon carved in high relief. A dense undergrowth of stunted oak
            coppice now covers much of the site. The ruins of a large palace
            or temple, built of enormous blocks of stone, occupy a terrace in
            a commanding situation within the circuit of the walls. This vast
            city, some four or five miles in circumference, appears to have
            been the ancient Pteria, which Croesus, king of Lydia, captured
            in his war with Cyrus. It was probably the capital of a powerful
            Hittite empire before the Phrygians made their way from
            [pg 129] Europe into the
            interior of Asia Minor and established a rival state to the west
            of the Halys.407







The sanctuary in the rocks. The
                rock-sculptures in the outer sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui
                represent two processions meeting. The central
                figures.





From the
            village of Boghaz-Keui a steep and rugged path leads up hill to a
            sanctuary, distant about a mile and a half to the east. Here
            among the grey limestone cliffs there is a spacious natural
            chamber or hall of roughly oblong shape, roofed only by the sky,
            and enclosed on three sides by high rocks. One of the short sides
            is open, and through it you look out on the broken slopes beyond
            and the more distant mountains, which make a graceful picture set
            in a massy frame. The length of the chamber is about a hundred
            feet; its breadth varies from twenty-five to fifty feet. A nearly
            level sward forms the floor. On the right-hand side, as you face
            inward, a narrow opening in the rock leads into another but much
            smaller chamber, or rather corridor, which would seem to have
            been the inner sanctuary or Holy of Holies. It is a romantic
            spot, where the deep shadows of the rocks are relieved by the
            bright foliage of walnut-trees and by the sight of the sky and
            clouds overhead. On the rock-walls of both chamber are carved the
            famous bas-reliefs. In the outer sanctuary these reliefs
            represent two great processions which defile along the two long
            sides of the chamber and meet face to face on the short wall at
            the inner end. The figures on the left-hand wall are for the most
            part men clad in the characteristic Hittite costume, which
            consists of a high pointed cap, shoes with turned-up toes, and a
            tunic drawn in at the waist and [pg 130] falling short of the knees.408 The
            figures on the right-hand wall are women wearing tall, square,
            flat-topped bonnets with ribbed sides; their long dresses fall in
            perpendicular folds to their feet, which are shod in shoes like
            those of the men. On the short wall, where the processions meet,
            the greater size of the central figures, as well as their
            postures and attributes, mark them out as divine. At the head of
            the male procession marches or is carried a bearded deity clad in
            the ordinary Hittite costume of tall pointed cap, short tunic,
            and turned-up shoes; but his feet rest on the bowed heads of two
            men, in his right hand he holds on his shoulder a mace or
            truncheon topped with a knob, while his extended left hand grasps
            a symbol, which apparently consists of a trident surmounted by an
            oval with a cross-bar. Behind him follows a similar, though
            somewhat smaller, figure of a man, or perhaps rather of a god,
            carrying a mace or truncheon over his shoulder in his right hand,
            while with his left he holds aloft a long sword with a flat hilt;
            his feet rest not on two men but on two flat-topped pinnacles,
            which perhaps represent mountains. At the head of the female
            procession and facing the great god who is borne on the two men,
            stands a goddess on a lioness or panther. Her costume does not
            differ from that of the women: her hair hangs down in a long
            plait behind: in her extended right hand she holds out an emblem
            to touch that of the god. The shape and meaning of her emblem are
            obscure. It consists of a stem with two pairs of protuberances,
            perhaps leaves or branches, one above the other, the whole being
            surmounted, like the emblem of the god, by an oval with a
            cross-bar. Under the outstretched arms of the two deities appear
            the front parts of two animals, which have been usually
            interpreted as bulls but are rather goats; each of them wears on
            its head the high conical Hittite cap, and its body is concealed
            by that of the deity. Immediately behind the goddess marches a
            smaller and apparently youthful male figure, standing like her
            upon a lioness or panther. He is beardless and wears the Hittite
            [pg 131] dress of high
            pointed cap, short tunic, and shoes with turned-up toes. A
            crescent-hilted sword is girt at his side; in his left hand he
            holds a double-headed axe, and in his right a staff topped by an
            armless doll with the symbol of the cross-barred oval instead of
            a head. Behind him follow two women, or rather perhaps goddesses,
            resembling the goddess at the head of the procession, but with
            different emblems and standing not on a lioness but on a single
            two-headed eagle with outspread wings.







The rock-sculptures in the inner
                sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui. The lion-god. The god protecting
                his priest. Other representations of the priest at
                Boghaz-Keui and Euyuk.





The entrance
            to the smaller chamber is guarded on either side by the figure of
            a winged monster carved on the rock; the bodies of both figures
            are human, but one of them has the head of a dog, the other the
            head of a lion. In the inner sanctuary, to which this
            monster-guarded passage leads, the walls are also carved in
            relief. On one side we see a procession of twelve men in Hittite
            costume marching with curved swords in their right hands. On the
            opposite wall is a colossal erect figure of a deity with a human
            head and a body curiously composed of four lions, two above and
            two below, the latter standing on their heads. The god wears the
            high conical Hittite hat: his face is youthful and beardless like
            that of the male figure standing on the lioness in the large
            chamber; and the ear turned to the spectator is pierced with a
            ring. From the knees downwards the legs, curiously enough, are
            replaced by a device which has been interpreted as the tapering
            point of a great dagger or dirk with a midrib. To the right of
            this deity a square panel cut in the face of the rock exhibits a
            group of two figures in relief. The larger of the two figures
            closely resembles the youth on the lioness in the outer
            sanctuary. His chin is beardless; he wears the same high pointed
            cap, the same short tunic, the same turned-up shoes, the same
            crescent-hilted sword, and he carries a similar armless doll in
            his right hand. But his left arm encircles the neck of the
            smaller figure, whom he seems to clasp to his side in an attitude
            of protection. The smaller figure thus embraced by the god is
            clearly a priest or priestly king. His face is beardless; he
            wears a skull-cap and a long mantle reaching to his feet with a
            sort of chasuble thrown over it. The crescent-shaped hilt of a
            sword projects from under his [pg 132] mantle. The wrist of his right arm is
            clasped by the god's left hand; in his left hand the priest holds
            a crook or pastoral staff which ends below in a curl. Both the
            priest and his protector are facing towards the lion-god. In an
            upper corner of the panel behind them is a divine emblem composed
            of a winged disc resting on what look like two Ionic columns,
            while between them appear three symbols of doubtful significance.
            The figure of the priest or king in this costume, though not in
            this attitude, is a familiar one; for it occurs twice in the
            outer sanctuary and is repeated twice at the great Hittite palace
            of Euyuk, distant about four and a half hours' ride to the
            north-east of Boghaz-Keui. In the outer sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui
            we see the priest marching in the procession of the men, and
            holding in one hand his curled staff, or lituus, and in the other a
            symbol like that of the goddess on the lioness: above his head
            appears the winged disc without the other attributes. Moreover he
            occupies a conspicuous place by himself on the right-hand wall of
            the outer sanctuary, quite apart from the two processions, and
            carved on a larger scale than any of the other figures in them.
            Here he stands on two heaps, perhaps intended to represent
            mountains, and he carries in his right hand the emblem of the
            winged disc supported on two Ionic columns with the other symbols
            between them, except that the central symbol is replaced by a
            masculine figure wearing a pointed cap and a long robe decorated
            with a dog-tooth pattern. On one of the reliefs at the palace of
            Euyuk we see the priest with his characteristic dress and staff
            followed by a priestess, each of them with a hand raised as if in
            adoration: they are approaching the image of a bull which stands
            on a high pedestal with an altar before it. Behind them a priest
            leads a flock of rams to the sacrifice. On another relief at
            Euyuk the priest, similarly attired and followed by a priestess,
            is approaching a seated goddess and apparently pouring a libation
            at her feet. Both these scenes doubtless represent acts of
            worship paid in the one case to a goddess, in the other to a
            bull.409
[pg 133]






The two deities at the head of
                the processions at Boghaz-Keui appear to be the great Asiatic
                goddess and her consort. The Hittite god of the thundering
                sky. Jupiter Dolichenus.





We have still
            to inquire into the meaning of the rock-carvings at Boghaz-Keui.
            What are these processions which are meeting? Who are the
            personages represented? and what are they doing? Some have
            thought that the scene is historical and commemorates a great
            event, such as a treaty of peace between two peoples or the
            marriage of a king's son to a king's daughter.410 But
            to this view it has [pg
            134]
            been rightly objected that the attributes of the principal
            figures prove them to be divine or priestly, and that the scene
            is therefore religious or mythical rather than historical. With
            regard to the two personages who head the processions and hold
            out their symbols to each other, the most probable opinion
            appears to be that they stand for the great Asiatic goddess of
            fertility and her consort, by whatever names these deities were
            known; for under diverse names a similar divine couple appears to
            have been worshipped with similar rites all over Western
            Asia.411 The
            bearded god who, grasping a trident in his extended left hand,
            heads the procession of male figures is probably the Father
            deity, the great Hittite god of the thundering sky, whose emblems
            were the thunderbolt and the bull; for the trident which he
            carries may reasonably be interpreted as a thunderbolt. The deity
            is represented in similar form on two stone monuments of Hittite
            art which were found at Zenjirli in Northern Syria and at Babylon
            respectively. On both we see a bearded male god wearing the usual
            Hittite costume of tall cap, short tunic, and shoes turned up at
            the toes: a crescent-hilted sword is girt at his side: his hands
            are raised: in the right he holds a single-headed axe or hammer,
            in the left a trident of wavy lines, which is thought to stand
            for forked lightning or a bundle of thunderbolts. On the
            Babylonian slab, which bears a long Hittite inscription, the
            god's cap is ornamented with a pair of horns.412 The
            horns on the cap are probably [pg 135] those of a bull; for on another Hittite
            monument, found at Malatia on the Euphrates, there is carved a
            deity in the usual Hittite costume standing on a bull and
            grasping a trident or thunderbolt in his left hand, while facing
            him stands a priest clad in a long robe, holding a crook or
            curled staff in one hand and pouring a libation with the
            other.413 The
            Hittite thunder-god is also known to us from a treaty of alliance
            which about the year 1290 b.c. was contracted
            between Hattusil, King of the Hittites, and Rameses II., King of
            Egypt. By a singular piece of good fortune we possess copies of
            this treaty both in the Hittite and in the [pg 136] Egyptian language. The
            Hittite copy was found some years ago inscribed in cuneiform
            characters on a clay tablet at Boghaz-Keui; two copies of the
            treaty in the Egyptian language are engraved on the walls of
            temples at Thebes. From the Egyptian copies, which have been read
            and translated, we gather that the thunder-god was the principal
            deity of the Hittites, and that the two Hittite seals which were
            appended to the treaty exhibited the King embraced by the
            thunder-god and the Queen embraced by the sun-goddess of
            Arenna.414
            This Hittite divinity of the thundering sky appears to have long
            survived at Doliche in Commagene, for in later Roman art he
            reappears under the title of Jupiter Dolichenus, wearing a
            Phrygian cap, standing on a bull, and wielding a double axe in
            one hand and a thunderbolt in the other. In this form his worship
            was transported from his native Syrian home by soldiers and
            slaves, till it had spread over a large part of the Roman empire,
            especially on the frontiers, where it flourished in the camps of
            the legions.415 The
            combination of the bull with the thunderbolt as emblems of the
            deity suggests that the animal may have been chosen to represent
            the sky-god for the sake not merely of its virility but of its
            voice; for in the peal of thunder primitive man may well have
            heard the bellowing of a celestial bull.
[pg 137]






The Mother Goddess.





The goddess
            who at the head of the procession of women confronts the great
            sky-god in the sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui is generally recognized
            as the divine Mother, the great Asiatic goddess of life and
            fertility. The tall flat-topped hat with perpendicular grooves
            which she wears, and the lioness or panther on which she stands,
            remind us of the turreted crown and lion-drawn car of Cybele, who
            was worshipped in the neighbouring land of Phrygia across the
            Halys.416 So
            Atargatis, the great Syrian goddess of Hierapolis-Bambyce, was
            portrayed sitting on lions and wearing a tower on her head.417 At
            Babylon an image of a goddess whom the Greeks called Rhea had the
            figures of two lions standing on her knees.418







The youth on the lioness,
                bearing the double axe, at Boghaz-Keui may be the divine son
                and lover of the goddess.





But in the
            rock-hewn sculptures of Boghaz-Keui, who is the youth with the
            tall pointed cap and double axe who stands on a lioness or
            panther immediately behind the great goddess? His figure is all
            the more remarkable because he is the only male who interrupts
            the long procession of women. Probably he is at once the divine
            son and the divine lover of the goddess; for we shall find later
            on that in Phrygian mythology Attis united in himself both these
            characters.419
[pg 138] The lioness or
            panther on which he stands marks his affinity with the goddess,
            who is supported by a similar animal. It is natural that the
            lion-goddess should have a lion-son and a lion-lover. For we may
            take it as probable that the Oriental deities who are represented
            standing or sitting in human form on the backs of lions and other
            animals were originally indistinguishable from the beasts, and
            that the complete separation of the bestial from the human or
            divine shape was a consequence of that growth of knowledge and of
            power which led man in time to respect himself more and the
            brutes less. The hybrid gods of Egypt with their human
            [pg 139] bodies and animal
            heads form an intermediate stage in this evolution of
            anthropomorphic deities out of beasts.







The mystery of the
                lion-god.





We may now
            perhaps hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of that strange
            colossal figure in the inner shrine at Boghaz-Keui with its human
            head and its body composed of lions. For it is to be observed
            that the head of the figure is youthful and beardless, and that
            it wears a tall pointed cap, thus resembling in both respects the
            youth with the double-headed axe who stands on a lion in the
            outer sanctuary. We may suppose that the leonine figure in the
            inner shrine sets forth the true mystic, that is, the old savage
            nature of the god who in the outer shrine presented himself to
            his worshippers in the decent semblance of a man. To the chosen
            few who were allowed to pass the monster-guarded portal into the
            Holy of Holies, the awful secret may have been revealed that
            their god was a lion, or rather a lion-man, a being in whom the
            bestial and human natures mysteriously co-existed.420 The
            reader may remember that on the rock beside this leonine divinity
            is carved a group which represents a god with his arm twined
            round the neck of his priest in an attitude of protection,
            holding one of the priest's hands in his own. Both figures are
            looking and stepping towards the lion-monster, and the god is
            holding out his right hand as if pointing to it. The scene may
            represent the deity revealing the mystery to the priest, or
            preparing him to act his part in some solemn rite for which all
            his strength and courage will be needed. He seems to be leading
            his minister onward, comforting him with an assurance that no
            harm can come near him while the divine arm is around him and the
            divine hand clasps his. Whither is he leading him? Perhaps to
            death. The deep shadows of the rocks which fall on the
            [pg 140] two figures in the
            gloomy chasm may be an emblem of darker shadows soon to fall on
            the priest. Yet still he grasps his pastoral staff and goes
            forward, as though he said, “Yea, though
            I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
            evil; for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff they comfort
            me.”







The processions at Boghaz-Keui
                appear to represent the Sacred Marriage of the god and
                goddess. Traces of mother-kin among the Hittites.





If there is
            any truth in these guesses—for they are little more—the three
            principal figures in the processional scene at Boghaz-Keui
            represent the divine Father, the divine Mother, and the divine
            Son. But we have still to ask, What are they doing? That they are
            engaged in the performance of some religious rite seems certain.
            But what is it? We may conjecture that it is the rite of the
            Sacred Marriage, and that the scene is copied from a ceremony
            which was periodically performed in this very place by human
            representatives of the deities.421
            Indeed, the solemn meeting of the male and female figures at the
            head of their respective processions obviously suggests a
            marriage, and has been so interpreted by scholars, who, however,
            regarded it as the historical wedding of a prince and princess
            instead of the mystic union of a god and goddess, overlooking or
            explaining away the symbols of divinity which accompany the
            principal personages.422 We
            may suppose that at Boghaz-Keui, as at many other places in the
            interior of Asia Minor, the government was in the hands of a
            family who combined royal with priestly functions and personated
            the gods whose names they bore. Thus at Pessinus in Phrygia, as
            we shall see later on, the priests of Cybele bore the name of her
            consort Attis, and doubtless represented him in the ritual.423
[pg 141] If this was so at
            Boghaz-Keui, we may surmise that the chief pontiff and his family
            annually celebrated the marriage of the divine powers of
            fertility, the Father God and the Mother Goddess, for the purpose
            of ensuring the fruitfulness of the earth and the multiplication
            of men and beasts. The principal parts in the ceremony would
            naturally be played by the pontiff himself and his wife, unless
            indeed they preferred for good reasons to delegate the onerous
            duty to others. That such a delegation took place is perhaps
            suggested by the appearance of the pontiff himself in a
            subordinate place in the procession, as well as by his separate
            representation in another place, as if he were in the act of
            surveying the ceremony from a distance.424 The
            part of the divine Son at the rite would fitly devolve upon one
            of the high-priest's own offspring, who may well have been
            numerous. For it is probable that here, as elsewhere in Asia
            Minor, the Mother Goddess was personated by a crowd of sacred
            harlots,425
            with whom the spiritual ruler may have been required to consort
            in his character of incarnate deity. But if the personation of
            the Son of God at the rites laid a heavy burden of suffering on
            the shoulders of the actor, it is possible that the
            representative of the deity may have been drawn, perhaps by lot,
            from among the numerous progeny of the consecrated courtesans;
            for these women, as incarnations of the Mother Goddess, were
            probably supposed to transmit to their offspring some portion of
            their own divinity. Be that as it may, if the three principal
            personages in the processional scene at Boghaz-Keui are indeed
            the Father, the Mother, and the Son, the remarkable position
            assigned [pg
            142]
            to the third of them in the procession, where he walks behind his
            Mother alone in the procession of women, appears to indicate that
            he was supposed to be more closely akin to her than to his
            Father. From this again we may conjecturally infer that
            mother-kin rather than father-kin was the rule which regulated
            descent among the Hittites. The conjecture derives some support
            from Hittite archives, for the names of the Great Queen and the
            Queen Mother are mentioned along with that of the King in state
            documents.426 The
            other personages who figure in the procession may represent human
            beings masquerading in the costumes and with the attributes of
            deities. Such, for example, are the two female figures who stand
            on a double-headed eagle; the two male figures stepping on what
            seem to be two mountains; and the two winged beings in the
            procession of men, one of whom may be the Moon-god, for he wears
            a crescent on his head.427





 


§ 5. Sandan and Baal at
            Tarsus.







Sandan at Tarsus appears to be a
                son of Baal, as Hercules was a son of Zeus.





Whatever may
            be thought of these speculations, one thing seems fairly clear
            and certain. The figure which I have called the divine Son at
            Boghaz-Keui is identical with the god Sandan, who appears on the
            pyre at Tarsus. In both personages the costume, the attributes,
            the attitude are the same. Both represent a man clad in a short
            tunic with a tall pointed cap on his head, a sword at his side, a
            double-headed axe in his hand, and a lion or panther under his
            feet.428
            Accordingly, if we are right in identifying him as the divine Son
            at Boghaz-Keui, [pg
            143]
            we may conjecture that under the name of Sandan he bore the same
            character at Tarsus. The conjecture squares perfectly with the
            title of Hercules, which the Greeks bestowed on Sandan; for
            Hercules was the son of Zeus, the great father-god. Moreover, we
            have seen that the Baal of Tarsus, with the grapes and the corn
            in his hand, was assimilated to Zeus.429
            Thus it would appear that at Tarsus as at Boghaz-Keui there was a
            pair of deities, a divine Father and a divine Son, whom the
            Greeks identified with Zeus and Hercules respectively. If the
            Baal of Tarsus was a god of fertility, as his attributes clearly
            imply, his identification with Zeus would be natural, since it
            was Zeus who, in the belief of the Greeks, sent the fertilizing
            rain from heaven.430 And
            the identification of Sandan with Hercules would be equally
            natural, since the lion and the death on the pyre were features
            common to both. Our conclusion then is that it was the divine
            Son, the lion-god, who was burned in effigy or in the person of a
            human representative at Tarsus, and perhaps at Boghaz-Keui.
            Semitic parallels suggest that the victim who played the part of
            the Son of God in the fiery furnace ought in strictness to be the
            king's son.431 But
            no doubt in later times an effigy would be substituted for the
            man.





 


§ 6. Priestly Kings of
            Olba.







Priests of Sandan-Hercules at
                Tarsus. Kings of Cilicia related to Sandan.





Unfortunately
            we know next to nothing of the kings and priests of Tarsus. In
            Greek times we hear of an Epicurean philosopher of the city,
            Lysias by name, who was elected by his fellow-citizens to the
            office of Crown-wearer, that is, to the priesthood of Hercules.
            Once raised to that dignity, he would not lay it down again, but
            played the part of tyrant, wearing a white robe edged with
            purple, a costly cloak, white shoes, and a golden wreath of
            laurel. He truckled to the mob by distributing among them the
            property of the wealthy, while he put to death such as refused to
            open their money-bags to him.432
            Though we cannot distinguish in this account [pg 144] between the legal and the
            illegal exercise of authority, yet we may safely infer that the
            priesthood of Hercules, that is of Sandan, at Tarsus continued
            down to late times to be an office of great dignity and power,
            not unworthy to be held in earlier times by the kings themselves.
            Scanty as is our information as to the kings of Cilicia, we hear
            of two whose names appear to indicate that they stood in some
            special relation to the divine Sandan. One of them was
            Sandu'arri, lord of Kundi and Sizu, which have been identified
            with Anchiale and Sis in Cilicia.433 The
            other was Sanda-sarme, who gave his daughter in marriage to
            Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria.434 It
            would be in accordance with analogy if the kings of Tarsus
            formerly held the priesthood of Sandan and claimed to represent
            him in their own person.







Priestly kings of Olba who bore
                the names of Teucer and Ajax. The Teucrids of Salamis in
                Cyprus. Burnt sacrifices of human victims at Salamis and
                traces of a similar custom elsewhere. Burnt sacrifice of
                doves to Adonis.





We know that
            the whole of Western or Mountainous Cilicia was ruled by kings
            who combined the regal office with the priesthood of Zeus, or
            rather of a native deity whom, like the Baal of Tarsus, the
            Greeks assimilated to their own Zeus. These priestly potentates
            had their seat at Olba, and most of them bore the name either of
            Teucer or of Ajax,435 but
            we may suspect that these appellations are merely Greek
            distortions of native Cilician names. Teucer (Teukros) may be a corruption
            of Tark, Trok, Tarku, or Troko, all of which occur in the names
            of Cilician priests and kings. At all events, it is worthy of
            notice that one, [pg
            145]
            if not two, of these priestly Teucers had a father called
            Tarkuaris,436 and
            that in a long list of priests who served Zeus at the Corycian
            cave, not many miles from Olba, the names Tarkuaris, Tarkumbios,
            Tarkimos, Trokoarbasis, and Trokombigremis, besides many other
            obviously native names, occur side by side with Teucer and other
            purely Greek appellations.437 In
            like manner the Teucrids, who traced their descent from Zeus and
            reigned at Salamis in Cyprus,438 may
            well have been a native dynasty, who concocted a Greek pedigree
            for themselves in the days when Greek civilization was
            fashionable. The legend which attributed the foundation of the
            Cyprian Salamis to Teucer, son of Telamon, appears to be late and
            unknown to Homer.439
            Moreover, a cruel form of human sacrifice which was practised in
            the city down to historical times savours rather of Oriental
            barbarity than of Greek humanity. Led or driven by the youths, a
            man ran thrice round the altar; then the priest stabbed him in
            the throat with a spear and burned his body whole on a heaped-up
            pyre. The sacrifice was offered in the month of Aphrodite to
            Diomede, who along with Agraulus, daughter of Cecrops, had a
            temple at Salamis. A temple of Athena stood within the same
            [pg 146] sacred enclosure.
            It is said that in olden times the sacrifice was offered to
            Agraulus, and not to Diomede. According to another account it was
            instituted by Teucer in honour of Zeus. However that may have
            been, the barbarous custom lasted down to the reign of Hadrian,
            when Diphilus, king of Cyprus, abolished or rather mitigated it
            by substituting the sacrifice of an ox for that of a man.440 On
            the hypothesis here suggested we must suppose that these Greek
            names of divine or heroic figures at the Cyprian Salamis covered
            more or less similar figures of the Asiatic pantheon. And in the
            Salaminian burnt-sacrifice of a man we may perhaps detect the
            original form of the ceremony which in historical times appears
            to have been performed upon an image of Sandan or Hercules at
            Tarsus. When an ox was sacrificed instead of a man, the old
            sacrificial rites would naturally continue to be observed in all
            other respects exactly as before: the animal would be led thrice
            round the altar, stabbed with a spear, and burned on a pyre. Now
            at the Syrian Hierapolis the greatest festival of the year bore
            the name of the Pyre or the Torch. It was held at the beginning
            of spring. Great trees were then cut down and planted in the
            court of the temple: sheep, goats, birds, and other creatures
            were hung upon them: sacrificial victims were led round: then
            fire was set to the whole, and everything was consumed in the
            flames.441
            Perhaps here also the burning of animals was a substitute for the
            burning of men. When the practice of human sacrifice becomes too
            revolting to humanity to be tolerated, its abolition is commonly
            effected by substituting [pg 147] either animals or images for living men or
            women. At Salamis certainly, and perhaps at Hierapolis, the
            substitutes were animals: at Tarsus, if I am right, they were
            images. In this connexion the statement of a Greek writer as to
            the worship of Adonis in Cyprus deserves attention. He says that
            as Adonis had been honoured by Aphrodite, the Cyprians after his
            death cast live doves on a pyre to him, and that the birds,
            flying away from the flames, fell into another pyre and were
            consumed.442 The
            statement seems to be a description of an actual custom of
            burning doves in sacrifice to Adonis. Such a mode of honouring
            him would be very remarkable, since doves were commonly sacred to
            his divine mistress Aphrodite or Astarte. For example, at the
            Syrian Hierapolis, one of the chief seats of her worship, these
            birds were so holy that they might not even be touched. If a man
            inadvertently touched a dove, he was unclean or tabooed for the
            rest of the day. Hence the birds, never being molested, were so
            tame that they lived with the people in their houses, and
            commonly picked up their food fearlessly on the ground.443 Can
            the burning of the sacred bird of Aphrodite in the Cyprian
            worship of Adonis have been a substitute for the burning of a
            sacred man who personated the lover of the goddess?







The priestly Teucers of Olba
                perhaps personated a native god Tark.





If, as many
            scholars think, Tark or Tarku was the name, or part of the name,
            of a great Hittite deity, sometimes identified as the god of the
            sky and the lightning,444 we
            may [pg 148] conjecture that
            Tark or Tarku was the native name of the god of Olba, whom the
            Greeks called Zeus, and that the priestly kings who bore the name
            of Teucer represented the god Tark or Tarku in their own persons.
            This conjecture is confirmed by the observation that Olba, the
            ancient name of the city, is itself merely a Grecized form of
            Oura, the name which the place retains to this day.445 The
            situation of the town, moreover, speaks strongly in favour of the
            view that it was from the beginning an aboriginal settlement,
            though in after days, like so many other Asiatic cities, it took
            on a varnish of Greek culture. For it stood remote from the sea
            on a lofty and barren tableland, with a rigorous winter climate,
            in the highlands of Cilicia.







Western or Rugged
                Cilicia.





Great indeed
            is the contrast between the bleak windy uplands of Western or
            Rugged Cilicia, as the ancients called it, and the soft luxuriant
            lowlands of Eastern Cilicia, where winter is almost unknown and
            summer annually drives the population to seek in the cool air of
            the mountains a refuge from the intolerable heat and deadly
            fevers of the plains. In Western Cilicia, on the other hand, a
            lofty tableland, ending in a high sharp edge on the coast, rises
            steadily inland till it passes gradually into the chain of
            heights which divide it from the interior. Looked at from the sea
            it resembles a great blue wave swelling in one uniform sweep till
            its crest breaks into foam in the distant snows of the Taurus.
            The surface of the tableland is almost everywhere rocky and
            overgrown, in the intervals of the rocks, with dense, thorny,
            almost impenetrable scrub. Only here and there in a hollow or
            glen the niggardly soil allows of a patch of cultivation; and
            here and there fine oaks and [pg 149] planes, towering over the brushwood, clothe
            with a richer foliage the depth of the valleys. None but
            wandering herdsmen with their flocks now maintain a precarious
            existence in this rocky wilderness. Yet the ruined towns which
            stud the country prove that a dense population lived and throve
            here in antiquity, while numerous remains of wine-presses and
            wine-vats bear witness to the successful cultivation of the
            grape. The chief cause of the present desolation is lack of
            water; for wells are few and brackish, perennial streams hardly
            exist, and the ancient aqueducts, which once brought life and
            fertility to the land, have long been suffered to fall into
            disrepair.







The Cilician pirates.





But for ages
            together the ancient inhabitants of these uplands earned their
            bread by less reputable means than the toil of the husbandman and
            the vinedresser. They were buccaneers and slavers, scouring the
            high seas with their galleys and retiring with their booty to the
            inaccessible fastnesses of their mountains. In the decline of
            Greek power all over the East the pirate communities of Cilicia
            grew into a formidable state, recruited by gangs of desperadoes
            and broken men who flocked to it from all sides. The holds of
            these robbers may still be seen perched on the brink of the
            profound ravines which cleave the tableland at frequent
            intervals. With their walls of massive masonry, their towers and
            battlements, overhanging dizzy depths, they are admirably adapted
            to bid defiance to the pursuit of justice. In antiquity the dark
            forests of cedar, which clothed much of the country and supplied
            the pirates with timber for their ships, must have rendered
            access to these fastnesses still more difficult. The great gorge
            of the Lamas River, which eats its way like a sheet of forked
            lightning into the heart of the mountains, is dotted every few
            miles with fortified towns, some of them still magnificent in
            their ruins, dominating sheer cliffs high above the stream. They
            are now the haunt only of the ibex and the bear. Each of these
            communities had its own crest or badge, which may still be seen
            carved on the corners of the mouldering towers. No doubt, too, it
            blazoned the same crest on the hull, the sails, or the streamers
            of the galley which, manned with a crew of ruffians, it sent out
            to prey [pg
            150]
            upon the rich merchantmen in the Golden Sea, as the corsairs
            called the highway of commerce between Crete and Africa.







The deep gorges of Rugged
                Cilicia.





A staircase
            cut in the rock connects one of these ruined castles with the
            river in the glen, a thousand feet below. But the steps are worn
            and dangerous, indeed impassable. You may go for miles along the
            edge of these stupendous cliffs before you find a way down. The
            paths keep on the heights, for in many of its reaches the gully
            affords no foothold even to the agile nomads who alone roam these
            solitudes. At evening the winding course of the river may be
            traced for a long distance by a mist which, as the heat of the
            day declines, rises like steam from the deep gorge and hangs
            suspended in a wavy line of fleecy cloud above it. But even more
            imposing than the ravine of the Lamas is the terrific gorge known
            as the Sheitan dere or Devil's Glen
            near the Corycian cave. Prodigious walls of rock, glowing in the
            intense sunlight, black in the shadow, and spanned by a summer
            sky of the deepest blue, hem in the dry bed of a winter torrent,
            choked with rocks and tangled with thickets of evergreens, among
            which the oleanders with their slim stalks, delicate taper
            leaves, and bunches of crimson blossom stand out
            conspicuous.446
[pg 151]






The site and ruins of Olba. The
                temple of Olbian Zeus.





The ruins of
            Olba, among the most extensive and remarkable in Asia Minor, were
            discovered in 1890 by Mr. J. Theodore Bent. But three years
            before another English traveller had caught a distant view of its
            battlements and towers outlined against the sky like a city of
            enchantment or dreams.447
            Standing at a height of nearly six thousand feet above the sea,
            the upper town commands a free, though somewhat uniform, prospect
            for immense distances in all directions. The sea is just visible
            far away to the south. On these heights the winter is long and
            severe. Snow lies on the ground for months. No Greek would have
            chosen such a site for a city, so bleak and chill, so far from
            blue water; but it served well for a fastness of brigands. Deep
            gorges, one of them filled for miles with tombs, surround it on
            all sides, rendering fortification walls superfluous. But a great
            square tower, four stories high, rises conspicuous on the hill,
            forming a landmark and earning for this upper town the native
            name of Jebel Hissar, or the Mountain
            of the Castle. A Greek inscription cut on the tower proves that
            it was built by Teucer, son of Tarkuaris, one of the priestly
            potentates of Olba. Among other remains of public buildings the
            most notable are forty tall Corinthian columns of the great
            temple of Olbian Zeus. Though coarse in style and corroded by
            long exposure to frost and snow, these massive pillars, towering
            above the ruins, produce an imposing effect. That the temple of
            which they formed part belonged indeed to Olbian Zeus is shown by
            a Greek inscription found within the sacred area, which records
            that the pent-houses on the inner side of the boundary wall were
            built by King Seleucus Nicator and repaired for Olbian Zeus by
            “the great high-priest Teucer, son of
            Zenophanes.” About two hundred yards from this great
            temple are standing five elegant granite columns of a small
            temple dedicated to the goddess Fortune. Further, the remains of
            two theatres and many other public buildings attest the former
            splendour of this mountain city. An arched colonnade, of which
            some Corinthian columns are standing with their architraves, ran
            through the town; [pg
            152]
            and an ancient paved road, lined with tombs and ruins, leads down
            hill to a lower and smaller city two or three miles distant. It
            is this lower town which retains the ancient name of Oura. Here
            the principal ruins occupy an isolated fir-clad height bounded by
            two narrow ravines full of rock-cut tombs. Below the town the
            ravines unite and form a fine gorge, down which the old road
            passed seaward.448





 


§ 7. The God of the Corycian
            Cave.







Limestone caverns of Western
                Cilicia.





Nothing yet
            found at Olba throws light on the nature of the god who was
            worshipped there under the Greek name of Zeus. But at two places
            near the coast, distant only some fourteen or fifteen miles from
            Olba, a deity also called Zeus by the Greeks was revered in
            natural surroundings of a remarkable kind, which must have stood
            in close relation with the worship, and are therefore fitted to
            illustrate it. In both places the features of the landscape are
            of the same general cast, and at one of them the god was
            definitely identified with the Zeus of Olba. The country here
            consists of a tableland of calcareous rock rent at intervals by
            those great chasms which are characteristic of a limestone
            formation. Similar fissures, with the accompaniment of streams or
            rivers which pour into them and vanish under ground, are frequent
            in Greece, and may be observed in our own country near
            Ingleborough in Yorkshire. Fossil bones of extinct animals are
            often found embedded in [pg
            153]
            the stalagmite or breccia of limestone caves. For example, the
            famous Kent's Hole near Torquay contained bones of the mammoth,
            rhinoceros, lion, hyaena, and bear; and red osseous breccias,
            charged with the bones of quadrupeds which have long disappeared
            from Europe, are common in almost all the countries bordering on
            the Mediterranean.449
            Western Cilicia is richer in Miocene deposits than any other part
            of Anatolia, and the limestone gorges of the coast near Olba are
            crowded with fossil oysters, corals, and other shells.450
            Here, too, within the space of five miles the limestone plateau
            is rent by three great chasms, which Greek religion associated
            with Zeus and Typhon. One of these fissures is the celebrated
            Corycian cave.







The city of Corycus. The
                Corycian cave.





To visit this
            spot, invested with the double charm of natural beauty and
            legendary renown, you start from the dead Cilician city of
            Corycus on the sea, with its ruined walls, towers, and churches,
            its rock-hewn houses and cisterns, its shattered mole, its
            island-fortress, still imposing in decay. Viewed from the sea,
            this part of the Cilician coast, with its long succession of
            white ruins, relieved by the dark wooded hills behind, presents
            an appearance of populousness and splendour. But a nearer
            approach reveals the nakedness and desolation of the once
            prosperous land.451
            Following the shore westward from Corycus for about an hour you
            come to a pretty cove enclosed by wooded heights, where a spring
            of pure cold water bubbles up close to the sea, giving to the
            spot its name of Tatlu-su, or the Sweet Water.
            From this bay a steep ascent of about a mile along an ancient
            paved road leads inland to a plateau. Here, threading your way
            through a labyrinth or petrified sea of jagged calcareous rocks,
            you suddenly find yourself on the brink of a vast chasm which
            yawns at your feet. This is the Corycian cave. In reality it is
            not a cave but an immense hollow or trough in the plateau, of
            oval shape and perhaps half a mile in circumference. The cliffs
            which [pg
            154]
            enclose it vary from one hundred to over two hundred feet in
            depth. Its uneven bottom slopes throughout its whole length from
            north to south, and is covered by a thick jungle of trees and
            shrubs—myrtles, pomegranates, carobs, and many more, kept always
            fresh and green by rivulets, underground water, and the shadow of
            the great cliffs. A single narrow path leads down into its
            depths. The way is long and rough, but the deeper you descend the
            denser grows the vegetation, and it is under the dappled shade of
            whispering leaves and with the purling of brooks in your ears
            that you at last reach the bottom. The saffron which of old grew
            here among the bushes is no longer to be found, though it still
            flourishes in the surrounding district. This luxuriant bottom,
            with its rich verdure, its refreshing moisture, its grateful
            shade, is called Paradise by the wandering herdsmen. They tether
            their camels and pasture their goats in it and come hither in the
            late summer to gather the ripe pomegranates. At the southern and
            deepest end of this great cliff-encircled hollow you come to the
            cavern proper. The ruins of a Byzantine church, which replaced a
            heathen temple, partly block the entrance. Inwards the cave
            descends with a gentle slope into the bowels of the earth. The
            old path paved with polygonal masonry still runs through it, but
            soon disappears under sand. At about two hundred feet from its
            mouth the cave comes to an end, and a tremendous roar of
            subterranean water is heard. By crawling on all fours you may
            reach a small pool arched by a dripping stalactite-hung roof, but
            the stream which makes the deafening din is invisible. It was
            otherwise in antiquity. A river of clear water burst from the
            rock, but only to vanish again into a chasm. Such changes in the
            course of streams are common in countries subject to earthquakes
            and to the disruption caused by volcanic agency. The ancients
            believed that this mysterious cavern was haunted ground. In the
            rumble and roar of the waters they seemed to hear the clash of
            cymbals touched by hands divine.452
[pg 155]






Priests of Corycian Zeus.





If now,
            quitting the cavern, we return by the same path to the summit of
            the cliffs, we shall find on the plateau the ruins of a town and
            of a temple at the western edge of the great Corycian chasm. The
            wall of the holy precinct was built within a few feet of the
            precipices, and the sanctuary must have stood right over the
            actual cave and its subterranean waters. In later times the
            temple was converted into a Christian church. By pulling down a
            portion of the sacred edifice Mr. Bent had the good fortune to
            discover a Greek inscription containing a long list of names,
            probably those of the priests who superintended the worship. One
            name which meets us frequently in the list is Zas, and it is
            tempting to regard this as merely a dialectical form of Zeus. If
            that were so, the priests who bore the name might be supposed to
            personate the god.453 But
            many strange and barbarous-looking names, evidently foreign,
            occur in the list, and Zas may be one of them. However, it is
            certain that Zeus was worshipped at the Corycian cave; for about
            half a mile from it, on the summit of a hill, are the ruins of a
            larger temple, which an inscription proves to have been dedicated
            to Corycian Zeus.454







The cave of the giant
                Typhon.





But Zeus, or
            whatever native deity masqueraded under his name, did not reign
            alone in the deep dell. A more dreadful being haunted a still
            more awful abyss which opens in the ground only a hundred yards
            to the east of the great Corycian chasm. It is a circular
            cauldron, about a quarter [pg 156] of a mile in circumference, resembling the
            Corycian chasm in its general character, but smaller, deeper, and
            far more terrific in appearance. Its sides overhang and
            stalactites droop from them. There is no way down into it. The
            only mode of reaching the bottom, which is covered with
            vegetation, would be to be lowered at the end of a long rope. The
            nomads call this chasm Purgatory, to distinguish it from the
            other which they name Paradise. They say that there is a
            subterranean passage between the two, and that the smoke of a
            fire kindled in the Corycian cave may be seen curling out of the
            other. The one ancient writer who expressly mentions this second
            and more grisly cavern is Mela, who says that it was the lair of
            the giant Typhon, and that no animal let down into it could
            live.455
            Aeschylus puts into the mouth of Prometheus an account of
            “the earth-born Typhon, dweller in
            Cilician caves, dread monster, hundred-headed,” who in his
            pride rose up against the gods, hissing destruction from his
            dreadful jaws, while from his Gorgon eyes the lightning flashed.
            But him a flaming levin bolt, crashing from heaven, smote to the
            very heart, and now he lies, shrivelled and scorched, under the
            weight of Etna by the narrow sea. Yet one day he will belch a
            fiery hail, a boiling angry flood, rivers of flame, to devastate
            the fat Sicilian fields.456
            This poetical description of the monster, confirmed by a similar
            passage of Pindar,457
            clearly proves that Typhon was conceived as a personification of
            those active volcanoes which spout fire and smoke to heaven as if
            they would assail the celestial gods. The Corycian caverns are
            not volcanic, but the ancients apparently regarded them as such,
            else they would hardly have made them the den of Typhon.







Battle of Zeus and
                Typhon.





According to
            one legend Typhon was a monster, half man and half brute,
            begotten in Cilicia by Tartarus upon the goddess Earth. The upper
            part of him was human, but from the loins downward he was an
            enormous snake. In the battle of the gods and giants, which was
            fought out in Egypt, Typhon hugged Zeus in his snaky coils,
            wrested [pg
            157]
            from him his crooked sword, and with the blade cut the sinews of
            the god's hands and feet. Then taking him on his back he conveyed
            the mutilated deity across the sea to Cilicia, and deposited him
            in the Corycian cave. Here, too, he hid the severed sinews, wrapt
            in a bear's skin. But Hermes and Aegipan contrived to steal the
            missing thews and restore them to their divine owner. Thus made
            whole and strong again, Zeus pelted his beaten adversary with
            thunderbolts, drove him from place to place, and at last
            overwhelmed him under Mount Etna. And the spots where the hissing
            bolts fell are still marked by jets of flame.458







Fossil bones of extinct animals
                give rise to stories of giants.





It is possible
            that the discovery of fossil bones of large extinct animals may
            have helped to localize the story of the giant at the Corycian
            cave. Such bones, as we have seen, are often found in limestone
            caverns, and the limestone gorges of Cilicia are in fact rich in
            fossils. The Arcadians laid the scene of the battle of the gods
            and the giants in the plain of Megalopolis, where many bones of
            mammoths have come to light, and where, moreover, flames have
            been seen to burst from the earth and even to burn for
            years.459
            These natural conditions would easily suggest a fable of giants
            who had fought the gods and had been slain by thunderbolts; the
            smouldering earth or jets of flame would be regarded as the spots
            where the divine lightnings had struck the ground. Hence the
            Arcadians sacrificed to thunder and lightning.460 In
            Sicily, too, great quantities of bones of mammoths, elephants,
            hippopotamuses, and other animals long extinct in the island have
            been found, and have been appealed to with confidence by
            patriotic Sicilians as conclusive evidence of the gigantic
            stature of their ancestors or predecessors.461
            These remains of huge unwieldy creatures which once trampled
            through the jungle or splashed in the rivers of Sicily may have
            contributed with the fires of Etna to build up the story of
            giants imprisoned under the volcano and vomiting smoke and flame
            from its crater. “Tales of [pg 158] giants and monsters, which
            stand in direct connexion with the finding of great fossil bones,
            are scattered broadcast over the mythology of the world. Huge
            bones, found at Punto Santa Elena, in the north of Guayaquil,
            have served as a foundation for the story of a colony of giants
            who dwelt there. The whole area of the Pampas is a great
            sepulchre of enormous extinct animals; no wonder that one great
            plain should be called the ‘Field of the
            giants,’ and that such names as ‘the hill of the giant,’ ‘the stream of the animal,’ should be guides
            to the geologist in his search for fossil bones.”462







Chasm of Olbian Zeus at
                Kanytelideis.





About five
            miles to the north-east of the Corycian caverns, but divided from
            them by many deep gorges and impassable rocks, is another and
            very similar chasm. It may be reached in about an hour and a
            quarter from the sea by an ancient paved road, which ascends at
            first very steeply and then gently through bush-clad and wooded
            hills. Thus you come to a stretch of level ground covered with
            the well-preserved ruins of an ancient town. Remains of
            fortresses constructed of polygonal masonry, stately churches,
            and many houses, together with numerous tombs and reliefs, finely
            chiselled in the calcareous limestone of the neighbourhood, bear
            witness to the extent and importance of the place. Yet it is
            mentioned by no ancient writer. Inscriptions prove that its name
            was Kanyteldeis or Kanytelideis, which still survives in the
            modern form of Kanidiwan. The great chasm opens in the very heart
            of the city. So crowded are the ruins that you do not perceive
            the abyss till you are within a few yards of it. It is almost a
            complete circle, about a quarter of a mile wide, three-quarters
            of a mile in circumference, and uniformly two hundred feet or
            more in depth. The cliffs go sheer down and remind the traveller
            of the great quarries at Syracuse. But like the Corycian caves,
            the larger of which it closely resembles, the huge fissure is
            natural; and its bottom, like theirs, is overgrown with trees and
            vegetation. Two ways led down into it in antiquity, both cut
            through the rock. One of them was a tunnel, which is now
            obstructed; the other is still open. [pg 159] Remains of columns and hewn stones in the
            bottom of the chasm seem to show that a temple once stood there.
            But there is no cave at the foot of the cliffs, and no stream
            flows in the deep hollow or can be heard to rumble underground. A
            ruined tower of polygonal masonry, which stands on the southern
            edge of the chasm, bears a Greek inscription stating that it was
            dedicated to Olbian Zeus by the priest Teucer, son of Tarkuaris.
            The letters are beautifully cut in the style of the third century
            before Christ. We may infer that at the time of the dedication
            the town belonged to the priestly kings of Olba, and that the
            great chasm was sacred to Olbian Zeus.463







The deity of these great chasms
                was called Zeus by the Greeks, but he was probably a god of
                fertility embodied in vegetation and water.





What, then,
            was the character of the god who was worshipped under the name of
            Zeus at these two great natural chasms? The depth of the
            fissures, opening suddenly and as it were without warning in the
            midst of a plateau, was well fitted to impress and awe the
            spectator; and the sight of the rank evergreen vegetation at
            their bottom, fed by rivulets or underground water, must have
            presented a striking contrast to the grey, barren, rocky
            wilderness of the surrounding tableland. Such a spot must have
            seemed to simple folk a paradise, a garden of God, the abode of
            higher powers who caused the wilderness to blossom, if not with
            roses, at least with myrtles and pomegranates for man, and with
            grass and underwood for his flocks. So to the Semite, as we saw,
            the Baal of the land is he who fertilizes it by subterranean
            water rather than by rain from the sky, and who therefore dwells
            in the depths of earth rather than in the height of heaven.464 In
            rainless countries the sky-god is deprived of one of the
            principal functions which he discharges in cool cloudy climates
            like that of Europe. He has, in fact, little or nothing to do
            with the water-supply, and has therefore small excuse for levying
            a water-rate on his worshippers. Not, indeed, that Cilicia is
            rainless; but in countries bordering [pg 160] on the Mediterranean the drought is almost
            unbroken through the long months of summer. Vegetation then
            withers: the face of nature is scorched and brown: most of the
            rivers dry up; and only their white stony beds, hot to the foot
            and dazzling to the eye, remain to tell where they flowed. It is
            at such seasons that a green hollow, a shady rock, a murmuring
            stream, are welcomed by the wanderer in the South with a joy and
            wonder which the untravelled Northerner can hardly imagine. Never
            do the broad slow rivers of England, with their winding reaches,
            their grassy banks, their grey willows mirrored with the soft
            English sky in the placid stream, appear so beautiful as when the
            traveller views them for the first time after leaving behind him
            the aridity, the heat, the blinding glare of the white southern
            landscape, set in seas and skies of caerulean blue.







Analogy of the Corycian and
                Olbian caverns to Ibreez and the vale of the Adonis.





We may take
            it, then, as probable that the god of the Corycian and Olbian
            caverns was worshipped as a source of fertility. In antiquity,
            when the river, which now roars underground, still burst from the
            rock in the Corycian cave, the scene must have resembled Ibreez,
            where the god of the corn and the vine was adored at the source
            of the stream; and we may compare the vale of Adonis in the
            Lebanon, where the divinity who gave his name to the river was
            revered at its foaming cascades. The three landscapes had in
            common the elements of luxuriant vegetation and copious streams
            leaping full-born from the rock. We shall hardly err in supposing
            that these features shaped the conception of the deities who were
            supposed to haunt the favoured spots. At the Corycian cave the
            existence of a second chasm, of a frowning and awful aspect,
            might well suggest the presence of an evil being who lurked in it
            and sought to undo the beneficent work of the good god. Thus we
            should have a fable of a conflict between the two, a battle of
            Zeus and Typhon.







Two gods at Olba, perhaps a
                father and a son, corresponding to the Baal and Sandan of
                Tarsus.





On the whole
            we conclude that the Olbian Zeus, worshipped at one of these
            great limestone chasms, and clearly identical in nature with the
            Corycian Zeus, was also identical with the Baal of Tarsus, the
            god of the corn and the vine, who in his turn can hardly be
            separated from [pg
            161]
            the god of Ibreez. If my conjecture is right the native name of
            the Olbian Zeus was Tark or Trok, and the priestly Teucers of
            Olba represented him in their own persons. On that hypothesis the
            Olbian priests who bore the name of Ajax embodied another native
            deity of unknown name, perhaps the father or the son of Tark. A
            comparison of the coin-types of Tarsus with the Hittite monuments
            of Ibreez and Boghaz-Keui led us to the conclusion that the
            people of Tarsus worshipped at least two distinct gods, a father
            and a son, the father-god being known to the Semites as Baal and
            to the Greeks as Zeus, while the son was called Sandan by the
            natives, but Hercules by the Greeks. We may surmise that at Olba
            the names of Teucer and Ajax designated two gods who corresponded
            in type to the two gods of Tarsus; and if the lesser figure at
            Ibreez, who appears in an attitude of adoration before the deity
            of the corn and the vine, could be interpreted as the divine Son
            in presence of the divine Father, we should have in all three
            places the same pair of deities, represented probably in the
            flesh by successive generations of priestly kings. But the
            evidence is far too slender to justify us in advancing this
            hypothesis as anything more than a bare conjecture.





 


§ 8. Cilician
            Goddesses.







Goddesses less prominent than
                gods in Cilician religion.





So far, the
            Cilician deities discussed have been males; we have as yet found
            no trace of the great Mother Goddess who plays so important a
            part in the religion of Cappadocia and Phrygia, beyond the great
            dividing range of the Taurus. Yet we may suspect that she was not
            unknown in Cilicia, though her worship certainly seems to have
            been far less prominent there than in the centre of Asia Minor.
            The difference may perhaps be interpreted as evidence that
            mother-kin and hence the predominance of Mother Goddesses
            survived, in the bleak highlands of the interior, long after a
            genial climate and teeming soil had fostered the growth of a
            higher civilization, and with it the advance from female to male
            kinship, in the rich lowlands of Cilicia. Be that as it may,
            Cilician goddesses with or without a male partner are known to
            have been revered in various parts of the
            country.
[pg
            162]






The goddess 'Atheh, partner of
                Baal at Tarsus, seems to have been a form of Atargatis. The
                lion-goddess and the bull-god. In later times the old goddess
                became the Fortune of the City.





Thus at Tarsus
            itself the goddess 'Atheh was worshipped along with Baal; their
            effigies are engraved on the same coins of the city. She is
            represented wearing a veil and seated upon a lion, with her name
            in Aramaic letters engraved beside her.465
            Hence it would seem that at Tarsus, as at Boghaz-Keui, the Father
            God mated with a lion-goddess like the Phrygian Cybele or the
            Syrian Atargatis. Now the name Atargatis is a Greek rendering of
            the Aramaic 'Athar-'atheh, a compound word which includes the
            name of the goddess of Tarsus.466
            Thus in name as well as in attributes the female partner of the
            Baal of Tarsus appears to correspond to Atargatis, the Syrian
            Mother Goddess whose image, seated on a lion or lions, was
            worshipped with great pomp and splendour at Hierapolis-Bambyce
            near the Euphrates.467
[pg 163] May we go a step
            farther and find a correspondence between the Baal of Tarsus and
            the husband-god of Atargatis at Hierapolis-Bambyce? That
            husband-god, like the Baal of Tarsus, was identified by the
            Greeks with Zeus, and Lucian tells us that the resemblance of his
            image to the images of Zeus was in all respects unmistakable. But
            his image, unlike those of Zeus, was seated upon bulls.468 In
            point of fact he was probably Hadad, the chief male god of the
            Syrians, who appears to have been a god of thunder and fertility;
            for at Baalbec in the Lebanon, where the ruined temple of the Sun
            is the most imposing monument bequeathed to the modern world by
            Greek art in its decline, his image grasped in his left hand a
            thunderbolt and ears of corn,469 and
            a colossal statue of the deity, found near Zenjirli in Northern
            Syria, represents him with a bearded human head and horns, the
            emblem of strength and fertility.470 A
            similar god of thunder and lightning was worshipped from early
            times by the Babylonians and Assyrians; he bore the similar name
            of Adad and his emblems appear to have been a thunderbolt and a
            bull. On an Assyrian relief his image is represented as that of a
            bearded man clad in a short tunic, wearing a cap with two pairs
            of horns, and grasping an axe in his right hand and a thunderbolt
            in his left. His resemblance to the Hittite god of the thundering
            sky was therefore very close. An alternative name for this
            Babylonian and Assyrian deity was Ramman, an appropriate
            [pg 164] term, derived from
            a verb ramâmu to “scream” or “roar.”471 Now
            we have seen that the god of Ibreez, whose attributes tally with
            those of the Baal of Tarsus, wears a cap adorned with bull's
            horns;472
            that the Father God at Boghaz-Keui, meeting the Mother Goddess on
            her lioness, is attended by an animal which according to the
            usual interpretation is a bull;473 and
            that the bull itself was worshipped, apparently as an emblem of
            fertility, at Euyuk near Boghaz-Keui.474
            Thus at Tarsus and Boghaz-Keui, as at Hierapolis-Bambyce, the
            Father God and the Mother Goddess would seem to have had as their
            sacred animals or emblems the bull and the lion respectively. In
            later times, under Greek influence, the goddess was apparently
            exchanged for, or converted into, the Fortune of the City, who
            appears on coins of Tarsus as a seated woman with veiled and
            turreted head, grasping ears of corn and a poppy in her hand. Her
            lion is gone, but a trace of him perhaps remains on a coin which
            exhibits the throne of the goddess adorned with a lion's
            leg.475 In
            general it would seem that the goddess Fortune, who figures
            commonly as the guardian of cities in the Greek East, especially
            in Syria, was nothing but a disguised form of Gad, the Semitic
            god of fortune or luck, who, though the exigencies of grammar
            required him to be masculine, is supposed to have been often
            merely a special aspect of the great goddess Astarte or Atargatis
            conceived as the patroness and protector of towns.476 In
            Oriental religion such permutations or combinations need not
            surprise us. To the gods all things are [pg 165] possible. In Cyprus the goddess of love
            wore a beard,477 and
            Alexander the Great sometimes disported himself in the costume of
            Artemis, while at other times he ransacked the divine wardrobe to
            figure in the garb of Hercules, of Hermes, and of Ammon.478 The
            change of the goddess 'Atheh of Tarsus into Gad or Fortune would
            be easy if we suppose that she was known as Gad-'Atheh,
            “Luck of 'Atheh,” which occurs as
            a Semitic personal name.479 In
            like manner the goddess of Fortune at Olba, who had her small
            temple beside the great temple of Zeus,480 may
            have been originally the consort of the native god Tark or
            Tarku.







The Phoenician god El and his
                wife at Mallus in Cilicia. Assimilation of native Oriental
                deities to Greek divinities.





Another town
            in Cilicia where an Oriental god and goddess appear to have been
            worshipped together was Mallus. The city was built on a height in
            the great Cilician plain near the mouth of the river
            Pyramus.481 Its
            coins exhibit two winged deities, a male and a female, in a
            kneeling or running attitude. On some of the coins the male deity
            is represented, like Janus, with two heads facing opposite ways,
            and with two pairs of wings, while beneath him is the forepart of
            a bull with a human head. The obverse of the coins which bear the
            female deity displays a conical stone, sometimes flanked by two
            bunches of grapes.482
            This conical stone, like those of other Asiatic cities,483 was
            probably the emblem of a Mother Goddess, and the bunches of
            grapes indicate her fertilizing powers. The god with the two
            heads [pg
            166]
            and four wings can hardly be any other than the Phoenician El,
            whom the Greeks called Cronus; for El was characterized by four
            eyes, two in front and two behind, and by three pairs of
            wings.484 A
            discrepancy in the number of wings can scarcely be deemed fatal
            to the identification. The god may easily have moulted some
            superfluous feathers on the road from Phoenicia to Mallus. On
            later coins of Mallus these quaint Oriental deities disappear,
            and are replaced by corresponding Greek deities, particularly by
            a head of Cronus on one side and a figure of Demeter, grasping
            ears of corn, on the other.485 The
            change doubtless sprang from a wish to assimilate the ancient
            native divinities to the new and fashionable divinities of the
            Greek pantheon. If Cronus and Demeter, the harvest god and
            goddess, were chosen to supplant El and his female consort, the
            ground of the choice must certainly have been a supposed
            resemblance between the two pairs of deities. We may assume,
            therefore, that the discarded couple, El and his wife, had also
            been worshipped by the husbandman as sources of fertility, the
            givers of corn and wine. One of these later coins of Mallus
            exhibits Dionysus sitting on a vine laden with ripe clusters,
            while on the obverse is seen a male figure guiding a yoke of oxen
            as if in the act of ploughing.486
            These types of the vine-god and the ploughman probably represent
            another attempt to adapt the native religion to changed
            conditions, to pour the old Asiatic wine into new Greek bottles.
            The barbarous monster with the multiplicity of heads and wings
            has been reduced to a perfectly human Dionysus. The sacred but
            deplorable old conical stone no longer flaunts proudly on the
            coins; it has retired to a decent obscurity in favour of a
            natural and graceful vine. It is thus that a truly progressive
            theology keeps pace with the march of intellect. But if these
            things were done by the apostles of culture at Mallus, we cannot
            suppose that the clergy of Tarsus, the capital, lagged behind
            their provincial [pg
            167]
            brethren in their efforts to place the ancient faith upon a sound
            modern basis. The fruit of their labours seems to have been the
            more or less nominal substitution of Zeus, Fortune, and Hercules
            for Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan.487







Sarpedonian Artemis. The goddess
                Perasia at Hieropolis-Castabala. The fire-walk in the worship
                of Perasia. Insensibility to pain regarded as a mark of
                inspiration.





We may suspect
            that in like manner the Sarpedonian Artemis, who had a sanctuary
            in South-Eastern Cilicia, near the Syrian border, was really a
            native goddess parading in borrowed plumes. She gave oracular
            responses by the mouth of inspired men, or more probably of
            women, who in their moments of divine ecstasy may have been
            deemed incarnations of her divinity.488
            Another even more transparently Asiatic goddess was Perasia, or
            Artemis Perasia, who was worshipped at Hieropolis-Castabala in
            Eastern Cilicia. The extensive ruins of the ancient city, now
            known as Bodroum, cover the slope of a hill about three-quarters
            of a mile to the north of the river Pyramus. Above them towers
            the acropolis, built on the summit of dark grey precipices, and
            divided from the neighbouring mountain by a deep cutting in the
            rock. A mediaeval castle, built of hewn blocks of reddish-yellow
            limestone, has replaced the ancient citadel. The city possessed a
            large theatre, and was traversed by two handsome colonnades, of
            which some columns are still standing among the ruins. A thick
            growth of brushwood and grass now covers most of the site, and
            the place is wild and solitary. Only the wandering herdsmen
            encamp near the deserted city in winter and spring. The
            neighbourhood is treeless; yet in May magnificent fields of wheat
            and barley gladden the eye, and in the valleys the [pg 168] clover grows as high as the
            horses' knees.489 The
            ambiguous nature of the goddess who presided over this City of
            the Sanctuary (Hieropolis)490 was
            confessed by a puzzled worshipper, a physician named Lucius
            Minius Claudianus, who confided his doubts to the deity herself
            in some very indifferent Greek verses. He wisely left it to the
            goddess to say whether she was Artemis, or the Moon, or Hecate,
            or Aphrodite, or Demeter.491 All
            that we know about her is that her true name was Perasia, and
            that she was in the enjoyment of certain revenues.492
            Further, we may reasonably conjecture that at the Cilician
            Castabala she was worshipped with rites like those which were
            held in honour of her namesake Artemis Perasia at another city of
            the same name, Castabala in Cappadocia. There, as we saw, the
            priestesses of the goddess walked over fire with bare feet
            unscathed.493
            Probably the [pg
            169]
            same impressive ceremony was performed before a crowd of
            worshippers in the Cilician Castabala also. Whatever the exact
            meaning of the rite may have been, the goddess was in all
            probability one of those Asiatic Mother Goddesses to whom the
            Greeks often applied the name of Artemis.494 The
            immunity enjoyed by the priestess in the furnace was attributed
            to her inspiration by the deity. In discussing the nature of
            inspiration or possession by a deity, the Syrian philosopher
            Jamblichus notes as one of its symptoms a total insensibility to
            pain. Many inspired persons, he tells us, “are not burned by fire, the fire not taking hold of
            them by reason of the divine inspiration; and many, though they
            are burned, perceive it not, because at the time they do not live
            an animal life. They pierce themselves with skewers and feel
            nothing. They gash their backs with hatchets, they slash their
            arms with daggers, and know not what they do, because their acts
            are not those of mere men. For impassable places become passable
            to those who are filled with the spirit. They rush into fire,
            they pass through fire, they cross rivers, like the priestess at
            Castabala. These things prove that under the influence of
            inspiration men are beside themselves, that their senses, their
            will, their life are those neither of man nor of beast, but that
            they lead another and a diviner life instead, whereby they are
            inspired and wholly possessed.”495
            Thus in traversing the fiery furnace the priestesses of Perasia
            were believed to be beside themselves, to be filled with the
            goddess, to be in a real sense incarnations of her
            divinity.496


A similar
            touchstone of inspiration is still applied by some villagers in
            the Himalayan districts of North-Western [pg 170] India. Once a year they worship Airi, a
            local deity, who is represented by a trident and has his temples
            on lonely hills and desolate tracts. At his festival the people
            seat themselves in a circle about a bonfire. A kettle-drum is
            beaten, and one by one his worshippers become possessed by the
            god and leap with shouts round the flames. Some brand themselves
            with heated iron spoons and sit down in the fire. Such as escape
            unhurt are believed to be truly inspired, while those who burn
            themselves are despised as mere pretenders to the divine frenzy.
            Persons thus possessed by the spirit are called Airi's horses or
            his slaves. During the revels, which commonly last about ten
            days, they wear red scarves round their heads and receive alms
            from the faithful. These men deem themselves so holy that they
            will let nobody touch them, and they alone may touch the sacred
            trident, the emblem of their god.497 In
            Western Asia itself modern fanatics still practise the same
            austerities which were practised by their brethren in the days of
            Jamblichus. “Asia Minor abounds in
            dervishes of different orders, who lap red-hot iron, calling it
            their ‘rose,’ chew coals of living
            fire, strike their heads against solid walls, stab themselves in
            the cheek, the scalp, the temple, with sharp spikes set in heavy
            weights, shouting ‘Allah, Allah,’
            and always consistently avowing that during such frenzy they are
            entirely insensible to pain.”498





 


§ 9. The Burning of Cilician
            Gods.







The divine triad, Baal, 'Atheh,
                and Sandan, at Tarsus may have been personated by priests and
                priestesses.





On the whole,
            then, we seem to be justified in concluding that under a thin
            veneer of Greek humanity the barbarous native gods of Cilicia
            continued long to survive, and that among them the great Asiatic
            goddess retained a place, though not the prominent place which
            she held in the highlands of the interior down at least to the
            beginning of our era. The principle that the inspired priest or
            priestess represents the deity in person appears, if I am right,
            to [pg 171] have been
            recognized at Castabala and at Olba, as well as at the sanctuary
            of Sarpedonian Artemis. There can be no intrinsic improbability,
            therefore, in the view that at Tarsus also the divine triad of
            Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan may also have been personated by priests
            and priestesses, who, on the analogy of Olba and of the great
            sanctuaries in the interior of Asia Minor, would originally be at
            the same time kings and queens, princes and princesses. Further,
            the burning of Sandan in effigy at Tarsus would, on this
            hypothesis, answer to the walk of the priestess of Perasia
            through the furnace at Castabala. Both were perhaps mitigations
            of a custom of putting the priestly king or queen, or another
            member of the royal family, to death by fire.




[pg 172]




 


Chapter VII. Sardanapalus and
          Hercules.



 


§ 1. The Burning of
            Sardanapalus.







Tarsus said to have been founded
                by the Assyrian king Sardanapalus, who burned himself on a
                pyre. Deaths of Babylonian and Assyrian kings on the
                pyre.





The theory
            that kings or princes were formerly burned to death at Tarsus in
            the character of gods is singularly confirmed by another and
            wholly independent line of argument. For, according to one
            account, the city of Tarsus was founded not by Sandan but by
            Sardanapalus, the famous Assyrian monarch whose death on a great
            pyre was one of the most famous incidents in Oriental legend.
            Near the sea, within a day's march of Tarsus, might be seen in
            antiquity the ruins of a great ancient city named Anchiale, and
            outside its walls stood a monument called the monument of
            Sardanapalus, on which was carved in stone the figure of the
            monarch. He was represented snapping the fingers of his right
            hand, and the gesture was explained by an accompanying
            inscription, engraved in Assyrian characters, to the following
            effect:—“Sardanapalus, son of
            Anacyndaraxes, built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day. Eat, drink,
            and play, for everything else is not worth that,” by which
            was implied that all other human affairs were not worth a snap of
            the fingers.499 The
            gesture may have been misinterpreted [pg 173] and the inscription mistranslated,500 but
            there is no reason to doubt the existence of such a monument,
            though we may conjecture that it was of Hittite rather than
            Assyrian origin; for, not to speak of the traces of Hittite art
            and religion which we have found at Tarsus, a group of Hittite
            monuments has been discovered at Marash, in the upper valley of
            the Pyramus.501 The
            Assyrians may have ruled over Cilicia for a time, but Hittite
            influence was probably much deeper and more lasting.502 The
            story that Tarsus was founded by Sardanapalus may well be
            apocryphal,503 but
            there must have been some reason for his association with the
            city. On the present hypothesis that reason is to be found in the
            traditional manner of his death. To avoid falling into the hands
            of the rebels, who laid siege to Nineveh, he built a huge pyre in
            his palace, heaped it up with gold and silver and purple raiment,
            and then burnt himself, his wife, his concubines, and his eunuchs
            in the fire.504 The
            story is false of the historical Sardanapalus, that is, of the
            great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, but it is true of his brother
            Shamashshumukin. Being appointed king of Babylon by Ashurbanipal,
            he revolted against his suzerain and benefactor, and was besieged
            by him in his capital. The siege was long and the resistance
            desperate, for the Babylonians knew that they had no mercy to
            expect from the ruthless Assyrians. But they were decimated by
            famine and pestilence, and when the city could hold out no more,
            King Shamashshumukin, determined not to fall alive into the hands
            of his offended brother, shut himself up in his [pg 174] palace, and there burned
            himself to death, along with his wives, his children, his slaves,
            and his treasures, at the very moment when the conquerors were
            breaking in the gates.505 Not
            many years afterwards the same tragedy was repeated at Nineveh
            itself by Saracus or Sinsharishkun, the last king of Assyria.
            Besieged by the rebel Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, and by
            Cyaxares, king of the Medes, he burned himself in his palace.
            That was the end of Nineveh and of the Assyrian empire.506
            Thus Greek history preserved the memory of the catastrophe, but
            transferred it from the real victims to the far more famous
            Ashurbanipal, whose figure in after ages loomed vast and dim
            against the setting sun of Assyrian glory.





 


§ 2. The Burning of
            Croesus.







Story that Cyrus intended to
                burn Croesus alive. It is unlikely that the Persians would
                thus have polluted the sacred element of fire.





Another
            Oriental monarch who prepared at least to die in the flames was
            Croesus, king of Lydia. Herodotus tells how the Persians under
            Cyrus captured Sardes, the Lydian capital, and took Croesus
            alive, and how Cyrus caused a great pyre to be erected, on which
            he placed the captive monarch in fetters, and with him twice
            seven Lydian youths. Fire was then applied to the pile, but at
            the last moment Cyrus relented, a sudden shower extinguished the
            flames, and Croesus was spared.507 But
            it is most improbable that the Persians, with their profound
            reverence for the sanctity of fire, should have thought of
            defiling the sacred element with the worst of all pollutions, the
            contact of dead bodies.508
            Such an act would have seemed to them sacrilege of the deepest
            dye. For to them fire was the earthly form of the [pg 175] heavenly light, the eternal,
            the infinite, the divine; death, on the other hand, was in their
            opinion the main source of corruption and uncleanness. Hence they
            took the most stringent precautions to guard the purity of fire
            from the defilement of death.509 If
            a man or a dog died in a house where the holy fire burned, the
            fire had to be removed from the house and kept away for nine
            nights in winter or a month in summer before it might be brought
            back; and if any man broke the rule by bringing back the fire
            within the appointed time, he might be punished with two hundred
            stripes.510 As
            for burning a corpse in the fire, it was the most heinous of all
            sins, an invention of Ahriman, the devil; there was no atonement
            for it, and it was punished with death.511 Nor
            did the law remain a dead letter. Down to the beginning of our
            era the death penalty was inflicted on all who threw a corpse or
            cow-dung on the fire, nay, even on such as blew on the fire with
            their breath.512 It
            is hard, therefore, to believe that a Persian king should have
            commanded his subjects to perpetrate a deed which he and they
            viewed with horror as the most flagitious sacrilege
            conceivable.







The older and truer tradition
                was that in the extremity of his fortunes Croesus attempted
                to burn himself.





Another and in
            some respects truer version of the story of Croesus and Cyrus has
            been preserved by two older witnesses—namely, by the Greek poet
            Bacchylides, who was born some forty years after the event,513 and
            by a Greek artist who painted the scene on a red-figured vase
            about, or soon after, the time of the poet's birth. Bacchylides
            tells us that when the Persians captured Sardes, Croesus, unable
            to brook the thought of slavery, caused a pyre to be erected in
            front of his courtyard, mounted it with his wife and daughters,
            and bade a page apply a light to the wood. A bright blaze shot
            up, but Zeus extinguished it with rain from heaven, and
            [pg 176] Apollo of the
            Golden Sword wafted the pious king and his daughters to the happy
            land beyond the North Wind.514 In
            like manner the vase-painter clearly represents the burning of
            Croesus as a voluntary act, not as a punishment inflicted on him
            by the conqueror. He lets us see the king enthroned upon the pyre
            with a wreath of laurel on his head and a sceptre in one hand,
            while with the other he is pouring a libation. An attendant is in
            the act of applying to the pile two objects which have been
            variously interpreted as torches to kindle the wood or whisks to
            sprinkle holy water. The demeanour of the king is solemn and
            composed: he seems to be performing a religious rite, not
            suffering an ignominious death.515


Thus we may
            fairly conclude with some eminent modern scholars516
            that in the extremity of his fortunes Croesus prepared to meet
            death like a king or a god in the flames. It was thus that
            Hercules, from whom the old kings of Lydia claimed to be
            sprung,517
            ascended from earth to heaven: it was thus that Zimri, king of
            Israel, passed beyond the reach of his enemies: it was thus that
            Shamashshumukin, king of Babylon, escaped a brother's vengeance:
            it was thus that the last king of Assyria expired in the ruins of
            his capital; and it was thus that, sixty-six years after the
            capture of Sardes, the Carthaginian king Hamilcar sought to
            retrieve a lost battle by a hero's death.518







Legend that Semiramis burnt
                herself on a pyre.





Semiramis
            herself, the legendary queen of Assyria, is said to have burnt
            herself on a pyre out of grief at the death of a favourite
            horse.519
            Since there are strong grounds for regarding [pg 177] the queen in her mythical
            aspect as a form of Ishtar or Astarte,520 the
            legend that Semiramis died for love in the flames furnishes a
            remarkable parallel to the traditionary death of the love-lorn
            Dido, who herself appears to be simply an Avatar of the same
            great Asiatic goddess.521
            When we compare these stories of the burning of Semiramis and
            Dido with each other and with the historical cases of the burning
            of Oriental monarchs, we may perhaps conclude that there was a
            time when queens as well as kings were expected under certain
            circumstances, perhaps on the death of their consort, to perish
            in the fire. The conclusion can hardly be deemed extravagant when
            we remember that the practice of burning widows to death survived
            in India under English rule down to a time within living
            memory.522







The “great burnings”for Jewish kings.





At Jerusalem
            itself a reminiscence of the practice of burning kings, alive or
            dead, appears to have lingered as late as the time of Isaiah, who
            says: “For Tophet is prepared of old;
            yea, for the king it is made ready; he hath made it deep and
            large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the
            Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.”523 We
            know that “great burnings” were
            [pg 178] regularly made for
            dead kings of Judah,524 and
            it can hardly be accidental that the place assigned by Isaiah to
            the king's pyre is the very spot in the Valley of Hinnom where
            the first-born children were actually burned by their parents in
            honour of Moloch “the King.” The
            exact site of the Valley of Hinnom is disputed, but all are
            agreed in identifying it with one of the ravines which encircle
            or intersect Jerusalem; and according to some eminent authorities
            it was the one called by Josephus the Tyropoeon.525 If
            this last identification is correct, the valley where the
            children were burned on a pyre lay immediately beneath the royal
            palace and the temple. Perhaps the young victims died for God and
            the king.526







The great burnings for Jewish
                Rabbis at Meiron in Galilee.





With the
            “great burnings” for dead Jewish
            kings it seems worth while to compare the great burnings still
            annually made for dead Jewish Rabbis at the lofty village of
            Meiron in Galilee, the most famous and venerated place of
            pilgrimage for Jews in modern Palestine. Here the tombs of the
            Rabbis are hewn out of the rock, and here on the thirtieth of
            April, the eve of May Day, multitudes of pilgrims, both men and
            women, assemble and burn their offerings, which consist of
            shawls, scarfs, handkerchiefs, books, and the like. These are
            placed in two stone basins on the top of two low pillars, and
            being drenched with oil and ignited they are consumed to ashes
            amid the loud applause, shouts, and cries of the spectators. A
            man has been known to pay as much as [pg 179] two thousand piastres for the privilege of
            being allowed to open the ceremony by burning a costly shawl. On
            such occasions the solemn unmoved serenity of the Turkish
            officials, who keep order, presents a striking contrast to the
            intense excitement of the Jews.527
            This curious ceremony may be explained by the widespread practice
            of burning property for the use and benefit of the dead. So, to
            take a single instance, the tyrant Periander collected the finest
            raiment of all the women in Corinth and burned it in a pit for
            his dead wife, who had sent him word by necromancy that she was
            cold and naked in the other world, because the clothes he buried
            with her had not been burnt.528 In
            like manner, perhaps, garments and other valuables may have been
            consumed on the pyre for the use of the dead kings of Judah. In
            Siam, the corpse of a king or queen is burned in a huge structure
            resembling a permanent palace, which with its many-gabled and
            high-pitched roofs and multitudinous tinselled spires, soaring to
            a height of over two hundred feet, sometimes occupies an area of
            about an acre.529 The
            blaze of such an enormous catafalque may resemble, even if it far
            surpasses, the “great burnings”
            for the Jewish kings.





 


§ 3. Purification by
            Fire.







Death by fire regarded by the
                ancients as a kind of apotheosis. Fire was supposed to purge
                away the mortal parts of men, leaving the immortal.





These events
            and these traditions seem to prove that under certain
            circumstances Oriental monarchs deliberately chose to burn
            themselves to death. What were these circumstances? and what were
            the consequences of the act? If the intention had merely been to
            escape from the hands of a conqueror, an easier mode of death
            would naturally have been chosen. There must have been a special
            reason for electing to die by fire. The legendary death of
            Hercules, the historical death of Hamilcar, and the picture of
            Croesus enthroned in state on the pyre and pouring a libation,
            all combine to indicate that to be burnt alive was regarded as a
            solemn sacrifice, nay, more than that, as an apotheosis which
            [pg 180] raised the victim
            to the rank of a god.530 For
            it is to be remembered that Hamilcar as well as Hercules was
            worshipped after death. Fire, moreover, was regarded by the
            ancients as a purgative so powerful that properly applied it
            could burn away all that was mortal of a man, leaving only the
            divine and immortal spirit behind. Hence we read of goddesses who
            essayed to confer immortality on the infant sons of kings by
            burning them in the fire by night; but their beneficent purpose
            was always frustrated by the ignorant interposition of the mother
            or father, who peeping into the room saw the child in the flames
            and raised a cry of horror, thus disconcerting the goddess at her
            magic rites. This story is told of Isis in the house of the king
            of Byblus, of Demeter in the house of the king of Eleusis, and of
            Thetis in the house of her mortal husband Peleus.531 In
            a slightly [pg
            181]
            different way the witch Medea professed to give back to the old
            their lost youth by boiling them with a hell-broth in her magic
            cauldron;532 and
            when Pelops had been butchered and served up at a banquet of the
            gods by his cruel father Tantalus, the divine beings, touched
            with pity, plunged his mangled remains in a kettle, from which
            after decoction he emerged alive and young.533
“Fire,” says Jamblichus,
            “destroys the material part of
            sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it,
            releasing them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of the
            purity of its nature, making them meet for communion with the
            gods. So, too, it releases us from the bondage of corruption, it
            likens us to the gods, it makes us meet for their friendship, and
            it converts our material nature into an immaterial.”534
            Thus we can understand why kings and commoners who claimed or
            aspired to divinity should choose death by fire. It opened to
            them the gates of heaven. The quack Peregrinus, who ended his
            disreputable career in the flames at Olympia, gave out that after
            death he would be turned into a spirit who would guard men from
            the perils of the night; and, as Lucian remarked, no doubt there
            were plenty of fools to believe him.535
            According to one account, the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles,
            who set up for being a god in his lifetime, leaped into the
            crater of Etna in order to establish his claim to godhead.536
            There is nothing incredible in the tradition. The crack-brained
            philosopher, with his itch for notoriety, may well have done what
            Indian fakirs537 and
            the brazen-faced mountebank Peregrinus did in antiquity, and what
            Russian peasants and Chinese Buddhists have done in modern
            times.538
            There is no extremity to which fanaticism or vanity, or a mixture
            of the two, will not impel its victims.


[pg 182]


 


§ 4. The Divinity of Lydian
            Kings.







The Lydian kings seem to have
                claimed divinity on the ground of their descent from
                Hercules, the god of the double-axe and of the lion; and this
                Lydian Hercules or Sandon appears to have been the same with
                the Cilician Sandan. Lydian kings held responsible for the
                weather and the crops.





But apart from
            any general notions of the purificatory virtues of fire, the
            kings of Lydia seem to have had a special reason for regarding
            death in the flames as their appropriate end. For the ancient
            dynasty of the Heraclids which preceded the house of Croesus on
            the throne traced their descent from a god or hero whom the
            Greeks called Hercules;539 and
            this Lydian Hercules appears to have been identical in name and
            in substance with the Cilician Hercules, whose effigy was
            regularly burned on a great pyre at Tarsus. The Lydian Hercules
            bore the name of Sandon;540 the
            Cilician Hercules bore the name of Sandan, or perhaps rather of
            Sandon, since Sandon is known from inscriptions and other
            evidence to have been a Cilician name.541 The
            characteristic emblems of the Cilician Hercules were the lion and
            the double-headed axe; and both these emblems meet us at Sardes
            in connexion with the dynasty of the Heraclids. For the
            double-headed axe was carried as part of the sacred regalia by
            Lydian kings from the time of the legendary queen Omphale down to
            the reign of Candaules, the last of the Heraclid kings. It is
            said to have been given to Omphale by Hercules himself, and it
            was apparently regarded as a palladium of the Heraclid
            sovereignty; for after the dotard Candaules ceased to carry the
            axe himself, and had handed it over to the keeping of a courtier,
            a rebellion broke out, and the ancient dynasty of the Heraclids
            came to an end. The new king Gyges did not attempt to carry the
            old emblem of sovereignty; he dedicated it with other spoils to
            Zeus in Caria. Hence the image of the Carian Zeus bore an axe in
            his hand and received the epithet of Labrandeus, from
            labrys, the Lydian word for
            “axe.”542
            Such is Plutarch's account; but we may [pg 183] suspect that Zeus, or rather the native god
            whom the Greeks identified with Zeus, carried the axe long before
            the time of Candaules. If, as is commonly supposed, the axe was
            the symbol of the Asiatic thunder-god,543 it
            would be an appropriate emblem in the hand of kings, who are so
            often expected to make rain, thunder, and lightning for the good
            of their people. Whether the kings of Lydia were bound to make
            thunder and rain we do not know; but at all events, like many
            early monarchs, they seem to have been held responsible for the
            weather and the crops. In the reign of Meles the country suffered
            severely from dearth, so the people consulted an oracle, and the
            deity laid the blame on the kings, one of whom had in former
            years incurred the guilt of murder. The soothsayers accordingly
            declared that King Meles, though his own hands were clean, must
            be banished for three years in order that the taint of bloodshed
            should be purged away. The king obeyed and retired to Babylon,
            where he lived three years. In his absence the kingdom was
            administered by a deputy, a certain Sadyattes, son of Cadys, who
            traced his descent from Tylon.544 As
            to this Tylon we shall hear more presently. Again, we read that
            the Lydians rejoiced greatly at the assassination of Spermus,
            another of their kings, “for he was very
            wicked, and the land suffered from drought in his
            reign.”545
            Apparently, like the ancient Irish and many modern Africans, they
            laid the drought at the king's door, and thought that he only got
            what he deserved under the knife of the assassin.
[pg 184]






The lion-god of Lydia.





With regard to
            the lion, the other emblem of the Cilician Hercules, we are told
            that the same king Meles, who was banished because of a dearth,
            sought to make the acropolis of Sardes impregnable by carrying
            round it a lion which a concubine had borne to him. Unfortunately
            at a single point, where the precipices were such that it seemed
            as if no human foot could scale them, he omitted to carry the
            beast, and sure enough at that very point the Persians afterwards
            clambered up into the citadel.546 Now
            Meles was one of the old Heraclid dynasty547 who
            boasted their descent from the lion-hero Hercules; hence the
            carrying of a lion round the acropolis was probably a form of
            consecration intended to place the stronghold under the
            guardianship of the lion-god, the hereditary deity of the royal
            family. And the story that the king's concubine gave birth to a
            lion's whelp suggests that the Lydian kings not only claimed
            kinship with the beast, but posed as lions in their own persons
            and passed off their sons as lion-cubs. Croesus dedicated at
            Delphi a lion of pure gold, perhaps as a badge of Lydia,548 and
            Hercules with his lion's skin is a common type on coins of
            Sardes.549







Identity of the Lydian and
                Cilician Hercules.





Thus the
            death, or the attempted death, of Croesus on the pyre completes
            the analogy between the Cilician and the Lydian Hercules. At
            Tarsus and at Sardes we find the worship of a god whose symbols
            were the lion and the double-headed axe, and who was burned on a
            great pyre, either in effigy or in the person of a human
            representative. The Greeks called him Hercules, but his native
            name was Sandan or Sandon. At Sardes he seems to have been
            personated by the kings, who carried the double-axe and perhaps
            wore, like their ancestor Hercules, the lion's skin. We may
            conjecture that at Tarsus also the royal family aped the
            lion-god. At all events we know that Sandan, the name of the god,
            entered into the names of Cilician [pg 185] kings, and that in later times the priests
            of Sandan at Tarsus wore the royal purple.550





 


§ 5. Hittite Gods at Tarsus and
            Sardes.







The Cilician and Lydian Hercules
                (Sandan or Sandon) seems to have been a Hittite deity.





Now we have
            traced the religion of Tarsus back by a double thread to the
            Hittite religion of Cappadocia. One thread joins the Baal of
            Tarsus, with his grapes and his corn, to the god of Ibreez. The
            other thread unites the Sandan of Tarsus, with his lion and his
            double axe, to the similar figure at Boghaz-Keui. Without being
            unduly fanciful, therefore, we may surmise that the
            Sandon-Hercules of Lydia was also a Hittite god, and that the
            Heraclid dynasty of Lydia were of Hittite blood. Certainly the
            influence, if not the rule, of the Hittites extended to Lydia;
            for at least two rock-carvings accompanied by Hittite
            inscriptions are still to be seen in the country. Both of them
            attracted the attention of the ancient Greeks. One of them
            represents a god or warrior in Hittite costume armed with a spear
            and bow. It is carved on the face of a grey rock, which stands
            out conspicuous on a bushy hillside, where an old road runs
            through a glen from the valley of the Hermus to the valley of the
            Cayster. The place is now called Kara-Bel. Herodotus thought that
            the figure represented the Egyptian king and conqueror
            Sesostris.551 The
            other monument is a colossal seated figure of the Mother of the
            Gods, locally known in antiquity as Mother Plastene. It is hewn
            out of the solid rock and occupies a large niche in the face of a
            cliff at the steep northern foot of Mount Sipylus.552
            Thus it would seem that at some time or other the Hittites
            carried their arms to the shores of the Aegean. There is no
            improbability, therefore, in the view that a Hittite dynasty may
            have reigned at Sardes.553


[pg 186]


 


§ 6. The Resurrection of
            Tylon.







Death and resurrection of the
                Lydian hero Tylon. Feast of the Golden Flower at
                Sardes.





The burning of
            Sandan, like that of Melcarth,554 was
            probably followed by a ceremony of his resurrection or awakening,
            to indicate that the divine life was not extinct, but had only
            assumed a fresher and purer form. Of that resurrection we have,
            so far as I am aware, no direct evidence. In default of it,
            however, there is a tale of a local Lydian hero called Tylon or
            Tylus, who was killed and brought to life again. The story runs
            thus. Tylon or Tylus was a son of Earth.555 One
            day as he was walking on the banks of the Hermus a serpent stung
            and killed him. His distressed sister Moire had recourse to a
            giant named Damasen, who attacked and slew the serpent. But the
            serpent's mate culled a herb, “the flower
            of Zeus” in the woods, and bringing it in her mouth put it
            to the lips of the dead serpent, which immediately revived. In
            her turn Moire took the hint and restored her brother Tylon to
            life by touching him with the same plant.556 A
            similar incident occurs in many folk-tales. Serpents are often
            credited with a knowledge of life-giving plants.557 But
            Tylon seems to have been more than a mere hero of fairy-tales. He
            was closely associated with Sardes, for he figures on the coins
            of the city along with his champion Damasen or Masnes, the dead
            serpent, and the life-giving branch.558 And
            [pg 187] he was related in
            various ways to the royal family of Lydia; for his daughter
            married Cotys, one of the earliest kings of the country,559 and
            a descendant of his acted as regent during the banishment of King
            Meles.560 It
            has been suggested that the story of his death and resurrection
            was acted as a pageant to symbolize the revival of plant life in
            spring.561 At
            all events, a festival called the Feast of the Golden Flower was
            celebrated in honour of Persephone at Sardes,562
            probably in one of the vernal months, and the revival of the hero
            and of the goddess may well have been represented together. The
            Golden Flower of the Festival would then be the “flower of Zeus” of the legend, perhaps the
            yellow crocus of nature or rather her more gorgeous sister, the
            Oriental saffron. For saffron grew in great abundance at the
            Corycian cave of Zeus;563 and
            it is an elegant conjecture, if it is nothing more, that the very
            name of the place meant “the Crocus
            Cave.”564
            However, on the coins of Sardes the magical plant seems to be a
            branch rather than a blossom, a Golden Bough rather than a Golden
            Flower.




[pg 188]




 


Chapter VIII. Volcanic
          Religion.



 


§ 1. The Burning of a
            God.







The custom of burning a god may
                have been intended to recruit his divine energies.





Thus it
            appears that a custom of burning a god in effigy or in the person
            of a human representative was practised by at least two peoples
            of Western Asia, the Phoenicians and the Hittites. Whether they
            both developed the custom independently, or whether one of them
            adopted it from the other, we cannot say. And their reasons for
            celebrating a rite which to us seems strange and monstrous are
            also obscure. In the preceding inquiry some grounds have been
            adduced for thinking that the practice was based on a conception
            of the purifying virtue of fire, which, by destroying the
            corruptible and perishable elements of man, was supposed to fit
            him for union with the imperishable and the divine. Now to people
            who created their gods in their own likeness, and imagined them
            subject to the same law of decadence and death, the idea would
            naturally occur that fire might do for the gods what it was
            believed to do for men, that it could purge them of the taint of
            corruption and decay, could sift the mortal from the immortal in
            their composition, and so endow them with eternal youth. Hence a
            custom might arise of subjecting the deities themselves, or the
            more important of them, to an ordeal of fire for the purpose of
            refreshing and renovating those creative energies on the
            maintenance of which so much depended. To the coarse apprehension
            of the uninstructed and unsympathetic observer the solemn rite
            might easily wear a very different aspect. According as he was of
            a pious or of a sceptical turn of mind, he might [pg 189] denounce it as a sacrilege or
            deride it as an absurdity. “To burn the
            god whom you worship,” he might say, “is the height of impiety and of folly. If you
            succeed in the attempt, you kill him and deprive yourselves of
            his valuable services. If you fail, you have mortally offended
            him, and sooner or later he will visit you with his severe
            displeasure.” To this the worshipper, if he was patient
            and polite, might listen with a smile of indulgent pity for the
            ignorance and obtuseness of the critic. “You are much mistaken,” he might observe,
            “in imagining that we expect or attempt
            to kill the god whom we adore. The idea of such a thing is as
            repugnant to us as to you. Our intention is precisely the
            opposite of that which you attribute to us. Far from wishing to
            destroy the deity, we desire to make him live for ever, to place
            him beyond the reach of that process of degeneration and final
            dissolution to which all things here below appear by their nature
            to be subject. He does not die in the fire. Oh no! Only the
            corruptible and mortal part of him perishes in the flames: all
            that is incorruptible and immortal of him will survive the purer
            and stronger for being freed from the contagion of baser
            elements. That little heap of ashes which you see there is not
            our god. It is only the skin which he has sloughed, the husk
            which he has cast. He himself is far away, in the clouds of
            heaven, in the depths of earth, in the running waters, in the
            tree and the flower, in the corn and the vine. We do not see him
            face to face, but every year he manifests his divine life afresh
            in the blossoms of spring and the fruits of autumn. We eat of his
            broken body in bread. We drink of his shed blood in the juice of
            the grape.”





 


§ 2. The Volcanic Region of
            Cappadocia.







The custom of burning a god may
                have stood in some relation to volcanic phenomena.





Some such
            train of reasoning may suffice to explain, though naturally not
            to justify, the custom which we bluntly call the burning of a
            god. Yet it is worth while to ask whether in the development of
            the practice these general considerations may not have been
            reinforced or modified by special circumstances; for example, by
            the natural features of the country where the custom grew up. For
            the history [pg
            190]
            of religion, like that of all other human institutions, has been
            profoundly affected by local conditions, and cannot be fully
            understood apart from them. Now Asia Minor, the region where the
            practice in question appears to have been widely diffused, has
            from time immemorial been subjected to the action of volcanic
            forces on a great scale. It is true that, so far as the memory of
            man goes back, the craters of its volcanoes have been extinct,
            but the vestiges of their dead or slumbering fires are to be seen
            in many places, and the country has been shaken and rent at
            intervals by tremendous earthquakes. These phenomena cannot fail
            to have impressed the imagination of the inhabitants, and thereby
            to have left some mark on their religion.







The great extinct volcano Mount
                Argaeus in Cappadocia.





Among the
            extinct volcanoes of Anatolia the greatest is Mount Argaeus, in
            the centre of Cappadocia, the heart of the old Hittite country.
            It is indeed the highest point of Asia Minor, and one of the
            loftiest mountains known to the ancients; for in height it falls
            not very far short of Mount Blanc. Towering abruptly in a huge
            pyramid from the plain, it is a conspicuous object for miles on
            miles. Its top is white with eternal snow, and in antiquity its
            lower slopes were clothed with dense forests, from which the
            inhabitants of the treeless Cappadocian plains drew their supply
            of timber. In these woods, and in the low grounds at the foot of
            the mountain, the languishing fires of the volcano manifested
            themselves as late as the beginning of our era. The ground was
            treacherous. Under a grassy surface there lurked pits of fire,
            into which stray cattle and unwary travellers often fell.
            Experienced woodmen used great caution when they went to fell
            trees in the forest. Elsewhere the soil was marshy, and flames
            were seen to play over it at night.565
            Superstitious fancies no doubt [pg 191] gathered thick around these perilous spots,
            but what shape they took we cannot say. Nor do we know whether
            sacrifices were offered on the top of the mountain, though a
            curious discovery may perhaps be thought to indicate that they
            were. Sharp and lofty pinnacles of red porphyry, inaccessible to
            the climber, rise in imposing grandeur from the eternal snow of
            the summit, and here Mr. Tozer found that the rock had been
            perforated in various places with human habitations. One such
            rock-hewn dwelling winds inward for a considerable distance; rude
            niches are hollowed in its sides, and on its roof and walls may
            be seen the marks of tools.566 The
            ancients certainly did not climb mountains for pleasure or
            health, and it is difficult to imagine that any motive but
            superstition should have led them to provide dwellings in such a
            place. These rock-cut chambers may have been shelters for priests
            charged with the performance of religious or magical rites on the
            summit.





 


§ 3. Fire-Worship in
            Cappadocia.







Persian fire-worship in
                Cappadocia. Worship of natural fires which burn perpetually.
                The perpetual fires of Baku.





Under the
            Persian rule Cappadocia became, and long continued to be, a great
            seat of the Zoroastrian fire-worship. In the time of Strabo,
            about the beginning of our era, the votaries of that faith and
            their temples were still numerous in the country. The perpetual
            fire burned on an altar, surrounded by a heap of ashes, in the
            middle of the temple; and the priests daily chanted their liturgy
            before it, holding in their hands a bundle of myrtle rods and
            wearing on their heads tall felt caps with cheek-pieces which
            covered their lips, lest they should defile the sacred flame with
            their breath.567 It
            is reasonable to suppose that the natural fires which burned
            perpetually on the outskirts of Mount Argaeus attracted the
            devotion of the disciples of Zoroaster, for elsewhere similar
            fires have been the object of religious [pg 192] reverence down to modern times. Thus at
            Jualamukhi, on the lower slopes of the Himalayas, jets of
            combustible gas issue from the earth; and a great Hindoo temple,
            the resort of many pilgrims, is built over them. The perpetual
            flame, which is of a reddish hue and emits an aromatic perfume,
            rises from a pit in the fore-court of the sanctuary. The
            worshippers deliver their gifts, consisting usually of flowers,
            to the attendant fakirs, who first hold them over the flame and
            then cast them into the body of the temple.568
            Again, Hindoo pilgrims make their way with great difficulty to
            Baku on the Caspian, in order to worship the everlasting fires
            which there issue from the beds of petroleum. The sacred spot is
            about ten miles to the north-east of the city. An English
            traveller, who visited Baku in the middle of the eighteenth
            century, has thus described the place and the worship.
            “There are several ancient temples built
            with stone, supposed to have been all dedicated to fire; most of
            them are arched vaults, not above ten to fifteen feet high.
            Amongst others there is a little temple, in which the Indians now
            worship; near the altar, about three feet high, is a large hollow
            cane, from the end of which issues a blue flame, in colour and
            gentleness not unlike a lamp that burns with spirits, but
            seemingly more pure. These Indians affirm that this flame has
            continued ever since the flood, and they believe it will last to
            the end of the world; that if it was resisted or suppressed in
            that place, it would rise in some other. Here are generally forty
            or fifty of these poor devotees, who come on a pilgrimage from
            their own country, and subsist upon wild sallary, and a kind of
            Jerusalem artichoke, which are very good food, with other herbs
            and roots, found a little to the northward. Their business is to
            make expiation, not for their own sins only, but for those of
            others; and they continue the longer time, in proportion to the
            number of persons for whom they have engaged to pray. They mark
            their foreheads with saffron, and have a great veneration for a
            red cow.”569
            Thus it [pg
            193]
            would seem that a purifying virtue is attributed to the sacred
            flame, since pilgrims come to it from far to expiate sin.





 


§ 4. The Burnt Land of
            Lydia.







The Burnt Land of Lydia.





Another
            volcanic region of Asia Minor is the district of Lydia, to which,
            on account of its remarkable appearance, the Greeks gave the name
            of the Burnt Land. It lies to the east of Sardes in the upper
            valley of the Hermus, and covers an area of about fifty miles by
            forty. As described by Strabo, the country was wholly treeless
            except for the vines, which produced a wine inferior to none of
            the most famous vintages of antiquity. The surface of the plains
            was like ashes; the hills were composed of black stone, as if
            they had been scorched by fire. Some people laid the scene of
            Typhon's battle with the gods in this Black Country, and supposed
            that it had been burnt by the thunderbolts hurled from heaven at
            the impious monster. The philosophic Strabo, however, held that
            the fires which had wrought this havoc were subterranean, not
            celestial, and he pointed to three craters, at intervals of about
            four miles, each in a hill of scoriae which he supposed to have
            been once molten matter ejected by the volcanoes.570 His
            observation and his theory have both been confirmed by modern
            science. The three extinct volcanoes to which he referred are
            still conspicuous features of the landscape. Each is a black cone
            of loose cinders, scoriae, and ashes, with steep sides and a deep
            crater. From each a flood of rugged black lava has flowed forth,
            bursting out at the foot of the cone, and then rushing down the
            dale to the bed of the Hermus. The dark streams follow all the
            sinuosities of the valleys, their sombre hue contrasting with the
            rich verdure of the surrounding landscape. Their surface, broken
            into a thousand fantastic forms, resembles a sea lashed into fury
            by a gale, and then suddenly hardened into [pg 194] stone. Regarded from the
            geological point of view, these black cones of cinders and these
            black rivers of lava are of comparatively recent formation.
            Exposure to the weather for thousands of years has not yet
            softened their asperities and decomposed them into vegetable
            mould; they are as hard and ungenial as if the volcanic stream
            had ceased to flow but yesterday. But in the same district there
            are upwards of thirty other volcanic cones, whose greater age is
            proved by their softened forms, their smoother sides, and their
            mantle of vegetation. Some of them are planted with vineyards to
            their summits.571
            Thus the volcanic soil is still as favourable to the cultivation
            of the vine as it was in antiquity. The relation between the two
            was noted by the ancients. Strabo compares the vines of the Burnt
            Land with the vineyards of Catania fertilized by the ashes of
            Mount Etna; and he tells us that some ingenious persons explained
            the fire-born Dionysus as a myth of the grapes fostered by
            volcanic agency.572





 


§ 5. The Earthquake
            God.







Earthquakes in Asia Minor.
                Worship of Poseidon, the earthquake god.





But the
            inhabitants of these regions were reminded of the slumbering
            fires by other and less agreeable tokens than the generous juice
            of their grapes. For not the Burnt Land only but the country to
            the south, including the whole valley of the Maeander, was
            subject to frequent and violent shocks of earthquake. The soil
            was loose, friable, and full of salts, the ground hollow,
            undermined by fire and water. In particular the city of
            Philadelphia was a great centre of disturbance. The shocks there,
            we are told, were continuous. The houses rocked, the walls
            cracked and gaped; the few inhabitants were kept busy repairing
            the breaches or buttressing and propping the edifices which
            threatened to tumble [pg
            195]
            about their ears. Most of the citizens, indeed, had the prudence
            to dwell dispersed on their farms. It was a marvel, says Strabo,
            that such a city should have any inhabitants at all, and a still
            greater marvel that it should ever have been built.573
            However, by a wise dispensation of Providence, the earthquakes
            which shook the foundations of their houses only strengthened
            those of their faith. The people of Apameia, whose town was
            repeatedly devastated, paid their devotions with great fervour to
            Poseidon, the earthquake god.574
            Again, the island of Santorin, in the Greek Archipelago, has been
            for thousands of years a great theatre of volcanic activity. On
            one occasion the waters of the bay boiled and flamed for four
            days, and an island composed of red-hot matter rose gradually, as
            if hoisted by machinery, above the waves. It happened that the
            sovereignty of the seas was then with the Rhodians, those
            merchant-princes whose prudent policy, strict but benevolent
            oligarchy, and beautiful island-city, rich with accumulated
            treasures of native art, rendered them in a sense the Venetians
            of the ancient world. So when the ebullition and heat of the
            eruption had subsided, their sea-captains landed in the new
            island, and founded a sanctuary of Poseidon the Establisher or
            Securer,575 a
            complimentary epithet often bestowed on him as a hint not to
            shake the earth more than he could conveniently help.576 In
            many [pg
            196]
            places people sacrificed to Poseidon the Establisher, in the hope
            that he would be as good as his name and not bring down their
            houses on their heads.577







Spartan propitiation of Poseidon
                during an earthquake.





Another
            instance of a Greek attempt to quiet the perturbed spirit
            underground is instructive, because similar efforts are still
            made by savages in similar circumstances. Once when a Spartan
            army under King Agesipolis had taken the field, it chanced that
            the ground under their feet was shaken by an earthquake. It was
            evening, and the king was at mess with the officers of his staff.
            No sooner did they feel the shock than, with great presence of
            mind, they rose from their dinner and struck up a popular hymn in
            honour of Poseidon. The soldiers outside the tent took up the
            strain, and soon the whole army joined in the sacred
            melody.578 It
            is not said whether the flute-band, which always played the
            Spartan redcoats into action,579
            accompanied the deep voices of the men with its shrill music. At
            all events, the intention of this service of praise, addressed to
            the earth-shaking god, can only have been to prevail on him to
            stop. I have spoken of the Spartan redcoats because the uniform
            of Spartan soldiers was red.580 As
            they fought in an extended, not a deep, formation, a Spartan line
            of battle must always have been, what the British used to be, a
            thin red line. It was in this order, and no doubt with the music
            [pg 197] playing and the
            sun flashing on their arms, that they advanced to meet the
            Persians at Thermopylae. Like Cromwell's Ironsides, these men
            could fight as well as sing psalms.581







Modes of stopping an earthquake
                by informing the god or giant that there are still men on the
                earth.





If the
            Spartans imagined that they could stop an earthquake by a
            soldiers' chorus, their theory and practice resembled those of
            many other barbarians. Thus the people of Timor, in the East
            Indies, think that the earth rests on the shoulder of a mighty
            giant, and that when he is weary of bearing it on one shoulder he
            shifts it to the other, and so causes the ground to quake. At
            such times, accordingly, they all shout at the top of their
            voices to let him know that there are still people on the earth;
            for otherwise they fear lest, impatient of his burden, he might
            tip it into the sea.582 The
            Manichaeans held a precisely similar theory of earthquakes,
            except that according to them the weary giant transferred his
            burden from one shoulder to the other at the end of every thirty
            years,583 a
            view which, at all events, points to the observation of a cycle
            in the recurrence of earthquake shocks. But we are not told that
            these heretics reduced an absurd theory to an absurd practice by
            raising a shout in [pg
            198]
            order to remind the earth-shaker of the inconvenience he was
            putting them to. However, both the theory and the practice are to
            be found in full force in various parts of the East Indies. When
            the Balinese and the Sundanese feel an earthquake they cry out,
            “Still alive,” or “We still live,” to acquaint the earth-shaking
            god or giant with their existence.584 The
            natives of Leti, Moa, and Lakor, islands of the Indian
            Archipelago, imagine that earthquakes are caused by Grandmother
            Earth in order to ascertain whether her descendants are still to
            the fore. So they make loud noises for the purpose of satisfying
            her grandmotherly solicitude.585 The
            Tami of German New Guinea ascribe earthquakes to a certain old
            Panku who sits under a great rock; when he stirs, the earth
            quakes. If the shock lasts a long time they beat on the ground
            with palm-branches, saying, “You down
            there! easy a little! We men are still here.”586 The
            Shans of Burma are taught by Buddhist monks that under the world
            there sleeps a great fish with his tail in his mouth, but
            sometimes he wakes, bites his tail, and quivering with pain
            causes the ground to quiver and shake likewise. That is the cause
            of great earthquakes. But the cause of little earthquakes is
            different. These are produced by little men who live underground
            and sometimes feeling lonely knock on the roof of the world over
            their heads; these knockings we perceive as slight shocks of
            earthquakes. When Shans feel such a shock, they run out of their
            houses, kneel down, and answer the little men saying,
            “We are here! We are here!”587
            Earthquakes are common in the Pampa del Sacramento of Eastern
            Peru. The Conibos, a tribe of Indians on the left bank of the
            great Ucayali River, attribute these disturbances to the creator,
            who usually resides in heaven, but comes down from time to time
            to see whether the work of his hands still exists. The result of
            his descent is an earthquake. So when one happens, these Indians
            rush out [pg
            199]
            of their huts with extravagant gestures shouting, as if in answer
            to a question, “A moment, a moment, here
            I am, father, here I am!” Their intention is, no doubt, to
            assure their heavenly father that they are still alive, and that
            he may return to his mansion on high with an easy mind. They
            never remember the creator nor pay him any heed except at an
            earthquake.588 In
            Africa the Atonga tribe of Lake Nyassa used to believe that an
            earthquake was the voice of God calling to inquire whether his
            people were all there. So when the rumble was heard underground
            they all shouted in answer, “Ye,
            ye,” and some of them went to the mortars
            used for pounding corn and beat on them with pestles. They
            thought that if any one of them did not thus answer to the divine
            call he would die.589 In
            Ourwira the people think that an earthquake is caused by a dead
            sultan marching past underground; so they stand up to do him
            honour, and some raise their hands to the salute. Were they to
            omit these marks of respect to the deceased, they would run the
            risk of being swallowed up alive.590 The
            Baganda of Central Africa used to attribute earthquakes to a
            certain god named Musisi, who lived underground and set the earth
            in a tremor when he moved about. At such times persons who had
            fetishes to hand patted them and begged the god to be still;
            women who were with child patted their bellies to keep the god
            from taking either their own life or that of their unborn babes;
            others raised a shrill cry to induce him to remain quiet.591







Conduct of the Bataks during an
                earthquake.





When the
            Bataks of Sumatra feel an earthquake they shout “The handle! The handle!” The meaning of the
            cry is variously explained. Some say that it contains a delicate
            allusion to the sword which is thrust up to the hilt into the
            body of the demon or serpent who shakes the earth. Thus explained
            the words are a jeer or taunt levelled at that mischievous
            being.592
            Others say that when Batara-guru, the [pg 200] creator, was about to fashion the earth he
            began by building a raft, which he commanded a certain
            Naga-padoha to support. While he was hard at work his chisel
            broke, and at the same moment Naga-padoha budged under his
            burden. Therefore Batara-guru said, “Hold
            hard a moment! The handle of the chisel is broken off.”
            And that is why the Bataks call out “The
            handle of the chisel” during an earthquake. They believe
            that the deluded Naga-padoha will take the words for the voice of
            the creator, and that he will hold hard accordingly.593







Various modes of prevailing upon
                the earthquake god to stop.





When the earth
            quakes in some parts of Celebes, it is said that all the
            inhabitants of a village will rush out of their houses and grub
            up grass by handfuls in order to attract the attention of the
            earth-spirit, who, feeling his hair thus torn out by the roots,
            will be painfully conscious that there are still people above
            ground.594 So
            in Samoa, during shocks of earthquake, the natives sometimes ran
            and threw themselves on the ground, gnawed the earth, and shouted
            frantically to the earthquake god Mafuie to desist lest he should
            shake the earth to pieces.595
            They consoled themselves with the thought that Mafuie has only
            one arm, saying, “If he had two, what a
            shake he would give!”596 The
            Bagobos of the Philippine Islands believe that the earth rests on
            a great post, which a large serpent is trying to remove. When the
            serpent shakes the post, the earth quakes. At such times the
            Bagobos beat their dogs to make them howl, for the howling of the
            animals frightens the serpent, and he stops shaking the post.
            Hence so long as an earthquake lasts the howls of dogs may be
            heard to proceed from every house in a Bagobo village.597 The
            Tongans think that the earth is supported on the prostrate
            [pg 201] form of the god
            Móooi. When he is tired of lying in one posture, he tries to turn
            himself about, and that causes an earthquake. Then the people
            shout and beat the ground with sticks to make him lie
            still.598
            During an earthquake the Burmese make a great uproar, beating the
            walls of their houses and shouting, to frighten away the evil
            genius who is shaking the earth.599 On
            a like occasion and for a like purpose some natives of the
            Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain beat drums and blow on
            shells.600 The
            Dorasques, an Indian tribe of Panama, believed that the volcano
            of Chiriqui was inhabited by a powerful spirit, who, in his
            anger, caused an earthquake. At such times the Indians shot
            volleys of arrows in the direction of the volcano to terrify him
            and make him desist.601
            Some of the Peruvian Indians regarded an earthquake as a sign
            that the gods were thirsty, so they poured water on the
            ground.602 In
            Ashantee several persons used to be put to death after an
            earthquake; they were slain as a sacrifice to Sasabonsun, the
            earthquake god, in the hope of satiating his cruelty for a time.
            Houses which had been thrown down or damaged by an earthquake
            were sprinkled with human blood before they were rebuilt. When
            part of the wall of the king's house at Coomassie was knocked
            down by an earthquake, fifty young girls were slaughtered, and
            the mud to be used in the repairs was kneaded with their
            blood.603







Religious and moral effects of
                earthquakes.





An English
            resident in Fiji attributed a sudden access of piety in Kantavu,
            one of the islands, to a tremendous earthquake which destroyed
            many of the natives. The Fijians think that their islands rest on
            a god, who causes earthquakes by turning over in his sleep. So
            they sacrifice to him things of great value in order that he may
            turn as gently as possible.604 In
            Nias a violent earthquake has a salutary [pg 202] effect on the morals of the natives. They
            suppose that it is brought about by a certain Batoo Bedano, who
            intends to destroy the earth because of the iniquity of mankind.
            So they assemble and fashion a great image out of the trunk of a
            tree. They make offerings, they confess their sins, they correct
            the fraudulent weights and measures, they vow to do better in the
            future, they implore mercy, and if the earth has gaped, they
            throw a little gold into the fissure. But when the danger is
            over, all their fine vows and promises are soon forgotten.605







The god of the sea and of the
                earthquake naturally conceived as one.





We may surmise
            that in those Greek lands which have suffered severely from
            earthquakes, such as Achaia and the western coasts of Asia Minor,
            Poseidon was worshipped not less as an earthquake god than as a
            sea-god.606 It
            is to be remembered that an earthquake is often accompanied by a
            tremendous wave which comes rolling in like a mountain from the
            sea, swamping the country far and wide; indeed on the coasts of
            Chili and Peru, which have often been devastated by both, the
            wave is said to be even more dreaded than the earthquake.607 The
            Greeks often experienced this combination of catastrophes, this
            conspiracy, as it were, of earth and sea against the life and
            works of man.608
[pg 203] It was thus that
            Helice, on the coast of Achaia, perished with all its inhabitants
            on a winter night, overwhelmed by the billows; and its
            destruction was set down to the wrath of Poseidon.609
            Nothing could be more natural than that to people familiar with
            the twofold calamity the dreadful god of the earthquake and of
            the sea should appear to be one and the same. The historian
            Diodorus Siculus observes that Peloponnese was deemed to have
            been in ancient days the abode of Poseidon, that the whole
            country was in a manner sacred to him, and that every city in it
            worshipped him above all the gods. The devotion to Poseidon he
            explains partly by the earthquakes and floods by which the land
            has been visited, partly by the remarkable chasms and
            subterranean rivers which are a conspicuous feature of its
            limestone mountains.610





 


§ 6. The Worship of Mephitic
            Vapours.







Poisonous mephitic
                vapours.





But eruptions
            and earthquakes, though the most tremendous, are not the only
            phenomena of volcanic regions which have affected the religion of
            the inhabitants. Poisonous mephitic vapours and hot springs,
            which abound especially in volcanic regions,611
            have also had their devotees, and both are, or were formerly, to
            be found in those western districts of Asia Minor with which we
            are here concerned. To begin with vapours, we may take as an
            illustration of their deadly effect the Guevo Upas, or Valley of
            Poison, near Batur in Java. It is the crater of an extinct
            volcano, about half a mile in circumference, and from thirty to
            thirty-five [pg
            204]
            feet deep. Neither man nor beast can descend to the bottom and
            live. The ground is covered with the carcases of tigers, deer,
            birds, and even the bones of men, all killed by the abundant
            emanations of carbonic acid gas which exhale from the soil.
            Animals let down into it die in a few minutes. The whole range of
            hills is volcanic. Two neighbouring craters constantly emit
            smoke.612 In
            another crater of Java, near the volcano Talaga Bodas, the
            sulphureous exhalations have proved fatal to tigers, birds, and
            countless insects; and the soft parts of these creatures, such as
            fibres, muscles, hair, and skin, are well preserved, while the
            bones are corroded or destroyed.613







Places of Pluto or Charon. The
                valley of Amsanctus.





The ancients
            were acquainted with such noxious vapours in their own country,
            and they regarded the vents from which they were discharged as
            entrances to the infernal regions.614 The
            Greeks called them places of Pluto (Plutonia) or places of Charon
            (Charonia).615 In
            Italy the vapours were personified as a goddess, who bore the
            name of Mefitis and was worshipped in various parts of the
            peninsula.616 She
            had a temple in the famous valley of Amsanctus in the land of the
            Hirpini, where the exhalations, supposed to be the breath of
            Pluto himself, were of so deadly a character that all who set
            foot on the spot died.617 The
            place is a glen, partly wooded with chestnut trees, among
            limestone hills, distant about four miles from the town of
            Frigento. Here, under a steep shelving bank of decomposed
            limestone, there is a pool of dark ash-coloured water, which
            continually bubbles up with an explosion like distant thunder. A
            rapid stream of the same blackish water rushes into the pool from
            under the [pg
            205]
            barren rocky hill, but the fall is not more than a few feet. A
            little higher up are apertures in the ground, through which warm
            blasts of sulphuretted hydrogen are constantly issuing with more
            or less noise, according to the size of the holes. These blasts
            are no doubt what the ancients deemed the breath of Pluto. The
            pool is now called Mefite and the holes
            Mefitinelle. On the other side
            of the pool is a smaller pond called the Coccaio, or Cauldron, because
            it appears to be perpetually boiling. Thick masses of mephitic
            vapour, visible a hundred yards off, float in rapid undulations
            on its surface. The exhalations given off by these waters are
            sometimes fatal, especially when they are borne on a high wind.
            But as the carbonic acid gas does not naturally rise more than
            two or three feet from the ground, it is possible in calm weather
            to walk round the pools, though to stoop is difficult and to fall
            would be dangerous. The ancient temple of Mefitis has been
            replaced by a shrine of the martyred Santa Felicita.618







Sanctuaries of Charon or Pluto
                in Caria.





Similar
            discharges of poisonous vapours took place at various points in
            the volcanic district of Caria, and were the object of
            superstitious veneration in antiquity. Thus at the village of
            Thymbria there was a sacred cave which gave out deadly
            emanations, and the place was deemed a sanctuary of Charon.619 A
            similar cave might be seen at the village of Acharaca near Nysa,
            in the valley of the Maeander. Here, below the cave, there was a
            fine grove with a temple dedicated to Pluto and Persephone. The
            place was sacred to Pluto, yet sick people resorted to it for the
            restoration of their health. They lived in the neighbouring
            village, and the priests prescribed for them according to the
            revelations which they received from the two deities in dreams.
            Often the priests would take the patients to the cave and leave
            them there for days without food. Sometimes the sufferers
            themselves were favoured with revelations in dreams, but
            [pg 206] they always acted
            under the spiritual direction of the priests. To all but the sick
            the place was unapproachable and fatal. Once a year a festival
            was held in the village, and then afflicted folk came in crowds
            to be rid of their ailments. About the hour of noon on that day a
            number of athletic young men, their naked bodies greased with
            oil, used to carry a bull up to the cave and there let it go. But
            the beast had not taken a few steps into the cavern before it
            fell to the ground and expired: so deadly was the vapour.620







Sanctuary of Pluto at the Lydian
                or Phrygian Hierapolis.





Another
            Plutonian sanctuary of the same sort existed at Hierapolis, in
            the upper valley of the Maeander, on the borders of Lydia and
            Phrygia.621
            Here under a brow of the hill there was a deep cave with a narrow
            mouth just large enough to admit the body of a man. A square
            space in front of the cave was railed off, and within the railing
            there hung so thick a cloudy vapour that it was hardly possible
            to see the ground. In calm weather people could step up to the
            railing with safety, but to pass within it was instant death.
            Bulls driven into the enclosure fell to the earth and were
            dragged out lifeless; and sparrows, which spectators by way of
            experiment allowed to fly into the mist, dropped dead at once.
            Yet the eunuch priests of the Great Mother Goddess could enter
            the railed-off area with impunity; nay more, they used to go up
            to the very mouth of the cave, stoop, and creep into it for a
            certain distance, holding their breath; but there was a look on
            their faces as if they were being choked. Some people ascribed
            the immunity of the priests to the divine protection, others to
            the use of antidotes.622





 


§ 7. The Worship of Hot
            Springs.







The hot springs and petrified
                cascades of Hierapolis.





The mysterious
            chasm of Hierapolis, with its deadly mist, has not been
            discovered in modern times; indeed it [pg 207] would seem to have vanished even in
            antiquity.623 It
            may have been destroyed by an earthquake. But another marvel of
            the Sacred City remains to this day. The hot springs with their
            calcareous deposit, which, like a wizard's wand, turns all that
            it touches to stone, excited the wonder of the ancients, and the
            course of ages has only enhanced the fantastic splendour of the
            great transformation scene. The stately ruins of Hierapolis
            occupy a broad shelf or terrace on the mountain-side commanding
            distant views of extraordinary beauty and grandeur, from the dark
            precipices and dazzling snows of Mount Cadmus away to the burnt
            summits of Phrygia, fading in rosy tints into the blue of the
            sky. Hills, broken by wooded ravines, rise behind the city. In
            front the terrace falls away in cliffs three hundred feet high
            into the desolate treeless valley of the Lycus. Over the face of
            these cliffs the hot streams have poured or trickled for
            thousands of years, encrusting them with a pearly white substance
            like salt or driven snow. The appearance of the whole is as if a
            mighty river, some two miles broad, had been suddenly arrested in
            the act of falling over a great cliff and transformed into white
            marble. It is a petrified Niagara. The illusion is strongest in
            winter or in cool summer mornings when the mist from the hot
            springs hangs in the air, like a veil of spray resting on the
            foam of the waterfall. A closer inspection of the white cliff,
            which attracts the traveller's attention at a distance of twenty
            miles, only adds to its beauty and changes one illusion for
            another. For now it seems to be a glacier, its long pendent
            stalactites looking like icicles, and the snowy whiteness of its
            smooth expanse being tinged here and there with delicate hues of
            blue, rose and green, all the colours of the rainbow. These
            petrified cascades of Hierapolis are among the wonders of the
            world. Indeed they have probably been without a rival in their
            kind ever since the famous white and pink terraces or staircases
            of Rotomahana in New Zealand were destroyed by a volcanic
            eruption.







The hot pool of Hierapolis with
                its deadly exhalations.





The hot
            springs which have wrought these miracles at [pg 208] Hierapolis rise in a large
            deep pool among the vast and imposing ruins of the ancient city.
            The water is of a greenish-blue tint, but clear and transparent.
            At the bottom may be seen the white marble columns of a beautiful
            Corinthian colonnade, which must formerly have encircled the
            sacred pool. Shimmering through the green-blue water they look
            like the ruins of a Naiad's palace. Clumps of oleanders and
            pomegranate-trees overhang the little lake and add to its charm.
            Yet the enchanted spot has its dangers. Bubbles of carbonic acid
            gas rise incessantly from the bottom and mount like flickering
            particles of silver to the surface. Birds and beasts which come
            to drink of the water are sometimes found dead on the bank,
            stifled by the noxious vapour; and the villagers tell of bathers
            who have been overpowered by it and drowned, or dragged down, as
            they say, to death by the water-spirit.







Deposits left by the waters of
                Hierapolis.





The streams of
            hot water, no longer regulated by the care of a religious
            population, have for centuries been allowed to overflow their
            channels and to spread unchecked over the tableland. By the
            deposit which they leave behind they have raised the surface of
            the ground many feet, their white ridges concealing the ruins and
            impeding the footstep, except where the old channels, filled up
            solidly to the brim, now form hard level footpaths, from which
            the traveller may survey the strange scene without quitting the
            saddle. In antiquity the husbandmen used purposely to lead the
            water in rills round their lands, and thus in a few years their
            fields and vineyards were enclosed with walls of solid stone. The
            water was also peculiarly adapted for the dyeing of woollen
            stuffs. Tinged with dyes extracted from certain roots, it
            imparted to cloths dipped in it the finest shades of purple and
            scarlet.624
[pg 209]






Hercules the patron of hot
                springs.





We cannot
            doubt that Hierapolis owed its reputation as a holy city in great
            part to its hot springs and mephitic vapours. The curative virtue
            of mineral and thermal springs was well known to the ancients,
            and it would be interesting, if it were possible, to trace the
            causes which have gradually eliminated the superstitious element
            from the use of such waters, and so converted many old seats of
            volcanic religion into the medicinal baths of modern times. It
            was an article of Greek faith that all hot springs were sacred to
            Hercules.625
“Who ever heard of cold baths that were
            sacred to Hercules?” asks Injustice in Aristophanes; and
            Justice admits that the brawny hero's patronage of hot baths was
            the excuse alleged by young men for sprawling all day in the
            steaming water when they ought to have been sweating in the
            gymnasium.626 Hot
            springs were said to have been first produced for the refreshment
            of Hercules after his labours; some ascribed the kindly thought
            and deed to Athena, others to Hephaestus, and others to the
            nymphs.627 The
            warm water of these sources appears to have been used especially
            to heal diseases of the skin; for a Greek proverb, “the itch of Hercules,” was applied to persons
            in need of hot baths for the scab.628 On
            the strength of his connexion with medicinal springs Hercules set
            up as a patron of the healing art. In heaven, if we can trust
            Lucian, he even refused to give place to Aesculapius himself, and
            the difference between the two deities led to a very unseemly
            brawl. “Do you mean to say,”
            demanded Hercules of his father Zeus, in a burst of indignation,
            “that this apothecary is to sit down to
            table [pg
            210]
            before me?” To this the apothecary replied with much
            acrimony, recalling certain painful episodes in the private life
            of the burly hero. Finally the dispute was settled by Zeus, who
            decided in favour of Aesculapius on the ground that he died
            before Hercules, and was therefore entitled to rank as senior
            god.629







Hot springs of Hercules at
                Thermopylae.





Among the hot
            springs sacred to Hercules the most famous were those which rose
            in the pass of Thermopylae, and gave to the defile its name of
            the Hot Gates.630 The
            warm baths, called by the natives “the
            Pots,” were enlarged and improved for the use of invalids
            by the wealthy sophist Herodes Atticus in the second century of
            our era. An altar of Hercules stood beside them.631
            According to one story, the hot springs were here produced for
            his refreshment by the goddess Athena.632
            They exist to this day apparently unchanged, although the
            recession of the sea has converted what used to be a narrow pass
            into a wide, swampy flat, through which the broad but shallow,
            turbid stream of the Sperchius creeps sluggishly seaward. On the
            other side the rugged mountains descend in crags and precipices
            to the pass, their grey rocky sides tufted with low wood or
            bushes wherever vegetation can find a foothold, and their summits
            fringed along the sky-line with pines. They remind a Scotchman of
            the “crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly
            hurled” in which Ben Venue comes down to the Silver Strand
            of Loch Katrine. The principal spring bursts from the rocks just
            at the foot of the steepest and loftiest part of the range. After
            forming a small pool it flows in a rapid stream eastward,
            skirting the foot of the mountains. The water is so hot that it
            is almost painful to hold the hands in it, at least near the
            source, and steam rises thickly from its surface along the course
            of the brook. Indeed the clouds of white steam and the strong
            sulphurous smell acquaint the traveller with his approach to the
            famous spot before he comes in sight of the springs. The water is
            clear, but has the appearance of being of a deep sea-blue or
            sea-green [pg
            211]
            colour. This appearance it takes from the thick, slimy deposits
            of blue-green sulphur which line the bed of the stream. From its
            source the blue, steaming, sulphur-reeking brook rushes eastward
            for a few hundred yards at the foot of the mountain, and is then
            joined by the water of another spring, which rises much more
            tranquilly in a sort of natural bath among the rocks. The sides
            of this bath are not so thickly coated with sulphur as the banks
            of the stream; hence its water, about two feet deep, is not so
            blue. Just beyond it there is a second and larger bath, which,
            from its square shape and smooth sides, would seem to be in part
            artificial. These two baths are probably the Pots mentioned by
            ancient writers. They are still used by bathers, and a few wooden
            dressing-rooms are provided for the accommodation of visitors.
            Some of the water is conducted in an artificial channel to turn a
            mill about half a mile off at the eastern end of the pass. The
            rest crosses the flat to find its way to the sea. In its passage
            it has coated the swampy ground with a white crust, which sounds
            hollow under the tread.633







Hot springs of Hercules at
                Aedepsus.





We may
            conjecture that these remarkable springs furnished the principal
            reason for associating Hercules with this district, and for
            laying the scene of his fiery death on the top of the
            neighbouring Mount Oeta. The district is volcanic, and has often
            been shaken by earthquakes.634
            Across the strait the island of Euboea has suffered from the same
            cause and at the same time; and on its southern shore sulphureous
            springs, like those of Thermopylae, but much hotter and more
            powerful, were in like manner dedicated to Hercules.635 The
            strong medicinal qualities of the [pg 212] waters, which are especially adapted for
            the cure of skin diseases and gout, have attracted patients in
            ancient and modern times. Sulla took the waters here for his
            gout;636 and
            in the days of Plutarch the neighbouring town of Aedepsus,
            situated in a green valley about two miles from the springs, was
            one of the most fashionable resorts of Greece. Elegant and
            commodious buildings, an agreeable country, and abundance of fish
            and game united with the health-giving properties of the baths to
            draw crowds of idlers to the place, especially in the prime of
            the glorious Greek spring, the height of the season at Aedepsus.
            While some watched the dancers dancing or listened to the strains
            of the harp, others passed the time in discourse, lounging in the
            shade of cloisters or pacing the shore of the beautiful strait
            with its prospect of mountains beyond mountains immortalized in
            story across the water.637 Of
            all this Greek elegance and luxury hardly a vestige remains. Yet
            the healing springs flow now as freely as of old. In the course
            of time the white and yellow calcareous deposit which the water
            leaves behind it, has formed a hillock at the foot of the
            mountains, and the stream now falls in a steaming cascade from
            the face of the rock into the sea.638
            Once, after an earthquake, the springs ceased to flow for three
            days, and at the same time the hot springs of Thermopylae dried
            up.639 The
            incident proves the relation of these Baths of Hercules on both
            sides of the strait to each other and to volcanic agency. On
            another occasion a cold spring suddenly burst out beside the hot
            springs of Aedepsus, and as its water was supposed to be
            peculiarly beneficial to health, patients hastened from far and
            near to drink of it. But the generals of King Antigonus, anxious
            to raise a revenue, imposed a tax on the use of the water; and
            the spring, as if in disgust at being turned to so base a use,
            disappeared as suddenly as it had come.640
[pg 213]






Reasons for the association of
                Hercules with hot springs.





The
            association of Hercules with hot springs was not confined to
            Greece itself. Greek influence extended it to Sicily,641
            Italy,642 and
            even to Dacia.643 Why
            the hero should have been chosen as the patron of thermal waters,
            it is hard to say. Yet it is worth while, perhaps, to remember
            that such springs combine in a manner the twofold and seemingly
            discordant principles of water and fire,644 of
            fertility and destruction, and that the death of Hercules in the
            flames seems to connect him with the fiery element. Further, the
            apparent conflict of the two principles is by no means as
            absolute as at first sight we might be tempted to suppose; for
            heat is as necessary as moisture to the support of animal and
            vegetable life. Even volcanic fires have their beneficent aspect,
            since their products lend a more generous flavour to the juice of
            the grape. The ancients themselves, as we have seen, perceived
            the connexion between good wine and volcanic soil, and proposed
            more or less seriously to interpret the vine-god Dionysus as a
            child of the fire.645 As
            a patron of hot springs Hercules combined the genial elements of
            heat and moisture, and may therefore have stood, in one of his
            many aspects, for the principle of fertility.







The hot springs of Callirrhoe in
                Moab.





In Syria
            childless women still resort to hot springs in order to procure
            offspring from the saint or the jinnee of the waters.646
[pg 214] This, for example,
            they do at the famous hot springs in the land of Moab which flow
            through a wild gorge into the Dead Sea. In antiquity the springs
            went by the Greek name of Callirrhoe, the Fair-flowing. It was to
            them that the dying Herod, weighed down by a complication of
            disorders which the pious Jews traced to God's vengeance,
            repaired in the vain hope of arresting or mitigating the fatal
            progress of disease. The healing waters brought no alleviation of
            his sufferings, and he retired to Jericho to die.647 The
            hot springs burst in various places from the sides of a deep
            romantic ravine to form a large and rapid stream of lukewarm
            water, which rushes down the depths of the lynn, dashing and
            foaming over boulders, under the dense shade of tamarisk-trees
            and cane-brakes, the rocks on either bank draped with an emerald
            fringe of maidenhair fern. One of the springs falls from a high
            rocky shelf over the face of a cliff which is tinted bright
            yellow by the sulphurous water. The lofty crags which shut in the
            narrow chasm are bold and imposing in outline and varied in
            colour, for they range from red sandstone through white and
            yellow limestone to black basalt. The waters issue from the line
            where the sandstone and limestone meet. Their temperature is
            high, and from great clefts in the mountain-sides you may see
            clouds of steam rising and hear the rumbling of the running
            waters. The bottom of the glen is clothed and half choked with
            rank vegetation; for, situated far below the level of the sea,
            the hot ravine is almost African in climate and flora. Here grow
            dense thickets of canes with their feathery tufts that shake and
            nod in every passing breath of wind: here the oleander flourishes
            with its dark-green glossy foliage and its beautiful pink
            blossoms: here tall date-palms rear their stately heads wherever
            the hot springs flow. Gorgeous flowers, too, carpet the ground.
            Splendid orobanches, some pinkish purple, some bright yellow,
            grow in large tufts, each flower-stalk more than three feet high,
            and covered with blossoms from the ground upwards. An exquisite
            rose-coloured geranium abounds among the stones; and where the
            soil is a little richer than [pg 215] usual it is a mass of the night-scented
            stock, while the crannies of the rocks are gay with scarlet
            ranunculus and masses of sorrel and cyclamen. Over all this
            luxuriant vegetation flit great butterflies of brilliant hues.
            Looking down the far-stretching gorge to its mouth you see in the
            distance the purple hills of Judah framed between walls of black
            basaltic columns on the one side and of bright red sandstone on
            the other.648







Prayers and sacrifices offered
                to the hot springs of Callirrhoe.





Every year in
            the months of April and May the Arabs resort in crowds to the
            glen to benefit by the waters. They take up their quarters in
            huts made of the reeds which they cut in the thickets. They bathe
            in the steaming water, or allow it to splash on their bodies as
            it gushes in a powerful jet from a crevice in the rocks. But
            before they indulge in these ablutions, the visitors, both Moslem
            and Christian, propitiate the spirit or genius of the place by
            sacrificing a sheep or goat at the spring and allowing its red
            blood to tinge the water. Then they bathe in what they call the
            Baths of Solomon. Legend runs that Solomon the Wise made his
            bathing-place here, and in order to keep the water always warm he
            commanded the jinn never to let the fire die down. The jinn obey
            his orders to this day, but sometimes they slacken their efforts,
            and then the water runs low and cool. When the bathers perceive
            that, they say, “O Solomon, bring green
            wood, dry wood,” and no sooner have they said so than the
            water begins to gurgle and steam as before. Sick people tell the
            saint or sheikh, who lives invisible in the springs, all about
            their ailments; they point out to him the precise spot that is
            the seat of the malady, it may be the back, or the head, or the
            legs; and if the heat of the water diminishes, they call out,
            “Thy bath is cold, O sheikh, thy bath is
            cold!” whereupon the obliging sheikh stokes up the fire,
            and out comes the water boiling. But if in spite of their
            remonstrances the temperature of the spring [pg 216] continues low, they say that
            the sheikh has gone on pilgrimage, and they shout to him to
            hasten his return. Barren Moslem women also visit these hot
            springs to obtain children, and they do the same at the similar
            baths near Kerak. At the latter place a childless woman has been
            known to address the spirit of the waters saying, “O sheikh Solomon, I am not yet an old woman; give me
            children.”649 The
            respect thus paid by Arab men and women to the sheikh Solomon at
            his hot springs may help us to understand the worship which at
            similar spots Greek men and women used to render to the hero
            Hercules. As the ideal of manly strength he may have been deemed
            the father of many of his worshippers, and Greek wives may have
            gone on pilgrimage to his steaming waters in order to obtain the
            wish of their hearts.





 


§ 8. The Worship of Volcanoes in
            other Lands.







Worship of volcanic phenomena in
                other lands.





How far these
            considerations may serve to explain the custom of burning
            Hercules, or gods identified with him, in effigy or in the person
            of a human being, is a question which deserves to be considered.
            It might be more easily answered if we were better acquainted
            with analogous customs in other parts of the world, but our
            information with regard to the worship of volcanic phenomena in
            general appears to be very scanty. However, a few facts may be
            noted.







The great volcano of Kirauea in
                Hawaii.





The largest
            active crater in the world is Kirauea in Hawaii. It is a huge
            cauldron, several miles in circumference and hundreds of feet
            deep, the bottom of which is filled with boiling lava in a state
            of terrific ebullition; from the red surge rise many black cones
            or insulated craters belching columns of grey smoke or pyramids
            of brilliant flame from their roaring mouths, while torrents of
            blazing lava roll down their sides to flow into the molten,
            tossing sea of fire below. The scene is especially impressive by
            night, [pg
            217]
            when flames of sulphurous blue or metallic red sweep across the
            heaving billows of the infernal lake, casting a broad glare on
            the jagged sides of the insulated craters, which shoot up eddying
            streams of fire with a continuous roar, varied at frequent
            intervals by loud detonations, as spherical masses of fusing lava
            or bright ignited stones are hurled into the air.650 It
            is no wonder that so appalling a spectacle should have impressed
            the imagination of the natives and filled it with ideas of the
            dreadful beings who inhabit the fiery abyss. They considered the
            great crater, we are told, as the primaeval abode of their
            volcanic deities: the black cones that rise like islands from the
            burning lake appeared to them the houses where the gods often
            amused themselves by playing at draughts: the roaring of the
            furnaces and the crackling of the flames were the music of their
            dance; and the red flaming surge was the surf wherein they
            played, sportively swimming on the rolling wave.651







The divinities of the volcano.
                Offerings to the volcano. Priestess impersonating the goddess
                of the volcano.





For these
            fearful divinities they had appropriate names; one was the King
            of Steam or Vapour, another the Rain of Night, another the
            Husband of Thunder, another the Child of War with a Spear of
            Fire, another the Fiery-eyed Canoe-breaker, another the Red-hot
            Mountain holding or lifting Clouds, and so on. But above them all
            was the great goddess Pélé. All were dreaded: they never
            journeyed on errands of mercy but only to receive offerings or to
            execute vengeance; and their arrival in any place was announced
            by the convulsive trembling of the earth, by the lurid light of
            volcanic eruption, by the flash of lightning, and the clap of
            thunder. The whole island was bound to pay them tribute or
            support their temples and devotees; and whenever the chiefs or
            people failed to send the proper offerings, or incurred their
            displeasure by insulting them or their priests or breaking the
            taboos which should be observed round about the craters, they
            filled the huge cauldron on the top of Kirauea with molten lava,
            and spouted the fiery liquid on the surrounding country; or they
            would [pg
            218]
            march to some of their other houses, which mortals call craters,
            in the neighbourhood of the sinners, and rushing forth in a river
            or column of fire overwhelm the guilty. If fishermen did not
            bring them enough fish from the sea, they would go down, kill all
            the fish, fill the shoals with lava, and so destroy the
            fishing-grounds. Hence, when the volcano was in active eruption
            or threatened to break out, the people used to cast vast numbers
            of hogs, alive or dead, into the craters or into the rolling
            torrent of lava in order to appease the gods and arrest the
            progress of the fiery stream.652 To
            pluck certain sacred berries, which grow on the mountain, to dig
            sand on its slopes, or to throw stones into the crater were acts
            particularly offensive to the deities, who would instantly rise
            in volumes of smoke, crush the offender under a shower of stones,
            or so involve him in thick darkness and rain that he could never
            find his way home. However, it was lawful to pluck and eat of the
            sacred berries, if only a portion of them were first offered to
            the goddess Pélé. The offerer would take a branch laden with
            clusters of the beautiful red and yellow berries, and standing on
            the edge of the abyss and looking towards the place where the
            smoke rose in densest volumes, he would say, “Pélé, here are your berries: I offer some to you,
            some I also eat.” With that he would throw some of the
            berries into the crater and eat the rest.653 A
            kind of brittle volcanic glass, of a dark-olive colour and
            semi-transparent, is found on the mountain in the shape of
            filaments as fine as human hair; the natives call it the hair of
            the goddess Pélé.654
            Worshippers used to cast locks of their own hair into the crater
            of Kirauea as an offering to the dreadful goddess who dwelt in
            it. She had also a temple at the bottom of a valley, where stood
            a number of rude stone idols wrapt in white and yellow cloth.
            Once a year the priests and devotees of Pélé assembled there to
            perform certain rites and to feast on hogs, dogs, and fruit,
            which the [pg
            219]
            pious inhabitants of Hamakua brought to the holy place in great
            abundance. This annual festival was intended to propitiate the
            volcanic goddess and thereby to secure the country from
            earthquakes and floods of molten lava.655 The
            goddess of the volcano was supposed to inspire people, though to
            the carnal eye the inspiration resembled intoxication. One of
            these inspired priestesses solemnly affirmed to an English
            missionary that she was the goddess Pélé herself and as such
            immortal. Assuming a haughty air, she said, “I am Pélé; I shall never die; and those who follow
            me, when they die, if part of their bones be taken to Kirauea
            (the name of the volcano), will live with me in the bright fires
            there.”656 For
            “the worshippers of Pélé threw a part of
            bones of their dead into the volcano, under the impression that
            the spirits of the deceased would then be admitted to the society
            of the volcanic deities, and that their influence would preserve
            the survivors from the ravages of volcanic fire.”657







Sacrifices to volcanoes. Human
                victims thrown into volcanoes. Annual sacrifices to the
                volcano Bromo in Java.





This last
            belief may help to explain a custom, which some peoples have
            observed, of throwing human victims into volcanoes. The intention
            of such a practice need not be simply to appease the dreadful
            volcanic spirits by ministering to their fiendish lust of
            cruelty; it may be a notion that the souls of the men or women
            who have been burnt to death in the crater will join the host of
            demons in the fiery furnace, mitigate their fury, and induce them
            to spare the works and the life of man. But, however we may
            explain the custom, it has been usual in various parts of the
            world to throw human beings as well as less precious offerings
            into the craters of active volcanoes. Thus the Indians of
            Nicaragua used to sacrifice men, women, and children to the
            active volcano Massaya, flinging them into the craters: we are
            told that the victims went willingly to their fate.658 In
            the island of Siao, to the north of Celebes, a child was formerly
            sacrificed every year in order to keep the volcano Goowoong Awoo
            quiet. The poor wretch was tortured to death at a festival which
            lasted nine days. In later times the place of the child has
            [pg 220] been taken by a
            wooden puppet, which is hacked to pieces in the same way. The
            Galelareese of Halmahera say that the Sultan of Ternate used
            annually to require some human victims, who were cast into the
            crater of the volcano to save the island from its ravages.659 In
            Java the volcano Bromo or Bromok is annually worshipped by people
            who throw offerings of coco-nuts, plantains, mangoes, rice,
            chickens, cakes, cloth, money, and so forth into the
            crater.660 To
            the Tenggereese, an aboriginal heathen tribe inhabiting the
            mountains of which Bromo is the central crater, the festival of
            making offerings to the volcano is the greatest of the year. It
            is held at full moon in the twelfth month, the day being fixed by
            the high priest. Each household prepares its offerings the night
            before. Very early in the morning the people set out by moonlight
            for Mount Bromo, men, women, and children all arrayed in their
            best. Before they reach the mountain they must cross a wide sandy
            plain, where the spirits of the dead are supposed to dwell until
            by means of the Festival of the Dead they obtain admittance to
            the volcano. It is a remarkable sight to see thousands of people
            streaming across the level sands from three different directions.
            They have to descend into it from the neighbouring heights, and
            the horses break into a gallop when, after the steep descent,
            they reach the level. The gay and varied colours of the dresses,
            the fantastic costumes of the priests, the offerings borne along,
            the whole lit up by the warm beams of the rising sun, lend to the
            spectacle a peculiar charm. All assemble at the foot of the
            crater, where a market is held for offerings and refreshments.
            The scene is a lively one, for hundreds of people must now pay
            the vows which they made during the year. The priests sit in a
            long row on mats, and when the high priest appears the people
            pray, saying, “Bromo, we thank thee for
            all thy gifts and benefits with which thou ever blessest us, and
            for which we offer thee our thank-offerings to-day. Bless us, our
            children, and our children's children.” The prayers over,
            the high priest gives a signal, and the whole multitude arises
            and climbs the mountain. On reaching the edge of the [pg 221] crater, the pontiff again
            blesses the offerings of food, clothes, and money, which are then
            thrown into the crater. Yet few of them reach the spirits for
            whom they are intended; for a swarm of urchins now scrambles down
            into the crater, and at more or less risk to life and limb
            succeeds in appropriating the greater part of the offerings. The
            spirits, defrauded of their dues, must take the will for the
            deed.661
            Tradition says that once in a time of dearth a chief vowed to
            sacrifice one of his children to the volcano, if the mountain
            would bless the people with plenty of food. His prayer was
            answered, and he paid his vow by casting his youngest son as a
            thank-offering into the crater.662







Other sacrifices to
                volcanoes.





On the slope
            of Mount Smeroe, another active volcano in Java, there are two
            small idols, which the natives worship and pray to when they
            ascend the mountain. They lay food before the images to obtain
            the favour of the god of the volcano.663 In
            antiquity people cast into the craters of Etna vessels of gold
            and silver and all kinds of victims. If the fire swallowed up the
            offerings, the omen was good; but if it rejected them, some evil
            was sure to befall the offerer.664







No evidence that the Asiatic
                custom of burning kings or gods was connected with volcanic
                phenomena.





These examples
            suggest that a custom of burning men or images may possibly be
            derived from a practice of throwing them into the craters of
            active volcanoes in order to appease the dreaded spirits or gods
            who dwell there. But unless we reckon the fires of Mount Argaeus
            in Cappadocia665 and
            of Mount Chimaera in Lycia,666
            there is apparently no record of any mountain in Western Asia
            which has been in [pg
            222]
            eruption within historical times. On the whole, then, we conclude
            that the Asiatic custom of burning kings or gods was probably in
            no way connected with volcanic phenomena. Yet it was perhaps
            worth while to raise the question of the connexion, even though
            it has received only a negative answer. The whole subject of the
            influence which physical environment has exercised on the history
            of religion deserves to be studied with more attention than it
            has yet received.667




[pg 223]




 


Chapter IX. The Ritual of
          Adonis.







Results of the preceding
              inquiry.





Thus far we have
          dealt with the myth of Adonis and the legends which associated him
          with Byblus and Paphos. A discussion of these legends led us to the
          conclusion that among Semitic peoples in early times, Adonis, the
          divine lord of the city, was often personated by priestly kings or
          other members of the royal family, and that these his human
          representatives were of old put to death, whether periodically or
          occasionally, in their divine character. Further, we found that
          certain traditions and monuments of Asia Minor seem to preserve
          traces of a similar practice. As time went on, the cruel custom was
          apparently mitigated in various ways; for example, by substituting
          an effigy or an animal for the man, or by allowing the destined
          victim to escape with a merely make-believe sacrifice. The evidence
          of all this is drawn from a variety of scattered and often
          ambiguous indications: it is fragmentary, it is uncertain, and the
          conclusions built upon it inevitably partake of the weakness of the
          foundation. Where the records are so imperfect, as they happen to
          be in this branch of our subject, the element of hypothesis must
          enter largely into any attempt to piece together and interpret the
          disjointed facts. How far the interpretations here proposed are
          sound, I leave to future inquiries to determine.







Our knowledge of the rites of
              Adonis derived chiefly from Greek writers.





From dim regions
          of the past, where we have had to grope our way with small help
          from the lamp of history, it is a relief to pass to those later
          periods of classical antiquity on which contemporary Greek writers
          have shed the light of their clear intelligence. To them we owe
          [pg 224] almost all that we
          know for certain about the rites of Adonis. The Semites who
          practised the worship have said little about it; at all events
          little that they said has come down to us. Accordingly, the
          following account of the ritual is derived mainly from Greek
          authors who saw what they describe; and it applies to ages in which
          the growth of humane feeling had softened some of the harsher
          features of the worship.







Festivals of the death and
              resurrection of Adonis. The festival at Alexandria. The
              festival at Byblus.





At the festivals
          of Adonis, which were held in Western Asia and in Greek lands, the
          death of the god was annually mourned, with a bitter wailing,
          chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were
          carried out as to burial and then thrown into the sea or into
          springs;668 and
          in some places his revival was celebrated on the following
          day.669 But
          at different places the ceremonies varied somewhat in the manner
          and apparently also in the season of their celebration. At
          Alexandria images of Aphrodite and Adonis were displayed on two
          couches; beside them were set ripe fruits of all kinds, cakes,
          plants growing in flower-pots, and green bowers twined with anise.
          The marriage of the lovers was celebrated one day, and on the
          morrow women attired as mourners, with streaming hair and bared
          [pg 225] breasts, bore the
          image of the dead Adonis to the sea-shore and committed it to the
          waves. Yet they sorrowed not without hope, for they sang that the
          lost one would come back again.670 The
          date at which this Alexandrian ceremony was observed is not
          expressly stated; but from the mention of the ripe fruits it has
          been inferred that it took place in late summer.671 In
          the great Phoenician sanctuary of Astarte at Byblus the death of
          Adonis was annually mourned, to the shrill wailing notes of the
          flute, with weeping, lamentation, and beating of the breast; but
          next day he was believed to come to life again and ascend up to
          heaven in the presence of his worshippers. The disconsolate
          believers, left behind on earth, shaved their heads as the
          Egyptians did on the death of the divine bull Apis; women who could
          not bring themselves to sacrifice their beautiful tresses had to
          give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival,
          and to dedicate to Astarte the wages of their shame.672







Date of the festival at Byblus.
              The anemone and the red rose the flowers of Adonis. Festivals
              of Adonis at Athens and Antioch.





This Phoenician
          festival appears to have been a vernal one, for its date was
          determined by the discoloration of the river Adonis, and this has
          been observed by modern travellers to occur in spring. At that
          season the red earth washed down from the mountains by the rain
          tinges the water of the river, and even the sea, for a great way
          with a blood-red hue, and the crimson stain was believed to be the
          blood of Adonis, annually wounded to death by the boar on Mount
          Lebanon.673
          Again, the [pg
          226]
          scarlet anemone is said to have sprung from the blood of Adonis, or
          to have been stained by it;674 and
          as the anemone blooms in Syria about Easter, this may be thought to
          show that the festival of Adonis, or at least one of his festivals,
          was held in spring. The name of the flower is probably derived from
          Naaman (“darling”), which seems to
          have been an epithet of Adonis. The Arabs still call the anemone
          “wounds of the Naaman.”675 The
          red rose also was said to owe its hue to the same sad occasion; for
          Aphrodite, hastening to her wounded lover, trod on a bush of white
          roses; the cruel thorns tore her tender flesh, and her sacred blood
          dyed the white roses for ever red.676 It
          would be idle, perhaps, to lay much weight on evidence drawn from
          the calendar of flowers, and in particular to press an argument so
          fragile as the bloom of the rose. Yet so far as it counts at all,
          the tale which links the damask rose with the death of Adonis
          points to a summer rather than to a spring celebration of his
          passion. In Attica, certainly, the festival fell at the height of
          summer. For the fleet which Athens fitted out against Syracuse, and
          by the destruction of which her power was permanently crippled,
          sailed at midsummer, and by an ominous coincidence the sombre rites
          of Adonis were being celebrated at the very time. As the troops
          marched down to the harbour to embark, the streets through which
          they passed were lined with coffins and corpse-like effigies, and
          the air was rent with the noise of women wailing for the dead
          Adonis. The circumstance cast a gloom over the sailing of the most
          splendid armament that Athens ever sent to sea.677 Many
          [pg 227] ages afterwards,
          when the Emperor Julian made his first entry into Antioch, he found
          in like manner the gay, the luxurious capital of the East plunged
          in mimic grief for the annual death of Adonis: and if he had any
          presentiment of coming evil, the voices of lamentation which struck
          upon his ear must have seemed to sound his knell.678







Resemblance of these rites to
              Indian and European ceremonies. The death and resurrection of
              Adonis a mythical expression for the annual decay and revival
              of plant life. Adonis sometimes taken for the sun.





The resemblance
          of these ceremonies to the Indian and European ceremonies which I
          have described elsewhere is obvious. In particular, apart from the
          somewhat doubtful date of its celebration, the Alexandrian ceremony
          is almost identical with the Indian.679 In
          both of them the marriage of two divine beings, whose affinity with
          vegetation seems indicated by the fresh plants with which they are
          surrounded, is celebrated in effigy, and the effigies are
          afterwards mourned over and thrown into the water.680 From
          the similarity of these customs to each other and to the spring and
          midsummer customs of modern Europe we should naturally expect that
          they all admit of a common explanation. Hence, if the explanation
          which I have adopted of the latter is correct, the ceremony of the
          death and resurrection of Adonis must also have been a dramatic
          representation of the decay and revival of plant life. The
          inference thus based on the resemblance of the customs is confirmed
          by the following features in the legend and ritual of Adonis. His
          affinity with vegetation comes out at once in the common story of
          his birth. He was said to have been born from a myrrh-tree, the
          bark of which bursting, after a ten month' gestation, allowed the
          lovely infant to come forth. According to some, a boar rent the
          bark with his tusk and so opened a passage for the babe. A faint
          rationalistic colour was given to the legend by saying that his
          mother was a woman named Myrrh, who had been [pg 228] turned into a myrrh-tree soon after she
          had conceived the child.681 The
          use of myrrh as incense at the festival of Adonis may have given
          rise to the fable.682 We
          have seen that incense was burnt at the corresponding Babylonian
          rites,683 just
          as it was burnt by the idolatrous Hebrews in honour of the Queen of
          Heaven,684 who
          was no other than Astarte. Again, the story that Adonis spent half,
          or according to others a third, of the year in the lower world and
          the rest of it in the upper world,685 is
          explained most simply and naturally by supposing that he
          represented vegetation, especially the corn, which lies buried in
          earth half the year and reappears above ground the other half.
          Certainly of the annual phenomena of nature there is none which
          suggests so obviously the idea of death and resurrection as the
          disappearance and reappearance of vegetation in autumn and spring.
          Adonis has been taken for the sun; but there is nothing in the
          sun's annual course within the temperate and tropical zones to
          suggest that he is dead for half or a third of the year and alive
          for the other half or two-thirds. He might, indeed, be conceived as
          weakened in winter, but dead he could not be thought to be; his
          daily reappearance contradicts the supposition.686
          Within the Arctic Circle, where the sun annually disappears for a
          continuous period which varies from twenty-four hours to six months
          according to the latitude, his yearly death and resurrection would
          certainly be an obvious idea; but no one except the unfortunate
          [pg 229] astronomer
          Bailly687 has
          maintained that the Adonis worship came from the Arctic regions. On
          the other hand, the annual death and revival of vegetation is a
          conception which readily presents itself to men in every stage of
          savagery and civilization; and the vastness of the scale on which
          this ever-recurring decay and regeneration takes place, together
          with man's intimate dependence on it for subsistence, combine to
          render it the most impressive annual occurrence in nature, at least
          within the temperate zones. It is no wonder that a phenomenon so
          important, so striking, and so universal should, by suggesting
          similar ideas, have given rise to similar rites in many lands. We
          may, therefore, accept as probable an explanation of the Adonis
          worship which accords so well with the facts of nature and with the
          analogy of similar rites in other lands. Moreover, the explanation
          is countenanced by a considerable body of opinion amongst the
          ancients themselves, who again and again interpreted the dying and
          reviving god as the reaped and sprouting grain.688
[pg 230]






Tammuz or Adonis as a corn-spirit
              bruised and ground in a mill.





The character of
          Tammuz or Adonis as a corn-spirit comes out plainly in an account
          of his festival given by an Arabic writer of the tenth century. In
          describing the rites and sacrifices observed at the different
          seasons of the year by the heathen Syrians of Harran, he says:
          “Tammuz (July). In the middle of this month
          is the festival of el-Bûgât, that is, of the weeping women, and
          this is the Tâ-uz festival, which is celebrated in honour of the
          god Tâ-uz. The women bewail him, because his lord slew him so
          cruelly, ground his bones in a mill, and then scattered them to the
          wind. The women (during this festival) eat nothing which has been
          ground in a mill, but limit their diet to steeped wheat, sweet
          vetches, dates, raisins, and the like.”689
          Tâ-uz, who is no other than Tammuz, is here like Burns's John
          Barleycorn—
[pg
          231]






“They wasted o'er a
                scorching flame





                The marrow of his bones;





                But a miller us'd him worst of all—




For he crush'd him
                between two stones.”







This
          concentration, so to say, of the nature of Adonis upon the cereal
          crops is characteristic of the stage of culture reached by his
          worshippers in historical times. They had left the nomadic life of
          the wandering hunter and herdsman far behind them; for ages they
          had been settled on the land, and had depended for their
          subsistence mainly on the products of tillage. The berries and
          roots of the wilderness, the grass of the pastures, which had been
          matters of vital importance to their ruder forefathers, were now of
          little moment to them: more and more their thoughts and energies
          were engrossed by the staple of their life, the corn; more and more
          accordingly the propitiation of the deities of fertility in general
          and of the corn-spirit in particular tended to become the central
          feature of their religion. The aim they set before themselves in
          celebrating the rites was thoroughly practical. It was no vague
          poetical sentiment which prompted them to hail with joy the rebirth
          of vegetation and to mourn its decline. Hunger, felt or feared, was
          the mainspring of the worship of Adonis.







The mourning for Adonis
              interpreted as a harvest rite.





It has been
          suggested by Father Lagrange that the mourning for Adonis was
          essentially a harvest rite designed to propitiate the corn-god, who
          was then either perishing under the sickles of the reapers, or
          being trodden to death under the hoofs of the oxen on the
          threshing-floor. While the men slew him, the women wept crocodile
          tears at home to appease his natural indignation by a show of grief
          for his death.690 The
          theory fits in well with the dates of the festivals, which fell in
          spring or summer; for spring and summer, not autumn, are the
          seasons of the barley and wheat harvests in the lands which,
          worshipped Adonis.691
[pg 232] Further, the
          hypothesis is confirmed by the practice of the Egyptian reapers,
          who lamented, calling upon Isis, when they cut the first
          corn;692 and
          it is recommended by the analogous customs of many hunting tribes,
          who testify great respect for the animals which they kill and
          eat.693







But probably Adonis was a spirit
              of fruits, edible roots, and grass before he became a spirit of
              the cultivated corn.





Thus interpreted
          the death of Adonis is not the natural decay of vegetation in
          general under the summer heat or the winter cold; it is the violent
          destruction of the corn by man, who cuts it down on the field,
          stamps it to pieces on the threshing-floor, and grinds it to powder
          in the mill. That this was indeed the principal aspect in which
          Adonis presented himself in later times to the agricultural peoples
          of the Levant, may be admitted; but whether from the beginning he
          had been the corn and nothing but the corn, [pg 233] may be doubted. At an earlier period he
          may have been to the herdsman, above all, the tender herbage which
          sprouts after rain, offering rich pasture to the lean and hungry
          cattle. Earlier still he may have embodied the spirit of the nuts
          and berries which the autumn woods yield to the savage hunter and
          his squaw. And just as the husbandman must propitiate the spirit of
          the corn which he consumes, so the herdsman must appease the spirit
          of the grass and leaves which his cattle munch, and the hunter must
          soothe the spirit of the roots which he digs, and of the fruits
          which he gathers from the bough. In all cases the propitiation of
          the injured and angry sprite would naturally comprise elaborate
          excuses and apologies, accompanied by loud lamentations at his
          decease whenever, through some deplorable accident or necessity, he
          happened to be murdered as well as robbed. Only we must bear in
          mind that the savage hunter and herdsman of those early days had
          probably not yet attained to the abstract idea of vegetation in
          general; and that accordingly, so far as Adonis existed for them at
          all, he must have been the Adon or lord of each individual
          tree and plant rather than a personification of vegetable life as a
          whole. Thus there would be as many Adonises as there were trees and
          shrubs, and each of them might expect to receive satisfaction for
          any damage done to his person or property. And year by year, when
          the trees were deciduous, every Adonis would seem to bleed to death
          with the red leaves of autumn and to come to life again with the
          fresh green of spring.







The propitiation of the
              corn-spirit may have fused with the worship of the dead.





We have seen
          reason to think that in early times Adonis was sometimes personated
          by a living man who died a violent death in the character of the
          god. Further, there is evidence which goes to show that among the
          agricultural peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean, the corn-spirit,
          by whatever name he was known, was often represented, year by year,
          by human victims slain on the harvest-field.694 If
          that was so, it seems likely that the propitiation of the
          corn-spirit would tend to fuse to some extent with the worship of
          the dead. For the spirits of these victims [pg 234] might be thought to return to life in the
          ears which they had fattened with their blood, and to die a second
          death at the reaping of the corn. Now the ghosts of those who have
          perished by violence are surly and apt to wreak their vengeance on
          their slayers whenever an opportunity offers. Hence the attempt to
          appease the souls of the slaughtered victims would naturally blend,
          at least in the popular conception, with the attempt to pacify the
          slain corn-spirit. And as the dead came back in the sprouting corn,
          so they might be thought to return in the spring flowers, waked
          from their long sleep by the soft vernal airs. They had been laid
          to their rest under the sod. What more natural than to imagine that
          the violets and the hyacinths, the roses and the anemones, sprang
          from their dust, were empurpled or incarnadined by their blood, and
          contained some portion of their spirit?







“I sometimes think that
                never blows so red





                The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;





                That every Hyacinth the Garden wears





                Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.








“And this reviving Herb
                whose tender Green





                Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean—





                Ah, lean upon it lightly, for who knows




From what once lovely
                Lip it springs unseen?”












The festival of the dead a
              festival of flowers.





In the summer
          after the battle of Landen, the most sanguinary battle of the
          seventeenth century in Europe, the earth, saturated with the blood
          of twenty thousand slain, broke forth into millions of poppies, and
          the traveller who passed that vast sheet of scarlet might well
          fancy that the earth had indeed given up her dead.695 At
          Athens the great Commemoration of the Dead fell in spring about the
          middle of March, when the early flowers are in bloom. Then the dead
          were believed to rise from their graves and go about the streets,
          vainly endeavoring to enter the temples and the dwellings, which
          were barred against these perturbed spirits with ropes, buckthorn,
          and pitch. The name of the festival, according to the most obvious
          and natural interpretation, means the Festival of Flowers, and the
          title would [pg
          235]
          fit well with the substance of the ceremonies if at that season the
          poor ghosts were indeed thought to creep from the narrow house with
          the opening flowers.696 There
          may therefore be a measure of truth in the theory of Renan, who saw
          in the Adonis worship a dreamy voluptuous cult of death, conceived
          not as the King of Terrors, but as an insidious enchanter who lures
          his victims to himself and lulls them into an eternal sleep. The
          infinite charm of nature in the Lebanon, he thought, lends itself
          to religious emotions of this sensuous, visionary sort, hovering
          vaguely between pain and pleasure, between slumber and tears.697 It
          would doubtless be a mistake to attribute to Syrian peasants the
          worship of a conception so purely abstract as that of death in
          general. Yet it may be true that in their simple minds the thought
          of the reviving spirit of vegetation was blent with the very
          concrete notion of the ghosts of the dead, who come to life again
          in spring days with the early flowers, with the tender green of the
          corn and the many-tinted blossoms of the trees. Thus their views of
          the death and resurrection of nature would be coloured by their
          views of the death and resurrection of man, by their personal
          sorrows and hopes and fears. In like manner we cannot doubt that
          Renan's theory of Adonis was itself deeply tinged by passionate
          memories, memories of the slumber akin to death which sealed his
          own eyes on the slopes of the Lebanon, memories of the sister who
          sleeps in the land of Adonis never again to wake with the anemones
          and the roses.


[pg 236]




 


Chapter X. The Gardens of
          Adonis.







Pots of corn, herbs, and flowers,
              called the gardens of Adonis.





Perhaps the best
          proof that Adonis was a deity of vegetation, and especially of the
          corn, is furnished by the gardens of Adonis, as they were called.
          These were baskets or pots filled with earth, in which wheat,
          barley, lettuces, fennel, and various kinds of flowers were sown
          and tended for eight days, chiefly or exclusively by women.
          Fostered by the sun's heat, the plants shot up rapidly, but having
          no root they withered as rapidly away, and at the end of eight days
          were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis, and flung with
          them into the sea or into springs.698







These gardens of Adonis were
              charms to promote the growth of vegetation. The throwing of
              the “gardens”into water was a rain-charm. Parallel European
              customs of drenching the corn with water at harvest or sowing.
              Use of water as a rain-charm at harvest and sowing.





These gardens of
          Adonis are most naturally interpreted as representatives of Adonis
          or manifestations of his power; they represented him, true to his
          original nature, in vegetable form, while the images of him, with
          which they were carried out and cast into the water, portrayed him
          in his later human shape. All these Adonis ceremonies, if I am
          right, were originally intended as charms to promote the growth
          [pg 237] or revival of
          vegetation; and the principle by which they were supposed to
          produce this effect was homoeopathic or imitative magic. For
          ignorant people suppose that by mimicking the effect which they
          desire to produce they actually help to produce it; thus by
          sprinkling water they make rain, by lighting a fire they make
          sunshine, and so on. Similarly, by mimicking the growth of crops
          they hope to ensure a good harvest. The rapid growth of the wheat
          and barley in the gardens of Adonis was intended to make the corn
          shoot up; and the throwing of the gardens and of the images into
          the water was a charm to secure a due supply of fertilizing
          rain.699 The
          same, I take it, was the object of throwing the effigies of Death
          and the Carnival into water in the corresponding ceremonies of
          modern Europe.700
          Certainly the custom of drenching with water a leaf-clad person,
          who undoubtedly personifies vegetation, is still resorted to in
          Europe for the express purpose of producing rain.701
          Similarly the custom of throwing water on the last corn cut at
          harvest, or on the person who brings it home (a custom observed in
          Germany and France, and till quite lately in England and Scotland),
          is in some places practised with the avowed intent to procure rain
          for the next year's crops. Thus in Wallachia and amongst the
          Roumanians in Transylvania, when a girl is bringing home a crown
          made of the last ears of corn cut at harvest, all who meet her
          hasten to throw water on her, and two farm-servants are placed at
          the door for the purpose; for they believe that if this were not
          done, the crops next year would perish from drought.702 So
          [pg 238] amongst the Saxons
          of Transylvania, the person who wears the wreath made of the last
          corn cut is drenched with water to the skin; for the wetter he is,
          the better will be next year's harvest, and the more grain there
          will be threashed out. Sometimes the wearer of the wreath is the
          reaper who cut the last corn.703 In
          Northern Euboea, when the corn-sheaves have been piled in a stack,
          the farmer's wife brings a pitcher of water and offers it to each
          of the labourers that he may wash his hands. Every man, after he
          has washed his hands, sprinkles water on the corn and on the
          threshing-floor, expressing at the same time a wish that the corn
          may last long. Lastly, the farmer's wife holds the pitcher
          slantingly and runs at full speed round the stack without spilling
          a drop, while she utters a wish that the stack may endure as long
          as the circle she has just described.704 At
          the spring ploughing in Prussia, when the ploughmen and sowers
          returned in the evening from their work in the fields, the farmer's
          wife and the servants used to splash water over them. The ploughmen
          and sowers retorted by seizing every one, throwing them into the
          pond, and ducking them under the water. The farmer's wife might
          claim exemption on payment of a forfeit, but every one else had to
          be ducked. By observing this custom they hoped to ensure a due
          supply of rain for the seed.705 Also
          after harvest in Prussia, the person who wore a wreath made of the
          last corn cut was drenched with water, while a prayer was uttered
          that “as the corn had sprung up and
          multiplied through the water, so it might spring up and multiply in
          the barn and granary.”706 At
          Schlanow, in Brandenburg, when the sowers [pg 239] return home from the first sowing they are
          drenched with water “in order that the corn
          may grow.”707 In
          Anhalt on the same occasion the farmer is still often sprinkled
          with water by his family; and his men and horses, and even the
          plough, receive the same treatment. The object of the custom, as
          people at Arensdorf explained it, is “to
          wish fertility to the fields for the whole year.”708 So in
          Hesse, when the ploughmen return with the plough from the field for
          the first time, the women and girls lie in wait for them and slyly
          drench them with water.709 Near
          Naaburg, in Bavaria, the man who first comes back from sowing or
          ploughing has a vessel of water thrown over him by some one in
          hiding.710 At
          Hettingen in Baden the farmer who is about to begin the sowing of
          oats is sprinkled with water, in order that the oats may not
          shrivel up.711
          Before the Tusayan Indians of North America go out to plant their
          fields, the women sometimes pour water on them; the reason for
          doing so is that “as the water is poured on
          the men, so may water fall on the planted fields.”712 The
          Indians of Santiago Tepehuacan steep the seed of the maize in water
          before they sow it, in order that the god of the waters may bestow
          on the fields the needed moisture.713







Gardens of Adonis among the Oraons
              and Mundas of Bengal.





The opinion that
          the gardens of Adonis are essentially charms to promote the growth
          of vegetation, especially of the crops, and that they belong to the
          same class of customs as those spring and midsummer folk-customs of
          modern Europe which I have described elsewhere,714 does
          not rest for its evidence merely on the intrinsic probability of
          the case. Fortunately we are able to show that gardens of Adonis
          (if we may use the expression in a general sense) are still
          planted, first, by a primitive race at their sowing season,
          [pg 240] and, second, by
          European peasants at midsummer. Amongst the Oraons and Mundas of
          Bengal, when the time comes for planting out the rice which has
          been grown in seed-beds, a party of young people of both sexes go
          to the forest and cut a young Karma-tree, or the branch of one.
          Bearing it in triumph they return dancing, singing, and beating
          drums, and plant it in the middle of the village dancing-ground. A
          sacrifice is offered to the tree; and next morning the youth of
          both sexes, linked arm-in-arm, dance in a great circle round the
          Karma-tree, which is decked with strips of coloured cloth and sham
          bracelets and necklets of plaited straw. As a preparation for the
          festival, the daughters of the headman of the village cultivate
          blades of barley in a peculiar way. The seed is sown in moist,
          sandy soil, mixed with turmeric, and the blades sprout and unfold
          of a pale-yellow or primrose colour. On the day of the festival the
          girls take up these blades and carry them in baskets to the
          dancing-ground, where, prostrating themselves reverentially, they
          place some of the plants before the Karma-tree. Finally, the
          Karma-tree is taken away and thrown into a stream or tank.715 The
          meaning of planting these barley blades and then presenting them to
          the Karma-tree is hardly open to question. Trees are supposed to
          exercise a quickening influence upon the growth of crops, and
          amongst the very people in question—the Mundas or
          Mundaris—“the grove deities are held
          responsible for the crops.”716
          Therefore, when at the season for planting out the rice the Mundas
          bring in a tree and treat it with so much respect, their object can
          only be to foster thereby the growth of the rice which is about to
          be planted out; and the custom of causing barley blades to sprout
          rapidly and then presenting them to the tree must be intended to
          subserve the same purpose, perhaps by reminding the tree-spirit of
          his duty towards the crops, and stimulating his activity by this
          visible example of rapid vegetable growth. The throwing of the
          Karma-tree into the water is to be interpreted as a rain-charm.
          [pg 241] Whether the barley
          blades are also thrown into the water is not said; but if my
          interpretation of the custom is right, probably they are so. A
          distinction between this Bengal custom and the Greek rites of
          Adonis is that in the former the tree-spirit appears in his
          original form as a tree; whereas in the Adonis worship he appears
          in human form, represented as a dead man, though his vegetable
          nature is indicated by the gardens of Adonis, which are, so to say,
          a secondary manifestation of his original power as a
          tree-spirit.







Gardens of Adonis in
              Rajputana.





Gardens of
          Adonis are cultivated also by the Hindoos, with the intention
          apparently of ensuring the fertility both of the earth and of
          mankind. Thus at Oodeypoor in Rajputana a festival is held
          “in honour of Gouri, or Isani, the goddess
          of abundance, the Isis of Egypt, the Ceres of Greece. Like the
          Rajpoot Saturnalia, which it follows, it belongs to the vernal
          equinox, when nature in these regions proximate to the tropic is in
          the full expanse of her charms, and the matronly Gouri casts her
          golden mantle over the verdant Vassanti, personification of spring.
          Then the fruits exhibit their promise to the eye; the kohil fills
          the ear with melody; the air is impregnated with aroma, and the
          crimson poppy contrasts with the spikes of golden grain to form a
          wreath for the beneficent Gouri. Gouri is one of the names of Isa
          or Parvati, wife of the greatest of the gods, Mahadeva or Iswara,
          who is conjoined with her in these rites, which almost exclusively
          appertain to the women. The meaning of gouri is ‘yellow,’ emblematic of the ripened harvest,
          when the votaries of the goddess adore her effigies, which are
          those of a matron painted the colour of ripe corn.” The
          rites begin when the sun enters the sign of the Ram, the opening of
          the Hindoo year. An image of the goddess Gouri is made of earth,
          and a smaller one of her husband Iswara, and the two are placed
          together. A small trench is next dug, barley is sown in it, and the
          ground watered and heated artificially till the grain sprouts, when
          the women dance round it hand in hand, invoking the blessing of
          Gouri on their husbands. After that the young corn is taken up and
          distributed by the women to the men, who wear it in their turbans.
          Every wealthy family, or at least every subdivision of the city,
          has its own image. These and other [pg 242] rites, known only to the initiated, occupy
          several days, and are performed within doors. Then the images of
          the goddess and her husband are decorated and borne in procession
          to a beautiful lake, whose deep blue waters mirror the cloudless
          Indian sky, marble palaces, and orange groves. Here the women,
          their hair decked with roses and jessamine carry the image of Gouri
          down a marble staircase to the water's edge, and dance round it
          singing hymns and love-songs. Meantime the goddess is supposed to
          bathe in the water. No men take part in the ceremony; even the
          image of Iswara, the husband-god, attracts little attention.717 In
          these rites the distribution of the barley shoots to the men, and
          the invocation of a blessing on their husbands by the wives, point
          clearly to the desire of offspring as one motive for observing the
          custom. The same motive probably explains the use of gardens of
          Adonis at the marriage of Brahmans in the Madras Presidency. Seeds
          of five or nine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots, which are
          made specially for the purpose and are filled with earth. Bride and
          bridegroom water the seeds both morning and evening for four days;
          and on the fifth day the seedlings are thrown, like the real
          gardens of Adonis, into a tank or river.718







Gardens of Adonis in North-Western
              and Central India.





In the Himalayan
          districts of North-Western India the cultivators sow barley, maize,
          pulse, or mustard in a basket of earth on the twenty-fourth day of
          the fourth month (Asárh), which falls about the
          middle of July. Then on the last day of the month they place amidst
          the new sprouts small clay images of Mahadeo and Parvati and
          worship them in remembrance of the marriage of those deities. Next
          day they cut down the green stalks and wear them in their
          head-dress.719
          Similar is the barley feast known as Jâyî or Jawâra in Upper India
          and as Bhujariya in the Central Provinces. On the seventh day of
          the light half of the month Sâwan grains of barley are sown in a
          pot of manure, and spring up so quickly that by the end of the
          [pg 243] month the vessel is
          full of long, yellowish-green stalks. On the first day of the next
          month, Bhâdon, the women and girls take the stalks out, throw the
          earth and manure into water, and distribute the plants among their
          male friends, who bind them in their turbans and about their
          dress.720 At
          Sargal in the Central Provinces of India this ceremony is observed
          about the middle of September. None but women may take part in it,
          though crowds of men come to look on. Some little time before the
          festival wheat or other grain has been sown in pots ingeniously
          constructed of large leaves, which are held together by the thorns
          of a species of acacia. Having grown up in the dark, the stalks are
          of a pale colour. On the day appointed these gardens of Adonis, as
          we may call them, are carried towards a lake which abuts on the
          native city. The women of every family or circle of friends bring
          their own pots, and having laid them on the ground they dance round
          them. Then taking the pots of sprouting corn they descend to the
          edge of the water, wash the soil away from the pots, and distribute
          the young plants among their friends.721 At
          the temple of the goddess Padmavati, near Pandharpur in the Bombay
          Presidency, a Nine Nights' festival is held in the bright half of
          the month Ashvin (September-October). At this time a bamboo frame
          is hung in front of the image, and from it depend garlands of
          flowers and strings of wheaten cakes. Under the frame the floor in
          front of the pedestal is strewn with a layer of earth in which
          wheat is sown and allowed to sprout.722 A
          similar rite is observed in the same month before the images of two
          other goddesses, Ambabai and Lakhubai, who also have temples at
          Pandharpur.723
[pg 244]






Gardens of Adonis in Bavaria.
              Gardens of Adonis on St. John's Day in Sardinia.





In some parts of
          Bavaria it is customary to sow flax in a pot on the last three days
          of the Carnival; from the seed which grows best an omen is drawn as
          to whether the early, the middle, or the late sowing will produce
          the best crop.724 In
          Sardinia the gardens of Adonis are still planted in connexion with
          the great Midsummer festival which bears the name of St. John. At
          the end of March or on the first of April a young man of the
          village presents himself to a girl, and asks her to be his
          comare (gossip or sweetheart),
          offering to be her compare. The invitation is
          considered as an honour by the girl's family, and is gladly
          accepted. At the end of May the girl makes a pot of the bark of the
          cork-tree, fills it with earth, and sows a handful of wheat and
          barley in it. The pot being placed in the sun and often watered,
          the corn sprouts rapidly and has a good head by Midsummer Eve (St.
          John's Eve, the twenty-third of June). The pot is then called
          Erme or Nenneri. On St. John's Day the
          young man and the girl, dressed in their best, accompanied by a
          long retinue and preceded by children gambolling and frolicking,
          move in procession to a church outside the village. Here they break
          the pot by throwing it against the door of the church. Then they
          sit down in a ring on the grass and eat eggs and herbs to the music
          of flutes. Wine is mixed in a cup and passed round, each one
          drinking as it passes. Then they join hands and sing “Sweethearts of St. John” (Compare e comare
          di San Giovanni) over and over again, the flutes
          playing the while. When they tire of singing they stand up and
          dance gaily in a ring till evening. This is the general Sardinian
          custom. As practised at Ozieri it has some special features. In May
          the pots are made of cork-bark and planted with corn, as already
          described. Then on the Eve of St. John the window-sills are draped
          with rich cloths, on which the pots are placed, adorned with
          crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each of
          the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll
          dressed as a woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste; but
          this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into
          disuse. The village swains go about [pg 245] in a troop to look at the pots and their
          decorations and to wait for the girls, who assemble on the public
          square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled,
          round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be
          “Sweethearts of St. John” act as
          follows. The young man stands on one side of the bonfire and the
          girl on the other, and they, in a manner, join hands by each
          grasping one end of a long stick, which they pass three times
          backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands
          thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to
          each other. Dancing and music go on till late at night.725 The
          correspondence of these Sardinian pots of grain to the gardens of
          Adonis seems complete, and the images formerly placed in them
          answer to the images of Adonis which accompanied his gardens.







Gardens of Adonis on St. John's
              Day in Sicily.





Customs of the
          same sort are observed at the same season in Sicily. Pairs of boys
          and girls become gossips of St. John on St. John's Day by drawing
          each a hair from his or her head and performing various ceremonies
          over them. Thus they tie the hairs together and throw them up in
          the air, or exchange them over a potsherd, which they afterwards
          break in two, preserving each a fragment with pious care. The tie
          formed in the latter way is supposed to last for life. In some
          parts of Sicily the gossips of St. John present each other with
          plates of sprouting corn, lentils, and canary seed, which have been
          planted forty days before the festival. The one who receives the
          plate pulls a stalk of the young plants, binds it with a ribbon,
          and preserves it among his or her greatest treasures, restoring the
          platter to the giver. At Catania the gossips exchange pots of basil
          and great cucumbers; the girls tend the basil, and the thicker it
          grows the more it is prized.726
[pg 246]






In these Sardinian and Sicilian
              ceremonies St. John may have taken the place of Adonis. Custom
              of bathing in water or washing in dew on the Eve or Day of St.
              John (Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day). Petrarch at Cologne on
              St. John's Eve.





In these
          midsummer customs of Sardinia and Sicily it is possible that, as
          Mr. R. Wünsch supposes,727 St.
          John has replaced Adonis. We have seen that the rites of Tammuz or
          Adonis were commonly celebrated about midsummer; according to
          Jerome, their date was June.728 And
          besides their date and their similarity in respect of the pots of
          herbs and corn, there is another point of affinity between the two
          festivals, the heathen and the Christian. In both of them water
          plays a prominent part. At his midsummer festival in Babylon the
          image of Tammuz, whose name is said to mean “true son of the deep water,” was bathed with
          pure water: at his summer festival in Alexandria the image of
          Adonis, with that of his divine mistress Aphrodite, was committed
          to the waves; and at the midsummer celebration in Greece the
          gardens of Adonis were thrown into the sea or into springs. Now a
          great feature of the midsummer festival associated with the name of
          St. John is, or used to be, the custom of bathing in the sea,
          springs, rivers, or the dew on Midsummer Eve or the morning of
          Midsummer Day. Thus, for example, at Naples there is a church
          dedicated to St. John the Baptist under the name of St. John of the
          Sea (S. Giovan a
          mare); and it was an old practice for men and women
          to bathe in the sea on St. John's Eve, that is, on Midsummer Eve,
          believing that thus all their sins were washed away.729 In
          the Abruzzi water is still supposed to acquire certain marvellous
          and beneficent properties on St. John's Night. They say that on
          that night the sun and moon bathe in the water. Hence many people
          take a bath in the sea or in a river at that season, especially at
          the moment of sunrise. At Castiglione a Casauria they go before
          sunrise to the Pescara River or to springs, wash their faces and
          hands, then gird themselves with twigs of bryony (vitalba) and twine the plant
          round their brows, in order that they may be free from pains. At
          Pescina boys and girls wash each other's faces in a river or a
          spring, then exchange kisses, and become gossips. The dew, also,
          that [pg 247] falls on St. John's
          Night is supposed in the Abruzzi to benefit whatever it touches,
          whether it be water, flowers, or the human body. For that reason
          people put out vessels of water on the window-sills or the
          terraces, and wash themselves with the water in the morning in
          order to purify themselves and escape headaches and colds. A still
          more efficacious mode of accomplishing the same end is to rise at
          the peep of dawn, to wet the hands in the dewy grass, and then to
          rub the moisture on the eyelids, the brow, and the temples, because
          the dew is believed to cure maladies of the head and eyes. It is
          also a remedy for diseases of the skin. Persons who are thus
          afflicted should roll on the dewy grass. When patients are
          prevented by their infirmity or any other cause from quitting the
          house, their friends will gather the dew in sheets or tablecloths
          and so apply it to the suffering part.730 At
          Marsala in Sicily there is a spring of water in a subterranean
          grotto called the Grotto of the Sibyl. Beside it stands a church of
          St. John, which has been supposed to occupy the site of a temple of
          Apollo. On St. John's Eve, the twenty-third of June, women and
          girls visit the grotto, and by drinking of the prophetic water
          learn whether their husbands have been faithful to them in the year
          that is past, or whether they themselves will wed in the year that
          is to come. Sick people, too, imagine that by bathing in the water,
          drinking of it, or ducking thrice in it in the name of the Trinity,
          they will be made whole.731 At
          Chiaramonte in Sicily the following custom is observed on St.
          John's Eve. The men repair to one fountain and the women to
          another, and dip their heads thrice in the water, repeating at each
          ablution certain verses in honour of St. John. They believe that
          this is a cure or preventive of the scald.732 When
          Petrarch visited Cologne, he chanced to [pg 248] arrive in the town on St. John's Eve. The sun
          was nearly setting, and his host at once led him to the Rhine. A
          strange sight there met his eyes, for the banks of the river were
          covered with pretty women. The crowd was great but good-humoured.
          From a rising ground on which he stood the poet saw many of the
          women, girt with fragrant herbs, kneel down on the water's edge,
          roll their sleeves up above their elbows, and wash their white arms
          and hands in the river, murmuring softly some words which the
          Italian did not understand. He was told that the custom was a very
          old one, much honoured in the observance; for the common folk,
          especially the women, believed that to wash in the river on St.
          John's Eve would avert every misfortune in the coming year.733 On
          St. John's Eve the people of Copenhagen used to go on pilgrimage to
          a neighbouring spring, there to heal and strengthen themselves in
          the water.734 In
          Spain people still bathe in the sea or roll naked in the dew of the
          meadows on St. John's Eve, believing that this is a sovereign
          preservative against diseases of the skin.735 To
          roll in the dew on the morning of St. John's Day is also esteemed a
          cure for diseases of the skin in Normandy and Perigord. In Perigord
          a field of hemp is especially recommended for the purpose, and the
          patient should rub himself with the plants on which he has
          rolled.736 At
          Ciotat in Provence, while the midsummer bonfire blazed, young
          people used to plunge into the sea and splash each other
          vigorously. At Vitrolles they bathed in a pond in order that they
          might not suffer from fever during the year, and at Saint-Maries
          they watered the horses to protect them from the itch.737 A
          custom of drenching people on this occasion with water formerly
          prevailed in Toulon, Marseilles, and other towns of the south of
          France. The water was squirted from syringes, poured on the heads
          of passers-by from windows, and so [pg 249] forth.738 From
          Europe the practice of bathing in rivers and springs on St. John's
          Day appears to have passed with the Spaniards to the New
          World.739







The custom of bathing at midsummer
              is pagan, not Christian, in its origin.





It may perhaps
          be suggested that this wide-spread custom of bathing in water or
          dew on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day is purely Christian in
          origin, having been adopted as an appropriate mode of celebrating
          the day dedicated to the Baptist. But in point of fact the custom
          is older than Christianity, for it was denounced and forbidden as a
          heathen practice by Augustine,740 and
          to this day it is practised at midsummer by the Mohammedan peoples
          of North Africa.741 We
          may conjecture that the Church, unable to put down this relic of
          paganism, followed its usual policy of accommodation by bestowing
          on the rite of a Christian name and acquiescing, with a sigh, in
          its observance. And casting about for a saint to supplant a heathen
          patron of bathing, the Christian doctors could hardly have hit upon
          a more appropriate successor than St. John the Baptist.







Old heathen festival of midsummer
              in Europe and the East.





But into whose
          shoes did the Baptist step? Was the displaced deity really Adonis,
          as the foregoing evidence seems to suggest? In Sardinia and Sicily
          it may have been so, for in these islands Semitic influence was
          certainly deep and probably lasting. The midsummer pastimes of
          Sardinian and Sicilian children may therefore be a direct
          continuation of the Carthaginian rites of Tammuz. Yet the midsummer
          festival seems too widely spread and too deeply rooted in Central
          and Northern Europe to allow us to trace it everywhere to an
          Oriental origin in general and to the cult of Adonis in particular.
          It has the air of a native of the soil rather than of an exotic
          imported from the East. We shall [pg 250] do better, therefore, to suppose that at a
          remote period similar modes of thought, based on similar needs, led
          men independently in many distant lands, from the North Sea to the
          Euphrates, to celebrate the summer solstice with rites which, while
          they differed in some things, yet agreed closely in others; that in
          historical times a wave of Oriental influence, starting perhaps
          from Babylonia, carried the Tammuz or Adonis form of the festival
          westward till it met with native forms of a similar festival; and
          that under pressure of the Roman civilization these different yet
          kindred festivals fused with each other and crystallized into a
          variety of shapes, which subsisted more or less separately side by
          side, till the Church, unable to suppress them altogether, stripped
          them so far as it could of their grosser features, and dexterously
          changing the names allowed them to pass muster as Christian. And
          what has just been said of the midsummer festivals probably
          applies, with the necessary modifications, to the spring festivals
          also. They, too, seem to have originated independently in Europe
          and the East, and after ages of separation to have amalgamated
          under the sway of the Roman Empire and the Christian Church. In
          Syria, as we have seen, there appears to have been a vernal
          celebration of Adonis; and we shall presently meet with an
          undoubted instance of an Oriental festival of spring in the rites
          of Attis. Meantime we must return for a little to the midsummer
          festival which goes by the name of St. John.







Midsummer fires and midsummer
              couples in relation to vegetation.





The Sardinian
          practice of making merry round a great bonfire on St. John's Eve is
          an instance of a custom which has been practised at the midsummer
          festival from time immemorial in many parts of Europe. That custom
          has been more fully dealt with by me elsewhere.742 The
          instances which I have cited in other parts of this work seem to
          indicate a connexion of the midsummer bonfire with vegetation. For
          example, both in Sweden and Bohemia an essential part of the
          festival is the raising of a May-pole or Midsummer-tree, which in
          Bohemia is burned in the bonfire.743
          Again, in a Russian midsummer ceremony a straw figure of Kupalo,
          [pg 251] the representative
          of vegetation, is placed beside a May-pole or Midsummer-tree and
          then carried to and fro across a bonfire.744
          Kupalo is here represented in duplicate, in tree-form by the
          Midsummer-tree, and in human form by the straw effigy, just as
          Adonis was represented both by an image and a garden of Adonis; and
          the duplicate representatives of Kupalo, like those of Adonis, are
          finally cast into water. In the Sardinian and Sicilian customs the
          Gossips or Sweethearts of St. John probably answer, on the one hand
          to Adonis and Astarte, on the other to the King and Queen of May.
          In the Swedish province of Blekinge part of the midsummer festival
          is the election of a Midsummer Bride, who chooses her bridegroom; a
          collection is made for the pair, who for the time being are looked
          upon as man and wife.745 Such
          Midsummer pairs may be supposed, like the May pairs, to stand for
          the powers of vegetation or of fertility in general: they represent
          in flesh and blood what the images of Siva or Mahadeo and Parvati
          in the Indian ceremonies, and the images of Adonis and Aphrodite in
          the Alexandrian ceremony, set forth in effigy.







Gardens of Adonis intended to
              foster the growth of vegetation, and especially of the crops.
              Modes of divination at midsummer like the gardens of
              Adonis.





The reason why
          ceremonies whose aim is to foster the growth of vegetation should
          thus be associated with bonfires; why in particular the
          representative of vegetation should be burned in the likeness of a
          tree, or passed across the fire in effigy or in the form of a
          living couple, has been discussed by me elsewhere.746 Here
          it is enough to have adduced evidence of such association, and
          therefore to have obviated the objection which might have been
          raised to my theory of the Sardinian custom, on the ground that the
          bonfires have nothing to do with vegetation. One more piece of
          evidence may here be given to prove the contrary. In some parts of
          Germany and Austria young men and girls leap over midsummer
          bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax grow
          tall.747 We
          may, therefore, assume that in the Sardinian custom the blades of
          wheat and barley which are [pg 252] forced on in pots for the midsummer festival,
          and which correspond so closely to the gardens of Adonis, form one
          of those widely-spread midsummer ceremonies, the original object of
          which was to promote the growth of vegetation, and especially of
          the crops. But as, by an easy extension of ideas, the spirit of
          vegetation was believed to exercise a beneficent and fertilizing
          influence on human as well as animal life, the gardens of Adonis
          would be supposed, like the May-trees or May-boughs, to bring good
          luck, and more particularly perhaps offspring,748 to
          the family or to the person who planted them; and even after the
          idea had been abandoned that they operated actively to confer
          prosperity, they might still be used to furnish omens of good or
          evil. It is thus that magic dwindles into divination. Accordingly
          we find modes of divination practised at midsummer which resemble
          more or less closely the gardens of Adonis. Thus an anonymous
          Italian writer of the sixteenth century has recorded that it was
          customary to sow barley and wheat a few days before the festival of
          St. John (Midsummer Day) and also before that of St. Vitus; and it
          was believed that the person for whom they were sown would be
          fortunate, and get a good husband or a good wife, if the grain
          sprouted well; but if it sprouted ill, he or she would be
          unlucky.749 In
          various parts of Italy and all over Sicily it is still customary to
          put plants in water or in earth on the Eve of St. John, and from
          the manner in which they are found to be blooming or fading on St.
          John's Day omens are drawn, especially as to fortune in love.
          Amongst the plants used for this purpose are Ciuri di S. Giuvanni (St. John's
          wort?) and nettles.750 In
          Prussia two hundred years ago the farmers used to send out their
          servants, especially their maids, to gather St. John's [pg 253] wort on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day
          (St. John's Day). When they had fetched it, the farmer took as many
          plants as there were persons and stuck them in the wall or between
          the beams; and it was thought that he or she whose plant did not
          bloom would soon fall sick or die. The rest of the plants were tied
          in a bundle, fastened to the end of a pole, and set up at the gate
          or wherever the corn would be brought in at the next harvest. The
          bundle was called Kupole: the
          ceremony was known as Kupole's festival; and at it the farmer
          prayed for a good crop of hay, and so forth.751 This
          Prussian custom is particularly notable, inasmuch as it strongly
          confirms the opinion that Kupalo (doubtless identical with Kupole)
          was originally a deity of vegetation.752 For
          here Kupalo is represented by a bundle of plants specially
          associated with midsummer in folk-custom; and her influence over
          vegetation is plainly signified by placing her vegetable emblem
          over the place where the harvest is brought in, as well as by the
          prayers for a good crop which are uttered on the occasion. This
          furnishes a fresh argument in support of the view that the Death,
          whose analogy to Kupalo, Yarilo, and the rest I have shown
          elsewhere, originally personified vegetation, more especially the
          dying or dead vegetation of winter.753
          Further, my interpretation of the gardens of Adonis is confirmed by
          finding that in this Prussian custom the very same kind of plants
          is used to form the gardens of Adonis (as we may call them) and the
          image of the deity. Nothing could set in a stronger light the truth
          of the theory that the gardens of Adonis are merely another
          manifestation of the god himself.







Sicilian gardens of Adonis in
              spring.





In Sicily
          gardens of Adonis are still sown in spring as well as in summer,
          from which we may perhaps infer that Sicily as well as Syria
          celebrated of old a vernal festival of the dead and risen god. At
          the approach of Easter, Sicilian women sow wheat, lentils, and
          canary-seed in plates, which they keep in the dark and water every
          two days. The plants soon shoot up; the stalks are tied together
          with red ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on
          [pg 254] the sepulchres
          which, with the effigies of the dead Christ, are made up in
          Catholic and Greek churches on Good Friday,754 just
          as the gardens of Adonis were placed on the grave of the dead
          Adonis.755 The
          practice is not confined to Sicily, for it is observed also at
          Cosenza in Calabria,756 and
          perhaps in other places. The whole custom—sepulchres as well as
          plates of sprouting grain—may be nothing but a continuation, under
          a different name, of the worship of Adonis.







Resemblance of the Easter
              ceremonies in the Greek Church to the rites of Adonis.





Nor are these
          Sicilian and Calabrian customs the only Easter ceremonies which
          resemble the rites of Adonis. “During the
          whole of Good Friday a waxen effigy of the dead Christ is exposed
          to view in the middle of the Greek churches and is covered with
          fervent kisses by the thronging crowd, while the whole church rings
          with melancholy, monotonous dirges. Late in the evening, when it
          has grown quite dark, this waxen image is carried by the priests
          into the street on a bier adorned with lemons, roses, jessamine,
          and other flowers, and there begins a grand procession of the
          multitude, who move in serried ranks, with slow and solemn step,
          through the whole town. Every man carries his taper and breaks out
          into doleful lamentation. At all the houses which the procession
          passes there are seated women with censers to fumigate the marching
          host. Thus the community solemnly buries its Christ as if he had
          just died. At last the waxen image is again deposited in the
          church, and the same lugubrious chants echo anew. These
          lamentations, accompanied by a strict fast, continue till midnight
          on Saturday. As the clock strikes twelve, the bishop appears and
          announces the glad tidings that ‘Christ is
          risen,’ to which the crowd replies, ‘He is risen indeed,’ and at once the whole city
          bursts into an uproar of joy, which finds vent in shrieks and
          shouts, in the endless discharge of carronades and muskets, and the
          explosion of fire-works of every sort. In the very same hour people
          plunge from the extremity of the fast into the enjoyment of the
          Easter lamb and neat wine.”757
[pg 255]






Resemblance of the Easter
              ceremonies in the Catholic Church to the rites of
              Adonis.





In like manner
          the Catholic Church has been accustomed to bring before its
          followers in a visible form the death and resurrection of the
          Redeemer. Such sacred dramas are well fitted to impress the lively
          imagination and to stir the warm feelings of a susceptible southern
          race, to whom the pomp and pageantry of Catholicism are more
          congenial than to the colder temperament of the Teutonic peoples.
          The solemnities observed in Sicily on Good Friday, the official
          anniversary of the Crucifixion, are thus described by a native
          Sicilian writer. “A truly moving ceremony
          is the procession which always takes place in the evening in every
          commune of Sicily, and further the Deposition from the Cross. The
          brotherhoods took part in the procession, and the rear was brought
          up by a great many boys and girls representing saints, both male
          and female, and carrying the emblems of Christ's Passion. The
          Deposition from the Cross was managed by the priests. The coffin
          with the dead Christ in it was flanked by Jews armed with swords,
          an object of horror and aversion in the midst of the profound pity
          excited by the sight not only of Christ but of the Mater Dolorosa,
          who followed behind him. Now and then the ‘mysteries’ or symbols of the Crucifixion went
          in front. Sometimes the procession followed the ‘three hours of agony’ and the ‘Deposition from the Cross.’ The ‘three hours’ commemorated those which Jesus
          Christ passed upon the Cross. Beginning at the eighteenth and
          ending at the twenty-first hour of Italian time two priests
          preached alternately on the Passion. Anciently the sermons were
          delivered in the open air on the place called the Calvary: at last,
          when the third hour was about to strike, at the words [pg 256] emisit
          spiritum Christ died, bowing his head amid the sobs
          and tears of the bystanders. Immediately afterwards in some places,
          three hours afterwards in others, the sacred body was unnailed and
          deposited in the coffin. In Castronuovo, at the Ave Maria, two
          priests clad as Jews, representing Joseph of Arimathea and
          Nicodemus, with their servants in costume, repaired to the Calvary,
          preceded by the Company of the Whites. There, with doleful verses
          and chants appropriate to the occasion, they performed the various
          operations of the Deposition, after which the procession took its
          way to the larger church.... In Salaparuta the Calvary is erected
          in the church. At the preaching of the death, the Crucified is made
          to bow his head by means of machinery, while guns are fired,
          trumpets sound, and amid the silence of the people, impressed by
          the death of the Redeemer, the strains of a melancholy funeral
          march are heard. Christ is removed from the Cross and deposited in
          the coffin by three priests. After the procession of the dead
          Christ the burial is performed, that is, two priests lay Christ in
          a fictitious sepulchre, from which at the mass of Easter Saturday
          the image of the risen Christ issues and is elevated upon the altar
          by means of machinery.”758
          Scenic representations of the same sort, with variations of detail,
          are exhibited at Easter in the Abruzzi,759 and
          probably in many other parts of the Catholic world.760







The Christian festival of Easter
              perhaps grafted on a festival of Adonis.





When we reflect
          how often the Church has skilfully contrived to plant the seeds of
          the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the
          Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a
          similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis, which, as we have
          seen reason to believe, was celebrated in Syria at the same season.
          The type, created by Greek artists, of the sorrowful goddess with
          her dying lover in her arms, resembles and may have [pg 257] been the model of the Pietà of Christian art, the
          Virgin with the dead body of her divine Son in her lap, of which
          the most celebrated example is the one by Michael Angelo in St.
          Peter's. That noble group, in which the living sorrow of the mother
          contrasts so wonderfully with the languor of death in the son, is
          one of the finest compositions in marble. Ancient Greek art has
          bequeathed to us few works so beautiful, and none so
          pathetic.761







The worship of Adonis at
              Bethlehem. The Morning Star, identified with Venus, may have
              been the signal for the festival of Adonis. The Star of
              Bethlehem.





In this
          connexion a well-known statement of Jerome may not be without
          significance. He tells us that Bethlehem, the traditionary
          birthplace of the Lord, was shaded by a grove of that still older
          Syrian Lord, Adonis, and that where the infant Jesus had wept, the
          lover of Venus was bewailed.762
          Though he does not expressly say so, Jerome seems to have thought
          that the grove of Adonis had been planted by the heathen after the
          birth of Christ for the purpose of defiling the sacred spot. In
          this he may have been mistaken. If Adonis was indeed, as I have
          argued, the spirit of the corn, a more suitable name for his
          dwelling-place could hardly be found than Bethlehem, “the House of Bread,”763 and
          he may well have been worshipped there at his House of Bread long
          ages before the birth of Him who said, “I
          am the bread of life.”764 Even
          on the hypothesis that Adonis followed rather than preceded Christ
          at Bethlehem, the choice of his sad figure to divert the allegiance
          of Christians from their Lord cannot but strike us as eminently
          appropriate when we remember the similarity of the rites which
          commemorated the death and resurrection of the two. One of the
          earliest seats of the worship of the new god was Antioch, and at
          Antioch, [pg
          258]
          as we have seen,765 the
          death of the old god was annually celebrated with great solemnity.
          A circumstance which attended the entrance of Julian into the city
          at the time of the Adonis festival may perhaps throw some light on
          the date of its celebration. When the emperor drew near to the city
          he was received with public prayers as if he had been a god, and he
          marvelled at the voices of a great multitude who cried that the
          Star of Salvation had dawned upon them in the East.766 This
          may doubtless have been no more than a fulsome compliment paid by
          an obsequious Oriental crowd to the Roman emperor. But it is also
          possible that the rising of a bright star regularly gave the signal
          for the festival, and that as chance would have it the star emerged
          above the rim of the eastern horizon at the very moment of the
          emperor's approach. The coincidence, if it happened, could hardly
          fail to strike the imagination of a superstitious and excited
          multitude, who might thereupon hail the great man as the deity
          whose coming was announced by the sign in the heavens. Or the
          emperor may have mistaken for a greeting to himself the shouts
          which were addressed to the star. Now Astarte, the divine mistress
          of Adonis, was identified with the planet Venus, and her changes
          from a morning to an evening star were carefully noted by the
          Babylonian astronomers, who drew omens from her alternate
          appearance and disappearance.767 Hence
          we may conjecture that the festival of Adonis was regularly timed
          to coincide with the appearance of Venus as [pg 259] the Morning or Evening Star. But the
          star which the people of Antioch saluted at the festival was seen
          in the East; therefore, if it was indeed Venus, it can only have
          been the Morning Star. At Aphaca in Syria, where there was a famous
          temple of Astarte, the signal for the celebration of the rites was
          apparently given by the flashing of a meteor, which on a certain
          day fell like a star from the top of Mount Lebanon into the river
          Adonis. The meteor was thought to be Astarte herself,768 and
          its flight through the air might naturally be interpreted as the
          descent of the amorous goddess to the arms of her lover. At Antioch
          and elsewhere the appearance of the Morning Star on the day of the
          festival may in like manner have been hailed as the coming of the
          goddess of love to wake her dead leman from his earthy bed. If that
          were so, we may surmise that it was the Morning Star which guided
          the wise men of the East to Bethlehem,769 the
          hallowed spot which heard, in the language of Jerome, the weeping
          of the infant Christ and the lament for Adonis.




[pg 261]




 


Book Second.
        Attis.
[pg
        263]




 


Chapter I. The Myth and Ritual of
          Attis.







Attis the Phrygian counterpart of
              Adonis. His relation to Cybele. His miraculous birth. The death
              of Attis.





Another of those
          gods whose supposed death and resurrection struck such deep roots
          into the faith and ritual of Western Asia is Attis. He was to
          Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears to have
          been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection were
          annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring.770 The
          legends and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the
          ancients themselves sometimes identified them.771 Attis
          was said to have been a fair young shepherd or herdsman beloved by
          Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, a great Asiatic goddess of
          fertility, who had her chief home in Phrygia.772 Some
          held that Attis was her son.773 His
          birth, like that of many other heroes, is said to have been
          miraculous. His mother, Nana, was a virgin, who conceived by
          putting a ripe almond or a pomegranate in her bosom. Indeed in the
          Phrygian cosmogony an almond figured [pg 264] as the father of all things,774
          perhaps because its delicate lilac blossom is one of the first
          heralds of the spring, appearing on the bare boughs before the
          leaves have opened. Such tales of virgin mothers are relics of an
          age of childish ignorance when men had not yet recognized the
          intercourse of the sexes as the true cause of offspring. That
          ignorance, still shared by the lowest of existing savages, the
          aboriginal tribes of central Australia,775 was
          doubtless at one time universal among mankind. Even in later times,
          when people are better acquainted with the laws of nature, they
          sometimes imagine that these laws may be subject to exceptions, and
          that miraculous beings may be born in miraculous ways by women who
          have never known a man. In Palestine to this day it is believed
          that a woman may conceive by a jinnee or by the spirit of her dead
          husband. There is, or was lately, a man at Nebk who is currently
          supposed to be the offspring of such a union, and the simple folk
          have never suspected his mother's virtue.776 Two
          different accounts of the death of Attis were current. According to
          the one he was killed by a boar, like Adonis. According to the
          other he unmanned himself under a pine-tree, and bled to death on
          the spot. The latter is said to have been the local story told by
          the people of Pessinus, a great seat of the worship of Cybele, and
          the whole legend of which the story forms a part is stamped with a
          character of rudeness and savagery that speaks strongly for its
          antiquity.777 Both
          tales might claim the support of custom, [pg 265] or rather both were probably invented to
          explain certain customs observed by the worshippers. The story of
          the self-mutilation of Attis is clearly an attempt to account for
          the self-mutilation of his priests, who regularly castrated
          themselves on entering the service of the goddess. The story of his
          death by the boar may have been told to explain why his
          worshippers, especially the people of Pessinus, abstained from
          eating swine.778 In
          like manner the worshippers of Adonis abstained from pork, because
          a boar had killed their god.779 After
          his death Attis is said to have been changed into a
          pine-tree.780







Worship of Cybele introduced into
              Rome in 204 b.c.





The worship of
          the Phrygian Mother of the Gods was adopted by the Romans in 204
          b.c. towards the close of
          their long struggle with Hannibal. For their drooping spirits had
          been opportunely cheered by a prophecy, alleged to be drawn from
          that convenient farrago of nonsense, the Sibylline Books, that the
          foreign invader would be driven from Italy if the great Oriental
          goddess were brought to Rome. Accordingly ambassadors were
          despatched to her sacred city Pessinus in Phrygia. The small black
          stone which embodied the mighty divinity was entrusted to them and
          conveyed to Rome, where it was received with great respect and
          installed in the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill. It was the
          middle of April when the goddess arrived,781 and
          she went to work at once. For the harvest that year was such as had
          not been seen for many a long day,782 and
          in the very next year Hannibal and his veterans embarked for
          Africa. As he looked his last on the coast of Italy, fading behind
          him in the distance, he could not foresee that Europe, which had
          repelled the arms, would yet yield to the gods, of the Orient. The
          vanguard of the conquerors had already encamped in [pg 266] the heart of Italy before the rearguard
          of the beaten army fell sullenly back from its shores.







Attis and his eunuch priests the
              Galli at Rome.





We may
          conjecture, though we are not told, that the Mother of the Gods
          brought with her the worship of her youthful lover or son to her
          new home in the West. Certainly the Romans were familiar with the
          Galli, the emasculated priests of Attis, before the close of the
          Republic. These unsexed beings, in their Oriental costume, with
          little images suspended on their breasts, appear to have been a
          familiar sight in the streets of Rome, which they traversed in
          procession, carrying the image of the goddess and chanting their
          hymns to the music of cymbals and tambourines, flutes and horns,
          while the people, impressed by the fantastic show and moved by the
          wild strains, flung alms to them in abundance, and buried the image
          and its bearers under showers of roses.783 A
          further step was taken by the Emperor Claudius when he incorporated
          the Phrygian worship of the sacred tree, and with it probably the
          orgiastic rites of Attis, in the established religion of
          Rome.784 The
          great [pg 267] spring festival of
          Cybele and Attis is best known to us in the form in which it was
          celebrated at Rome; but as we are informed that the Roman
          ceremonies were also Phrygian,785 we
          may assume that they differed hardly, if at all, from their Asiatic
          original. The order of the festival seems to have been as
          follows.786







The spring festival of Cybele and
              Attis at Rome. The Day of Blood.





On the
          twenty-second day of March, a pine-tree was cut in the woods and
          brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a
          great, divinity. The duty of carrying the sacred tree was entrusted
          to a guild of Tree-bearers. The trunk was swathed like a corpse
          with woollen bands and decked with wreaths, of violets, for violets
          were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis, as roses and
          anemones from the blood of Adonis; and the effigy of a young man,
          doubtless Attis himself, was tied to the middle of the stem.787 On
          the second day of the festival, the twenty-third [pg 268] of March, the chief ceremony seems to
          have been a blowing of trumpets.788 The
          third day, the twenty-fourth of March, was known as the Day of
          Blood: the Archigallus or high-priest drew blood from his arms and
          presented it as an offering.789 Nor
          was he alone in making this bloody sacrifice. Stirred by the wild
          barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns,
          and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the
          dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt into a
          frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they gashed their
          bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to
          bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing
          blood.790 The
          ghastly rite probably formed part of the mourning for Attis and may
          have been intended to strengthen him for the resurrection. The
          Australian aborigines cut themselves in like manner over the graves
          of their friends for the purpose, perhaps, of enabling them to be
          born again.791
          Further, we may conjecture, though we are not expressly told, that
          it was on the same Day of Blood and for the same purpose that the
          novices sacrificed their virility. Wrought up to the highest pitch
          of religious excitement they dashed the severed portions of
          themselves against the image of the cruel goddess. These broken
          instruments of fertility were afterwards reverently wrapt up and
          buried in the earth or in subterranean chambers sacred to
          Cybele,792
          where, like the [pg
          269]
          offering of blood, they may have been deemed instrumental in
          recalling Attis to life and hastening the general resurrection of
          nature, which was then bursting into leaf and blossom in the vernal
          sunshine. Some confirmation of this conjecture is furnished by the
          savage story that the mother of Attis conceived by putting in her
          bosom a pomegranate sprung from the severed genitals of a
          man-monster named Agdestis, a sort of double of Attis.793







Eunuch priests in the service of
              Asiatic goddesses.





If there is any
          truth in this conjectural explanation of the custom, we can readily
          understand why other Asiatic goddesses of fertility were served in
          like manner by eunuch priests. These feminine deities required to
          receive from their male ministers, who personated the divine
          lovers, the means of discharging their beneficent functions: they
          had themselves to be impregnated by the life-giving energy before
          they could transmit it to the world. Goddesses thus ministered to
          by eunuch priests were the great Artemis of Ephesus794 and
          the great Syrian Astarte of Hierapolis,795 whose
          sanctuary, frequented by swarms of pilgrims and enriched by the
          offerings of Assyria and Babylonia, of Arabia and Phoenicia, was
          perhaps in the days of its glory the most popular in the
          East.796 Now
          the unsexed priests of this Syrian goddess resembled those of
          Cybele so closely that some people took them to be the same.797 And
          the mode in which they dedicated themselves to the religious life
          was similar. The [pg
          270]
          greatest festival of the year at Hierapolis fell at the beginning
          of spring, when multitudes thronged to the sanctuary from Syria and
          the regions round about. While the flutes played, the drums beat,
          and the eunuch priests slashed themselves with knives, the
          religious excitement gradually spread like a wave among the crowd
          of onlookers, and many a one did that which he little thought to do
          when he came as a holiday spectator to the festival. For man after
          man, his veins throbbing with the music, his eyes fascinated by the
          sight of the streaming blood, flung his garments from him, leaped
          forth with a shout, and seizing one of the swords which stood ready
          for the purpose, castrated himself on the spot. Then he ran through
          the city, holding the bloody pieces in his hand, till he threw them
          into one of the houses which he passed in his mad career. The
          household thus honoured had to furnish him with a suit of female
          attire and female ornaments, which he wore for the rest of his
          life.798 When
          the tumult of emotion had subsided, and the man had come to himself
          again, the irrevocable sacrifice must often have been followed by
          passionate sorrow and lifelong regret. This revulsion of natural
          human feeling after the frenzies of a fanatical religion is
          powerfully depicted by Catullus in a celebrated poem.799
[pg 271]






The sacrifice of virility. The
              mourning for Attis.





The parallel of
          these Syrian devotees confirms the view that in the similar worship
          of Cybele the sacrifice of virility took place on the Day of Blood
          at the vernal rites of the goddess, when the violets, supposed to
          spring from the red drops of her wounded lover, were in bloom among
          the pines. Indeed the story that Attis unmanned himself under a
          pine-tree800 was
          clearly devised to explain why his priests did the same beside the
          sacred violet-wreathed tree at his festival. [pg 272] At all events, we can hardly doubt that
          the Day of Blood witnessed the mourning for Attis over an effigy of
          him which was afterwards buried.801 The
          image thus laid in the sepulchre was probably the same which had
          hung upon the tree.802
          Throughout the period of mourning the worshippers fasted from
          bread, nominally because Cybele had done so in her grief for the
          death of Attis,803 but
          really perhaps for the same reason which induced the women of
          Harran to abstain from eating anything ground in a mill while they
          wept for Tammuz.804 To
          partake of bread or flour at such a season might have been deemed a
          wanton profanation of the bruised and broken body of the god. Or
          the fast may possibly have been a preparation for a sacramental
          meal.805







The Festival of Joy
              (Hilaria)
              for the resurrection of Attis on March 25th. The procession to
              the Almo.





But when night
          had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For
          suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the
          god had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of
          the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in their ears
          the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the god was
          hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue
          triumphant from the corruption of the grave.806 On
          the [pg 273] morrow, the
          twenty-fifth day of March, which was reckoned the vernal equinox,
          the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of
          glee. At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the
          form of a carnival. It was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria). A universal licence
          prevailed. Every man might say and do what he pleased. People went
          about the streets in disguise. No dignity was too high or too
          sacred for the humblest citizen to assume with impunity. In the
          reign of Commodus a band of conspirators thought to take advantage
          of the masquerade by dressing in the uniform of the Imperial Guard,
          and so, mingling with the crowd of merrymakers, to get within
          stabbing distance of the emperor. But the plot miscarried.807 Even
          the stern Alexander Severus used to relax so far on the joyous day
          as to admit a pheasant to his frugal board.808 The
          next day, the twenty-sixth of March, was given to repose, which
          must have been much needed after the varied excitements and
          fatigues of the preceding days.809
          Finally, the Roman festival closed on the twenty-seventh of March
          with a procession to the brook Almo. The silver image of the
          goddess, with its face of jagged black stone, sat in a wagon drawn
          by oxen. Preceded by the nobles walking barefoot, it moved slowly,
          to the loud music of pipes and tambourines, out by the Porta
          Capena, and so down to the banks of the Almo, which flows into the
          Tiber just below the walls of Rome. There the high-priest, robed in
          purple, washed the wagon, the image, and the other sacred objects
          in the water of the stream. On returning from their bath, the wain
          and the oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers. All was mirth
          and gaiety. No one thought of the blood that had flowed so lately.
          Even the eunuch priests forgot their wounds.810
[pg 274]






The mysteries of Attis. The
              sacrament. The baptism of blood. The Vatican a centre of the
              worship of Attis.





Such, then,
          appears to have been the annual solemnization of the death and
          resurrection of Attis in spring. But besides these public rites,
          his worship is known to have comprised certain secret or mystic
          ceremonies, which probably aimed at bringing the worshipper, and
          especially the novice, into closer communication with his god. Our
          information as to the nature of these mysteries and the date of
          their celebration is unfortunately very scanty, but they seem to
          have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood. In the
          sacrament the novice became a partaker of the mysteries by eating
          out of a drum and drinking out of a cymbal, two instruments of
          music which figured prominently in the thrilling orchestra of
          Attis.811 The
          fast which accompanied the mourning for the dead god812 may
          perhaps have been designed to prepare the body of the communicant
          for the reception of the blessed sacrament by purging it of all
          that could defile by contact the sacred elements.813 In
          the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with
          fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with
          a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its
          forehead glittering with gold leaf, was then driven on to the
          grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its
          hot reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was
          received with devout eagerness by the worshipper on every part of
          his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit, drenched,
          dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to receive the homage, nay
          the adoration, of his fellows as one who had been born again to
          eternal life and had washed [pg 275] away his sins in the blood of the bull.814 For
          some time afterwards the fiction of a new birth was kept up by
          dieting him on milk like a new-born babe.815 The
          regeneration of the worshipper took place at the same time as the
          regeneration of his god, namely at the vernal equinox.816 At
          Rome the new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of
          bull's blood appear to have been carried out above all at the
          sanctuary of the Phrygian goddess on the Vatican Hill, at or near
          the spot where the great basilica of St. Peter's now stands; for
          many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when the church
          was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609.817 From
          the Vatican as a centre this barbarous system of superstition seems
          to have spread to other parts [pg 276] of the Roman empire. Inscriptions found in
          Gaul and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their
          ritual on that of the Vatican.818 From
          the same source we learn that the testicles as well as the blood of
          the bull played an important part in the ceremonies.819
          Probably they were regarded as a powerful charm to promote
          fertility and hasten the new birth.


[pg 277]




 


Chapter II. Attis As a God of
          Vegetation.







The sanctity of the pine-tree in
              the worship of Attis.





The original
          character of Attis as a tree-spirit is brought out plainly by the
          part which the pine-tree plays in his legend, his ritual, and his
          monuments.820 The
          story that he was a human being transformed into a pine-tree is
          only one of those transparent attempts at rationalizing old beliefs
          which meet us so frequently in mythology. The bringing in of the
          pine-tree from the woods, decked with violets and woollen bands, is
          like bringing in the May-tree or Summer-tree in modern folk-custom;
          and the effigy which was attached to the pine-tree was only a
          duplicate representative of the tree-spirit Attis. After being
          fastened to the tree, the effigy was kept for a year and then
          burned.821 The
          same thing appears to have been sometimes done with the May-pole;
          and in like manner the effigy of the corn-spirit, made at harvest,
          is often preserved till it is replaced by a new effigy at next
          year's harvest.822 The
          original intention of such customs was no doubt to maintain the
          spirit of vegetation in life throughout the year. Why the Phrygians
          should have worshipped the pine above other trees we can only
          guess. Perhaps the sight of its changeless, though sombre, green
          cresting the ridges of the high hills above the fading splendour of
          the autumn woods in the valleys may have seemed to their eyes to
          mark it out as the seat of a diviner life, of something exempt from
          the sad vicissitudes of the [pg 278] seasons, constant and eternal as the sky
          which stooped to meet it. For the same reason, perhaps, ivy was
          sacred to Attis; at all events, we read that his eunuch priests
          were tattooed with a pattern of ivy leaves.823
          Another reason for the sanctity of the pine may have been its
          usefulness. The cones of the stone-pine contain edible nut-like
          seeds, which have been used as food since antiquity, and are still
          eaten, for example, by the poorer classes in Rome.824
          Moreover, a wine was brewed from these seeds,825 and
          this may partly account for the orgiastic nature of the rites of
          Cybele, which the ancients compared to those of Dionysus.826
          Further, pine-cones were regarded as symbols or rather instruments
          of fertility. Hence at the festival of the Thesmophoria they were
          thrown, along with pigs and other agents or emblems of fecundity,
          into the sacred vaults of Demeter for the purpose of quickening the
          ground and the wombs of women.827
[pg 279]






Attis as a corn-god. Cybele as a
              goddess of fertility. The bathing of her image either a
              rain-charm or a marriage-rite.





Like
          tree-spirits in general, Attis was apparently thought to wield
          power over the fruits of the earth or even to be identical with the
          corn. One of his epithets was “very
          fruitful”: he was addressed as the “reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn”; and the
          story of his sufferings, death, and resurrection was interpreted as
          the ripe grain wounded by the reaper, buried in the granary, and
          coming to life again when it is sown in the ground.828 A
          statue of him in the Lateran Museum at Rome clearly indicates his
          relation to the fruits of the earth, and particularly to the corn;
          for it represents him with a bunch of ears of corn and fruit in his
          hand, and a wreath of pine-cones, pomegranates, and other fruits on
          his head, while from the top of his Phrygian cap ears of corn are
          sprouting.829 On a
          stone urn, which contained the ashes of an Archigallus or
          high-priest of Attis, the same idea is expressed in a slightly
          different way. The top of the urn is adorned with ears of corn
          carved in relief, and it is surmounted by the figure of a cock,
          whose tail consists of ears of corn.830
          Cybele in like manner was conceived as a goddess of fertility who
          could make or mar the fruits of the earth; for the people of
          Augustodunum (Autun) in Gaul used to cart her image about in a
          wagon for the good of the fields and vineyards, while they danced
          and sang before it,831 and
          we have seen that in Italy an unusually [pg 280] fine harvest was attributed to the recent
          arrival of the Great Mother.832 The
          bathing of the image of the goddess in a river may well have been a
          rain-charm to ensure an abundant supply of moisture for the crops.
          Or perhaps, as Mr. Hepding has suggested, the union of Cybele and
          Attis, like that of Aphrodite and Adonis, was dramatically
          represented at the festival, and the subsequent bath of the goddess
          was a ceremonial purification of the bride, such as is often
          observed at human marriages.833 In
          like manner Aphrodite is said to have bathed after her union with
          Adonis,834 and
          so did Demeter after her intercourse with Poseidon.835 Hera
          washed in the springs of the river Burrha after her marriage with
          Zeus;836 and
          every year she recovered her virginity by bathing in the spring of
          Canathus.837
          However that may be, the rules of diet observed by the worshippers
          of Cybele and Attis at their solemn fasts are clearly dictated by a
          belief that the divine life of these deities manifested itself in
          the fruits of the earth, and especially in such of them as are
          actually hidden by the soil. For while the devotees were allowed to
          partake of flesh, though not of pork or fish, they were forbidden
          to eat seeds and the roots of vegetables, but they might eat the
          stalks and upper parts of the plants.838


[pg 281]




 


Chapter III. Attis As The Father
          God.







The name Attis seems to
              mean “father.”





The name Attis
          appears to mean simply “father.”839 This
          explanation, suggested by etymology, is confirmed by the
          observation that another name for Attis was Papas;840 for
          Papas has all the appearance of being a common form of that word
          for “father” which occurs
          independently in many distinct families of speech all the world
          over. Similarly the mother of Attis was named Nana,841 which
          is itself a form of the world-wide word for “mother.” “The immense
          list of such words collected by Buschmann shows that the types
          pa and ta, with the similar forms
          ap and at, preponderate in the world as
          names for ‘father,’ while
          ma and na, am
          and an, preponderate as names for
          ‘mother.’ ”842







Relation of Attis to the Mother
              Goddess. Attis as a Sky-god or Heavenly Father. Stories of the
              emasculation of the Sky-god.





Thus the mother
          of Attis is only another form of his divine mistress the great
          Mother Goddess,843 and
          we are brought back to the myth that the lovers were mother and
          son. The story that Nana conceived miraculously without commerce
          with the other sex shows that the Mother Goddess of Phrygia herself
          was viewed, like other goddesses of the same primitive type, as a
          Virgin Mother.844 That
          view of [pg
          282]
          her character does not rest on a perverse and mischievous theory
          that virginity is more honourable than matrimony. It is derived, as
          I have already indicated, from a state of savagery in which the
          mere fact of paternity was unknown. That explains why in later
          times, long after the true nature of paternity had been
          ascertained, the Father God was often a much less important
          personage in mythology than his divine partner the Mother Goddess.
          With regard to Attis in his paternal character it deserves to be
          noticed that the Bithynians used to ascend to the tops of the
          mountains and there call upon him under the name of Papas. The
          custom is attested by Arrian,845 who
          as a native of Bithynia must have had good opportunities of
          observing it. We may perhaps infer from it that the Bithynians
          conceived Attis as a sky-god or heavenly father, like Zeus, with
          whom indeed Arrian identifies him. If that were so, the story of
          the loves of Attis and Cybele, the Father God and the Mother
          Goddess, might be in one of its aspects a particular version of the
          widespread myth which represents Mother Earth fertilized by Father
          Sky;846 and,
          further, the story of the [pg
          283]
          emasculation of Attis would be parallel to the Greek legend that
          Cronus castrated his father, the old sky-god Uranus,847 and
          was himself in turn castrated by his own son, the younger sky-god
          Zeus.848 The
          tale of the mutilation of the sky-god by his son has been plausibly
          explained as a myth of the violent separation of the earth and sky,
          which some races, for example the Polynesians, suppose to have
          originally clasped each other in a close embrace.849 Yet
          it seems unlikely that an order of eunuch priests like the Galli
          should have been based on a purely cosmogonic myth: why should they
          continue for all time to be mutilated because the sky-god was so in
          the beginning? The custom of castration must surely have been
          designed to meet a constantly recurring need, not merely to reflect
          a mythical event which happened at the creation of the world. Such
          a need is the maintenance of the fruitfulness of the earth,
          annually imperilled by the changes of the seasons. Yet [pg 284] the theory that the mutilation of the
          priests of Attis and the burial of the severed parts were designed
          to fertilize the ground may perhaps be reconciled with the
          cosmogonic myth if we remember the old opinion, held apparently by
          many peoples, that the creation of the world is year by year
          repeated in that great transformation which depends ultimately on
          the annual increase of the sun's heat.850
          However, the evidence for the celestial aspect of Attis is too
          slight to allow us to speak with any confidence on this subject. A
          trace of that aspect appears to survive in the star-spangled cap
          which he is said to have received from Cybele,851 and
          which is figured on some monuments supposed to represent him.852 His
          identification with the Phrygian moon-god Men Tyrannus853
          points in the same direction, but is probably due rather to the
          religious speculation of a later age than to genuine popular
          tradition.854


[pg 285]




 


Chapter IV. Human Representatives of
          Attis.







The high priest of Attis bore the
              god's name and seems to have personated him. The drawing of the
              high priest's blood may have been a substitute for putting him
              to death in the character of the god. The name of Attis in the
              royal families of Phrygia and Lydia. The Phrygian priests of
              Attis may have been members of the royal family.





From
          inscriptions it appears that both at Pessinus and Rome the
          high-priest of Cybele regularly bore the name of Attis.855 It is
          therefore a reasonable conjecture that he played the part of his
          namesake, the legendary Attis, at the annual festival.856 We
          have seen that on the Day of Blood he drew blood from his arms, and
          this may have been an imitation of the self-inflicted death of
          Attis under the pine-tree. It is not inconsistent with this
          supposition that Attis was also represented at these ceremonies by
          an effigy; for instances can be shown in which the divine being is
          first represented by a living person and afterwards by an effigy,
          which is then burned or otherwise destroyed.857
          Perhaps we may go a step farther and conjecture that this mimic
          killing of the priest, accompanied by a real effusion of his blood,
          was in Phrygia, as it has been elsewhere, a substitute for a human
          sacrifice which in earlier times was actually offered. Sir W. M.
          Ramsay, whose authority on all questions relating to Phrygia no one
          will dispute, is [pg
          286]
          of opinion that at these Phrygian ceremonies “the representative of the god was probably slain each
          year by a cruel death, just as the god himself died.”858 We
          know from Strabo859 that
          the priests of Pessinus were at one time potentates as well as
          priests; they may, therefore, have belonged to that class of divine
          kings or popes whose duty it was to die each year for their people
          and the world. The name of Attis, it is true, does not occur among
          the names of the old kings of Phrygia, who seem to have borne the
          names of Midas and Gordias in alternate generations; but a very
          ancient inscription carved in the rock above a famous Phrygian
          monument, which is known as the Tomb of Midas, records that the
          monument was made for, or dedicated to, King Midas by a certain
          Ates, whose name is doubtless identical with Attis, and who, if not
          a king himself, may have been one of the royal family.860 It is
          worthy of note also that the name Atys, which, again, appears to be
          only another form of Attis, is recorded as that of an early king of
          Lydia;861 and
          that a son of Croesus, king of Lydia, not only bore the name Atys
          but was said to have been killed, while he was hunting a boar, by a
          member of the royal Phrygian family, who traced his lineage to King
          Midas and had fled to the court of Croesus because he had
          unwittingly slain his own brother.862
          Scholars have recognized in this story of the death of Atys, son of
          Croesus, a mere double of the myth of Attis;863 and
          in view of the facts which have come before us in the present
          inquiry864 it
          [pg 287] is a remarkable
          circumstance that the myth of a slain god should be told of a
          king's son. May we conjecture that the Phrygian priests who bore
          the name of Attis and represented the god of that name were
          themselves members, perhaps the eldest sons, of the royal house, to
          whom their fathers, uncles, brothers, or other kinsmen deputed the
          honour of dying a violent death in the character of gods, while
          they reserved to themselves the duty of living, as long as nature
          allowed them, in the humbler character of kings? If this were so,
          the Phrygian dynasty of Midas may have presented a close parallel
          to the Greek dynasty of Athamas, in which the eldest sons seem to
          have been regularly destined to the altar.865 But
          it is also possible that the divine priests who bore the name of
          Attis may have belonged to that indigenous race which the
          Phrygians, on their irruption into Asia from Europe, appear to have
          found and conquered in the land afterwards known as Phrygia.866 On
          the latter hypothesis the priests may have represented an older and
          higher civilization than that of their barbarous conquerors. Be
          that as it may, the god they personated was a deity of vegetation
          whose divine life manifested itself especially in the pine-tree and
          the violets of spring; and if they died in the character of that
          divinity, they corresponded to the mummers who are still slain in
          mimicry by European peasants in spring, and to the priest who was
          slain long ago in grim earnest on the wooded shore of the Lake of
          Nemi.


[pg 288]




 


Chapter V. The Hanged
          God.







The way in which the
              representatives of Attis were put to death is perhaps shown by
              the legend of Marsyas, who was hung on a pine-tree and flayed
              by Apollo.





A reminiscence
          of the manner in which these old representatives of the deity were
          put to death is perhaps preserved in the famous story of Marsyas.
          He was said to be a Phrygian satyr or Silenus, according to others
          a shepherd or herdsman, who played sweetly on the flute. A friend
          of Cybele, he roamed the country with the disconsolate goddess to
          soothe her grief for the death of Attis.867 The
          composition of the Mother's Air, a tune played on the flute in
          honour of the Great Mother Goddess, was attributed to him by the
          people of Celaenae in Phrygia.868 Vain
          of his skill, he challenged Apollo to a musical contest, he to play
          on the flute and Apollo on the lyre. Being vanquished, Marsyas was
          tied up to a pine-tree and flayed or cut limb from limb either by
          the victorious Apollo or by a Scythian slave.869 His
          skin was shown at Celaenae in historical times. It [pg 289] hung at the foot of the citadel in a
          cave from which the river Marsyas rushed with an impetuous and
          noisy tide to join the Maeander.870 So
          the Adonis bursts full-born from the precipices of the Lebanon; so
          the blue river of Ibreez leaps in a crystal jet from the red rocks
          of the Taurus; so the stream, which now rumbles deep underground,
          used to gleam for a moment on its passage from darkness to darkness
          in the dim light of the Corycian cave. In all these copious
          fountains, with their glad promise of fertility and life, men of
          old saw the hand of God and worshipped him beside the rushing river
          with the music of its tumbling waters in their ears. At Celaenae,
          if we can trust tradition, the piper Marsyas, hanging in his cave,
          had a soul for harmony even in death; for it is said that at the
          sound of his native Phrygian melodies the skin of the dead satyr
          used to thrill, but that if the musician struck up an air in praise
          of Apollo it remained deaf and motionless.871







Marsyas apparently a double of
              Attis. The hanging and spearing of Odin and his human victims
              on sacred trees. The hanging and spearing of human victims
              among the Bagobos.





In this Phrygian
          satyr, shepherd, or herdsman who enjoyed the friendship of Cybele,
          practised the music so characteristic of her rites,872 and
          died a violent death on her sacred tree, the pine, may we not
          detect a close resemblance to Attis, the favourite shepherd or
          herdsman of the goddess, who is himself described as a piper,873 is
          said to have perished under a pine-tree, and was annually
          represented by an effigy hung, like Marsyas, upon a pine? We may
          conjecture that in old days the priest who bore the name and played
          the part of Attis at the spring festival of Cybele was regularly
          hanged or otherwise slain upon the sacred tree, and that this
          barbarous custom was afterwards mitigated into the form in which it
          is known to us in later times, when the priest merely drew blood
          from his body under the tree and attached an effigy instead of
          himself to its trunk. In the holy grove at Upsala men and animals
          were sacrificed by [pg
          290]
          being hanged upon the sacred trees.874 The
          human victims dedicated to Odin were regularly put to death by
          hanging or by a combination of hanging and stabbing, the man being
          strung up to a tree or a gallows and then wounded with a spear.
          Hence Odin was called the Lord of the Gallows or the God of the
          Hanged, and he is represented sitting under a gallows tree.875
          Indeed he is said to have been sacrificed to himself in the
          ordinary way, as we learn from the weird verses of the Havamal, in which the god
          describes how he acquired his divine power by learning the magic
          runes:







“I know that I hung on
                the windy tree





                For nine whole nights,





                Wounded with the spear, dedicated to Odin,




Myself to
                myself.”876







The Bagobos of
          Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands, used annually to sacrifice
          human victims for the good of the crops in a similar way. Early in
          December, when the [pg
          291]
          constellation Orion appeared at seven o'clock in the evening, the
          people knew that the time had come to clear their fields for sowing
          and to sacrifice a slave. The sacrifice was presented to certain
          powerful spirits as payment for the good year which the people had
          enjoyed, and to ensure the favour of the spirits for the coming
          season. The victim was led to a great tree in the forest; there he
          was tied with his back to the tree and his arms stretched high
          above his head, in the attitude in which ancient artists portrayed
          Marsyas hanging on the fatal tree. While he thus hung by the arms,
          he was slain by a spear thrust through his body at the level of the
          armpits. Afterwards the body was cut clean through the middle at
          the waist, and the upper part was apparently allowed to dangle for
          a little from the tree, while the under part wallowed in blood on
          the ground. The two portions were finally cast into a shallow
          trench beside the tree. Before this was done, anybody who wished
          might cut off a piece of flesh or a lock of hair from the corpse
          and carry it to the grave of some relation whose body was being
          consumed by a ghoul. Attracted by the fresh corpse, the ghoul would
          leave the mouldering old body in peace. These sacrifices have been
          offered by men now living.877







The hanging of Artemis. The
              hanging of Helen. The hanging of animal victims.





In Greece the
          great goddess Artemis herself appears to have been annually hanged
          in effigy in her sacred grove of Condylea among the Arcadian hills,
          and there accordingly she went by the name of the Hanged One.878
          Indeed a trace of a similar rite may perhaps be detected even at
          Ephesus, the most famous of her sanctuaries, in the legend of a
          woman who hanged herself and was thereupon dressed by the
          compassionate goddess in her own divine garb and called by the name
          of Hecate.879
          Similarly, at Melite in Phthia, a story [pg 292] was told of a girl named Aspalis who hanged
          herself, but who appears to have been merely a form of Artemis. For
          after her death her body could not be found, but an image of her
          was discovered standing beside the image of Artemis, and the people
          bestowed on it the title of Hecaerge or Far-shooter, one of the
          regular epithets of the goddess. Every year the virgins sacrificed
          a young goat to the image by hanging it, because Astypalis was said
          to have hanged herself.880 The
          sacrifice may have been a substitute for hanging an image or a
          human representative of Artemis. Again, in Rhodes the fair Helen
          was worshipped under the title of Helen of the Tree, because the
          queen of the island had caused her handmaids, disguised as Furies,
          to string her up to a bough.881 That
          the Asiatic Greeks sacrificed animals in this fashion is proved by
          coins of Ilium, which represent an ox or cow hanging on a tree and
          stabbed with a knife by a man, who sits among the branches or on
          the animal's back.882 At
          Hierapolis also the victims were hung on trees before they were
          burnt.883 With
          these Greek and Scandinavian parallels before us we can hardly
          dismiss as wholly improbable [pg 293] the conjecture that in Phrygia a man-god may
          have hung year by year on the sacred but fatal tree.







Use of the skins of human victims
              to effect their resurrection.





The tradition
          that Marsyas was flayed and that his skin was exhibited at Celaenae
          down to historical times may well reflect a ritual practice of
          flaying the dead god and hanging his skin upon the pine as a means
          of effecting his resurrection, and with it the revival of
          vegetation in spring. Similarly, in ancient Mexico the human
          victims who personated gods were often flayed and their bloody
          skins worn by men who appear to have represented the dead deities
          come to life again.884 When
          a Scythian king died, he was buried in a grave along with one of
          his concubines, his cup-bearer, cook, groom, lacquey, and
          messenger, who were all killed for the purpose, and a great barrow
          was heaped up over the grave. A year afterwards fifty of his
          servants and fifty of his best horses were strangled; and their
          bodies, having been disembowelled and cleaned out, were stuffed
          with chaff, sewn up, and set on scaffolds round about the barrow,
          every dead man bestriding a dead horse, which was bitted and
          bridled as in life.885 These
          strange horsemen were no doubt supposed to mount guard over the
          king. The setting up of their stuffed skins might be thought to
          ensure their ghostly resurrection.







Skins of men and horses stuffed
              and set up at graves. Some tribes of Borneo use the skulls of
              their enemies to ensure the fertility of the ground and of
              women, the abundance of game, and so forth.





That some such
          notion was entertained by the Scythians is made probable by the
          account which the mediaeval traveller de Plano Carpini gives of the
          funeral customs of the Mongols. The traveller tells us that when a
          noble Mongol died, the custom was to bury him seated in the middle
          of a tent, along with a horse saddled and bridled, and a mare and
          her foal. Also they used to eat another horse, stuff the carcase
          with straw, and set it up on poles. All this they did in order that
          in the other world the dead man might have a tent to live in, a
          mare to yield milk, and a steed to ride, and that he might be able
          to breed horses. Moreover, the bones of the horse which they ate
          were burned for the good of his soul.886 When
          the Arab traveller Ibn Batuta visited Peking in the fourteenth
          century, [pg
          294]
          he witnessed the funeral of an emperor of China who had been killed
          in battle. The dead sovereign was buried along with four young
          female slaves and six guards in a vault, and an immense mound like
          a hill was piled over him. Four horses were then made to run round
          the hillock till they could run no longer, after which they were
          killed, impaled, and set up beside the tomb.887 When
          an Indian of Patagonia dies, he is buried in a pit along with some
          of his property. Afterwards his favourite horse, having been
          killed, skinned, and stuffed, is propped up on sticks with its head
          turned towards the grave. At the funeral of a chief four horses are
          sacrificed, and one is set up at each corner of the burial-place.
          The clothes and other effects of the deceased are burned; and to
          conclude all, a feast is made of the horses' flesh.888 The
          Scythians certainly believed in the existence of the soul after
          death and in the possibility of turning it to account. This is
          proved by the practice of one of their tribes, the Taurians of the
          Crimea, who used to cut off the heads of their prisoners and set
          them on poles over their houses, especially over the chimneys, in
          order that the spirits of the slain men might guard the
          dwellings.889 Some
          of the savages of Borneo allege a similar reason for their
          favourite custom of taking human heads. “The custom,” said a Kayan chief, “is not horrible. It is an ancient custom, a good,
          beneficent custom, bequeathed to us [pg 295] by our fathers and our fathers' fathers; it
          brings us blessings, plentiful harvests, and keeps off sickness and
          pains. Those who were once our enemies, hereby become our
          guardians, our friends, our benefactors.”890 Thus
          to convert dead foes into friends and allies all that is necessary
          is to feed and otherwise propitiate their skulls at a festival when
          they are brought into the village. “An
          offering of food is made to the heads, and their spirits, being
          thus appeased, cease to entertain malice against, or to seek to
          inflict injury upon, those who have got possession of the skull
          which formerly adorned the now forsaken body.”891 When
          the Sea Dyaks of Sarawak return home successful from a head-hunting
          expedition, they bring the head ashore with much ceremony, wrapt in
          palm leaves. “On shore and in the village,
          the head, for months after its arrival, is treated with the
          greatest consideration, and all the names and terms of endearment
          of which their language is capable are abundantly lavished on it;
          the most dainty morsels, culled from their abundant though
          inelegant repast, are thrust into its mouth, and it is instructed
          to hate its former friends, and that, having been now adopted into
          the tribe of its captors, its spirit must be always with them;
          sirih leaves and betel-nut are given to it, and finally a cigar is
          frequently placed between its ghastly and pallid lips. None of this
          disgusting mockery is performed with the intention of ridicule, but
          all to propitiate the spirit by kindness, and to procure its good
          wishes for the tribe, of whom it is now supposed to have become a
          member.”892
          Amongst these Dyaks the “Head-Feast,” which has been just described, is
          supposed to be the most beneficial in its [pg 296] influence of all their feasts and ceremonies.
          “The object of them all is to make their
          rice grow well, to cause the forest to abound with wild animals, to
          enable their dogs and snares to be successful in securing game, to
          have the streams swarm with fish, to give health and activity to
          the people themselves, and to ensure fertility to their women. All
          these blessings, the possessing and feasting of a fresh head are
          supposed to be the most efficient means of securing. The very
          ground itself is believed to be benefited and rendered fertile,
          more fertile even than when the water in which fragments of gold
          presented by the Rajah have been washed, has been sprinkled over
          it.”893







The stuffed skin of the human
              representative of the Phrygian god may have been used for like
              purposes.





In like manner,
          if my conjecture is right, the man who represented the father-god
          of Phrygia used to be slain and his stuffed skin hung on the sacred
          pine in order that his spirit might work for the growth of the
          crops, the multiplication of animals, and the fertility of women.
          So at Athens an ox, which appears to have embodied the corn-spirit,
          was killed at an annual sacrifice, and its hide, stuffed with straw
          and sewn up, was afterwards set on its feet and yoked to a plough
          as if it were ploughing, apparently in order to represent, or
          rather to promote, the resurrection of the slain [pg 297] corn-spirit at the end of the
          threshing.894 This
          employment of the skins of divine animals for the purpose of
          ensuring the revival of the slaughtered divinity might be
          illustrated by other examples.895
          Perhaps the hide of the bull which was killed to furnish the
          regenerating bath of blood in the rites of Attis may have been put
          to a similar use.


[pg 298]




 


Chapter VI. Oriental Religions in the
          West.







Popularity of the worship of
              Cybele and Attis in the Roman Empire.





The worship of
          the Great Mother of the Gods and her lover or son was very popular
          under the Roman Empire. Inscriptions prove that the two received
          divine honours, separately or conjointly, not only in Italy, and
          especially at Rome, but also in the provinces, particularly in
          Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, and Bulgaria.896 Their
          worship survived the establishment of Christianity by Constantine;
          for Symmachus records the recurrence of the festival of the Great
          Mother,897 and
          in the days of Augustine her effeminate priests still paraded the
          streets and squares of Carthage with whitened faces, scented hair,
          and mincing gait, while, like the mendicant friars of the Middle
          Ages, they begged alms from the passers-by.898 In
          Greece, on the other hand, the bloody orgies of the Asiatic goddess
          and her consort appear to have found little favour.899 The
          barbarous and cruel character of the worship, with its frantic
          excesses, was doubtless repugnant to the good taste and humanity of
          the Greeks, who seem to have preferred the kindred but gentler
          rites of Adonis. Yet the same features which shocked and repelled
          the Greeks may have positively [pg 299] attracted the less refined Romans and
          barbarians of the West. The ecstatic frenzies, which were mistaken
          for divine inspiration,900 the
          mangling of the body, the theory of a new birth and the remission
          of sins through the shedding of blood, have all their origin in
          savagery,901 and
          they naturally appealed to peoples in whom the savage instincts
          were still strong. Their true character was indeed often disguised
          under a decent veil of allegorical or philosophical
          interpretation,902 which
          probably sufficed to impose upon the rapt and enthusiastic
          worshippers, reconciling even the more cultivated of them to things
          which otherwise must have filled them with horror and disgust.







The spread of Oriental faiths over
              the Roman Empire contributed to undermine the fabric of Greek
              and Roman civilization by inculcating the salvation of the
              individual soul as the supreme aim of life.





The religion of
          the Great Mother, with its curious blending of crude savagery with
          spiritual aspirations, was only one of a multitude of similar
          Oriental faiths which in the later days of paganism spread over the
          Roman Empire, and by saturating the European peoples with alien
          ideals of [pg
          300]
          life gradually undermined the whole fabric of ancient
          civilization.903 Greek
          and Roman society was built on the conception of the subordination
          of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state; it
          set the safety of the commonwealth, as the supreme aim of conduct,
          above the safety of the individual whether in this world or in a
          world to come. Trained from infancy in this unselfish ideal, the
          citizens devoted their lives to the public service and were ready
          to lay them down for the common good; or if they shrank from the
          supreme sacrifice, it never occurred to them that they acted
          otherwise than basely in preferring their personal existence to the
          interests of their country. All this was changed by the spread of
          Oriental religions which inculcated the communion of the soul with
          God and its eternal salvation as the only objects worth living for,
          objects in comparison with which the prosperity and even the
          existence of the state sank into insignificance. The inevitable
          result of this selfish and immoral doctrine was to withdraw the
          devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his
          thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a
          contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as a
          probation for a better and an eternal. The saint and the recluse,
          disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven,
          became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing
          the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives
          and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city
          seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of
          God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so
          to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however
          much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt
          that this one lost heavily by the change. A general disintegration
          of the body politic set in. The ties of the state and the family
          were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself
          [pg 301] into its individual
          elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for civilization is
          only possible through the active co-operation of the citizens and
          their willingness to subordinate their private interests to the
          common good. Men refused to defend their country and even to
          continue their kind.904 In
          their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they
          were content to leave the material world, which they identified
          with the principle of evil, to perish around them. This obsession
          lasted for a thousand years. The revival of Roman law, of the
          Aristotelian philosophy, of ancient art and literature at the close
          of the Middle Ages, marked the return of Europe to native ideals of
          life and conduct, to saner, manlier views of the world. The long
          halt in the march of civilization was over. The tide of Oriental
          invasion had turned at last. It is ebbing still.905







Popularity of the worship of
              Mithra; its resemblance to Christianity and its rivalry with
              that religion. The festival of Christmas borrowed by the Church
              from the religion of Mithra.





Among the gods
          of eastern origin who in the decline of the ancient world competed
          against each other for the allegiance of the West was the old
          Persian deity Mithra. [pg
          302]
          The immense popularity of his worship is attested by the monuments
          illustrative of it which have been found scattered in profusion all
          over the Roman Empire.906 In
          respect both of doctrines and of rites the cult of Mithra appears
          to have presented many points of resemblance not only to the
          religion of the Mother of the Gods907 but
          also to Christianity.908 The
          similarity struck the Christian doctors themselves and was
          explained by them as a work of the devil, who sought to seduce the
          souls of men from the true faith by a false and insidious imitation
          of it.909 So to
          the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru many of the native
          heathen rites appeared to be diabolical counterfeits of the
          Christian sacraments.910 With
          more probability the modern student of comparative religion traces
          such resemblances to the similar and independent workings of the
          mind of man in his sincere, if crude, attempts to fathom the secret
          of the universe, and to adjust his little life to its awful
          mysteries. However that may be, there can be no doubt that the
          Mithraic religion proved a formidable rival to Christianity,
          combining as it did a solemn ritual with aspirations after moral
          purity and a hope of immortality.911
          Indeed the issue of the conflict between the two faiths appears for
          a time to have hung in the balance.912 An
          instructive relic of the long [pg 303] struggle is preserved in our festival of
          Christmas, which the Church seems to have borrowed directly from
          its heathen rival. In the Julian calendar the twenty-fifth of
          December was reckoned the winter solstice,913 and
          it was regarded as the Nativity of the Sun, because the day begins
          to lengthen and the power of the sun to increase from that
          turning-point of the year.914 The
          ritual of the nativity, as it appears to have been celebrated in
          Syria and Egypt, was remarkable. The celebrants retired into
          certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a
          loud cry, “The Virgin has brought forth!
          The light is waxing!”915 The
          Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an
          infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought
          forth and exhibited to his worshippers.916 No
          doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the
          twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the
          Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess;
          in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte.917 Now
          [pg 304] Mithra was regularly
          identified by his worshippers with the Sun, the Unconquered Sun, as
          they called him;918 hence
          his nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December.919 The
          Gospels say nothing as to the day of Christ's birth, and
          accordingly the early Church did not celebrate it. In time,
          however, the Christians of Egypt came to regard the sixth of
          January as the date of the Nativity, and the custom of
          commemorating the birth of the Saviour on that day gradually spread
          until by the fourth century it was universally established in the
          East. But at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth
          century the Western Church, which had never recognized the sixth of
          January as the day of the Nativity, adopted the twenty-fifth of
          December as the true date, and in time its decision was accepted
          also by the Eastern Church. At Antioch the change was not
          introduced till about the year 375 a.d.920







Motives for the institution of
              Christmas.





What
          considerations led the ecclesiastical authorities to institute the
          festival of Christmas? The motives for the innovation are stated
          with great frankness by a Syrian writer, himself a Christian.
          “The reason,” he tells us,
          “why the fathers transferred the
          celebration of the sixth of January to the twenty-fifth of December
          was this. It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same
          twenty-fifth of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they
          kindled [pg
          305]
          lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities
          the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the
          Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this
          festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity
          should be solemnized on that day and the festival of the Epiphany
          on the sixth of January. Accordingly, along with this custom, the
          practice has prevailed of kindling fires till the
          sixth.”921 The
          heathen origin of Christmas is plainly hinted at, if not tacitly
          admitted, by Augustine when he exhorts his Christian brethren not
          to celebrate that solemn day like the heathen on account of the
          sun, but on account of him who made the sun.922 In
          like manner Leo the Great rebuked the pestilent belief that
          Christmas was solemnized because of the birth of the new sun, as it
          was called, and not because of the nativity of Christ.923







The Easter celebration of the
              death and resurrection of Christ appears to have been
              assimilated to the celebration of the death and resurrection of
              Attis, which was held at Rome at the same season. Heathen
              festivals displaced by Christian.





Thus it appears
          that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday of its
          Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the
          devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun
          of Righteousness.924 If
          that was so, there can be no intrinsic improbability [pg 306] in the conjecture that motives of the
          same sort may have led the ecclesiastical authorities to assimilate
          the Easter festival of the death and resurrection of their Lord to
          the festival of the death and resurrection of another Asiatic god
          which fell at the same season. Now the Easter rites still observed
          in Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy bear in some respects a
          striking resemblance to the rites of Adonis, and I have suggested
          that the Church may have consciously adapted the new festival to
          its heathen predecessor for the sake of winning souls to
          Christ.925 But
          this adaptation probably took place in the Greek-speaking rather
          than in the Latin-speaking parts of the ancient world; for the
          worship of Adonis, while it flourished among the Greeks, appears to
          have made little impression on Rome and the West.926
          Certainly it never formed part of the official Roman religion. The
          place which it might have taken in the affections of the vulgar was
          already occupied by the similar but more barbarous worship of Attis
          and the Great Mother. Now the death and resurrection of Attis were
          officially celebrated at Rome on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth
          of March,927 the
          latter being regarded as the spring equinox,928 and
          therefore as the most appropriate day for the revival of a god of
          vegetation who had been dead or sleeping throughout the winter. But
          according to an ancient and widespread tradition Christ suffered on
          the twenty-fifth of March, and accordingly some Christians
          regularly celebrated the Crucifixion on that day without any regard
          to the state of the moon. This custom was certainly observed in
          Phrygia, Cappadocia, and Gaul, and there seem to be grounds for
          thinking that at one time it was followed also in Rome.929 Thus
          the tradition which [pg
          307]
          placed the death of Christ on the twenty-fifth of March was ancient
          and deeply rooted. It is all the more remarkable because
          astronomical considerations prove that it can have had no
          historical foundation.930 The
          inference appears to be inevitable that the passion of Christ must
          have been arbitrarily referred to that date in order to harmonize
          with an older festival of the spring equinox. This is the view of
          the learned ecclesiastical historian Mgr. Duchesne, who points out
          that the death of the Saviour was thus made to fall upon the very
          day on which, according to a widespread belief, the world had been
          created.931 But
          the resurrection [pg
          308]
          of Attis, who combined in himself the characters of the divine
          Father and the divine Son,932 was
          officially celebrated at Rome on the same day. When we remember
          that the festival of St. George in April has replaced the ancient
          pagan festival of the Parilia;933 that
          the festival of St. John the Baptist in June has succeeded to a
          heathen Midsummer festival of water;934 that
          the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin in August has ousted
          the festival of Diana;935 that
          the feast of All Souls in November is a continuation of an old
          heathen feast of the dead;936 and
          that the Nativity of Christ himself was assigned to the winter
          solstice in December because that day was deemed the Nativity of
          the Sun;937 we
          can hardly be thought rash or unreasonable in conjecturing that the
          other cardinal festival of the Christian church—the solemnization
          of Easter—may have been in like manner, and from like motives of
          edification, adapted to a similar celebration of the Phrygian god
          Attis at the vernal equinox.938







Coincidence between the pagan and
              the Christian festivals of the divine death and
              resurrection.





At least it is a
          remarkable coincidence, if it is nothing more, that the Christian
          and the heathen festivals of the divine death and resurrection
          should have been solemnized at the same season and in the same
          places. For the places which celebrated the death of Christ at the
          spring equinox were Phrygia, Gaul, and apparently Rome, that is,
          the very regions in which the worship of Attis either originated or
          [pg 309] struck deepest root.
          It is difficult to regard the coincidence as purely accidental. If
          the vernal equinox, the season at which in the temperate regions
          the whole face of nature testifies to a fresh outburst of vital
          energy, had been viewed from of old as the time when the world was
          annually created afresh in the resurrection of a god, nothing could
          be more natural than to place the resurrection of the new deity at
          the same cardinal point of the year. Only it is to be observed that
          if the death of Christ was dated on the twenty-fifth of March, his
          resurrection, according to Christian tradition, must have happened
          on the twenty-seventh of March, which is just two days later than
          the vernal equinox of the Julian calendar and the resurrection of
          Attis. A similar displacement of two days in the adjustment of
          Christian to heathen celebrations occurs in the festivals of St.
          George and the Assumption of the Virgin. However, another Christian
          tradition, followed by Lactantius and perhaps by the practice of
          the Church in Gaul, placed the death of Christ on the twenty-third
          and his resurrection on the twenty-fifth of March.939 If
          that was so, his resurrection coincided exactly with the
          resurrection of Attis.







Different theories by which pagans
              and Christians explained the coincidence.





In point of fact
          it appears from the testimony of an anonymous Christian, who wrote
          in the fourth century of our era, that Christians and pagans alike
          were struck by the remarkable coincidence between the death and
          resurrection of their respective deities, and that the coincidence
          formed a theme of bitter controversy between the adherents of the
          rival religions, the pagans contending that the resurrection of
          Christ was a spurious imitation of the resurrection of Attis, and
          the Christians asserting with equal warmth that the resurrection of
          Attis was a diabolical counterfeit of the resurrection of Christ.
          In these unseemly bickerings the heathen took what to a superficial
          observer might seem strong ground by arguing that their god was the
          older and therefore presumably the original, not the counterfeit,
          since as a general rule an original is older than its copy. This
          feeble argument the Christians easily rebutted. They [pg 310] admitted, indeed, that in point of time
          Christ was the junior deity, but they triumphantly demonstrated his
          real seniority by falling back on the subtlety of Satan, who on so
          important an occasion had surpassed himself by inverting the usual
          order of nature.940







Compromise of Christianity with
              paganism. Parallel with Buddhism.





Taken
          altogether, the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen
          festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They
          mark the compromise which the Church in the hour of its triumph was
          compelled to make with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals.
          The inflexible Protestantism of the primitive missionaries, with
          their fiery denunciations of heathendom, had been exchanged for the
          supple policy, the easy tolerance, the comprehensive charity of
          shrewd ecclesiastics, who clearly perceived that if Christianity
          was to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too
          rigid principles of its Founder, by widening a little the narrow
          gate which leads to salvation. In this respect an instructive
          parallel might be drawn between the history of Christianity and the
          [pg 311] history of
          Buddhism.941 Both
          systems were in their origin essentially ethical reforms born of
          the generous ardour, the lofty aspirations, the tender compassion
          of their noble Founders, two of those beautiful spirits who appear
          at rare intervals on earth like beings come from a better world to
          support and guide our weak and erring nature.942 Both
          preached moral virtue as the means of accomplishing what they
          regarded as the supreme object of life, the eternal salvation of
          the individual soul, though by a curious antithesis the one sought
          that salvation in a blissful eternity, the other in a final release
          from suffering, in annihilation. But the austere ideals of sanctity
          which they inculcated were too deeply opposed not only to the
          frailties but to the natural instincts of humanity ever to be
          carried out in practice by more than a small number of disciples,
          who consistently renounced the ties of the family and the state in
          order to work out their own salvation in the still seclusion of the
          cloister. If such faiths were to be nominally accepted by whole
          nations or even by the world, it was essential that they should
          first be modified or transformed so as to accord in some measure
          with the prejudices, the passions, the superstitions of the vulgar.
          This process of accommodation was carried out in after ages by
          followers who, made of less ethereal stuff than their masters, were
          for that reason the better fitted to mediate between them and the
          common herd. Thus as time went on, the two religions, in exact
          proportion to their growing popularity, absorbed more and more of
          those baser elements which they had been instituted for the very
          purpose of suppressing. Such spiritual decadences are [pg 312] inevitable. The world cannot live at
          the level of its great men. Yet it would be unfair to the
          generality of our kind to ascribe wholly to their intellectual and
          moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity
          from their primitive patterns. For it should never be forgotten
          that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these
          religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society
          but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the
          folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a
          chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing
          the species.


[pg 313]




 


Chapter VII. Hyacinth.







The Greek Hyacinth interpreted as
              the vegetation which blooms and withers away.





Another mythical
          being who has been supposed to belong to the class of gods here
          discussed is Hyacinth. He too has been interpreted as the
          vegetation which blooms in spring and withers under the scorching
          heat of the summer sun.943
          Though he belongs to Greek, not to Oriental mythology, some account
          of him may not be out of place in the present discussion. According
          to the legend, Hyacinth was the youngest and handsomest son of the
          ancient king Amyclas, who had his capital at Amyclae in the
          beautiful vale of Sparta. One day playing at quoits with Apollo, he
          was accidentally killed by a blow of the god's quoit. Bitterly the
          god lamented the death of his friend. The hyacinth—“that sanguine flower inscribed with woe”—sprang
          from the blood of the hapless youth, as anemones and roses from the
          blood of Adonis, and violets from the blood of Attis:944 like
          these vernal flowers it heralded the advent of another spring and
          gladdened the hearts of men with the promise of a joyful
          resurrection. The flower is usually supposed to be not what we call
          a hyacinth, but a little purple iris with the letters of
          lamentation (AI, which in [pg
          314]
          Greek means “alas”) clearly
          inscribed in black on its petals. In Greece it blooms in spring
          after the early violets but before the roses.945 One
          spring, when the hyacinths were in bloom, it happened that the
          red-coated Spartan regiments lay encamped under the walls of
          Corinth. Their commander gave the Amyclean battalion leave to go
          home and celebrate as usual the festival of Hyacinth in their
          native town. But the sad flower was to be to these men an omen of
          death; for they had not gone far before they were enveloped by
          clouds of light-armed foes and cut to pieces.946







The tomb and the festival of
              Hyacinth at Amyclae.





The tomb of
          Hyacinth was at Amyclae under a massive altar-like pedestal, which
          supported an archaic bronze image of Apollo. In the left side of
          the pedestal was a bronze door, and through it offerings were
          passed to Hyacinth, as to a hero or a dead man, not as to a god,
          before sacrifices were offered to Apollo at the annual Hyacinthian
          festival. Bas-reliefs carved on the pedestal represented Hyacinth
          and his maiden sister Polyboea caught up to heaven by a company of
          goddesses.947 The
          annual festival of the Hyacinthia was held in the month of
          Hecatombeus, which seems to have corresponded to May.948 The
          ceremonies occupied three days. On the first the people mourned for
          [pg 315] Hyacinth, wearing no
          wreaths, singing no paeans, eating no bread, and behaving with
          great gravity. It was on this day probably that the offerings were
          made at Hyacinth's tomb. Next day the scene was changed. All was
          joy and bustle. The capital was emptied of its inhabitants, who
          poured out in their thousands to witness and share the festivities
          at Amyclae. Boys in high-girt tunics sang hymns in honour of the
          god to the accompaniment of flutes and lyres. Others, splendidly
          attired, paraded on horseback in the theatre: choirs of youths
          chanted their native ditties: dancers danced: maidens rode in
          wicker carriages or went in procession to witness the chariot
          races: sacrifices were offered in profusion: the citizens feasted
          their friends and even their slaves.949 This
          outburst of gaiety may be supposed to have celebrated the
          resurrection of Hyacinth and perhaps also his ascension to heaven,
          which, as we have seen, was represented on his tomb. However, it
          may be that the ascension took place on the third day of the
          festival; but as to that we know nothing. The sister who went to
          heaven with him was by some identified with Artemis or
          Persephone.950







Hyacinth an aboriginal god,
              perhaps a king, who was worshipped in Laconia before the
              invasion of the Dorians. His sister Polyboea may perhaps have
              been his spouse.





It is highly
          probable, as Erwin Rohde perceived,951 that
          Hyacinth was an old aboriginal deity of the underworld who had been
          worshipped at Amyclae long before the Dorians invaded and conquered
          the country. If that was so, the story of his relation to Apollo
          must have been a comparatively late invention, an attempt of the
          newcomers to fit the ancient god of the land into their own
          mythical system, in order that he might extend his protection to
          them. On this theory it may not be without significance
          [pg 316] that sacrifices at
          the festival were offered to Hyacinth, as to a hero, before they
          were offered to Apollo.952
          Further, on the analogy of similar deities elsewhere, we should
          expect to find Hyacinth coupled, not with a male friend, but with a
          female consort. That consort may perhaps be detected in his sister
          Polyboea, who ascended to heaven with him. The new myth, if new it
          was, of the love of Apollo for Hyacinth would involve a changed
          conception of the aboriginal god, which in its turn must have
          affected that of his spouse. For when Hyacinth came to be thought
          of as young and unmarried there was no longer room in his story for
          a wife, and she would have to be disposed of in some other way.
          What was easier for the myth-maker than to turn her into his
          unmarried sister? However we may explain it, a change seems
          certainly to have come over the popular idea of Hyacinth; for
          whereas on his tomb he was portrayed as a bearded man, later art
          represented him as the pink of youthful beauty.953 But
          it is perhaps needless to suppose that the sisterly relation of
          Polyboea to him was a late modification of the myth. The stories of
          Cronus and Rhea, of Zeus and Hera, of Osiris and Isis, remind us
          that in old days gods, like kings, often married their sisters, and
          probably for the same reason, namely, to ensure their own title to
          the throne under a rule of female kinship which treated women and
          not men as the channel in which the blood royal flowed.954 It is
          not impossible that Hyacinth may have been a divine king who
          actually reigned in his lifetime at Amyclae and was afterwards
          worshipped at his tomb. The representation of his triumphal ascent
          to heaven in company with his sister suggests that, like Adonis and
          Persephone, he may have been supposed to spend one part of the year
          in the [pg
          317]
          under-world of darkness and death, and another part in the
          upper-world of light and life. And as the anemones and the
          sprouting corn marked the return of Adonis and Persephone, so the
          flowers to which he gave his name may have heralded the ascension
          of Hyacinth.


End Of Vol.
          1.













 


Footnotes




1.


As in the present volume I am
          concerned with the beliefs and practices of Orientals I may quote
          the following passage from one who has lived long in the East and
          knows it well: “The Oriental mind is free
          from the trammels of logic. It is a literal fact that the Oriental
          mind can accept and believe two opposite things at the same time.
          We find fully qualified and even learned Indian doctors practising
          Greek medicine, as well as English medicine, and enforcing sanitary
          restrictions to which their own houses and families are entirely
          strangers. We find astronomers who can predict eclipses, and yet
          who believe that eclipses are caused by a dragon swallowing the
          sun. We find holy men who are credited with miraculous powers and
          with close communion with the Deity, who live in drunkenness and
          immorality, and who are capable of elaborate frauds on others. To
          the Oriental mind, a thing must be incredible to command a ready
          belief” (“Riots and Unrest in the
          Punjab, from a correspondent,” The Times Weekly
          Edition, May 24, 1907, p. 326). Again, speaking of
          the people of the Lower Congo, an experienced missionary describes
          their religious ideas as “chaotic in the
          extreme and impossible to reduce to any systematic order. The same
          person will tell you at different times that the departed spirit
          goes to the nether regions, or to a dark forest, or to the moon, or
          to the sun. There is no coherence in their beliefs, and their ideas
          about cosmogony and the future are very nebulous. Although they
          believe in punishment after death their faith is so hazy that it
          has lost all its deterrent force. If in the following pages a lack
          of logical unity is observed, it must be put to the debit of the
          native mind, as that lack of logical unity really represents the
          mistiness of their views.” See Rev. John H. Weeks,
          “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo
          People,” Folk-lore, xx. (1909) pp. 54
          sq. Unless we allow for this
          innate capacity of the human mind to entertain contradictory
          beliefs at the same time, we shall in vain attempt to understand
          the history of thought in general and of religion in
          particular.


2.


The equivalence of Tammuz and Adonis
          has been doubted or denied by some scholars, as by Renan
          (Mission
          de Phénicie, Paris, 1864, pp. 216, 235) and by
          Chwolsohn (Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus,
          St. Petersburg, 1856, ii. 510). But the two gods are identified by
          Origen (Selecta in Ezechielem, Migne's
          Patrologia Graeca, xiii. 797),
          Jerome (Epist. lviii. 3 and Commentar. in
          Ezechielem, viii. 13, 14, Migne's Patrologia
          Latina, xxii. 581, xxv. 82), Cyril of Alexandria
          (In
          Isaiam, lib. ii. tomus. iii., and Comment. on
          Hosea, iv. 15, Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, lxx. 441, lxxi. 136), Theodoretus
          (In
          Ezechielis cap. viii., Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, lxxxi. 885), the author of the Paschal
          Chronicle (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, xcii. 329)
          and Melito (in W. Cureton's Spicilegium Syriacum, London,
          1855, p. 44); and accordingly we may fairly conclude that, whatever
          their remote origin may have been, Tammuz and Adonis were in the
          later period of antiquity practically equivalent to each other.
          Compare W. W. Graf Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen
          Religionsgeschichte (Leipsic, 1876-1878), i. 299;
          id., in Realencyclopädie für
          protestantische Theologie und
          Kirchengeschichte,3
s.v. “Tammuz”; id., Adonis und
          Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), pp. 94 sqq.;
          W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte
          (Berlin, 1877), pp. 273 sqq.; Ch. Vellay, “Le dieu Thammuz,” Revue de l'Histoire
          des Religions, xlix. (1904) pp. 154-162. Baudissin
          holds that Tammuz and Adonis were two different gods sprung from a
          common root (Adonis und Esmun, p. 368). An
          Assyrian origin of the cult of Adonis was long ago affirmed by
          Macrobius (Sat. i. 21. 1). On Adonis and
          his worship in general see also F. C. Movers, Die
          Phoenizier, i. (Bonn, 1841) pp. 191 sqq.;
          W. H. Engel, Kypros (Berlin, 1841), ii. 536
          sqq.; Ch. Vellay, Le culte et les fêtes
          d' Adonis-Thammouz dans l'Orient antique (Paris,
          1904).


3.


The mourning for Adonis is mentioned
          by Sappho, who flourished about 600 b.c. See Th. Bergk's
          Poetae
          Lyrici Graeci,3 iii. (Leipsic, 1867) p.
          897; Pausanias, ix. 29. 8.


4.


Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2 (Berlin, 1909), pp.
          394 sq.; W. W. Graf Baudissin,
          Adonis
          und Esmun, pp. 65 sqq.


5.


Encyclopaedia Biblica, ed. T. K.
          Cheyne and J. S. Black, iii. 3327. In the Old Testament the title
          Adoni, “my lord,” is frequently given to men. See, for
          example, Genesis xxxiii. 8, 13, 14, 15, xlii. 10, xliii. 20, xliv.
          5, 7, 9, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24.


6.


C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der
          Religion im Altertum (Gotha, 1896-1903), i. 134
          sqq.; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, les Origines (Paris,
          1895), pp. 550 sq.; L. W. King, Babylonian Religion
          and Mythology (London, 1899), pp. 1 sqq.;
          id., A History of Sumer
          and Akkad (London, 1910), pp. 1 sqq.,
          40 sqq.; H. Winckler, in E.
          Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das alte
          Testament3 (Berlin, 1902), pp. 10
          sq., 349; Fr. Hommel,
          Grundriss
          der Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients
          (Munich, 1904), pp. 18 sqq.; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2 (Berlin, 1909), pp.
          401 sqq. As to the hypothesis that
          the Sumerians were immigrants from Central Asia, see L. W. King,
          History
          of Sumer and Akkad, pp. 351 sqq.
          The gradual desiccation of Central Asia, which is conjectured to
          have caused the Sumerian migration, has been similarly invoked to
          explain the downfall of the Roman empire; for by rendering great
          regions uninhabitable it is supposed to have driven hordes of
          fierce barbarians to find new homes in Europe. See Professor J. W.
          Gregory's lecture “Is the earth drying
          up?” delivered before the Royal Geographical Society and
          reported in The Times, December 9th, 1913.
          It is held by Prof. Hommel (op. cit. pp. 19 sqq.)
          that the Sumerian language belongs to the Ural-altaic family, but
          the better opinion seems to be that its linguistic affinities are
          unknown. The view, once ardently advocated, that Sumerian was not a
          language but merely a cabalistic mode of writing Semitic, is now
          generally exploded.


7.


H. Zimmern, “Der babylonische Gott Tamüz,” Abhandlungen der
          philologisch-historischen Klasse der Königl. Sächsischen
          Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, xxvii. No. xx.
          (Leipsic, 1909) pp. 701, 722.


8.


Dumu-zi, or in fuller form
          Dumuzi-abzu. See P. Jensen,
          Assyrisch-Babylonische Mythen und
          Epen (Berlin, 1900), p. 560; H. Zimmern, op.
          cit. pp. 703 sqq.; id., in
          E. Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
          Testament3 (Berlin, 1902), p. 397; P.
          Dhorme, La Religion Assyro-Babylonienne
          (Paris, 1910), p. 105; W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und
          Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), p. 104.


9.


H. Zimmern, “Der babylonische Gott Tamüz,” Abhandl. d. Kön.
          Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, xxvii. No.
          xx. (Leipsic, 1909) p, 723. For the text and translation of the
          hymns, see H. Zimmern, “Sumerisch-babylonische Tamüzlieder,”
Berichte
          über die Verhandlungen der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der
          Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologisch-historische
          Klasse, lix. (1907) pp. 201-252. Compare H.
          Gressmann, Altorientalische Texte und
          Bilder (Tübingen, 1909), i. 93 sqq.;
          W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun (Leipsic,
          1911), pp. 99 sq.; R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels
          to the Old Testament (Oxford, n.d.), pp. 179-185.


10.


A. Jeremias, Die
          babylonisch-assyrischen Vorstellungen vom Leben nach dem
          Tode (Leipsic, 1887), pp. 4 sqq.;
          id., in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 808, iii. 258
          sqq.; M. Jastrow, The Religion of
          Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, 1898), pp. 565-576,
          584, 682 sq.; W. L. King, Babylonian Religion
          and Mythology, pp. 178-183; P. Jensen, Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und
          Epen, pp. 81 sqq., 95 sqq.,
          169; R. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian
          Literature (New York, 1901), pp. 316 sq.,
          338, 408 sqq.; H. Zimmern, in E.
          Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
          Testament,3 pp. 397 sqq.,
          561 sqq.; id.,
          “Sumerisch-babylonische
          Tamūzlieder,” Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Königlich
          Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig,
          Philologisch-historische Klasse, lix. (1907) pp. 220,
          232, 236 sq.; id.,
          “Der babylonische Gott Tamūz,”
Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen
          Klasse der Königl. Sächsischen Gesellschaft der
          Wissenschaften, xxvii. No. xx. (Leipsic, 1909) pp.
          725 sq., 729-735; H. Gressmann,
          Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum Alten
          Testamente (Tübingen, 1909), i. 65-69; R. W. Rogers,
          Cuneiform
          Parallels to the Old Testament (Oxford, n.d.), pp. 121-131; W. W.
          Graf Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun (Leipsic,
          1911), pp. 99 sqq., 353 sqq.
          According to Jerome (on Ezekiel viii. 14) the month of Tammuz was
          June; but according to modern scholars it corresponded rather to
          July, or to part of June and part of July. See F. C. Movers,
          Die
          Phoenizier, i. 210; F. Lenormant, “Il mito di Adone-Tammuz nei documenti
          cuneiformi,” Atti del IV. Congresso Internazionale degli
          Orientalisti (Florence, 1880), i. 144 sq.; W.
          Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 275;
          Encyclopaedia Biblica, s.v.
“Months,” iii. 3194. My friend W.
          Robertson Smith informed me that owing to the variations of the
          local Syrian calendars the month of Tammuz fell in different places
          at different times, from midsummer to autumn, or from June to
          September. According to Prof. M. Jastrow, the festival of Tammuz
          was celebrated just before the summer solstice (The Religion of
          Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 547, 682). He observes
          that “the calendar of the Jewish Church
          still marks the 17th day of Tammuz as a fast, and Houtsma has shown
          that the association of the day with the capture of Jerusalem by
          the Romans represents merely the attempt to give an ancient
          festival a worthier interpretation.”


11.


Ezekiel viii. 14.


12.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 14. 4; Bion,
          Idyl, i., J. Tzetzes.
          Schol. on
          Lycophron, 831; Ovid, Metam.
          x. 503 sqq.; Aristides, Apology, edited by J. Rendel
          Harris (Cambridge, 1891), pp. 44, 106 sq. In
          Babylonian texts relating to Tammuz no reference has yet been found
          to death by a boar. See H. Zimmern, “Sumerisch-babylonische Tamūzlieder,” p. 451;
          id., “Der babylonische Gott Tamūz,” p. 731. Baudissin
          inclines to think that the incident of the boar is a late
          importation into the myth of Adonis. See his Adonis und
          Esmun, pp. 142 sqq. As to the relation of the
          boar to the kindred gods Adonis, Attis, and Osiris see Spirits of the Corn
          and of the Wild, ii. 22 sqq.,
          where I have suggested that the idea of the boar as the foe of the
          god may be based on the terrible ravages which wild pigs
          notoriously commit in fields of corn.


13.


W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und
          Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), pp. 152 sq.,
          with plate iv. As to the representation of the myth of Adonis on
          Etruscan mirrors and late works of Roman art, especially
          sarcophaguses and wall-paintings, see Otto Jahn, Archäologische
          Beiträge (Berlin, 1847), pp. 45-51.


14.


The ancients were aware that the
          Syrian and Cyprian Aphrodite, the mistress of Adonis, was no other
          than Astarte. See Cicero, De natura deorum, iii. 23. 59;
          Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iv. 44. On Adonis
          in Phoenicia see W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und
          Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), pp. 71 sqq.


15.


As to Cinyras, see F. C. Movers,
          Die
          Phoenizier, i. 238 sqq.,
          ii. 2. 226-231; W. H. Engel, Kypros (Berlin, 1841), i.
          168-173, ii. 94-136; Stoll, s.v. “Kinyras,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1189 sqq.
          Melito calls the father of Adonis by the name of Cuthar, and
          represents him as king of the Phoenicians with his capital at Gebal
          (Byblus). See Melito, “Oration to Antoninus
          Caesar,” in W. Cureton's Spicilegium
          Syriacum (London, 1855), p. 44.


16.


Philo of Byblus, quoted by Eusebius,
          Praeparatio Evangelii, i. 10;
          Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii. 568;
          Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Βύβλος. Byblus is a Greek
          corruption of the Semitic Gebal (גבל), the name which the place
          still retains. See E. Renan, Mission de Phénicie (Paris,
          1864), p. 155.


17.


R. Pietschmann, Geschichte der
          Phoenizier (Berlin, 1889), p. 139. On the coins it is
          designated “Holy Byblus.”


18.


Strabo, xvi. 1. 18, p. 755.


19.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 6.


20.


The sanctuary and image are figured on
          coins of Byblus. See T. L. Donaldson, Architectura
          Numismatica (London, 1859), pp. 105 sq.; E.
          Renan, Mission de Phénicie, p. 177; G.
          Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iii. (Paris, 1885) p. 60; R.
          Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phoenizier, p.
          202; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient
          Classique, ii. (Paris, 1897) p. 173. Renan excavated
          a massive square pedestal built of colossal stones, which he
          thought may have supported the sacred obelisk (op.
          cit. pp. 174-178).


21.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 6.


22.


Strabo, xvi. 1. 18, p. 755.


23.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 8; Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. v. 78; E. Renan, Mission de
          Phénicie, pp. 282 sqq.


24.


Eustathius, Commentary on
          Dionysius Periegetes, 912 (Geographi Graeci
          Minores, ed. C. Müller, ii. 376); Melito, in W.
          Cureton's Spicilegium Syriacum, p.
          44.


25.


Ezekiel xxvii. 9. As to the name Gebal
          see above, p. 13, note
          1.


26.


L. B. Paton, The Early History of
          Syria and Palestine (London, 1902), pp. 169-171. See
          below, pp. 75 sq.


27.


L. B. Paton, op.
          cit. p. 235; R. F. Harper, Assyrian and
          Babylonian Literature, p. 57 (the Nimrud inscription
          of Tiglath-pileser III.).


28.


The inscription was discovered by
          Renan. See Ch. Vellay, Le culte et les fêtes d'Adonis-Thammouz dans
          l'Orient antique (Paris, 1904), pp. 38 sq.; G.
          A. Cooke, Text-book of North-Semitic
          Inscriptions (Oxford 1903), No. 3, pp. 18
          sq. In the time of Alexander the
          Great the king of Byblus was a certain Enylus (Arrian, Anabasis, ii. 20), whose name
          appears on a coin of the city (F. C. Movers, Die
          Phoenizier, ii. 1, p. 103, note 81).


29.


On the divinity of Semitic kings and
          the kingship of Semitic gods see W. R. Smith, Religion of the
          Semites2 (London, 1894), pp. 44
          sq., 66 sqq.


30.


H. Radau, Early Babylonian
          History (New York and London, 1900), pp. 307-317; P.
          Dhorme, La Religion Assyro-Babylonienne
          (Paris, 1910), pp. 168 sqq.


31.


The evidence for this is the Moabite
          stone, but the reading of the inscription is doubtful. See S. R.
          Driver, in Encyclopaedia Biblica,
          s.v. “Mesha,” vol. iii. 3041 sqq.;
          id., Notes on the Hebrew
          Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel,
          Second Edition (Oxford, 1913), pp. lxxxv., lxxxvi., lxxxviii.
          sq.; G. A. Cooke, Text-book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, No. 1, pp. 1 sq.,
          6.


32.


2 Kings viii. 7, 9, xiii. 24
          sq.; Jeremiah xlix. 27. As to
          the god Hadad see Macrobius, Saturn, i. 23. 17-19 (where, as
          so often in late writers, the Syrians are called Assyrians); Philo
          of Byblus, in Fragmenta Historicorum
          Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii. 569; F. Baethgen,
          Beiträge
          zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1888),
          pp. 66-68; G. A. Cooke, Text-book of North-Semitic
          Inscriptions, Nos. 61, 62, pp. 161 sq.,
          164, 173, 175; M. J. Lagrange, Études sur les
          Religions Sémitiques2
          (Paris, 1905), pp. 93, 493, 496 sq. The
          prophet Zechariah speaks (xii. 11) of a great mourning of or for
          Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddon. This has been taken to refer
          to a lament for Hadad-Rimmon, the Syrian god of rain, storm, and
          thunder, like the lament for Adonis. See S. R. Driver's note on the
          passage (The Minor Prophets, pp. 266
          sq., Century
          Bible); W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und
          Esmun, p. 92.


33.


Josephus, Antiquit.
          Jud. ix. 4. 6.


34.


Genesis xxxvi. 35 sq.; 1
          Kings xi. 14-22; 1 Chronicles i. 50 sq. Of
          the eight kings of Edom mentioned in Genesis (xxxvi. 31-39) and in
          1 Chronicles (i. 43-50) not one was the son of his predecessor.
          This seems to indicate that in Edom, as elsewhere, the blood royal
          was traced in the female line, and that the kings were men of other
          families, or even foreigners, who succeeded to the throne by
          marrying the hereditary princesses. See The Magic Art and the
          Evolution of Kings, ii. 268 sqq.
          The Israelites were forbidden to have a foreigner for a king
          (Deuteronomy xvii. 15 with S. R. Driver's note), which seems to
          imply that the custom was known among their neighbours. It is
          significant that some of the names of the kings of Edom seem to be
          those of divinities, as Prof. A. H. Sayce observed long ago
          (Lectures
          on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, London
          and Edinburgh, 1887, p. 54).


35.


G. A. Cooke, op.
          cit. Nos. 62, 63, pp. 163, 165, 173 sqq.,
          181 sqq.; M. J. Lagrange,
          op.
          cit. pp. 496 sqq. The god Rekub-el is
          mentioned along with the gods Hadad, El, Reshef, and Shamash in an
          inscription of King Bar-rekub's mortal father, King Panammu (G. A.
          Cooke, op. cit. No. 61, p. 161).


36.


Virgil, Aen. i.
          729 sq., with Servius's note; Silius
          Italicus, Punica, i. 86 sqq.


37.


Ezekiel xxviii. 2, 9.


38.


Menander of Ephesus, quoted by
          Josephus, Contra Apionem, i. 18 and 21;
          Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iv. 446
          sq. According to the text of
          Josephus, as edited by B. Niese, the names of the kings in question
          were Abibal, Balbazer, Abdastart, Methusastart, son of Leastart,
          Ithobal, Balezor, Baal, Balator, Merbal. The passage of Menander is
          quoted also by Eusebius, Chronic. i. pp. 118, 120, ed. A.
          Schoene.


39.


G. A. Cooke, Text-book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, No. 36, p. 102. As to
          Melcarth, the Tyrian Hercules, see Ed. Meyer, s.v.
“Melqart,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie, ii. 2650 sqq.
          One of the Tyrian kings seems to have been called Abi-milk
          (Abi-melech), that is, “father of a
          king” or “father of Moloch,”
          that is, of Melcarth. A letter of his to the king of Egypt is
          preserved in the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence. See R. F. Harper,
          Assyrian
          and Babylonian Literature, p. 237. As to a title
          which implies that the bearer of it was the father of a god, see
          below, pp. 51 sq.


40.


E. Renan, quoted by Ch. Vellay,
          Le culte
          et les fêtes d'Adonis-Thammouz, p. 39. Mr. Cooke
          reads ארםלך (Uri-milk) instead of אדםלך (Adon-milk) (G. A. Cooke,
          Text-book
          of North-Semitic Inscriptions, No. 3, p. 18).


41.


Judges i. 4-7; Joshua x. 1
          sqq.


42.


Genesis xiv. 18-20, with Prof. S. R.
          Driver's commentary; Encyclopaedia Biblica,
          s.vv. “Adoni-bezek,” “Adoni-zedek,” “Melchizedek.” It is to be observed that names
          compounded with Adoni- were occasionally borne by private persons.
          Such names are Adoni-kam (Ezra ii. 13) and Adoni-ram (1 Kings iv.
          6), not to mention Adoni-jah (1 Kings i. 5 sqq.),
          who was a prince and aspired to the throne of his father David.
          These names are commonly interpreted as sentences expressive of the
          nature of the god whom the bearer of the name worshipped. See Prof.
          Th. Nöldeke, in Encyclopaedia Biblica,
          s.v. “Names,” iii. 3286. It is quite possible that
          names which once implied divinity were afterwards degraded by
          application to common men.


43.


Ezekiel viii. 14.


44.


They were banished from the temple by
          King Josiah, who came to the throne in 637 b.c. Jerusalem fell just
          fifty-one years later. See 2 Kings xxiii. 7. As to these
          “sacred men” (ḳedēshīm), see below, pp.
          72 sqq.


45.


2 Kings xxiii. 7, where, following the
          Septuagint, we must apparently read כתנים for the בתים of the
          Massoretic Text. So R. Kittel and J. Skinner.


46.


The ashērah (singular of ashērīm) was certainly of wood
          (Judges vi. 26): it seems to have been a tree stripped of its
          branches and planted in the ground beside an altar, whether of
          Jehovah or of other gods (Deuteronomy xvi. 21; Jeremiah xvii. 2).
          That the asherah was
          regarded as a goddess, the female partner of Baal, appears from 1
          Kings xviii. 19; 2 Kings xxi. 3, xxiii. 4; and that this goddess
          was identified with Ashtoreth (Astarte) may be inferred from a
          comparison of Judges ii. 13 with Judges iii. 7. Yet on the other
          hand the pole or tree seems by others to have been viewed as a male
          power (Jeremiah ii. 27; see below, pp. 107 sqq.), and the identification of
          the asherah with
          Astarte has been doubted or disputed by some eminent modern
          scholars. See on this subject W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the
          Semites,2 pp. 187 sqq.;
          S. R. Driver, on Deuteronomy xvi. 21; J. Skinner, on 1 Kings xiv.
          23; M. J. Lagrange, Études sur les religions
          Sémitiques,2 pp. 173 sqq.;
          G. F. Moore, in Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. i.
          330 sqq., s.v.
“Asherah.”


47.


Deuteronomy xxiii. 17 sq. (in
          Hebrew 18 sq.). The code of Deuteronomy
          was published in 621 b.c. in the reign of King
          Josiah, whose reforms, including the ejection of the ḳedeshim from the temple, were
          based upon it. See W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in
          the Jewish Church2
          (London and Edinburgh, 1892), pp. 256 sqq.,
          353 sqq.; S. R. Driver, Critical and
          Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy3
          (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. xliv. sqq.; K. Budde, Geschichte der
          althebräischen Litteratur (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 105
          sqq.


48.


He reigned seven years in Hebron and
          thirty-three in Jerusalem (2 Samuel v. 5; 1 Kings ii. 11; 1
          Chronicles xxix. 27).


49.


Professor A. H. Sayce has argued that
          David's original name was Elhanan (2 Samuel xxi. 19 compared with
          xxiii. 24), and that the name David, which he took at a later time,
          should be written Dod or Dodo, “the Beloved
          One,” which according to Prof. Sayce was a name for Tammuz
          (Adonis) in Southern Canaan, and was in particular bestowed by the
          Jebusites of Jerusalem on their supreme deity. See A. H. Sayce,
          Lectures
          on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (London
          and Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 52-57. If he is right, his conclusions
          would accord perfectly with those which I had reached
          independently, and it would become probable that David only assumed
          the name of David (Dod, Dodo) after the conquest of Jerusalem, and
          for the purpose of identifying himself with the god of the city,
          who had borne the same title from time immemorial. But on the whole
          it seems more likely, as Professor Kennett points out to me, that
          in the original story Elhanah, a totally different person from
          David, was the slayer of Goliath, and that the part of the
          giant-killer was thrust on David at a later time when the
          brightness of his fame had eclipsed that of many lesser
          heroes.


50.


2 Samuel xii. 26-31; 1 Chronicles xx.
          1-3. Critics seem generally to agree that in these passages the
          word מלכם must be pointed Milcom, not malcham “their king,” as the Massoretic text, followed
          by the English version, has it. The reading Milcom, which involves no change
          of the original Hebrew text, is supported by the reading of the
          Septuagint Μολχὸμ τοῦ βασιλέως αὐτῶν, where the three last words
          are probably a gloss on Μολχὸμ. See S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew
          Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel,
          Second Edition (Oxford, 1913), p. 294; Dean Kirkpatrick, in his
          note on 2 Samuel xii. 30 (Cambridge Bible for Schools and
          Colleges); Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii.
          3085; R. Kittel, Biblia Hebraica, i. 433; Brown,
          Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old
          Testament (Oxford, 1906), pp. 575 sq.
          David's son and successor adopted the worship of Milcom and made a
          high place for him outside Jerusalem. See 1 Kings xi. 5; 2 Kings
          xxiii. 13.


51.


2 Samuel v. 6-10; 1 Chronicles xi.
          4-9.


52.


See for example 1 Samuel xxiv. 8; 2
          Samuel xiv. 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, xv. 15, 21, xvi. 4, 9,
          xviii. 28, 31, 32; 1 Kings i. 2, 13, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27; 1
          Chronicles xxi. 3, 23.


53.


Jeremiah xxii. 18, xxxiv. 5. In the
          former passage, according to the Massoretic text, the full formula
          of mourning was, “Alas my brother! alas
          sister! alas lord! alas his glory!” Who was the lamented
          sister? Professor T. K. Cheyne supposes that she was Astarte, and
          by a very slight change (דדה for הדה) he would read “Dodah” for “his
          glory,” thus restoring the balance between the clauses; for
          “Dodah” would then answer to
          “Adon” (lord) as “sister” answers to “brother.” I have to thank Professor Cheyne for
          kindly communicating this conjecture to me by letter. He writes
          that Dodah “is a title of Ishtar, just as
          Dôd is a title of Tamûz,” and for evidence he refers me to
          the Dodah of the Moabite Stone, where, however, the reading Dodah
          is not free from doubt. See G. A. Cooke, Text-book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, No. 1, pp. 1, 3, 11;
          Encyclopaedia Biblica, ii. 3045;
          S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of
          the Books of Samuel, Second Edition (Oxford, 1913),
          pp. lxxxv., lxxxvi., xc.; F. Baethgen, Beiträge zur
          semitischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1888), p.
          234; H. Winckler, Geschichte Israels (Leipsic,
          1895-1900), ii. 258. As to Hebrew names formed from the root
          dôd in the sense of “beloved,” see Brown, Driver, and Briggs,
          Hebrew
          and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, pp. 187
          sq.; G. B. Gray, Studies in Hebrew
          Proper Names (London, 1896), pp. 60 sqq.


54.


This was perceived by Renan
          (Histoire
          du peuple d'Israel, iii. 273), and Prof. T. K. Cheyne
          writes to me: “The formulae of public
          mourning were derived from the ceremonies of the Adonia; this
          Lenormant saw long ago.”


55.


1 Chronicles xxix. 23; 2 Chronicles
          ix. 8.


56.


1 Samuel xvi. 13, 14, compare
          id., x. 1 and 20. The oil was
          poured on the king's head (1 Samuel x. 1; 2 Kings ix. 3, 6). For
          the conveyance of the divine spirit by means of oil, see also
          Isaiah lx. 1. The kings of Egypt appear to have consecrated their
          vassal Syrian kings by pouring oil on their heads. See the
          Tell-el-Amarna letters, No. 37 (H. Winckler, Die Thontafeln von
          Tell-el-Amarna, p. 99). Some West African priests are
          consecrated by a similar ceremony. See below, p. 68. The natives of Buru, an East Indian
          island, imagine that they can keep off demons by smearing their
          bodies with coco-nut oil, but the oil must be prepared by young
          unmarried girls. See G. A. Wilken, “Bijdrage tot de kennis der Alfoeren van het eiland
          Boeroe,” Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap
          van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxxviii. (Batavia,
          1875) p. 30; id., Verspreide
          Geschriften (The Hague, 1912), i. 61. In some tribes
          of North-West America hunters habitually anointed their hair with
          decoctions of certain plants and deer's brains before they set out
          to hunt. The practice was probably a charm to secure success in the
          hunt. See C. Hill-Tout, The Home of the Salish and Déné
          (London, 1907), p. 72.


57.


1 Samuel xxiv. 6. Messiah in Hebrew is
          Mashiah (משיה). The English form
          Messiah is derived from the Aramaic through the Greek. See T. K.
          Cheyne, in Encyclopaedia Biblica,
          s.v. “Messiah,” vol. iii. 3057 sqq.
          Why hair oil should be considered a vehicle of inspiration is by no
          means clear. It would have been intelligible if the olive had been
          with the Hebrews, as it was with the Athenians, a sacred tree under
          the immediate protection of a deity; for then a portion of the
          divine essence might be thought to reside in the oil. W. Robertson
          Smith supposed that the unction was originally performed with the
          fat of a sacrificial victim, for which vegetable oil was a later
          substitute (Religion of the
          Semites,2 pp. 383 sq.).
          On the whole subject see J. Wellhausen, “Zwei Rechtsriten bei den Hebräern,”
Archiv
          für Religionswissenschaft, vii. (1904) pp. 33-39; H.
          Weinel, “משה und seine Derivate,”
Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche
          Wissenschaft, xviii. (1898) pp. 1-82.


58.


2 Samuel xxi. 1-14, with Dean
          Kirkpatrick's notes on 1 and 10.


59.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, i. 284 sq.


60.


1 Samuel xii. 17 sq.
          Similarly, Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven and the Lord
          sent thunder and rain (Exodus ix. 23). The word for thunder in both
          these passages is “voices” (קלות).
          The Hebrews heard in the clap of thunder the voice of Jehovah, just
          as the Greeks heard in it the voice of Zeus and the Romans the
          voice of Jupiter.


61.


Ezekiel xiii. 11, 13, xxxviii. 22;
          Jeremiah iii. 2 sq. The Hebrews looked to
          Jehovah for rain (Leviticus xxvi. 3-5; Jeremiah v. 24) just as the
          Greeks looked to Zeus and the Romans to Jupiter.


62.


Ezra x. 9-14. The special sin which
          they laid to heart on this occasion was their marriage with Gentile
          women. It is implied, though not expressly said, that they traced
          the inclemency of the weather to these unfortunate alliances.
          Similarly, “during the rainy season, when
          the sun is hidden behind great masses of dark clouds, the Indians
          set up a wailing for their sins, believing that the sun is angry
          and may never shine on them again.” See Francis C. Nicholas,
          “The Aborigines of Santa Maria,
          Colombia,” American Anthropologist, N.S.,
          iii. (New York, 1901) p. 641. The Indians in question are the
          Aurohuacas of Colombia, in South America.


63.


Psalm cxxxvii. The willows beside the
          rivers of Babylon are mentioned in the laments for Tammuz. See
          above, pp. 9, 10.


64.


The line of the Dead Sea, lying in its
          deep trough, is visible from the Mount of Olives; indeed, so clear
          is the atmosphere that the blue water seems quite near the eye,
          though in fact it is more than fifteen miles off and nearly four
          thousand feet below the spectator. See K. Baedeker, Palestine and
          Syria4 (Leipsic, 1906), p. 77.
          When the sun shines on it, the lake is of a brilliant blue (G. A.
          Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy
          Land, London, 1894, pp. 501 sq.);
          but its brilliancy is naturally dimmed under clouded skies.


65.


2 Kings v. 5-7.


66.


2 Samuel xxiv.; 1 Chronicles xxi. In
          this passage, contrary to his usual practice, the Chronicler has
          enlivened the dull tenor of his history with some picturesque
          touches which we miss in the corresponding passage of Kings. It is
          to him that we owe the vision of the Angel of the Plague first
          stretching out his sword over Jerusalem and then returning it to
          the scabbard. From him Defoe seems to have taken a hint in his
          account of the prodigies, real or imaginary, which heralded the
          outbreak of the Great Plague in London. “One time before the plague was begun, otherwise than
          as I have said in St. Giles's, I think it was in March, seeing a
          crowd of people in the street, I joined with them to satisfy my
          curiosity, and found them all staring up into the air to see what a
          woman told them appeared plain to her, which was an angel clothed
          in white with a fiery sword in his hand, waving it or brandishing
          it over his head.... One saw one thing and one another. I looked as
          earnestly as the rest, but, perhaps, not with so much willingness
          to be imposed upon; and I said, indeed, that I could see nothing
          but a white cloud, bright on one side, by the shining of the sun
          upon the other part.” See Daniel Defoe, History of the Plague
          in London (Edinburgh, 1810, pp. 33 sq.).
          It is the more likely that Defoe had here the Chronicler in mind,
          because a few pages earlier he introduces the prophet Jonah and a
          man out of Josephus with very good effect.


67.


2 Kings xvii. 5 sq.,
          xviii. 9 sq.


68.


2 Kings xix. 32-36.


69.


We owe to Ezekiel (xxiii. 5
          sq., 12) the picture of the
          handsome Assyrian cavalrymen in their blue uniforms and gorgeous
          trappings. The prophet writes as if in his exile by the waters of
          Babylon he had seen the blue regiments filing past, in all the pomp
          of war, on their way to the front.


70.


Samaria fell in 722 b.c., during or just
          before the reign of Hezekiah: the Book of Deuteronomy, the
          cornerstone of king Josiah's reformation, was produced in 621
          b.c.; and Jerusalem fell
          in 586 b.c. The date of
          Hezekiah's accession is a much-disputed point in the chronology of
          Judah. See the Introduction to Kings and Isaiah i.-xxxix. by J.
          Skinner and O. C. Whitehouse respectively, in The Century
          Bible.


71.


Or the Deuteronomic redactor, as the
          critics call him. See W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in
          the Jewish Church2
          (London and Edinburgh, 1892), pp. 395 sq.,
          425; Encyclopaedia Biblica, ii. 2078
          sqq., 2633 sqq.,
          iv. 4273 sqq.; K. Budde, Geschichte der
          althebräischen Litteratur (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 99,
          121 sqq., 127 sqq.,
          132; Principal J. Skinner, in his introduction to Kings (in
          The
          Century Bible), pp. 10 sqq.


72.


Menander of Ephesus, quoted by
          Josephus, Contra Apionem, i. 18
          (Fragmenta Historicorum
          Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iv. 446); G. A. Cooke,
          Text-book
          of North-Semitic Inscriptions, No. 4, p. 26.
          According to Justin, however, the priest of Hercules, that is, of
          Melcarth, at Tyre, was distinct from the king and second to him in
          dignity. See Justin, xviii. 4, 5.


73.


Hosea ii. 5 sqq.;
          W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the
          Semites2 (London, 1894), pp.
          95-107.


74.


W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the
          Semites,2 pp. 107 sq.


75.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 120 sqq., 376 sqq.


76.


Strabo, xvi. 1. 18, p. 755.


77.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 9.


78.


Eusebius, Vita
          Constantini, iii. 55; Sozomenus, Historia
          Ecclesiastica, ii. 5; Socrates, Historia
          Ecclesiastica, i. 18; Zosimus, i. 58.


79.


On the valley of the Nahr Ibrahim, its
          scenery and monuments, see Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches
          in Palestine3 (London, 1867), iii.
          603-609; W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, Lebanon, Damascus, and
          beyond Jordan (London, 1886), pp. 239-246; E. Renan,
          Mission
          de Phénicie, pp. 282 sqq.;
          G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient
          Classique, ii. (Paris, 1897) pp. 175-179; Sir Charles
          Wilson, Picturesque Palestine (London,
          n.d.), iii. 16, 17, 27.
          Among the trees which line the valley are oak, sycamore, bay,
          plane, orange, and mulberry (W. M. Thomson, op.
          cit. p. 245). Travellers are unanimous in testifying
          to the extraordinary beauty of the vale of the Adonis. Thus
          Robinson writes: “There is no spot in all
          my wanderings on which memory lingers with greater delight than on
          the sequestered retreat and exceeding loveliness of Afka.”
          Renan says that the landscape is one of the most beautiful in the
          world. My friend the late Sir Francis Galton wrote to me (20th
          September 1906): “I have no good map of
          Palestine, but strongly suspect that my wanderings there, quite
          sixty years ago, took me to the place you mention, above the gorge
          of the river Adonis. Be that as it may, I have constantly asserted
          that the view I then had of a deep ravine and blue sea seen through
          the cliffs that bounded it, was the most beautiful I had ever set
          eyes on.”


80.


Etymologicum Magnum,
          s.v. Ἄφακα, p. 175.


81.


Melito, “Oration to Antoninus Caesar,” in W. Cureton's
          Spicilegium Syriacum (London,
          1855), p. 44.


82.


E. Renan, Mission de
          Phénicie, pp. 292-294. The writer seems to have no
          doubt that the beast attacking Adonis is a bear, not a boar. Views
          of the monument are given by A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im
          Lichte des Alten Orients2
          (Leipsic, 1906), p. 90, and by Baudissin, Adonis und
          Esmun, plates i. and ii., with his discussion, pp. 78
          sqq.


83.


Macrobius, Saturn,
          i. 21. 5.


84.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 8.


85.


F. C. Movers, Die
          Phoenizier, ii. 2, p. 224; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, ii. 199; G. A. Smith,
          Historical Geography of the Holy
          Land (London, 1894), p. 135.


86.


On the natural wealth of Cyprus see
          Strabo, xiv. 6. 5; W. H. Engel, Kypros,
          i. 40-71; F. C. Movers, Die Phoenizier, ii. 2, pp. 224
          sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, ii. 200 sq.; E.
          Oberhummer, Die Insel Cypern, i. (Munich,
          1903) pp. 175 sqq., 243 sqq. As
          to the firs and cedars of Cyprus see Theophrastus, Historia
          Plantarum, v. 7. 1, v. 9. 1. The Cyprians boasted
          that they could build and rig a ship complete, from her keel to her
          topsails, with the native products of their island (Ammianus
          Marcellinus, xiv. 8. 14).


87.


G. A. Cooke, Text-Book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, Nos. 12-25, pp. 55-76,
          347-349; P. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History
          (London, 1892), pp. 179, 185. It has been held that the name of
          Citium is etymologically identical with Hittite. If that was so, it
          would seem that the town was built and inhabited by a non-Semitic
          people before the arrival of the Phoenicians. See Encyclopaedia
          Biblica, s.v. “Kittim.” Other traces of this older race, akin
          to the primitive stock of Asia Minor, have been detected in Cyprus;
          amongst them the most obvious is the Cyprian syllabary, the
          characters of which are neither Phoenician nor Greek in origin. See
          P. Gardner, op. cit. pp. 154, 173-175, 178
          sq.


88.


G. A. Cooke, Text-Book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, No. 11, p. 52.


89.


Stephanus Byzantius, s.v.
          Ἀμαθοῦς; Pausanias, ix. 41. 2 sq. According to Pausanias,
          there was a remarkable necklace of green stones and gold in the
          sanctuary of Adonis and Aphrodite at Amathus. The Greeks commonly
          identified it with the necklace of Harmonia or Eriphyle. A
          terra-cotta statuette of Astarte, found at Amathus (?), represents
          her wearing a necklace which she touches with one hand. See L. P.
          di Cesnola, Cyprus (London, 1877), p. 275.
          The scanty ruins of Amathus occupy an isolated hill beside the sea.
          Among them is an enormous stone jar, half buried in the earth, of
          which the four handles are adorned with figures of bulls. It is
          probably of Phoenician manufacture. See L. Ross, Reisen nach Kos,
          Halikarnassos, Rhodes und der Insel Cypern (Halle,
          1852), pp. 168 sqq.


90.


Stephanus Byzantius, s.v.
          Ἀμαθοῦς. For the relation of Adonis to Osiris at Byblus see below,
          vol. ii. pp. 9 sq., 22 sq.,
          127.


91.


Hesychius, s.v.
          Μάλικα.


92.


L. P. di Cesnola, Cyprus,
          pp. 254-283; G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art
          dans l'Antiquité, iii. (Paris, 1885) pp.
          216-222.


93.


D. G. Hogarth, Devia
          Cypria (London, 1889), pp. 1-3; Encyclopaedia
          Britannica,9 vi. 747; Élisée Reclus,
          Nouvelle
          Géographie Universelle (Paris, 1879-1894), ix.
          668.


94.


T. L. Donaldson, Architectura
          Numismatica (London, 1859), pp. 107-109, with fig.
          31; Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix.
          (1888) pp. 210-213; G. F. Hill, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Cyprus (London, 1904), pp.
          cxxvii-cxxxiv, with plates xiv. 2, 3, 6-8, xv. 1-4, 7, xvi. 2, 4,
          6-9, xvii. 4-6, 8, 9, xxvi. 3, 6-16; George Macdonald, Catalogue of Greek
          Coins in the Hunterian Collection (Glasgow,
          1899-1905), ii. 566, with pl. lxi. 19. As to the existing remains
          of the temple, which were excavated by an English expedition in
          1887-1888, see “Excavations in Cyprus,
          1887-1888,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix.
          (1888) pp. 193 sqq. Previous accounts of the
          temple are inaccurate and untrustworthy.


95.


C. Schuchhardt, Schliemann's
          Ausgrabungen2 (Leipsic, 1891), pp.
          231-233; G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art
          dans l'Antiquité, vi. (Paris, 1894) pp. 336
          sq., 652-654; Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, ix. (1888) pp. 213 sq.; P.
          Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History,
          p. 181.


96.


J. Selden, De dis
          Syris (Leipsic, 1668), pp. 274 sqq.;
          S. Bochart, Hierozoicon, Editio Tertia
          (Leyden, 1692), ii. 4 sqq. Compare the statue of a
          priest with a dove in his hand, which was found in Cyprus (Perrot
          et Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iii. Paris, 1885, p. 510), with fig.
          349.


97.


A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, xxi. (1901) pp. 99 sqq.


98.


Tacitus, Annals,
          iii. 62.


99.


Herodotus, i. 105; compare Pausanias,
          i. 14. 7. Herodotus only speaks of the sanctuary of Aphrodite in
          Cyprus, but he must refer to the great one at Paphos. At Ascalon a
          goddess was worshipped in mermaid-shape under the name of Derceto,
          and fish and doves were sacred to her (Diodorus Siculus, ii. 4;
          compare Lucian, De dea Syria, 14). The name
          Derceto, like the much more correct Atargatis, is a Greek
          corruption of 'Attâr, the Aramaic form of
          Astarte, but the two goddesses
          Atargatis and Astarte, in spite of the affinity of their names,
          appear to have been historically distinct. See Ed. Meyer,
          Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2 (Stuttgart and Berlin,
          1909), pp. 605, 650 sq.; F. Baethgen, Beiträge zur
          Semitischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1888), pp.
          68 sqq.; F. Cumont, s.vv.
“Atargatis” and “Dea Syria,” in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie der
          classischen Altertumswissenschaft; René Dussaud,
          Notes de
          Mythologie Syrienne (Paris, 1903), pp. 82
          sqq.; R. A. Stewart Macalister,
          The
          Philistines, their History and Civilization (London,
          1913), pp. 94 sqq.


100.


It is described by ancient writers and
          figured on coins. See Tacitus, Hist.
          ii. 3; Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. viii. 8; Servius on
          Virgil, Aen. i. 720; T. L. Donaldson,
          Architectura Numismatica, p.
          107, with fig. 31; Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix.
          (1888) pp. 210-212. According to Maximus Tyrius, the material of
          the pyramid was unknown. Probably it was a stone. The English
          archaeologists found several fragments of white cones on the site
          of the temple at Paphos: one which still remains in its original
          position in the central chamber was of limestone and of somewhat
          larger size (Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix.
          (1888) p. 180).


101.


See above, p. 14.


102.


On coins of Perga the sacred cone is
          represented as richly decorated and standing in a temple between
          sphinxes. See B. V. Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1887),
          p. 585; P. Gardner, Types of Greek Coins (Cambridge,
          1883), pl. xv. No. 3; G. F. Hill, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia (London,
          1897), pl. xxiv. 12, 15, 16. However, Mr. G. F. Hill writes to me:
          “Is the stone at Perga really a cone? I
          have always thought it was a cube or something of that kind. On the
          coins the upper, sloping portion is apparently an elaborate veil or
          head-dress. The head attached to the stone is seen in the middle of
          this, surmounted by a tall kalathos.” The sanctuary
          stood on a height, and a festival was held there annually (Strabo,
          xiv. 4. 2, p. 667). The native title of the goddess was
          Anassa, that is, “Queen.” See B. V. Head, l.c.;
          Wernicke, s.v. “Artemis,” in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der
          classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ii. 1, col. 1397.
          Aphrodite at Paphos bore the same title. See below, p. 42, note 6. The worship of
          Pergaean Artemis at Halicarnassus was cared for by a priestess, who
          held office for life and had to make intercession for the city at
          every new moon. See G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecarum2 (Leipsic, 1898-1901), vol.
          ii. p. 373, No. 601.


103.


Herodian, v. 3. 5. This cone was of
          black stone, with some small knobs on it, like the stone of Cybele
          at Pessinus. It is figured on coins of Emesa. See B. V. Head,
          Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 659; P. Gardner,
          Types of
          Greek Coins, pl. xv. No. 1. The sacred stone of
          Cybele, which the Romans brought from Pessinus to Rome during the
          Second Punic War, was small, black, and rugged, but we are not told
          that it was of conical shape. See Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, vii. 49; Livy, xxix. 11. 7. According to
          one reading, Servius (on Virgil, Aen.
          vii. 188) speaks of the stone of Cybele as a needle (acus), which would point to a
          conical shape. But the reading appears to be without manuscript
          authority, and other emendations have been suggested.


104.


G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art
          dans l'Antiquité, iii. 273, 298 sq.,
          304 sq. The sanctuary of Aphrodite,
          or rather Astarte, at Golgi is said to have been even more ancient
          than her sanctuary at Paphos (Pausanias, viii. 5. 2).


105.


W. M. Flinders Petrie, Researches in
          Sinai (London, 1906), pp. 135 sq.,
          189. Votive cones made of clay have been found in large numbers in
          Babylonia, particularly at Lagash and Nippur. See M. Jastrow,
          The
          Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, U.S.A.,
          1898), pp. 672-674.


106.


Tacitus, Hist.
          ii. 3.


107.


We learn this from an inscription
          found at Paphos. See Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix.
          (1888) pp. 188, 231.


108.


Pausanias, x. 24. 6, with my
          note.


109.


D. G. Hogarth, A Wandering Scholar
          in the Levant (London, 1896), pp. 179 sq.
          Women used to creep through a holed stone to obtain children at a
          place on the Dee in Aberdeenshire. See Balder the
          Beautiful, ii. 187.


110.


G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art
          dans l'Antiquité, iii. 628.


111.


Herodotus, i. 199; Athenaeus, xii. 11,
          p. 516 a; Justin, xviii. 5. 4;
          Lactantius, Divin. Inst. i. 17; W. H. Engel,
          Kypros, ii. 142 sqq.
          Asiatic customs of this sort have been rightly explained by W.
          Mannhardt (Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, pp.
          283 sqq.).


112.


Herodotus, i. 199; Strabo, xvi. 1. 20,
          p. 745. As to the identity of Mylitta with Astarte see H. Zimmern
          in E. Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das alte
          Testament,3 pp. 423, note 7, 428, note
          4. According to him, the name Mylitta comes from Mu'allidtu, “she who helps women in travail.” In this
          character Ishtar would answer to the Greek Artemis and the Latin
          Diana. As to sacred prostitution in the worship of Ishtar see M.
          Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and
          Assyria, pp. 475 sq.,
          484 sq.; P. Dhorme, La Religion
          Assyro-Babylonienne (Paris, 1910), pp. 86, 300
          sq.


113.


Eusebius, Vita
          Constantini, iii. 58; Socrates, Historia
          Ecclesiastica, i. 18. 7-9; Sozomenus, Historia
          Ecclesiastica, v. 10. 7. Socrates says that at Heliopolis local
          custom obliged the women to be held in common, so that paternity
          was unknown, “for there was no distinction
          of parents and children, and the people prostituted their daughters
          to the strangers who visited them” (τοῖς παριοῦσι ξένοις).
          The prostitution of matrons as well as of maids is mentioned by
          Eusebius. As he was born and spent his life in Syria, and was a
          contemporary of the practices he describes, the bishop of Caesarea
          had the best opportunity of informing himself as to them, and we
          ought not, as Prof. M. P. Nilsson does (Griechische
          Feste, Leipsic, 1906, p. 366 n.2),
          to allow his positive testimony on this point to be outweighed by
          the silence of the later historian Sozomenus, who wrote long after
          the custom had been abolished. Eusebius had good reason to know the
          heathenish customs which were kept up in his diocese; for he was
          sharply taken to task by Constantine for allowing sacrifices to be
          offered on altars under the sacred oak or terebinth at Mamre; and
          in obedience to the imperial commands he caused the altars to be
          destroyed and an oratory to be built instead under the tree. So in
          Ireland the ancient heathen sanctuaries under the sacred oaks were
          converted by Christian missionaries into churches and monasteries.
          See Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica, i. 18;
          The Magic
          Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 242 sq.


114.


Athanasius, Oratio contra
          Gentes, 26 (Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, xxv. 52), γυναῖκες γοῦν ἐν εἰδωλείοις τῆς
          Φοινικῆς πάλαι προεκαθέζοντο, ἀπαρχόμεναι τοῖς ἐκεῖ θέοις ἑαυτῶν
          τὴν τοῦ σώματος αὐτῶν μισθαρνίαν, νομίζουσαι τῇ πορνειᾳ τὴν θέον
          ἑαυτῶν ἰλάσκεσθαι καὶ εἰς εὐμενείαν ἄγειν αὐτὴν διὰ τούτων. The
          account of the Phoenician custom which is given by H. Ploss
          (Das
          Weib,2 i. 302) and repeated after
          him by Fr. Schwally (Semitische Kriegsaltertümer,
          Leipsic, 1901, pp. 76 sq.) may rest only on a
          misapprehension of this passage of Athanasius. But if it is
          correct, we may conjecture that the slaves who deflowered the
          virgins were the sacred slaves of the temples, the ḳedeshim, and that they
          discharged this office as the living representatives of the god. As
          to these ḳedeshim, or “sacred men,” see above, pp. 17 sq., and below, pp. 72 sqq.


115.


The Testaments of the Twelve
          Patriarchs, translated and edited by R. H. Charles
          (London, 1908), chapter xii. p. 81.


116.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 6. The writer is careful to indicate that none
          but strangers were allowed to enjoy the women (ἡ δὲ ἀγορὴ μούνοισι
          ξείνοισι παρακέεται).


117.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, i. 30 sq.


118.


Herodotus, i. 93 sq.;
          Athenaeus, xii. 11, pp. 515 sq.


119.


W. M. Ramsay, “Unedited Inscriptions of Asia Minor,”
Bulletin
          de Correspondance Hellénique, vii. (1883) p. 276;
          id., Cities and Bishoprics
          of Phrygia, i. (Oxford, 1895) pp. 94 sq.,
          115.


120.


Strabo, xi. 14. 16, p. 532.


121.


Strabo, xii. 3. 32, 34 and 36, pp.
          557-559; compare xii. 2. 3, p. 535. Other sanctuaries in Pontus,
          Cappadocia, and Phrygia swarmed with sacred slaves, and we may
          conjecture, though we are not told, that many of these slaves were
          prostitutes. See Strabo, xi. 8. 4, xii. 2. 3 and 6, xii. 3. 31 and
          37, xii. 8. 14.


122.


On this great Asiatic goddess and her
          lovers see especially Sir W. M. Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics
          of Phrygia, i. 87 sqq.


123.


Compare W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und
          Feldkulte, pp. 284 sq.; W.
          Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, New
          Edition (London, 1902), pp. 171-174. Similarly in Camul, formerly a
          province of the Chinese Empire, the men used to place their wives
          at the disposal of any foreigners who came to lodge with them, and
          deemed it an honour if the guests made use of their opportunities.
          The emperor, hearing of the custom, forbade the people to observe
          it. For three years they obeyed, then, finding that their lands
          were no longer fruitful and that many mishaps befell them, they
          prayed the emperor to allow them to retain the custom, “for it was by reason of this usage that their gods
          bestowed upon them all the good things that they possessed, and
          without it they saw not how they could continue to exist.”
          See The
          Book of Ser Marco Polo, translated and edited by
          Colonel Henry Yule, Second Edition (London, 1875), i. 212
          sq. Here apparently the
          fertility of the soil was deemed to depend on the intercourse of
          the women with strangers, not with their husbands. Similarly, among
          the Oulad Abdi, an Arab tribe of Morocco, “the women often seek a divorce and engage in
          prostitution in the intervals between their marriages; during that
          time they continue to dwell in their families, and their relations
          regard their conduct as very natural. The administrative authority
          having bestirred itself and attempted to regulate this
          prostitution, the whole population opposed the attempt, alleging
          that such a measure would impair the abundance of the
          crops.” See Edmond Doutté, Magie et Religion
          dans l'Afrique du Nord (Algiers, 1908), pp. 560
          sq.


124.


Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 14, p. 13, ed.
          Potter; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 19;
          compare Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum,
          10.


125.


In Hebrew a temple harlot was
          regularly called “a sacred woman”
          (kĕdēsha). See Encyclopaedia
          Biblica, s.v. “Harlot”; S. R. Driver, on Genesis xxxviii. 21.
          As to such “sacred women” see below,
          pp. 70 sqq.


126.


Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 13, p. 12, ed.
          Potter; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 19;
          Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum,
          10.


127.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 14. 3.


128.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 14. 3. I
          follow the text of R. Wagner's edition in reading Μεγασσάρου τοῦ
          Ὑριέων βασιλέως. As to Hyria in Isauria see Stephanus Byzantius,
          s.v. Ὑρία. The city of
          Celenderis, on the south coast of Cilicia, possessed a small
          harbour protected by a fortified peninsula. Many ancient tombs
          survived till recent times, but have now mostly disappeared. It was
          the port from which the Turkish couriers from Constantinople used
          to embark for Cyprus. As to the situation and remains see F.
          Beaufort, Karmania (London, 1817), p. 201;
          W. M. Leake, Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor
          (London, 1824), pp. 114-118; R. Heberdey und A. Wilhelm,
          “Reisen in Kilikien,” Denkschriften der
          kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosoph.-historische
          Classe, xliv. (1896) No. vi. p. 94. The statement
          that the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Paphos was founded by the
          Arcadian Agapenor, who planted a colony in Cyprus after the Trojan
          war (Pausanias, viii. 5. 2), may safely be disregarded.


129.


Tacitus, Hist.
          ii. 3; Annals, iii. 62.


130.


Tacitus, Hist.
          ii. 3; Hesychius, s.v. Ταμιράδαι.


131.


Pindar, Pyth.
          ii. 13-17.


132.


Tyrtaeus, xii. 6 (Poetae Lyrici
          Graeci, ed. Th. Bergk,3
          Leipsic, 1866-1867, ii. 404); Pindar, Pyth.
          viii. 18; Plato, Laws, ii. 6, p. 660 e; Clement of Alexandria,
          Paedag. iii. 6, p. 274, ed.
          Potter; Dio Chrysostom, Orat. viii. (vol. i. p. 149, ed.
          L. Dindorf); Julian, Epist. lix. p. 574, ed. F. C.
          Hertlein; Diogenianus, viii. 53; Suidas, s.v.
          Καταγηράσαις.


133.


Schol. on Pindar, Pyth.
          ii. 15 (27); Hesychius, s.v. Κινυράδαι; Clement of
          Alexandria, Protrept. iii. 45, p. 40, ed.
          Potter; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, vi. 6. That
          the kings of Paphos were also priests of the goddess is proved,
          apart from the testimony of ancient writers, by inscriptions found
          on the spot. See H. Collitz, Sammlung der griechischen
          Dialektinschriften, i. (Göttingen, 1884) p. 22, Nos.
          38, 39, 40. The title of the goddess in these inscriptions is Queen
          or Mistress (Ϝανασ(σ)ἀς). It is perhaps a translation of the
          Semitic Baalath.


134.


Plutarch, De Alexandri Magni
          fortuna aut virtute, ii. 8. The name of the
          gardener-king was Alynomus. That the Cinyrads existed as a family
          down to Macedonian times is further proved by a Greek inscription
          found at Old Paphos, which records that a certain Democrates, son
          of Ptolemy, head of the Cinyrads, and his wife Eunice, dedicated a
          statue of their daughter to the Paphian Aphrodite. See L. Ross,
          “Inschriften von Cypern,”
Rheinisches Museum, N.F. vii.
          (1850) pp. 520 sq. It seems to have been a
          common practice of parents to dedicate statues of their sons or
          daughters to the goddess at Paphos. The inscribed pedestals of many
          such statues were found by the English archaeologists. See
          Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, ix. (1888) pp. 228, 235, 236,
          237, 241, 244, 246, 255.


135.


Tacitus, Hist.
          ii. 4; Pausanias, viii. 24. 6.


136.


Plutarch, Cato the
          Younger, 35.


137.


Ovid, Metam.
          x. 298 sqq.; Hyginus, Fab.
          58, 64; Fulgentius, Mytholog. iii. 8; Lactantius
          Placidius, Narrat. Fabul. x. 9; Servius on
          Virgil, Ecl. x. 18, and Aen. v.
          72; Plutarch, Parallela, 22; Schol. on
          Theocritus, i. 107. It is Ovid who describes (Metam.
          x. 431 sqq.) the festival of Ceres, at
          which the incest was committed. His source was probably the
          Metamorphoses of the Greek
          writer Theodorus, which Plutarch (l.c.)
          refers to as his authority for the story. The festival in question
          was perhaps the Thesmophoria, at which women were bound to remain
          chaste (Schol. on Theocritus, iv. 25; Schol. on Nicander,
          Ther. 70 sq.;
          Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 59;
          Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, i. 134 (135);
          compare Aelian, De natura animalium, ix. 26).
          Compare E. Fehrle, Die kultische Keuschheit im
          Altertum (Giessen, 1910), pp. 103 sqq.,
          121 sq., 151 sqq.
          The corn and bread of Cyprus were famous in antiquity. See
          Aeschylus, Suppliants, 549 (555); Hipponax,
          cited by Strabo, viii. 3. 8, p. 340; Eubulus, cited by Athenaeus,
          iii. 78, p. 112 f; E. Oberhummer,
          Die
          Insel. Cypern, i. (Munich, 1903) pp. 274 sqq.
          According to another account, Adonis was the fruit of the
          incestuous intercourse of Theias, a Syrian king, with his daughter
          Myrrha. See Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 14. 4 (who
          cites Panyasis as his authority); J. Tzetzes, Schol. on
          Lycophron, 829; Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. 34 (who lays the
          scene of the story on Mount Lebanon). With the corn-wreaths
          mentioned in the text we may compare the wreaths which the Roman
          Arval Brethren wore at their sacred functions, and with which they
          seem to have crowned the images of the goddesses. See G. Henzen,
          Acta
          Fratrum Arvalium (Berlin, 1874), pp. 24-27, 33
          sq. Compare Pausanias, vii. 20.
          1. sq.


138.


A list of these cases is given by
          Hyginus, Fab. 253. It includes the incest
          of Clymenus, king of Arcadia, with his daughter Harpalyce (compare
          Hyginus, Fab. 206); that of Oenomaus,
          king of Pisa, with his daughter Hippodamia (compare J. Tzetzes,
          Schol. on
          Lycophron, 156; Lucian, Charidemus, 19); that of
          Erechtheus, king of Athens, with his daughter Procris; and that of
          Epopeus, king of Lesbos, with his daughter Nyctimene (compare
          Hyginus, Fab. 204).


139.


The custom of brother and sister
          marriage seems to have been especially common in royal families.
          See my note on Pausanias, i. 7. 1 (vol. ii. pp. 84 sq.);
          as to the case of Egypt see below, vol. ii. pp. 213 sqq.
          The true explanation of the custom was first, so far as I know,
          indicated by J. F. McLennan (The Patriarchal Theory, London,
          1885, p. 95).


140.


Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 22; J.
          Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung,
          iii.2 (Leipsic, 1885) p.
          328.


141.


Priestesses are said to have preceded
          priests in some Egyptian cities. See W. M. Flinders Petrie,
          The
          Religion of Ancient Egypt (London, 1906), p. 74.


142.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 179, 190 sqq.


143.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 268 sqq.


144.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, i. 12 note 1.


145.


Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The
          Khasis (London, 1907), pp. 109-112, 120 sq.


146.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 191 sqq.


147.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 148.


148.


The late Rev. P. Dehon, S.J.,
          “Religion and Customs of the
          Uraons,” Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of
          Bengal, vol. i. No. 9 (Calcutta, 1906), pp.
          144-146.


149.


For more evidence see The Magic Art and the
          Evolution of Kings, ii. 97 sqq.


150.


Lucian, Rhetorum
          praeceptor, 11; Hyginus, Fab.
          270.


151.


Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 33, p. 29, ed.
          Potter.


152.


W. H. Engel, Kypros,
          ii. 585, 612; A. Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grèce
          Antique (Paris, 1857-1859), iii. 197, note 3.


153.


Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, vi. 22; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. iv. 57, p. 51, ed.
          Potter; Ovid, Metam. x. 243-297. The authority
          for the story is the Greek history of Cyprus by Philostephanus,
          cited both by Arnobius and Clement. In Ovid's poetical version of
          the legend Pygmalion is a sculptor, and the image with which he
          falls in love is that of a lovely woman, which at his prayer Venus
          endows with life. That King Pygmalion was a Phoenician is mentioned
          by Porphyry (De abstinentia, iv. 15) on the
          authority of Asclepiades, a Cyprian.


154.


See above, p. 42.


155.


Probus, on Virgil, Ecl. x.
          18. I owe this reference to my friend Mr. A. B. Cook.


156.


In his treatise on the political
          institutions of Cyprus, Aristotle reported that the sons and
          brothers of the kings were called “lords” (ἄνακτες), and their sisters and wives
          “ladies” (ἄνασσαι). See Harpocration
          and Suidas, s.v. Ἄνακτες. Compare Isocrates,
          ix. 72; Clearchus of Soli, quoted by Athenaeus, vi. 68, p. 256
          A. Now in the bilingual
          inscription of Idalium, which furnished the clue to the Cypriote
          syllabary, the Greek version gives the title Ϝάναξ as the
          equivalent of the Phoenician Adon (אדן). See Corpus Inscriptionum
          Semiticarum, i. No. 89; G. A. Cooke, Text-book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, p. 74, note 1.


157.


Josephus, Contra
          Apionem, i. 18, ed. B. Niese; Appian, Punica,
          i; Virgil, Aen. i. 346 sq.;
          Ovid, Fasti, iii. 574; Justin, xviii.
          4; Eustathius on Dionysius Periegetes, 195 (Geographi Graeci
          Minores, ed. C. Müller Paris, 1882, ii. 250
          sq.).


158.


Pumi-yathon, son of Milk-yathon, is
          known from Phoenician inscriptions found at Idalium. See G. A.
          Cooke, Text-book of North-Semitic
          Inscriptions, Nos. 12 and 13, pp. 55 sq., 57
          sq. Coins inscribed with the
          name of King Pumi-yathon are also in existence. See G. F. Hill,
          Catalogue
          of the Greek Coins of Cyprus (London, 1904), pp. xl.
          sq., 21 sq.,
          pl. iv. 20-24. He was deposed by Ptolemy (Diodorus Siculus, xix.
          79. 4). Most probably he is the Pymaton of Citium who purchased the
          kingdom from a dissolute monarch named Pasicyprus some time before
          the conquests of Alexander (Athenaeus, iv. 63, p. 167). In this
          passage of Athenaeus the name Pymaton, which is found in the MSS.
          and agrees closely with the Phoenician Pumi-yathon, ought not to be
          changed into Pygmalion, as the latest editor (G. Kaibel) has
          done.


159.


G. A. Cooke, op.
          cit. p. 55, note 1. Mr. Cooke remarks that the form
          of the name (פגמלין instead of פמייתן) must be due to Greek
          influence.


160.


See above, p. 41.


161.


Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 13, p. 12;
          Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 9;
          Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum,
          10.


162.


That the king was not necessarily
          succeeded by his eldest son is proved by the case of Solomon, who
          on his accession executed his elder brother Adoni-jah (1 Kings ii.
          22-24). Similarly, when Abimelech became king of Shechem, he put
          his seventy brothers in ruthless oriental fashion to death. See
          Judges viii. 29-31, ix. 5 sq., 18. So on his accession
          Jehoram, King of Judah, put all his brothers to the sword (2
          Chronicles xxi. 4). King Rehoboam had eighty-eight children (2
          Chronicles xi. 21) and King Abi-jah had thirty-eight (2 Chronicles
          xiii. 21). These examples illustrate the possible size of the
          family of a polygamous king.


163.


The Dying God, pp. 160
          sqq.


164.


The names which imply that a man was
          the father of a god have proved particularly puzzling to some
          eminent Semitic scholars. See W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the
          Semites,2 p. 45, note 2; Th. Nöldeke,
          s.v. “Names,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii. 3287
          sqq.; W. W. Graf Baudissin,
          Adonis
          und Esmun, pp. 39 sq., 43
          sqq. Such names are Abi-baal
          (“father of Baal”), Abi-el
          (“father of El”), Abi-jah
          (“father of Jehovah”), and
          Abi-melech (“father of a king” or
          “father of Moloch”). On the
          hypothesis put forward in the text the father of a god and the son
          of a god stood precisely on the same footing, and the same person
          would often be both one and the other. Where the common practice
          prevailed of naming a father after his son (Taboo and the Perils
          of the Soul, pp. 331 sqq.),
          a divine king in later life might often be called “father of such-and-such a god.”


165.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, i. 418 sq.


166.


A. Erman, Aegypten und
          aegyptisches Leben im Altertum (Tübingen,
          n.d.), p. 113.


167.


L. Borchardt, “Der ägyptische Titel ‘Vater
          des Gottes’ als Bezeichnung für ‘Vater oder Schwiegervater des Königs,’ ”
Berichte
          über die Verhandlungen der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der
          Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philolog.-histor. Klasse,
          lvii. (1905) pp. 254-270.


168.


F. C. Movers, Die
          Phoenizier, i. 243; Stoll, s.v.
“Kinyras,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1191; 1 Samuel
          xvi. 23.


169.


1 Chronicles xxv. 1-3; compare 2
          Samuel vi. 5.


170.


W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of
          Israel2 (London, 1902), pp. 391
          sq.; E. Renan, Histoire du peuple
          d'Israel (Paris, 1893), ii. 280.


171.


1 Samuel x. 5.


172.


2 Kings iii. 4-24. And for the
          explanation of the supposed miracle, see W. Robertson Smith,
          The Old
          Testament in the Jewish Church2
          (London and Edinburgh, 1892), pp. 146 sq. I
          have to thank Professor Kennett for the suggestion that the
          Moabites took the ruddy light on the water for an omen of blood
          rather than for actual gore.


173.


1 Samuel xvi. 14-23.


174.


J. H. Newman, Sermons preached
          before the University of Oxford, No. xv. pp. 346
          sq. (third edition).


175.


It would be interesting to pursue a
          similar line of inquiry in regard to the other arts. What was the
          influence of Phidias on Greek religion? How much does Catholicism
          owe to Fra Angelico?


176.


Pindar, Pyth.
          ii. 15 sq.


177.


On the lyre and the flute in Greek
          religion and Greek thought, see L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the
          Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909), iv. 243
          sqq.


178.


Pindar, Pyth.
          i. 13 sqq.


179.


This seems to be the view also of Dr.
          Farnell, who rightly connects the musical with the prophetic side
          of Apollo's character (op. cit. iv. 245).


180.


Hyginus, Fab.
          242. So in the version of the story which made Adonis the son of
          Theias, the father is said to have killed himself when he learned
          what he had done (Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. 34).


181.


Scholiast and Eustathius on Homer,
          Iliad, xi. 20. Compare F. C.
          Movers, Die Phoenizier, i. 243
          sq.; W. H. Engel, Kypros,
          ii. 109-116; Stoll, s.v. “Kinyras,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1191.


182.


Anacreon, cited by Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. vii. 154. Nonnus also refers to the long life
          of Cinyras (Dionys. xxxii. 212 sq.).


183.


Encyclopaedia
          Britannica,9 xiv. 858.


184.


L. R. Farnell, “Sociological hypotheses concerning the position of
          women in ancient religion,” Archiv für
          Religionswissenschaft, vii. (1904) p. 88; M. P.
          Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic,
          1906), pp. 366 sq.; Fr. Cumont, Les religions
          orientales dans le paganisme Romain2
          (Paris, 1909), pp. 361 sq. A different and, in my
          judgment, a truer view of these customs was formerly taken by Prof.
          Nilsson. See his Studia de Dionysiis Atticis
          (Lund, 1900), pp. 119-121. For a large collection of facts bearing
          on this subject and a judicious discussion of them, see W. Hertz,
          “Die Sage vom Giftmädchen,”
Gesammelte Abhandlungen
          (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1905), pp. 195-219. My attention was drawn
          to this last work by Prof. G. L. Hamilton of the University of
          Michigan after my manuscript had been sent to the printer. With
          Hertz's treatment of the subject I am in general agreement, and I
          have derived from his learned treatise several references to
          authorities which I had overlooked.


185.


Above, p. 37.


186.


Above, p. 38. Prof. Nilsson is mistaken in affirming
          (op.
          cit. p. 367) that the Lydian practice was purely
          secular: the inscription which I have cited proves the contrary.
          Both he and Dr. Farnell fully recognize the religious aspect of
          most of these customs in antiquity, and Prof. Nilsson attempts, as
          it seems to me, unsuccessfully, to indicate how a practice supposed
          to be purely secular in origin should have come to contract a
          religious character.


187.


Above, p. 37.


188.


Above, pp. 36 sq., 38.


189.


Hosea iv. 13 sq.


190.


Above, pp. 37 sqq.


191.


See above, pp. 17 sq.


192.


L. di Varthema, Travels
          (Hakluyt Society, 1863), pp. 141, 202-204 (Malabar); J. A. de
          Mandlesloe, in J. Harris's Voyages and Travels, i. (London,
          1744), p. 767 (Malabar); Richard, “History
          of Tonquin,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and
          Travels, ix. 760 sq.
          (Aracan); A. de Morga, The Philippine Islands, Moluccas, Siam,
          Cambodia, Japan, and China (Hakluyt Society, 1868),
          pp. 304 sq. (the Philippines); J.
          Mallat, Les Philippines (Paris, 1846),
          i. 61 (the Philippines); L. Moncelon, in Bulletins de la
          Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, 3me Série, ix.
          (1886) p. 368 (New Caledonia); H. Crawford Angas, in Verhandlungen der
          Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und
          Urgeschichte, 1898, p. 481 (Azimba, Central Africa);
          Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa (London,
          1897), p. 410 (the Wa-Yao of Central Africa). See further, W.
          Hertz, “Die Sage vom Giftmädchen,”
Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp.
          198-204.


193.


Herodotus, i. 93; Justin, xviii. 5. 4.
          Part of the wages thus earned was probably paid into the local
          temple. See above, pp. 37,
          38. However, according to
          Strabo (xi. 14. 16, p. 532) the Armenian girls of rich families
          often gave their lovers more than they received from them.


194.


This fatal objection to the theory
          under discussion has been clearly stated by W. Hertz, op.
          cit. p. 217. I am glad to find myself in agreement
          with so judicious and learned an inquirer.


195.


L. di Varthema, Travels
          (Hakluyt Society, 1863), p. 141; J. A. de Mandlesloe, in J.
          Harris's Voyages and Travels, i. (London,
          1744) p. 767; A. Hamilton, “New Account of
          the East Indies,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and
          Travels, viii. 374; Ch. Lassen, Indische
          Alterthumskunde, iv. (Leipsic, 1861), p. 408; A. de
          Herrera, The General History of the Vast Continent and
          Islands of America, translated by Captain J. Stevens
          (London, 1725-1726), iii. 310, 340; Fr. Coreal, Voyages aux Indes
          Occidentales (Amsterdam, 1722), i. 10 sq.,
          139 sq.; C. F. Ph. v. Martius,
          Beiträge
          zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde Amerika's, i.
          (Leipsic, 1867) pp. 113 sq. The first three of these
          authorities refer to Malabar; the fourth refers to Cambodia; the
          last three refer to the Indians of Central and South America. See
          further W. Hertz, “Die Sage vom
          Giftmädchen,” Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp.
          204-207. For a criticism of the Malabar evidence see K. Schmidt,
          Jus
          primae noctis (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1881), pp.
          312-320.


196.


Lactantius, Divin.
          Institut. i. 20; Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, iv. 7; Augustine, De civitate
          Dei, vi. 9, vii. 24; D. Barbosa, Description of the
          Coasts of East Africa and Malabar (Hakluyt Society,
          1866), p. 96; Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes Orientales et à la
          Chine (Paris, 1782), i. 68; F. Liebrecht,
          Zur
          Volkskunde (Heilbronn, 1879), pp. 396 sq.,
          511; W. Hertz, “Die Sage vom
          Giftmädchen,” Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp.
          270-272. According to Arnobius, it was matrons, not maidens, who
          resorted to the image. This suggests that the custom was a charm to
          procure offspring.


197.


R. Schomburgk, in Verhandlungen der
          Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und
          Urgeschichte, 1879, pp. 235 sq.;
          Miklucho-Maclay, ibid. 1880, p. 89; W. E. Roth,
          Studies
          among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines
          (Brisbane and London, 1897), pp. 174 sq.,
          180; B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of
          Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 92-95;
          id., Northern Tribes of
          Central Australia (London, 1904), pp. 133-136. In
          Australia the observance of the custom is regularly followed by the
          exercise of what seem to be old communal rights of the men over the
          women.


198.


J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions
          et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825),
          ii. 353 sqq.; J. Shortt, “The Bayadère or dancing-girls of Southern
          India,” Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of
          London, iii. (1867-69) pp. 182-194; Edward Balfour,
          Cyclopaedia of India3
          (London, 1885), i. 922 sqq.; W. Francis, in
          Census of
          India, 1901, vol. xv., Madras,
          Part I. (Madras, 1902) pp. 151 sq.; E.
          Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern
          India (Madras, 1906), pp. 36 sq., 40
          sq. The office of these sacred
          women has in recent years been abolished, on the ground of
          immorality, by the native Government of Mysore. See Homeward
          Mail, 6th June 1909 (extract kindly sent me by
          General Begbie).


199.


Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of
          Southern India (Madras, 1909), iii. 37-39. Compare
          id., Ethnographic Notes in
          Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 29 sq. In
          Southern India the maternal uncle often takes a prominent part in
          the marriage ceremony to the exclusion of the girl's father. See,
          for example, E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern
          India, ii. 497, iv. 147. The custom is derived from
          the old system of mother-kin, under which a man's heirs are not his
          own children but his sister's children. As to this system see
          below, Chapter XII., “Mother-kin and Mother
          Goddesses.”


200.


E. Balfour, op.
          cit. ii. 1012.


201.


Francis Buchanan, “A Journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore,
          Canara, and Malabar,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and
          Travels, viii. (London, 1811), p. 749.


202.


N. Subramhanya Aiyar, in Census of India,
          1901, vol. xxvi., Travancore, Part i. (Trivandrum,
          1903), pp. 276 sq. I have to thank my friend
          Mr. W. Crooke for referring me to this and other passages on the
          sacred dancing-girls of India.


203.


A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking
          Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London,
          1890), pp. 140 sq.


204.


A. B. Ellis, op.
          cit. p. 142.


205.


A. B. Ellis, op.
          cit. pp. 148 sq. Compare Des Marchais,
          Voyage en
          Guinée et à Cayenne (Amsterdam, 1731), ii. 144-151;
          P. Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves (Paris,
          1885), p. 128. The Abbé Bouche calls these women danwés.


206.


A. B. Ellis, op.
          cit. p. 60; Des Marchais, op.
          cit. ii. 149 sq.


207.


Des Marchais, Voyage en Guinée et à
          Cayenne (Amsterdam, 1731), ii. 146 sq.


208.


W. Bosman, “Description of the Coast of Guinea,” in J.
          Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, xvi.
          (London, 1814), p. 494.


209.


W. Bosman, l.c.
          The name of Whydah is spelt by Bosman as Fida, and by Des Marchais
          as Juda.


210.


MS. notes, kindly sent to me by the
          author, Mr. A. C. Hollis, 21st May, 1908.


211.


A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking
          Peoples of the Slave Coast, pp. 142-144; Le R. P.
          Baudin, “Féticheurs ou ministres religieux
          des Nègres de la Guinée,” Les Missions
          Catholiques, No. 787 (4 juillet 1884), p. 322.


212.


A. B. Ellis, op.
          cit. pp. 150 sq.


213.


La Côte des Esclaves, pp. 127
          sq.


214.


A. B. Ellis, op.
          cit. p. 147.


215.


A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking
          Peoples of the Gold Coast of West Africa (London,
          1887), pp. 120-138.


216.


A. B. Ellis, op.
          cit. p. 121.


217.


A. B. Ellis, op.
          cit. pp. 120 sq., 129-138. The slaves, male
          and female, dedicated to a god from childhood are often mentioned
          by the German missionary Mr. J. Spieth in his elaborate work on the
          Ewe people (Die Eẇe-Stämme: Material zur Kunde des
          Eẇe-Volkes in Deutsch-Togo, Berlin, 1906, pp. 228,
          229, 309, 450, 474, 792, 797, etc.). But his information does not
          illustrate the principal points to which I have called attention in
          the text.


218.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 129-135.


219.


Herodotus, i. 181 sq. It
          is not clear whether the same or a different woman slept every
          night in the temple.


220.


H. Winckler, Die Gesetze
          Hammurabi2 (Leipsic, 1903), p. 31, §
          182; C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and
          Letters (Edinburgh, 1904), pp. 54, 55, 59, 60, 61 (§§
          137, 144, 145, 146, 178, 182, 187, 192, 193, of the Code of
          Hammurabi). As to these female votaries see especially C. H. W.
          Johns, “Notes on the Code of
          Hammurabi,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and
          Literatures, xix. (January 1903) pp. 98-107. Compare
          S. A. Cook, The Laws of Moses and the Code of
          Hammurabi (London, 1903), pp. 147-150.


221.


C. H. W. Johns, “Notes on the Code of Hammurabi,” l.c.,
          where we read (p. 104) of a female votary of Shamash who had a
          daughter.


222.


Code of Hammurabi, § 181; C. H.
          W. Johns, “Notes on the Code of
          Hammurabi,” op. cit. pp. 100 sq.; S. A.
          Cook, op.
          cit. p. 148. Dr. Johns translates the name by
          “temple maid” (Babylonian and
          Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Letters, p. 61).
          He is scrupulously polite to these ladies, but I gather from him
          that a far less charitable view of their religious vocation is
          taken by Father Scheil, the first editor and translator of the
          code.


223.


Any man proved to have pointed the
          finger of scorn at a votary was liable to be branded on the
          forehead (Code of Hammurabi, § 127).


224.


See above, pp. 66, 69.


225.


Herodotus, i. 182.


226.


A. Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites
          Buch (Leipsic, 1890), pp. 268 sq. See
          further The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 130 sqq.


227.


Strabo, xvii. 1. 46, p. 816. The title
          “concubines of Zeus (Ammon)” is
          mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (i. 47).


228.


Diodorus Siculus, i. 47.


229.


The ἱερόδουλοι, as the Greeks called
          them.


230.


I have to thank the Rev. Professor R.
          H. Kennett for this important suggestion as to the true nature of
          the ḳedeshim. The
          passages of the Bible in which mention is made of these men are
          Deuteronomy xxiii. 17 (in Hebrew 18); 1 Kings xiv. 24, xv. 12,
          xxii. 46 (in Hebrew 47); 2 Kings xxiii. 7; Job xxxvi. 14 (where
          ḳedeshim is translated
          “the unclean” in the English
          version). The usual rendering of ḳedeshim in the English Bible is
          not justified by any of these passages; but it may perhaps derive
          support from a reference which Eusebius makes to the profligate
          rites observed at Aphaca (Vita Constantini, iii. 55;
          Migne's Patrologia Graeca, xx. 1120);
          Γύνιδες γοῦν τινες ἄνδρες οὐκ ἄνδρες, τὸ σέμνον τῆς φύσεως
          ἀπαρνησάμενοι, θηλείᾳ νόσῳ τὴν δαίμονα ἱλεοῦντο. But probably
          Eusebius is here speaking of the men who castrated themselves in
          honour of the goddess, and thereafter wore female attire. See
          Lucian, De dea Syria, 51; and below, pp.
          269 sq.


231.


Strabo, xi. 4. 7, p. 503.


232.


Drexler, in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, s.v.
“Men,” ii. 2687 sqq.


233.


It is true that Strabo (l.c.)
          speaks of the Albanian deity as a goddess, but this may be only an
          accommodation to the usage of the Greek language, in which the moon
          is feminine.


234.


Florus, Epitoma, ii. 7; Diodorus
          Siculus, Frag. xxxiv. 2 (vol. v. pp. 87 sq.,
          ed. L. Dindorf, in the Teubner series).


235.


Above, pp. 52 sq.


236.


1 Kings xix. 16; Isaiah lx. 1.


237.


1 Kings xx. 41. So in Africa
          “priests and priestesses are readily
          distinguishable from the rest of the community. They wear their
          hair long and unkempt, while other people, except the women in the
          towns on the seaboard, have it cut close to the head.... Frequently
          both appear with white circles painted round their eyes, or with
          various white devices, marks, or lines painted on the face, neck,
          shoulders, or arms” (A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking
          Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 123). “Besides the ordinary tribal tattoo-marks borne by all
          natives, the priesthood in Dahomi bear a variety of such marks,
          some very elaborate, and an expert can tell by the marks on a
          priest to what god he is vowed, and what rank he holds in the
          order. These hierarchical marks consist of lines, scrolls,
          diamonds, and other patterns, with sometimes a figure, such as that
          of the crocodile or chameleon. The shoulders are frequently seen
          covered with an infinite number of small marks like dots, set close
          together. All these marks are considered sacred, and the laity are
          forbidden to touch them” (A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking
          Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 146). The reason why
          the prophet's shoulders are especially marked is perhaps given by
          the statement of a Zulu that “the sensitive
          part with a doctor [medicine-man] is his shoulders. Everything he
          feels is in the situation of his shoulders. That is the place where
          black men feel the Amatongo” (ancestral spirits). See H.
          Callaway, The Religious System of the
          Amazulu, part ii. p. 159. These African analogies
          suggest that the “wounds between the
          arms” (literally, “between the
          hands”) which the prophet Zechariah mentions (xiii. 6) as
          the badge of a Hebrew prophet were marks tattooed on his shoulders
          in token of his holy office. The suggestion is confirmed by the
          prophet's own statement (l.c.) that he had received the
          wounds in the house of his lovers (בית מאהבי); for the same word
          lovers is repeatedly applied by the prophet Hosea to the Baalim
          (Hosea, ii. 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, verses 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 in
          Hebrew).


238.


1 Samuel ix. 1-20.


239.


H. Callaway, The Religious System
          of the Amazulu, part iii. pp. 300 sqq.


240.


See above, pp. 52 sq.


241.


1 Samuel ix. 9. In the Wiimbaio tribe
          of South-Eastern Australia a medicine-man used to be called
          “mekigar, from meki, ‘eye’ or ‘to
          see,’ otherwise ‘one who
          sees,’ that is, sees the causes of maladies in people, and
          who could extract them from the sufferer, usually in the form of
          quartz crystals” (A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of
          South-East Australia, London, 1904, p. 380).


242.


That the prophet's office in Canaan
          was developed out of the widespread respect for insanity is duly
          recognized by Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. p. 383.


243.


W. Max Müller, in Mitteilungen der
          Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, No. 1, p. 17;
          A. Erman, “Eine Reise nach Phönizien im 11
          Jahrhundert v. Chr.” Zeitschrift für Āgyptische Sprache und
          Altertumskunde, xxxviii. (1900) pp. 6 sq.; G.
          Maspero, Les contes populaires de l'Égypte
          Ancienne,3 p. 192; A. Wiedemann,
          Altägyptische Sagen und Märchen
          (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 99 sq.; H. Gressmann, Altorientalische
          Texte und Bilder zum Alten Testamente (Tübingen,
          1909), p. 226. Scholars differ as to whether Wen-Ammon's narrative
          is to be regarded as history or romance; but even if it were proved
          to be a fiction, we might safely assume that the incident of the
          prophetic frenzy at Byblus was based upon familiar facts. Prof.
          Wiedemann thinks that the god who inspired the page was the
          Egyptian Ammon, not the Phoenician Adonis, but this view seems to
          me less probable.


244.


1 Samuel ix. 6-8, 10; 1 Kings xiii. 1,
          4-8, 11, etc.


245.


1 Samuel ii. 22. Totally different
          from their Asiatic namesakes were the “sacred men” and “sacred
          women” who were charged with the superintendence of the
          mysteries at Andania in Messenia. They were chosen by lot and held
          office for a year. The sacred women might be either married or
          single; the married women had to swear that they had been true to
          their husbands. See G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecarum2 (Leipsic, 1898-1901), vol.
          ii. pp. 461 sqq., No. 653; Ch. Michel,
          Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques (Brussels, 1900), pp. 596
          sqq., No. 694; Leges Graecorum
          Sacrae, ed. J. de Prott, L. Ziehen, Pars Altera,
          Fasciculus i. (Leipsic, 1906), No. 58, pp. 166 sqq.


246.


Hosea ix. 7.


247.


Jeremiah xxix. 26.


248.


S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic
          Religion To-day (Chicago, New York, Toronto, 1902),
          pp. 150 sq.


249.


S. I. Curtiss, op.
          cit. p. 152. As to these “holy men,” see further C. R. Conder,
          Tent-work
          in Palestine (London, 1878), ii. 231 sq.:
          “The most peculiar class of men in the
          country is that of the Derwîshes, or sacred personages, who wander
          from village to village, performing tricks, living on alms, and
          enjoying certain social and domestic privileges, which very often
          lead to scandalous scenes. Some of these men are mad, some are
          fanatics, but the majority are, I imagine, rogues. They are
          reverenced not only by the peasantry, but also sometimes by the
          governing class. I have seen the Kady of Nazareth ostentatiously
          preparing food for a miserable and filthy beggar, who sat in the
          justice-hall, and was consulted as if he had been inspired. A
          Derwîsh of peculiar eminence is often dressed in good clothes, with
          a spotless turban, and is preceded by a banner-bearer, and followed
          by a band, with drum, cymbal, and tambourine.... It is natural to
          reflect whether the social position of the Prophets among the Jews
          may not have resembled that of the Derwîshes.”


250.


S. I. Curtiss, op.
          cit. pp. 116 sq.


251.


S. I. Curtiss, op.
          cit. pp. 118, 119. In India also some Mohammedan
          saints are noted as givers of children. Thus at Fatepur-Sikri, near
          Agra, is the grave of Salim Chishti, and childless women tie rags
          to the delicate tracery of the tomb, “thus
          bringing them into direct communion with the spirit of the holy
          man” (W. Crooke, Natives of Northern India,
          London, 1907, p. 203).


252.


1 Samuel i.


253.


Genesis vi. 1-3. In this passage
          “the sons of God (or rather of the
          gods)” probably means, in accordance with a common Hebrew
          idiom, no more than “the gods,” just
          as the phrase “sons of the prophets”
          means the prophets themselves. For more examples of this idiom, see
          Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, p.
          121.


254.


For example, all Hebrew names ending
          in -el or
          -iah are compounds of El or
          Yahwe, two names of the divinity. See G. B. Gray, Studies in Hebrew
          Proper Names (London, 1896), pp. 149 sqq.


255.


Brown, Driver, and Briggs,
          Hebrew
          and English Lexicon, p. 1028. But compare
          Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii.
          3285, iv. 4452.


256.


A trace of a similar belief perhaps
          survives in the narratives of Genesis xxxi. and Judges xiii., where
          barren women are represented as conceiving children after the visit
          of God, or of an angel of God, in the likeness of a man.


257.


J. Spieth, Die
          Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), pp. 446, 448-450.


258.


For more instances see H. Usener,
          Das
          Weihnachtsfest2 (Bonn, 1911), i. 71
          sqq.


259.


G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecarum,2 vol. ii. pp. 662, 663, No.
          803, lines 117 sqq., 129 sqq.


260.


Pausanias, ii. 10. 3 (with my note),
          iii. 23. 7; Livy, xi. Epitome; Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. xxix. 72; Valerius Maximus, i. 8. 2; Ovid,
          Metam. xv. 626-744; Aurelius
          Victor, De viris illustr. 22; Plutarch,
          Quaest.
          Rom. 94.


261.


Aristophanes, Plutus,
          733; Pausanias, ii. 11. 8; Herodas, Mimiambi, iv. 90 sq.; G.
          Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecarum,2 vol. ii. p. 655, No. 802,
          lines 116 sqq.; Ch. Michel, Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques, p. 826, No. 1069.


262.


Pausanias, ii. 10. 3, iv. 14. 7
          sq.


263.


Pausanias, ii. 10. 4.


264.


Pausanias, ii. 11. 5-8.


265.


Suetonius, Divus
          Augustus, 94; Dio Cassius, xlv. 1. 2. Tame serpents
          were kept in a sacred grove of Apollo in Epirus. A virgin priestess
          fed them, and omens of plenty and health or the opposites were
          drawn from the way in which the reptiles took their food from her.
          See Aelian, Nat. Hist. xi. 2.


266.


Pausanias, iv. 14. 7; Livy, xxvi. 19;
          Aulus Gellius, vi. 1; Plutarch, Alexander, 2. All these cases
          have been already cited in this connexion by L. Deubner,
          De
          incubatione (Leipsic, 1900), p. 33 note.


267.


Aelian, De natura
          animalium, vi. 17.


268.


H. V. Nanjundayya, The Ethnographical
          Survey of Mysore, vi. Komati
          Caste (Bangalore, 1906), p. 29.


269.


T. Arbousset et F. Daumas,
          Voyage
          d'Exploration au Nord-Est de la Colonie du Cap de
          Bonne-Espérance (Paris, 1842), p. 277; H. Callaway,
          Religious
          System of the Amazulu, part ii. pp. 140-144, 196-200,
          208-212; J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal (London,
          1857), p. 162; E. Casalis, The Basutos (London, 1861), p.
          246; “Words about Spirits,”
          (South
          African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880)
          pp. 101-103; A. Kranz, Natur- und Kulturleben der Zulus
          (Wiesbaden, 1880), p. 112; F. Speckmann, Die Hermannsburger
          Mission in Afrika (Hermannsburg, 1876), pp. 165-167;
          Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London,
          1904), pp. 85-87; Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South
          African Tribe (Neuchatel, 1912-1913), ii. 358
          sq.


270.


W. A. Elmslie, Among the Wild
          Ngoni (London, 1899), pp. 71 sq.


271.


O. Baumann, Usambara und seine
          Nachbargebiete (Berlin, 1891), pp. 141 sq.


272.


S. L. Hinde and H. Hinde, The Last of the
          Masai (London, 1901), pp. 101 sq.; A.
          C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), pp.
          307 sq.; Sir H. Johnston,
          The
          Uganda Protectorate (London, 1904), ii. 832.


273.


M. W. H. Beech, The Suk
          (Oxford, 1911), p. 20.


274.


A. C. Hollis, The
          Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 90.


275.


H. R. Tate, “The Native Law of the Southern Gikuyu of British East
          Africa,” Journal of the African Society,
          No. xxxv. April 1910, p. 243.


276.


E. de Pruyssenaere, Reisen und
          Forschungen im Gebiete des Weissen und Blauen Nil
          (Gotha, 1877), p. 27 (Petermann's Mittheilungen,
          Ergänzungsheft, No. 50). Compare G. Schweinfurth,
          The Heart
          of Africa3 (London, 1878), i. 55.
          Among the Bahima of Ankole dead chiefs turn into serpents, but dead
          kings into lions. See J. Roscoe, “The
          Bahima, a Cow Tribe of Enkole in the Uganda Protectorate,”
Journal
          of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvii. (1907), pp.
          101 sq.; Major J. A. Meldon,
          “Notes on the Bahima of Ankole,”
Journal
          of the African Society, No. xxii. (January 1907), p.
          151. Major Leonard holds that the pythons worshipped in Southern
          Nigeria are regarded as reincarnations of the dead; but this seems
          very doubtful. See A. G. Leonard, The Lower Niger and
          its Tribes (London, 1906), pp. 327 sqq.
          Pythons are worshipped by the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave
          Coast, but apparently not from a belief that the souls of the dead
          are lodged in them. See A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking
          Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, pp. 54
          sqq.


277.


G. A. Shaw, “The Betsileo,” The Antananarivo
          Annual and Madagascar Magazine, Reprint of the First Four
          Numbers (Antananarivo, 1885), p. 411; H. W. Little,
          Madagascar, its History and
          People (London, 1884), pp. 86 sq.; A.
          van Gennep, Tabou et Totémisme à Madagascar
          (Paris, 1904), pp. 272 sqq.


278.


“Religious
          Rites and Customs of the Iban or Dyaks of Sarawak,” by Leo
          Nyuak, translated from the Dyak by the Very Rev. Edm. Dunn,
          Anthropos, i. (1906) p. 182. As
          to the Sea Dyak reverence for snakes and their belief that spirits
          (antus) are incarnate in the
          reptiles, see further J. Perham, “Sea Dyak
          Religion,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal
          Asiatic Society, No. 10 (December, 1882), pp.
          222-224; H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North
          Borneo (London, 1896), i. 187 sq. But
          from this latter account it does not appear that the spirits
          (antus) which possess the snakes
          are supposed to be those of human ancestors.


279.


George Brown, D.D., Melanesians and
          Polynesians (London, 1910), pp. 238 sq.


280.


Rev. E. Casalis, The
          Basutos (London, 1861), p. 246. Compare A. Kranz,
          Natur-
          und Kulturleben der Zulus (Wiesbaden, 1880), p.
          112.


281.


A. C. Hollis, The
          Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 307.


282.


A. C. Hollis, The
          Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 90.


283.


Mervyn W. H. Beech, The Suk, their
          Language and Folklore (Oxford, 1911), p. 20.


284.


H. R. Tate (District Commissioner,
          East Africa Protectorate), “The Native Law
          of the Southern Gikuyu of British East Africa,” Journal of the
          African Society, No. xxxv., April 1910, p. 243. See
          further C. W. Hobley, “Further Researches
          into Kikuyu and Kamba Religious Beliefs and Customs,”
Journal
          of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xli. (1911)
          p. 408. According to Mr. Hobley it is only one particular sort of
          snake, called nyamuyathi, which is thought to
          be the abode of a spirit and is treated with ceremonious respect by
          the Akikuyu. Compare P. Cayzac, “La
          Religion des Kikuyu,” Anthropos, v. (1910) p. 312; and
          for more evidence of milk offered to serpents as embodiments of the
          dead see E. de Pruyssenaere and H. W. Little, cited above, p.
          83, notes 1 and 2.


285.


Rev. J. Roscoe, The
          Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 320 sq. My
          friend Mr. Roscoe tells me that serpents are revered and fed with
          milk by the Banyoro to the north of Uganda; but he cannot say
          whether the creatures are supposed to be incarnations of the dead.
          Some of the Gallas also regard serpents as sacred and offer milk to
          them, but it is not said that they believe the reptiles to embody
          the souls of the departed. See Rev. J. L. Krapf, Travels, Researches
          and Missionary Labours in Eastern Africa (London,
          1860), pp. 77 sq. The negroes of Whydah in
          Guinea likewise feed with milk the serpents which they worship. See
          Thomas Astley's New General Collection of Voyages and
          Travels, iii. (London, 1746) p. 29.


286.


L. Preller, Römische
          Mythologie3 (Berlin, 1881-1883), ii.
          196 sq.; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus
          der Römer2 (Munich, 1912), pp. 176
          sq. The worship of the
          genius was very popular in the
          Roman Empire. See J. Toutain, Les Cultes Païens dans l'Empire
          Romain, Première Partie, i. (Paris, 1907) pp. 439
          sqq.


287.


Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. xxix. 72. Compare Seneca, De Ira,
          iv. 31. 6.


288.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 5. 4; Hyginus,
          Fab. 6; Ovid, Metam.
          iv. 563-603.


289.


Plutarch, Cleomenes, 39.


290.


Porphyry, De vita
          Plotini, p. 103, Didot edition (appended to the lives
          of Diogenes Laertius).


291.


Plutarch, Cleomenes, 39; Scholiast on
          Aristophanes, Plutus, 733.


292.


Herodotus, viii. 41; Plutarch,
          Themistocles, 10; Aristophanes,
          Lysistra, 758 sq.,
          with the Scholium; Philostratus, Imag.
          ii. 17. 6. See further my note on Pausanias, i, 18, 2 (vol. ii. pp.
          168 sqq.).


293.


Sophocles, Electra, 893 sqq.;
          Euripides, Orestes, 112 sqq.


294.


Mittheilungen des Deutsch. Archäo log.
          Institutes in Athen, iv. (1879) pl. viii. Compare
          ib. pp. 135 sq.,
          162 sq.


295.


Above, pp. 84 sq.


296.


E. de Pruyssenaere, l.c.
          (above, p. 83, note
          1).


297.


See C. O. Müller, Denkmäler der alten
          Kunst2 (Göttingen, 1854), pl. lxi.
          with the corresponding text in vol. i. (where the eccentric system
          of paging adopted renders references to it practically useless). In
          these groups the female figure is commonly, and perhaps correctly,
          interpreted as the Goddess of Health (Hygieia). It is to be
          remembered that Hygieia was deemed a daughter of the serpent-god
          Aesculapius (Pausanias i. 23. 4), and was constantly associated
          with him in ritual and art. See, for example, Pausanias, i. 40. 6,
          ii. 4. 5, ii. 11. 6, ii. 23. 4, ii. 27. 6, iii. 22. 13, v. 20. 3,
          v. 26. 2, vii. 23. 7, viii. 28. 1, viii. 31. 1, viii. 32. 4, viii.
          47. 1. The snake-entwined goddess whose image was found in a
          prehistoric shrine at Gournia in Crete may have been a predecessor
          of the serpent-feeding Hygieia. See R. M. Burrows, The Discoveries in
          Crete (London, 1907), pp. 137 sq. The
          snakes, which were the regular symbol of the Furies, may have been
          originally nothing but the emblems or rather embodiments of the
          dead; and the Furies themselves may, like Aesculapius, have been
          developed out of the reptiles, sloughing off their serpent skins
          through the anthropomorphic tendency of Greek thought.


298.


Scholia on Lucian, Dial.
          Meretr. ii. (Scholia in Lucianum, ed. H.
          Rabe, Leipsic, 1906, pp. 275 sq.). As to the Thesmophoria,
          see my article, “Thesmophoria,”
Encyclopaedia
          Britannica,9 xxiii. 295 sqq.;
          Spirits
          of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 17 sqq.


299.


A. S. Gatschet, The Klamath Indians
          of South-Western Oregon (Washington, 1890), p.
          xcii.


300.


Washington Matthews, “Myths of Gestation and Parturition,”
American
          Anthropologist, New Series, iv. (New York, 1902) p.
          738.


301.


Central Provinces, Ethnographic
          Survey, iii. Draft Articles on Forest Tribes
          (Allahabad, 1907), p. 23.


302.


J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System
          of China, v. (Leyden, 1907) pp. 536 sq.


303.


W. Crooke, Natives of Northern
          India (London, 1907), p. 232.


304.


J. Spieth, Die
          Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), p. 796.


305.


J. E. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise
          among the Islands of the Western Pacific (London,
          1853), pp. 245 sq.


306.


Persons initiated into the mysteries
          of Sabazius had a serpent drawn through the bosom of their robes,
          and the reptile was identified with the god (ὁ διὰ κόλπου θέος,
          Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 16, p. 14, ed.
          Potter). This may be a trace of the belief that women can be
          impregnated by serpents, though it does not appear that the
          ceremony was performed only on women.


307.


See above, p. 78. Among the South Slavs women go to graves to
          get children. See below, p. 96.


308.


S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic
          Religion To-day, pp. 115 sqq.


309.


A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den
          Indischen Archipel (The Hague, 1906), P. 398.


310.


Relations des Jésuites, 1636, p.
          130 (Canadian reprint, Quebec, 1858). A similar custom was
          practised for a similar reason by the Musquakie Indians. See Miss
          Mary Alicia Owen, Folk-lore of the Musquakie Indians of North
          America (London, 1904), pp. 22 sq.,
          86. Some of the instances here given have been already cited by Mr.
          J. E. King, who suggests, with much probability, that the special
          modes of burial adopted for infants in various parts of the world
          may often have been intended to ensure their rebirth. See J. E.
          King, “Infant Burial,” Classical
          Review, xvii. (1903) pp. 83 sq. For
          a large collection of evidence as to the belief in the
          reincarnation of the dead, see E. S. Hartland, Primitive
          Paternity (London, 1909-1910), i. 156 sqq.


311.


Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West
          Africa (London, 1897), p. 478.


312.


Rev. John H. Weeks, “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo
          People,” Folk-lore, xix. (1908) p.
          422.


313.


Th. Masui, Guide de la Section
          de l'État Indépendant du Congo à l'Exposition de
          Bruxelles-Tervueren en 1897 (Brussels, 1897), pp. 113
          sq.


314.


J. B. Purvis, Through Uganda to
          Mount Elgon (London, 1909), pp. 302 sq. As
          to the Bagishu or Bageshu and their practice of throwing out the
          dead, see Rev. J. Roscoe, “Notes on the
          Bageshu,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological
          Institute, xxxix. (1909) pp. 181 sqq.


315.


Rev. J. Roscoe, The
          Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 46 sq.
          Women adopted a like precaution at the grave of twins to prevent
          the ghosts of the twins from entering into them and being born
          again (id., pp. 124 sq.).
          The Baganda always strangled children that were born feet first and
          buried their bodies at cross-roads. The heaps of sticks or grass
          thrown on these graves by passing women and girls rose in time into
          mounds large enough to deflect the path and to attract the notice
          of travellers. See J. Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 126 sq.,
          289.


316.


Rev. J. Roscoe, op.
          cit. pp. 126 sq. In the Senegal and Niger
          region of Western Africa it is said to be commonly believed by
          women that they can conceive without any carnal knowledge of a man.
          See Maurice Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal-Niger, Le Pays, les Peuples, les
          Langues, l'Histoire, les Civilisations (Paris, 1912),
          iii. 171.


317.


Rev. J. Roscoe, The
          Baganda, pp. 47 sq.; Totemism and
          Exogamy, ii. 506 sq. As
          to the custom of depositing the afterbirths of children at the foot
          of banana (plantain) trees, see J. Roscoe, op.
          cit. pp. 52, 54 sq.


318.


W. Crooke, Natives of Northern
          India (London, 1907), p. 202. As to the Hindoo custom
          of burying infants but burning older persons, see The Belief in
          Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, i. 162
          sq.


319.


Census of India, 1911, vol. xiv.
          Punjab, Part i., Report, by
          Pandit Harikishan Kaul (Lahore, 1912), p. 299.


320.


E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk
          Tales (London, 1908), p. 49. Other explanations of
          the custom are reported by the writer, but the original motive was
          probably a desire to secure the reincarnation of the dead child in
          the mother.


321.


E. M. Gordon, op.
          cit. pp. 50 sq.


322.


E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in
          Southern India (Madras, 1906), p. 155; id.,
          Castes
          and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), iv.
          52.


323.


W. Crooke, Natives of Northern
          India, p. 202; Census of India, 1901, vol.
          xvii. Punjab, Part i., Report, by H.
          A. Rose (Simla, 1902), pp. 213 sq.


324.


Census of India, 1901, vol.
          xiii. Central Provinces, Part i.,
          Report, by R. V. Russell (Nagpur, 1902), p. 93.


325.


For stories of such virgin births see
          Comte H. de Charency, Le folklore dans les deux Mondes
          (Paris, 1894), pp. 121-256; E. S. Hartland, The Legend of
          Perseus, vol. i. (London, 1894) pp. 71 sqq.;
          and my note on Pausanias vii. 17. 11 (vol. iv. pp. 138-140). To the
          instances there cited by me add: A. Thevet, Cosmographie
          Universelle (Paris, 1575), ii. 918 [wrongly numbered
          952]; K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern
          Zentral-Brasiliens (Berlin, 1884), pp. 370, 373; H.
          A. Coudreau, La France Equinoxiale, ii.
          (Paris, 1887) pp. 184 sq.; Relations des
          Jésuites, 1637, pp. 123 sq.
          (Canadian reprint, Quebec, 1858); Franz Boas, Indianische Sagen von
          der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas (Berlin, 1895),
          pp. 311 sq.; A. G. Morice, Au pays de l'Ours
          Noir (Paris and Lyons, 1897), p. 153; A. Raffray,
          “Voyage à la côte nord de la Nouvelle
          Guinée,” Bulletin de la Société de
          Géographie (Paris), VIe
          Série, xv. (1878) pp. 392 sq.; J. L. van der Toorn,
          “Het animisme bij den Minangkabauer der
          Padangsche Bovenlanden,” Bijdragen tot de
          Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië,
          xxxix. (1890) p. 78; E. Aymonier, “Les
          Tchames et leurs religions,” Revue de l'Histoire
          des Religions, xxiv. (1901) pp. 215 sq.;
          Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (London, 1907), p.
          195. In some stories the conception is brought about not by eating
          food but by drinking water. But the principle is the same.


326.


F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der
          Süd-Slaven (Vienna, 1885), p. 531.


327.


Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Leben der Kaileute,” in R. Neuhauss's
          Deutsch
          Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) p. 26.


328.


W. H. R. Rivers, “Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia,”
Journal
          of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xxxix. (1909)
          pp. 173-175. Compare Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 89
          sqq. As to this Melanesian
          belief that animals can enter into women and be born from them as
          human children with animal characteristics, Dr. Rivers observes (p.
          174): “It was clear that this belief was
          not accompanied by any ignorance of the physical rôle of the human father, and
          that the father played the same part in conception as in cases of
          birth unaccompanied by an animal appearance. We found it impossible
          to get definitely the belief as to the nature of the influence
          exerted by the animal on the woman, but it must be remembered that
          any belief of this kind can hardly have escaped the many years of
          European influence and Christian teaching which the people of this
          group have received. It is doubtful whether even a prolonged
          investigation of this point could now elicit the original belief of
          the people about the nature of the influence.” To me it
          seems that the belief described by Dr. Rivers in the text is
          incompatible with the recognition of human fatherhood as a
          necessary condition for the birth of children, and that though the
          people may now recognize that necessity, perhaps as a result of
          intercourse with Europeans, they certainly cannot have recognized
          it at the time when the belief in question originated.


329.


Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen,
          Northern
          Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), p. 330,
          compare id. ibid.
          pp. xi, 145, 147-151, 155 sq., 161 sq.,
          169 sq., 173 sq.,
          174-176, 606; id., Native Tribes of
          Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 52, 123-125,
          126, 132 sq., 265, 335-338.


330.


B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen,
          Northern
          Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 162, 330
          sq.


331.


B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen,
          Native
          Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 337 sq.


332.


W. Baldwin Spencer, An Introduction to
          the Study of Certain Native Tribes of the Northern
          Territory (Melbourne, 1912), p. 6: “The two fundamental beliefs of reincarnation and of
          children not being of necessity the result of sexual intercourse,
          are firmly held by the tribes in their normal wild state. There is
          no doubt whatever of this, and we now know that these two beliefs
          extend through all the tribes northwards to Katherine Creek and
          eastwards to the Gulf of Carpentaria.” In a letter (dated
          Melbourne, July 27th, 1913) Professor Baldwin Spencer writes to me
          that the natives on the Alligator River in the Northern Territory
          “have detailed traditions—as also have all
          the tribes—of how great ancestors wandered over the country leaving
          numbers of spirit children behind them who have been reincarnated
          time after time. They know who everyone is a reincarnation of, as
          the names are perpetuated.”


333.


W. Baldwin Spencer, An Introduction to
          the Study of Certain Native Tribes of the Northern
          Territory (Melbourne, 1912), pp. 41-45.


334.


Walter E. Roth, North Queensland
          Ethnography, Bulletin No. 5, Superstition, Magic,
          and Medicine (Brisbane, 1903), pp. 22, § 81.


335.


Walter E. Roth, op.
          cit. p. 23, § 82.


336.


Walter E. Roth, op.
          cit. p. 23, § 83. Mr. Roth adds, very justly:
          “When it is remembered that as a rule in
          all these Northern tribes, a little girl may be given to and will
          live with her spouse as wife long before she reaches the stage of
          puberty—the relationship of which to fecundity is not
          recognised—the idea of conception not being necessarily due to
          sexual connection becomes partly intelligible.”


337.


The Bishop of North Queensland (Dr.
          Frodsham) in a letter to me, dated Bishop's Lodge, Townsville,
          Queensland, July 9th, 1909. The Bishop's authority for the
          statement is the Rev. C. W. Morrison, M.A., acting head of the
          Yarrubah Mission. In the same letter Dr. Frodsham, speaking from
          personal observation, refers to “the
          belief, practically universal among the northern tribes, that
          copulation is not the cause of conception.” See J. G.
          Frazer, “Beliefs and Customs of the
          Australian Aborigines,” Folk-lore,
          xx. (1909) pp. 350-352; Man, ix. (1909) pp. 145-147;
          Totemism
          and Exogamy, i. 577 sq.


338.


Herbert Basedow, Anthropological Notes
          on the Western Coastal Tribes of the Northern Territory of South
          Australia, pp. 4 sq.
          (separate reprint from the Transactions of the Royal Society of South
          Australia, vol. xxxi. 1907).


339.


A. R. Brown, “Beliefs concerning Childbirth in some Australian
          Tribes,” Man, xii. (1912) pp. 180
          sq. Compare id.,
          “Three Tribes of Western Australia,”
Journal
          of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xliii. (1913)
          p. 168.


340.


Those who desire to pursue this
          subject further may consult with advantage Mr. E. S. Hartland's
          learned treatise Primitive Paternity (London,
          1909-1910), which contains an ample collection of facts and a
          careful discussion of them. Elsewhere I have argued that the
          primitive ignorance of paternity furnishes the key to the origin of
          totemism. See Totemism and Exogamy, i. 155
          sqq., iv. 40 sqq.


341.


Jeremiah ii. 27. The ancient Greeks
          seem also to have had a notion that men were sprung from trees or
          rocks. See Homer, Od. xix. 163; F. G. Welcker,
          Griechische Götterlehre
          (Göttingen, 1857-1862), i. 777 sqq.;
          A. B. Cook, “Oak and Rock,”
Classical
          Review, xv. (1901) pp. 322 sqq.


342.


The ashera and the masseba. See 1 Kings xiv. 23; 2
          Kings xviii. 4, xxiii. 14; Micah v. 13 sq. (in
          Hebrew, 12 sq.); Deuteronomy xvi. 21
          sq.; W. Robertson Smith,
          Religion
          of the Semites,2 pp. 187 sqq.,
          203 sqq.; G. F. Moore, in
          Encyclopaedia Biblica,
          svv., “Asherah” and “Massebah.” In the early religion of Crete also
          the two principal objects of worship seem to have been a sacred
          tree and a sacred pillar. See A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, xxi. (1901) pp. 99 sqq.


343.


As to conical images of Semitic
          goddesses, see above, pp. 34 sqq. The sacred pole
          (asherah) appears also to have
          been by some people regarded as the embodiment of a goddess
          (Astarte), not of a god. See above, p. 18, note 2. Among the Khasis of Assam the sacred
          upright stones, which resemble the Semitic masseboth, are regarded as
          males, and the flat table-stones as female. See P. R. T. Gurdon,
          The
          Khasis (London, 1907), pp. 112 sq.,
          150 sqq. So in Nikunau, one of the
          Gilbert Islands in the South Pacific, the natives had sandstone
          slabs or pillars which represented gods and goddesses. “If the stone slab represented a goddess it was not
          placed erect, but laid down on the ground. Being a lady they
          thought it would be cruel to make her stand so long.” See G.
          Turner, LL.D., Samoa (London, 1884), p.
          296.


344.


See above, pp. 91 sqq.


345.


As to the excavations at Gezer, see R.
          A. Stewart Macalister, Reports on the Excavation of
          Gezer (London, n.d.), pp. 76-89
          (reprinted from the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine
          Exploration Fund); id.,
          Bible
          Side-lights from the Mound of Gezer (London, 1906),
          pp. 57-67, 73-75. Professor Macalister now inclines to regard the
          socketed stone as a laver rather than as the base of the sacred
          pole. He supposes that the buried infants were first-born children
          sacrificed in accordance with the ancient law of the dedication of
          the first-born. The explanation which I have adopted in the text
          agrees better with the uninjured state of the bodies, and it is
          further confirmed by the result of the Austrian excavations at Tell
          Ta'annek (Taanach) in Palestine, which seem to prove that there
          children up to the age of two years were not buried in the family
          graves but interred separately in jars. Some of these sepulchral
          jars were deposited under or beside the houses, but many were
          grouped round a rock-hewn altar in a different part of the hill.
          There is nothing to indicate that any of the children were
          sacrificed: the size of some of the skeletons precludes the idea
          that they were slain at birth. Probably they all died natural
          deaths, and the custom of burying them in or near the house or
          beside an altar was intended to ensure their rebirth in the family.
          See Dr. E. Sellin, “Tell Ta'annek,”
Denkschriften der Kaiser. Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, l.
          (Vienna, 1904), No. iv. pp. 32-37, 96 sq.
          Compare W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun, p. 59
          n.3. I have to thank Professor
          R. A. Stewart Macalister for kindly directing my attention to the
          excavations at Tell Ta'annek (Taanach). It deserves to be mentioned
          that in an enclosure close to the standing stones at Gezer, there
          was found a bronze model of a cobra (R. A. Stewart Macalister,
          Bible
          Side-lights, p. 76). Perhaps the reptile was the
          deity of the shrine, or an embodiment of an ancestral spirit.


346.


The Dying God, pp. 166
          sqq. See Note I., “Moloch the King,” at the end of this
          volume.


347.


Philo of Byblus, quoted by Eusebius,
          Praepar.
          Evang. i. 10. 29 sq.; 2
          Kings iii. 27.


348.


See above, p. 15.


349.


Philo of Byblus, in Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii. pp. 569,
          570, 571. See above, p. 13.


350.


See above, p. 16.


351.


Sophocles, Trachiniae, 1191 sqq.;
          Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 7. 7; Diodorus
          Siculus, iv. 38; Hyginus, Fab. 36.


352.


[S. Clementis Romani,] Recognitiones, x. 24, p. 233,
          ed. E. G. Gersdorf (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, i.
          1434).


353.


Josephus, Antiquit.
          Jud. viii. 5. 3, Contra
          Apionem, i. 18. Whether the quadriennial festival of
          Hercules at Tyre (2 Maccabees iv. 18-20) was a different
          celebration, or only “the awakening of
          Melcarth,” celebrated with unusual pomp once in four years,
          we do not know.


354.


Eudoxus of Cnidus, quoted by
          Athenaeus, ix. 47, p. 392 d, e. That the death and
          resurrection of Melcarth were celebrated in an annual festival at
          Tyre has been recognised by scholars. See Raoul-Rochette,
          “Sur l'Hercule Assyrien et
          Phénicien,” Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et
          Belles-Lettres, xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848),
          pp. 25 sqq.; H. Hubert et M. Mauss,
          “Essai sur le sacrifice,”
L'Année
          Sociologique, ii. (1899) pp. 122, 124; M. J.
          Lagrange, Études sur les Religions
          Sémitiques,2 pp. 308-311. Iolaus is
          identified by some modern scholars with Eshmun, a Phoenician and
          Carthaginian deity about whom little is known. See F. C. Movers,
          Die
          Phoenizier, i. (Bonn, 1841) pp. 536 sqq.;
          F. Baethgen, Beiträge zur semitischen
          Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1888), pp. 44
          sqq.; C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der
          Religion im Altertum (Gotha, 1896-1903), i. 268; W.
          W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun, pp. 282
          sqq.


355.


Zenobius, Centur.
          v. 56 (Paroemiographi Graeci, ed. E. L.
          Leutsch et F. G. Schneidewin, Göttingen, 1839-1851, vol. i. p.
          143).


356.


Quails were perhaps burnt in honour of
          the Cilician Hercules or Sandan at Tarsus. See below, p. 126, note 2.


357.


Alfred Newton, Dictionary of
          Birds (London, 1893-96), p. 755.


358.


H. B. Tristram, The Fauna and Flora
          of Palestine (London, 1884), p. 124. For more
          evidence as to the migration of quails see Aug. Dillmann's
          commentary on Exodus xvi. 13, pp. 169 sqq.
          (Leipsic, 1880).


359.


The Tyrian Hercules was said to be a
          son of Zeus and Asteria (Eudoxus of Cnidus, quoted by Athenaeus,
          ix. 47, p. 392 d; Cicero, De natura
          deorum, iii. 16. 42). As to the transformation of
          Asteria into a quail see Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 4. 1; J.
          Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 401;
          Hyginus, Fab. 53; Servius on Virgil,
          Aen. iii. 73. The name Asteria
          may be a Greek form of Astarte. See W. W. Graf Baudissin,
          Adonis
          und Esmun, p. 307.


360.


Quintus Curtius, iv. 2. 10; Arrian,
          Anabasis, ii. 24. 5.


361.


Strabo, iii. 5. 5, pp. 169
          sq.; Mela, iii. 46; Scymnus
          Chius, Orbis Descriptio, 159-161
          (Geographi Graeci Minores, ed. C.
          Müller, i. 200 sq.).


362.


Silius Italicus, iii. 14-32; Mela,
          iii. 46; Strabo, iii. 5. 3, 5, 7, pp. 169, 170, 172; Diodorus
          Siculus, v. 20. 2; Philostratus, Vita
          Apollonii, v. 4 sq.; Appian, Hispanica, 65. Compare Arrian,
          Anabasis, ii. 16. 4. That the
          bones of Hercules were buried at Gades is mentioned by Mela
          (l.c.). Compare Arnobius,
          Adversus
          Nationes, i. 36. In Italy women were not allowed to
          participate in sacrifices offered to Hercules (Aulus Gellius, xi.
          6. 2; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 28; Sextus
          Aurelius Victor, De origine gentis Romanae, vi.
          6; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 60).
          Whether the priests of Melcarth at Gades were celibate, or had only
          to observe continence at certain seasons, does not appear. At Tyre
          the priest of Melcarth might be married (Justin, xviii. 4. 5). The
          worship of Melcarth under the name of Hercules continued to
          flourish in the south of Spain down to the time of the Roman
          Empire. See J. Toutain, Les Cultes païens dans l'Empire
          Romain, Première Partie, i. (Paris, 1907) pp. 400
          sqq.


363.


Livy, xxi. 21. 9, 22. 5-9; Cicero,
          De
          Divinatione, i. 24. 49; Silius Italicus, iii. 1
          sqq., 158 sqq.


364.


Pausanias, x. 4. 5.


365.


B. V. Head, Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 674; G. A. Cooke,
          Text-Book
          of North-Semitic Inscriptions, p. 351.


366.


F. Imhoof-Blumer and P. Gardner,
          Numismatic Commentary on
          Pausanias, pp. 10-12, with pl. A; Stoll, s.v.
“Melikertes,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2634.


367.


Justin, xviii. 6. 1-7; Virgil,
          Aen. iv. 473 sqq.,
          v. i. sqq.; Ovid, Fasti,
          iii. 545 sqq.; Timaeus, in Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i. 197.
          Compare W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the
          Semites,2 pp. 373 sqq.
          The name of Dido has been plausibly derived by Gesenius, Movers, E.
          Meyer, and A. H. Sayce from the Semitic dôd, “beloved.” See F. C. Movers, Die
          Phoenizier, i. 616; Meltzer, s.v.
“Dido,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i. 1017 sq.; A.
          H. Sayce, Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient
          Babylonians (London and Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 56
          sqq. If they are right, the
          divine character of Dido becomes more probable than ever, since
          “the Beloved” (Dodah) seems to have been a
          title of a Semitic goddess, perhaps Astarte. See above, p. 20, note 2. According to Varro it
          was not Dido but her sister Anna who slew herself on a pyre for
          love of Aeneas (Servius on Virgil, Aen.
          iv. 682).


368.


Justin, xviii. 6. 8.


369.


Silius Italicus, i. 81 sqq.


370.


See above, pp. 16, 110
sqq.


371.


Ezekiel xxviii. 14, compare 16.


372.


Balder the Beautiful, ii. 1
          sqq. But, as I have there
          pointed out, there are grounds for thinking that the custom of
          walking over fire is not a substitute for human sacrifice, but
          merely a stringent form of purification. On fire as a purificatory
          agent see below, pp. 179
sqq., 188 sq.


373.


Strabo, xii. 2. 7, p. 537. In Greece
          itself accused persons used to prove their innocence by walking
          through fire (Sophocles, Antigone, 264 sq.,
          with Jebb's note). Possibly the fire-walk of the priestesses at
          Castabala was designed to test their chastity. For this purpose the
          priests and priestesses of the Tshi-speaking people of the Gold
          Coast submit to an ordeal, standing one by one in a narrow circle
          of fire. This “is supposed to show whether
          they have remained pure, and refrained from sexual intercourse,
          during the period of retirement, and so are worthy of inspiration
          by the gods. If they are pure they will receive no injury and
          suffer no pain from the fire” (A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking
          Peoples of the Gold Coast, London, 1887, p. 138).
          These cases favour the purificatory explanation of the
          fire-walk.


374.


Euripides, Iphigenia in
          Tauris, 621-626. Compare Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14.
          6.


375.


Herodotus, vii. 167. This was the
          Carthaginian version of the story. According to another account,
          Hamilcar was killed by the Greek cavalry (Diodorus Siculus, xi. 22.
          1). His worship at Carthage is mentioned by Athenagoras
          (Supplicatio pro Christianis, p.
          64, ed. J. C. T. Otto, Jena, 1857.) I have called Hamilcar a king
          in accordance with the usage of Greek writers (Herodotus, vii. 165
          sq.; Aristotle, Politics, ii. 11; Polybius, vi.
          51; Diodorus Siculus, xiv. 54. 5). But the suffetes, or supreme
          magistrates, of Carthage were two in number; whether they were
          elected for a year or for life seems to be doubtful. Cornelius
          Nepos, who calls them kings, says that they were elected annually
          (Hannibal, vii. 4), and Livy
          (xxx. 7. 5) compares them to the consuls; but Cicero (De re
          publica, ii. 23. 42 sq.)
          seems to imply that they held office for life. See G. A. Cooke,
          Text-book
          of North-Semitic Inscriptions, pp. 115 sq.


376.


Lucian, Amores,
          1 and 54.


377.


See above, p. 32.


378.


G. A. Cooke, Text-book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, Nos. 23 and 29, PP. 73,
          83 sq., with the notes on pp. 81,
          84.


379.


G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art
          dans l'Antiquité, iii. 566-578. The colossal statue
          found at Amathus may be related, directly or indirectly, to the
          Egyptian god Bes, who is represented as a sturdy misshapen dwarf,
          wearing round his body the skin of a beast of the panther tribe,
          with its tail hanging down. See E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the
          Egyptians (London, 1904), ii. 284 sqq.;
          A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient
          Egyptians (London, 1897), pp. 159 sqq.;
          A. Furtwängler, s.v. “Herakles,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, i. 2143 sq.


380.


However, human victims were burned at
          Salamis in Cyprus. See below, p. 145.


381.


See above, p. 41.


382.


For traces of Phoenician influence in
          Cilicia see F. C. Movers, Die Phoenizier, ii. 2, pp.
          167-174, 207 sqq. Herodotus says (vii. 91)
          that the Cilicians were named after Cilix, a son of the Phoenician
          Agenor.


383.


As to the fertility and the climate of
          the plain of Tarsus, which is now very malarious, see E. J. Davis,
          Life in
          Asiatic Turkey (London, 1879), chaps. i.-vii. The
          gardens for miles round the city are very lovely, but wild and
          neglected, full of magnificent trees, especially fine oak, ash,
          orange, and lemon-trees. The vines run to the top of the highest
          branches, and almost every garden resounds with the song of the
          nightingale (E. J. Davis, op. cit. p. 35).


384.


Strabo, xiv. 5. 13, pp. 673
          sq.


385.


Dio Chrysostom, Or.
          xxxiii. vol. ii. pp. 14 sq., 17, ed. L. Dindorf
          (Leipsic, 1857).


386.


F. C. Movers, Die
          Phoenizier, ii. 2, pp. 171 sq.; P.
          Gardner, Types of Greek Coins (Cambridge,
          1883), pl. x. Nos. 29, 30; B. V. Head, Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 614; G. F. Hill,
          Catalogue
          of Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia
          (London, 1900), pp. 167-176, pl. xxix.-xxxii.; G. Macdonald,
          Catalogue
          of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection (Glasgow,
          1899-1905), ii. 547; G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art
          dans l'Antiquité, iv. 727. In later times, from about
          175 b.c. onward, the Baal of
          Tarsus was completely assimilated to Zeus on the coins. See B. V.
          Head, op.
          cit. p. 617; G. F. Hill, op.
          cit. pp. 177, 181.


387.


Sir W. M. Ramsay, Luke the Physician,
          and other Studies in the History of Religion (London,
          1908), pp. 112 sqq.


388.


E. J. Davis, “On a New Hamathite Inscription at Ibreez,”
Transactions of the Society of Biblical
          Archaeology, iv. (1876) pp. 336-346; id.,
          Life in
          Asiatic Turkey (London, 1879), pp. 245-260; G. Perrot
          et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iv. 723-729; Ramsay and Hogarth,
          “Prehellenic Monuments of
          Cappadocia,” Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et
          à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et Assyriennes, xiv.
          (1903) pp. 77-81, 85 sq., with plates iii. and iv.;
          L. Messerschmidt, Corpus Inscriptionum
          Hettiticarum (Berlin, 1900), Tafel xxxiv.; Sir W. M.
          Ramsay, Luke the Physician (London,
          1908), pp. 171 sqq.; John Garstang,
          The Land
          of the Hittites (London, 1910), pp. 191-195, 378
          sq. Of this sculptured group
          Messrs. W. M. Ramsay and D. G. Hogarth say that “it yields to no rock-relief in the world in impressive
          character” (American Journal of Archaeology,
          vi. (1890) p. 347). Professor Garstang would date the sculptures in
          the tenth or ninth century b.c. Another inscribed
          Hittite monument found at Bor, near the site of the ancient Tyana,
          exhibits a very similar figure of a priest or king in an attitude
          of adoration. The resemblance extends even to the patterns
          embroidered on the robe and shawl, which include the well-known
          swastika carved on the lower
          border of the long robe. The figure is sculptured in high relief on
          a slab of stone and would seem to have been surrounded by
          inscriptions, though a portion of them has perished. See J.
          Garstang, op. cit. pp. 185-188, with plate
          lvi. For the route from Tarsus to Ibreez (Ivriz) see E. J. Davis,
          Life in
          Asiatic Turkey, pp. 198-244; J. Garstang,
          op.
          cit. pp. 44 sqq.


389.


See above, pp. 28 sq.


390.


Strabo, xii. 2. 7, p. 537. When Cicero
          was proconsul of Cilicia (51-50 b.c.) he encamped with his
          army for some days at Cybistra, from which two of his letters to
          Atticus are dated. But hearing that the Parthians, who had invaded
          Syria, were threatening Cilicia, he hurried by forced marches
          through the pass of the Cilician Gates to Tarsus. See Cicero,
          Ad
          Atticum, v. 18, 19, 20; Ad
          Familiares, xv. 2, 4.


391.


E. J. Davis, in Transactions of the
          Society of Biblical Archaeology, iv. (1876) pp. 336
          sq., 346; id.,
          Life in
          Asiatic Turkey, pp. 232 sq.,
          236 sq., 264 sq.,
          270-272. Compare W. J. Hamilton, Researches in Asia
          Minor, Pontus, and Armenia (London, 1842), ii.
          304-307.


392.


L. Messerschmidt, The
          Hittites (London, 1903), pp. 49 sq. On
          an Assyrian cylinder, now in the British Museum, we see a warlike
          deity with bow and arrows standing on a lion, and wearing a similar
          bonnet decorated with horns and surmounted by a star or sun. See De
          Vogüé, Mélanges d'Archéologie Orientale
          (Paris, 1868), p. 46, who interprets the deity as the great Asiatic
          goddess. As to the horned god of Ibreez “it
          is a plausible theory that the horns may, in this case, be
          analogous to the Assyrian emblem of divinity. The sculpture is late
          and its style rather suggests Semitic influence” (Professor
          J. Garstang, in some MS. notes with which he has kindly furnished
          me).


393.


See below, p. 132.


394.


Spirits of the Corn and of the
          Wild, i. 16 sq., ii. 3 sqq.


395.


The identification is accepted by E.
          Meyer (Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. p. 641), G. Perrot et
          Ch. Chipiez (Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iv. 727), and P. Jensen (Hittiter und
          Armenier, Strasburg, 1898, p. 145).


396.


Ramsay and Hogarth, “Pre-Hellenic Monuments of Cappadocia,”
Recueil
          de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes
          et Assyriennes, xiv. (1893) p. 79.


397.


G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, ii. 360-362; G. Perrot
          et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iv. 572 sqq.,
          586 sq.


398.


That the cradle of the Hittites was in
          the interior of Asia Minor, particularly in Cappadocia, and that
          they spread from there south, east, and west, is the view of A. H.
          Sayce, W. M. Ramsay, D. G. Hogarth, W. Max Müller, F. Hommel, L. B.
          Paton, and L. Messerschmidt. See Palestine Exploration
          Fund Quarterly Statement for 1884, p. 49; A. H.
          Sayce, The Hittites3
          (London, 1903), pp. 80 sqq.; W. Max Müller,
          Asien und
          Europa (Leipsic, 1893), pp. 319 sqq.;
          Ramsay and Hogarth, “Pre-Hellenic Monuments
          of Cappadocia,” Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et
          à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et Assyriennes, xv.
          (1893) p. 94; F. Hommel, Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des
          alten Orients (Munich, 1904), pp. 42, 48, 54; L. B.
          Paton, The Early History of Syria and
          Palestine (London, 1902), pp. 105 sqq.;
          L. Messerschmidt, The Hittites (London, 1903), pp.
          12, 13, 19, 20; D. G. Hogarth, “Recent
          Hittite Research,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological
          Institute, xxxix. (1909) pp. 408 sqq.
          Compare Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. (Stuttgart and
          Berlin, 1909) pp. 617 sqq.; J. Garstang, The Land of the
          Hittites, pp. 315 sqq.
          The native Hittite writing is a system of hieroglyphics which has
          not yet been read, but in their intercourse with foreign nations
          the Hittites used the Babylonian cuneiform script. Clay tablets
          bearing inscriptions both in the Babylonian and in the Hittite
          language have been found by Dr. H. Winckler at Boghaz-Keui, the
          great Hittite capital in Cappadocia; so that the sounds of the
          Hittite words, though not their meanings, are now known. According
          to Professor Ed. Meyer, it seems certain that the Hittite language
          was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. As to the inscribed tablets
          of Boghaz-Keui, see H. Winckler, “Vorläufige Nachrichten über die Ausgrabungen in
          Boghaz-köi im Sommer 1907, 1. Die Tontafelfunde,”
Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft
          zu Berlin, No. 35, December 1907, pp. 1-59;
          “Hittite Archives from Boghaz-Keui,”
          translated from the German transcripts of Dr. Winckler by Meta E.
          Williams, Annals of Archaeology and
          Anthropology, iv. (Liverpool, 1912), pp. 90-98.


399.


G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, ii. 351, note 3, with
          his references; L. B. Paton, op. cit. p. 109; L.
          Messerschmidt, The Hittites, p. 10; F. Hommel,
          op.
          cit. p. 42; W. Max Müller, Asien und
          Europa, p. 332. See the preceding note.


400.


A. H. Sayce, “The Hittite Inscriptions,” Recueil de Travaux
          relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et
          Assyriennes, xiv. (1893) pp. 48 sq.; P.
          Jensen, Hittiter und Armenier
          (Strasburg, 1898), pp. 42 sq.


401.


Georgius Syncellus, Chronographia, vol. i. p. 290,
          ed. G. Dindorf (Bonn, 1829): Ἡρακλέα τινές φασιν ἐν Φοινίκῃ
          γνωρίζεσθαι Σάνδαν ἐπιλεγόμενον, ὡς καὶ μεχρὶ νῦν ὑπὸ Καππαδόκων
          καὶ Κιλίκων. In this passage Σάνδαν is a correction of F. C.
          Movers's (Die Phoenizier, i. 460) for the
          MS. reading Δισανδάν, the ΔΙ having apparently arisen by
          dittography from the preceding ΑΙ; and Κιλίκων is a correction of
          E. Meyer's (“Über einige semitische
          Götter,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen
          Gesellschaft, xxxi. 737) for the MS. reading Ἱλίων.
          Compare Jerome (quoted by Movers and Meyer, ll.cc.): “Hercules cognomento Desanaus
          in Syria Phoenice clarus habetur. Inde ad nostram usque memoriam a
          Cappadocibus et Eliensibus (al. Deliis) Desanaus adhuc
          dicitur.” If the text of Jerome is here sound,
          he would seem to have had before him a Greek original which was
          corrupt like the text of Syncellus or of Syncellus's authority. The
          Cilician Hercules is called Sandes by Nonnus (Dionys., xxxiv. 183 sq.).
          Compare Raoul-Rochette in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et
          Belles-Lettres, xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848),
          pp. 159 sqq.


402.


Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv. 8. 3; Dio
          Chrysostom, Or. xxxiii. vol. ii. p. 16, ed.
          L. Dindorf (Leipsic, 1857). The pyre is mentioned only by Dio
          Chrysostom, whose words clearly imply that its erection was a
          custom observed periodically. On Sandan or Sandon see K. O. Müller,
          “Sandon und Sardanapal,”
Kunstarchaeologische Werke, iii.
          6 sqq.; F. C. Movers, Die
          Phoenizier, i. 458 sqq.;
          Raoul-Rochette, “Sur l'Hercule Assyrien et
          Phénicien,” Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et
          Belles-Lettres, xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848),
          pp. 178 sqq.; E. Meyer, “Über einige Semitische Götter,” Zeitschrift der
          Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xxxi. (1877)
          pp. 736-740: id., Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 641 sqq. §
          484.


403.


P. Gardner, Catalogue of Greek
          Coins, the Seleucid Kings of Syria (London, 1878),
          pp. 72, 78, 89, 112, pl. xxi. 6, xxiv. 3, xxviii. 8; G. F. Hill,
          Catalogue
          of the Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia
          (London, 1900), pp. 180, 181, 183, 190, 221, 224, 225, pl. xxxiii.
          2, 3, xxxiv. 10, xxxvii. 9; F. Imhoof-Blumer, “Coin-types of some Kilikian Cities,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xviii. (1898) p. 169, pl. xiii.
          1, 2. The structure represented on the coins is sometimes called
          not the pyre but the monument of Sandan or Sardanapalus. Certainly
          the cone resting on the square base reminds us of the similar
          structure on the coins of Byblus as well as of the conical image of
          Aphrodite at Paphos (see above, pp. 14, 34); but the words of Dio
          Chrysostom make it probable that the design on the coins of Tarsus
          represents the pyre. At the same time, the burning of the god may
          well have been sculptured on a permanent monument of stone. The
          legend ΟΡΤΥΓΟΘΗΡΑ, literally “quail-hunt,” which appears on some coins of
          Tarsus (G. F. Hill, op. cit. pp. lxxxvi.
          sq.), may refer to a custom of
          catching quails and burning them on the pyre. We have seen (above,
          pp. 111 sq.)
          that quails were apparently burnt in sacrifice at Byblus. This
          explanation of the legend on the coins of Tarsus was suggested by
          Raoul-Rochette (op. cit. pp. 201-205). However,
          Mr. G. F. Hill writes to me that “the
          interpretation of Ὀρτυγοθήρα as anything but a personal name is
          rendered very unlikely by the analogy of all the other inscriptions
          on coins of the same class.” Doves were burnt on a pyre in
          honour of Adonis (below, p. 147). Similarly birds were burnt on a pyre in
          honour of Laphrian Artemis at Patrae (Pausanias, vii. 18. 12).


404.


Herodian, iv. 2.


405.


See Franz Cumont, “L'Aigle funéraire des Syriens et l'Apothéose des
          Empereurs,” Revue de l'Histoire des
          Religions, lxii, (1910) pp. 119-163.


406.


F. Imhoof-Blumer, Monnaies
          Grecques (Amsterdam, 1883), pp. 366 sq.,
          433, 435, with plates F. 24, 25, H. 14 (Verhandelingen der
          Konink. Akademie von Wetenschappen, Afdeeling
          Letterkunde, xiv.); F. Imhoof-Blumer und O. Keller, Tier- und
          Pflanzenbilder auf Münzen und Gemmen des klassischen
          Altertums (Leipsic, 1889), pp. 70 sq.,
          with pl. xii. 7, 8, 9; F. Imhoof-Blumer, “Coin-types of some Kilikian Cities,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xviii. (1898) pp. 169-171; P.
          Gardner, Types of Greek Coins, pl. xiii.
          20; G. F. Hill, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Lycaonia,
          Isauria, and Cilicia, pp. 178, 179, 184, 186, 206,
          213, with plates xxxii. 13, 14, 15, 16, xxxiv. 2, xxxvi. 9; G.
          Macdonald, Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian
          Collection, ii. 548, with pl. lx. 11. The booted
          Sandan is figured by G. F. Hill, op.
          cit. pl. xxxvi. 9.


407.


Herodotus, i. 76; Stephanus Byzantius,
          s.v. Πτέριον. As to the
          situation of Boghaz-Keui and the ruins of Pteria see W. J.
          Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and
          Armenia (London, 1842), i. 391 sqq.;
          H. Barth, “Reise von Trapezunt durch die
          nördliche Hälfte Klein-Asiens,” Ergänzungsheft zu
          Petermann's Geographischen Mittheilungen, No. 2
          (1860), pp. 44-52; H. F. Tozer, Turkish Armenia and
          Eastern Asia Minor (London, 1881), pp. 64, 71
          sqq.; W. M. Ramsay, “Historical Relations of Phrygia and
          Cappadocia,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
          Society, N.S., xv. (1883) p. 103; id.,
          Historical Geography of Asia
          Minor (London, 1890), pp. 28 sq., 33
          sq.; G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez,
          Histoire
          de l'Art dans l'Antiquité, iv. 596 sqq.;
          K. Humann und O. Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien und
          Nordsyrien (Berlin, 1890), pp. 71-80, with Atlas,
          plates xi.-xiv.; E. Chantre, Mission en Cappadoce (Paris,
          1898), pp. 13 sqq.; O. Puchstein, “Die Bauten von Boghaz-Köi,” Mitteilungen der
          Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin, No. 35,
          December 1907, pp. 62 sqq.; J. Garstang, The Land of the
          Hittites (London, 1910), pp. 196 sqq.


408.


This procession of men is broken
          (a) by two women clad in long
          plaited robes like the women on the opposite wall; (b) by
          two winged monsters; and (c) by the figure of a priest or
          king as to which see below, pp. 131 sq.


409.




W. J.
            Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and
            Armenia (London, 1842), i. 393-395; H. F. Tozer,
            Turkish
            Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor, pp. 59 sq.,
            66-78; W. M. Ramsay, “Historical
            Relations of Phrygia and Asia Minor,” Journal of the
            Royal Asiatic Society, N.S. xv. (1883) pp. 113-120;
            G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
            l'Antiquité, iv. 623-656, 666-672; K. Humann und O.
            Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien und
            Nordsyrien, pp. 55-70, with Atlas, plates vii.-x.;
            E. Chantre, Mission en Cappadoce, pp. 3-5,
            16-26; L. Messerschmidt, The Hittites, pp. 42-50; Th.
            Macridy-Bey, La Porte des Sphinx à Eyuk,
            pp. 13 sq. (Mitteilungen der
            Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1908, No. 3,
            Berlin); Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
            Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 631
            sq.; J. Garstang, The Land of the
            Hittites (London, 1910), pp. 196 sqq.
            (Boghaz-Keui) 256 sqq. (Eyuk). Compare P.
            Jensen, Hittiter und Armenier, pp. 165
            sqq. In some notes with which
            my colleague Professor J. Garstang has kindly furnished me he
            tells me that the two animals wearing Hittite hats, which appear
            between the great god and goddess in the outer sanctuary, are not
            bulls but certainly goats; and he inclines to think that the two
            heaps on which the priest stands in the outer sanctuary are
            fir-cones. Professor Ed. Meyer holds that the costume which the
            priestly king wears is that of the Sun-goddess, and that the
            corresponding figure in the procession of males on the left-hand
            side of the outer sanctuary does not represent the priestly king
            but the Sun-goddess in person. “The
            attributes of the King,” he says (op.
            cit. p. 632), “are to be
            explained by the circumstance that he, as the Hittite
            inscriptions prove, passed for an incarnation of the Sun, who
            with the Hittites was a female divinity; the temple of the Sun is
            therefore his emblem.” As to the title of “the Sun” bestowed on Hittite kings in
            inscriptions, see H. Winckler, “Vorläufige Nachrichten über die Ausgrabungen in
            Boghaz-köi im Sommer 1907,” Mitteilungen der
            Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin, No. 35,
            December 1907, pp. 32, 33, 36, 44, 45, 53. The correct form of
            the national name appears to be Chatti or Hatti rather than
            Hittites, which is the Hebrew form (חתי) of the name. Compare M.
            Jastrow, in Encyclopaedia Biblica, ii.
            coll. 2094 sqq., s.v.
“Hittites.”


An interesting
            Hittite symbol which occurs both in the sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui
            and at the palace of Euyuk is the double-headed eagle. In both
            places it serves as the support of divine or priestly personages.
            After being adopted as a badge by the Seljuk Sultans in the
            Middle Ages, it passed into Europe with the Crusaders and became
            in time the escutcheon of the Austrian and Russian empires. See
            W. J. Hamilton, op. cit. i. 383; G. Perrot et
            Ch. Chipiez, op. cit. iv. 681-683, pl.
            viii. E; L. Messerschmidt, The Hittites, p. 50.




410.


W. J. Hamilton, Researches in Asia
          Minor, Pontus, and Armenia, i. 394 sq.; H.
          Barth, in Monatsberichte der königl. Preuss. Akademie
          der Wissenschaften, 1859, pp. 128 sqq.;
          id., “Reise von Trapezunt,” Ergänzungsheft zu
          Petermann's Geograph. Mittheilungen, No. 2 (Gotha,
          1860), pp. 45 sq.; H. F. Tozer, Turkish Armenia and
          Eastern Asia Minor, p. 69; E. Chantre, Mission en
          Cappadoce, pp. 20 sqq.
          According to Barth, the scene represented is the marriage of
          Aryenis, daughter of Alyattes, king of Lydia, to Astyages, son of
          Cyaxares, king of the Medes (Herodotus, i. 74). For a discussion of
          various interpretations which have been proposed see G. Perrot et
          Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iv. 630 sqq.


411.


This is in substance the view of
          Raoul-Rochette, Lajard, W. M. Ramsay, G. Perrot, C. P. Tiele, Ed.
          Meyer, and J. Garstang. See Raoul-Rochette, “Sur l'Hercule Assyrien et Phénicien,”
Mémoires
          de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,
          xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848), p. 180 note 1; W. M. Ramsay,
          “On the Early Historical Relations between
          Phrygia and Cappadocia,” Journal of the Royal
          Asiatic Society, N.S. xv. (1883) pp. 113-120; G.
          Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iv. 630 sqq.;
          C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im
          Altertum, i. 255-257; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 633 sq.; J.
          Garstang, The Land of the Hittites, pp.
          235-237; id., The Syrian
          Goddess (London, 1913), pp. 5 sqq.


412.


K. Humann und O. Puchstein,
          Reisen in
          Kleinasien und Nordsyrien (Berlin, 1902), Atlas, pl.
          xlv. 3; Ausgrabungen zu Sendschirli,
          iii. (Berlin, 1902) pl. xli.; J. Garstang, The Land of the
          Hittites, p. 291, with plate lxxvii.; R. Koldewey,
          Die
          Hettitische Inschrift gefunden in der Königsburg von
          Babylon (Leipsic, 1900), plates 1 and 2 (Wissenschaftliche
          Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,
          Heft 1); L. Messerschmidt, Corpus Inscriptionum
          Hettiticarum, pl. i. 5 and 6; id.,
          The
          Hittites (London, 1903), pp. 40-42, with fig. 6 on p.
          41; M. J. Lagrange, Études sur les Religions
          Sémitiques2 (Paris, 1905), p. 93. The
          name of the god is thought to have been Teshub or Teshup; for a god
          of that name is known from the Tel-el-Amarna letters to have been
          the chief deity of the Mitani, a people of Northern Mesopotamia
          akin in speech and religion to the Hittites, but ruled by an Aryan
          dynasty. See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 578, 591
          sq., 636 sq.; R.
          F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian
          Literature, pp. 222, 223 (where the god's name is
          spelt Tishub). The god is also mentioned repeatedly in the Hittite
          archives which Dr. H. Winckler found inscribed on clay tablets at
          Boghaz-Keui. See H. Winckler, “Vorläufige
          Nachrichten über die Ausgrabungen in Boghaz-köi im Sommer
          1907,” Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft
          zu Berlin, No. 35, December 1907, pp. 13 sq.,
          32, 34, 36, 38, 39, 43, 44, 51 sq.,
          53; “Hittite Archives from
          Boghaz-Keui,” translated from the German transcripts of Dr.
          Winckler, Annals of Archaeology and
          Anthropology, iv. (Liverpool and London, 1912) pp. 90
          sqq. As to the Mitani, their
          language and their gods, see H. Winckler, op.
          cit. pp. 30 sqq., 46 sqq. In
          thus interpreting the Hittite god who heads the procession at
          Boghaz-Keui I follow my colleague Prof. J. Garstang (The Land of the
          Hittites, p. 237; The Syrian
          Goddess, pp. 5 sqq.), who has kindly furnished
          me with some notes on the subject. I formerly interpreted the deity
          as the Hittite equivalent of Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis. But against
          that view it may be urged that (1) the god is bearded and therefore
          of mature age, whereas Tammuz and his fellows were regularly
          conceived as youthful; (2) the thunderbolt which he seems to carry
          would be quite inappropriate to Tammuz, who was not a god of
          thunder but of vegetation; and (3) the Hittite Tammuz is
          appropriately represented in the procession of women immediately
          behind the Mother Goddess (see below, pp. 137 sq.), and it is extremely
          improbable that he should be represented twice over with different
          attributes in the same scene. These considerations seem to me
          conclusive against the interpretation of the bearded god as a
          Tammuz and decisive in favour of Professor Garstang's view of
          him.


413.


J. Garstang, “Notes of a Journey through Asia Minor,”
Annals of
          Archaeology and Anthropology, i. (Liverpool and
          London, 1908) pp. 3 sq., with plate iv.;
          id., The Land of the
          Hittites, pp. 138, 359, with plate xliv. In this
          sculpture the god on the bull holds in his right hand what is
          described as a triangular bow instead of a mace, an axe, or a
          hammer.


414.


A. Wiedemann, Ägyptische
          Geschichte (Gotha, 1884), ii. 438-440; G. Maspero,
          Histoire
          Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, ii.
          (Paris, 1897) pp. 401 sq.; W. Max Müller, Der Bündnisvortrag
          Ramses' II. und des Chetitirkönigs, pp. 17-19, 21
          sq., 38-44 (Mitteilungen der
          Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1902, No. 5, Berlin);
          L. Messerschmidt, The Hittites, pp. 14-19; J. H.
          Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt
          (Chicago, 1906-1907), iii. 163-174; id.,
          A History
          of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908), p. 311; Ed.
          Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 631, 635
          sqq.; J. Garstang, The Land of the
          Hittites, pp. 347-349. The Hittite copy of the treaty
          was discovered by Dr. H. Winckler at Boghaz-Keui in 1906. The
          identification of Arenna or Arinna is uncertain. In a forthcoming
          article, “The Sun God[dess] of
          Arenna,” to be published in the Liverpool Annals of Archaeology
          and Anthropology, Professor J. Garstang argues that
          Arenna is to be identified with the Cappadocian Comana.


415.


Ed. Meyer, “Dolichenus,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, i. 1191-1194; A. von
          Domaszewski, Die Religion des römischen
          Heeres (Treves, 1895), pp. 59 sq.,
          with plate iiii. fig. 1 and 2; Franz Cumont, s.v.
“Dolichenus,” in Pauly-Wissowa's
          Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
          Altertumswissenschaft, v. i. coll. 1276 sqq.;
          J. Toutain, Les Cultes païens dans l'Empire
          Romain, ii. (Paris, 1911) pp. 35-43. For examples of
          the inscriptions which relate to his worship see H. Dessau,
          Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae,
          vol. ii. Pars i. (Berlin, 1902) pp. 167-172, Nos. 4296-4324.


416.


As to the lions and mural crown of
          Cybele see Lucretius, ii. 600 sqq.; Catullus, lxiii. 76
          sqq.; Macrobius, Saturn.
          i. 23. 20; Rapp, s.v. “Kybele,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1644 sqq.


417.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 31; Macrobius, Saturn.
          i. 23. 19. Lucian's description of her image is confirmed by coins
          of Hierapolis, on which the goddess is represented wearing a high
          head-dress and seated on a lion. See B. V. Head, Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 654; G. Macdonald,
          Catalogue
          of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection (Glasgow,
          1899-1905), iii. 139 sq.; J. Garstang, The Syrian
          Goddess, pp. 21 sqq., 70, with fig. 7. That the
          name of the Syrian goddess of Hierapolis-Bambyce was Atargatis is
          mentioned by Strabo (xvi. 1. 27, p. 748). On Egyptian monuments the
          Semitic goddess Kadesh is represented standing on a lion. See W.
          Max Müller, Asien und Europa, pp. 314
          sq. It is to be remembered that
          Hierapolis-Bambyce was the direct successor of Carchemish, the
          great Hittite capital on the Euphrates, and may have inherited many
          features of Hittite religion. See A. H. Sayce, The
          Hittites,3 pp. 94 sqq.,
          105 sqq.; and as to the Hittite
          monuments at Carchemish, see J. Garstang, The Land of the
          Hittites, pp. 122 sqq.


418.


Diodorus Siculus, ii. 9. 5.


419.




In thus
            interpreting the youth with the double axe I agree with Sir W. M.
            Ramsay (“On the Early Historical
            Relations between Phrygia and Cappadocia,” Journal of the
            Royal Asiatic Society, N.S. xv. (1883) pp. 118,
            120), C. P. Tiele (Geschichte der Religion im
            Alterturm, i. 246, 255), and Prof. J. Garstang
            (The
            Land of the Hittites, p. 235; The Syrian
            Goddess, p. 8). That the youthful figure on the
            lioness or panther represents the lover of the great goddess is
            the view also of Professors Jensen and Hommel. See P. Jensen,
            Hittiter und Armenier, pp.
            173-175, 180; F. Hommel, Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des
            alten Orients, p. 51. Prof. Perrot holds that the
            youth in question is a double of the bearded god who stands at
            the head of the male procession, their costume being the same,
            though their attributes differ (G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez,
            Histoire de l'Art dans
            l'Antiquité, iv. 651). But, as I have already
            remarked, it is unlikely that the same god should be represented
            twice over with different attributes in the same scene. The
            resemblance between the two figures is better explained on the
            supposition that they are Father and Son. The same two deities,
            Father and Son, appear to be carved on a rock at Giaour-Kalesi, a
            place on the road which in antiquity may have led from Ancyra by
            Gordium to Pessinus. Here on the face of the rock are cut in
            relief two gigantic figures in the usual Hittite costume of
            pointed cap, short tunic, and shoes turned up at the toes. Each
            wears a crescent-hilted sword at his side, each is marching to
            the spectator's left with raised right hand; and the resemblance
            between them is nearly complete except that the figure in front
            is beardless and the figure behind is bearded. See G. Perrot et
            Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
            l'Antiquité, iv. 714 sqq.,
            with fig. 352; J. Garstang, The Land of the Hittites, pp.
            162-164. A similar, but solitary, figure is carved in a niche of
            the rock at Kara-Bel, but there the deity, or the man, carries a
            triangular bow over his right shoulder. See below, p. 185.


With regard to
            the lionesses or panthers, a bas-relief found at Carchemish, the
            capital of a Hittite kingdom on the Euphrates, shows two male
            figures in Hittite costume, with pointed caps and turned-up
            shoes, standing on a crouching lion. The foremost of the two
            figures is winged and carries a short curved truncheon in his
            right hand. According to Prof. Perrot, the two figures represent
            a god followed by a priest or a king. See G. Perrot et Ch.
            Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
            l'Antiquité, iv. 549 sq.;
            J. Garstang, The Land of the Hittites, pp.
            123 sqq. Again, on a sculptured
            slab found at Amrit in Phoenicia we see a god standing on a lion
            and holding a lion's whelp in his left hand, while in his right
            hand he brandishes a club or sword. See Perrot et Chipiez,
            op.
            cit. iii. 412-414. The type of a god or goddess
            standing or sitting on a lion occurs also in Assyrian art, from
            which the Phoenicians and Hittites may have borrowed it. See
            Perrot et Chipiez, op. cit. ii. 642-644. Much
            evidence as to the representation of Asiatic deities with lions
            has been collected by Raoul-Rochette, in his learned dissertation
            “Sur l'Hercule Assyrien et
            Phénicien,” Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et
            Belles-Lettres, xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris,
            1848), pp. 106 sqq. Compare De Vogüé,
            Mélanges d'Archéologie
            Orientale, pp. 44 sqq.




420.


Similarly in Yam, one of the Torres
          Straits Islands, two brothers named Sigai and Maiau were worshipped
          in a shrine under the form of a hammer-headed shark and a crocodile
          respectively, and were represented by effigies made of turtle-shell
          in the likeness of these animals. But “the
          shrines were so sacred that no uninitiated persons might visit
          them, nor did they know what they contained; they were aware of
          Sigai and Maiau, but they did not know that the former was a
          hammer-headed shark and the latter a crocodile; this mystery was
          too sacred to be imparted to uninitiates. When the heroes were
          addressed it was always by their human names, and not by their
          animal or totem names.” See A. C. Haddon, “The Religion of the Torres Straits Islanders,”
Anthropological Essays presented to E. B.
          Tylor (Oxford, 1907), p. 185.


421.


“There can be
          no doubt that there is here represented a Sacred Marriage, the
          meeting of two deities worshipped in different places, like the
          Horus of Edfu and the Hathor of Denderah” (C. P. Tiele,
          Geschichte der Religion im
          Altertum, i. 255). This view seems to differ from,
          though it approaches, the one suggested in the text. That the scene
          represents a Sacred Marriage between a great god and goddess is the
          opinion also of Prof. Ed. Meyer (Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 633 sq.),
          and Prof. J. Garstang (The Land of the Hittites, pp.
          238 sq.; The Syrian
          Goddess, p. 7).


422.


See above, p. 133.


423.


See below, p. 285. Compare the remarks of Sir W. M. Ramsay
          (“Pre-Hellenic Monuments of
          Cappadocia,” Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et
          à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et Assyriennes, xiii.
          (1890) p. 78): “Similar priest-dynasts are
          a widespread feature of the primitive social system of Asia Minor;
          their existence is known with certainty or inferred with
          probability at the two towns Komana; at Venasa not far north of
          Tyana, at Olba, at Pessinous, at Aizanoi, and many other places.
          Now there are two characteristics which can be regarded as probable
          in regard to most of these priests, and as proved in regard to some
          of them: (1) they wore the dress and represented the person of the
          god, whose priests they were; (2) they were ἱερώνυμοι, losing their
          individual name at their succession to the office, and assuming a
          sacred name, often that of the god himself or some figure connected
          with the cultus of the god. The priest of Cybele at Pessinous was
          called Attis, the priests of Sabazios were Saboi, the worshippers
          of Bacchos Bacchoi.” As to the priestly rulers of Olba, see
          below, pp. 144
sqq.


424.


See above, p. 132. However, Prof. Ed. Meyer may be right in
          thinking that the priest-like figure in the procession is not
          really that of the priest but that of the god or goddess whom he
          personated. See above, p. 133 note.


425.


See above, pp. 36 sqq.


426.


H. Winckler, “Vorläufige Nachrichten über die Ausgrabungen in
          Boghaz-köi im Sommer 1907,” Mitteilungen der
          Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, No. 35, December,
          1907, pp. 27 sq., 29; J. Garstang,
          The Land
          of the Hittites, pp. 352 sq.;
          “Hittite Archives from Boghaz-Keui,”
          translated from the German transcripts of Dr. Winckler by Meta E.
          Williams, Annals of Archaeology and
          Anthropology, iv. (Liverpool and London, 1912) p. 98.
          We have seen (above, p. 136) that in the seals of the Hittite treaty with
          Egypt the Queen appears along with the King. If Dr. H. Winckler is
          right in thinking (op. cit. p. 29) that one of the
          Hittite queens was at the same time sister to her husband the King,
          we should have in this relationship a further proof that mother-kin
          regulated the descent of the kingship among the Hittites as well as
          among the ancient Egyptians. See above, p. 44, and below, vol. ii. pp. 213 sqq.


427.


Compare Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 629-633.


428.


The figure exhibits a few minor
          variations on the coins of Tarsus. See the works cited above, p.
          127.


429.


Above, p. 119.


430.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 358 sqq.


431.


The Dying God, pp. 166
          sqq.


432.


Athenaeus, v. 54, p. 215 b, c. The high-priest of the
          Syrian goddess at Hierapolis held office for a year, and wore a
          purple robe and a golden tiara (Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 42). We may conjecture that the priesthood of
          Hercules at Tarsus was in later times at least an annual
          office.


433.


E. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Alterthums, i. (Stuttgart, 1884) § 389, p. 475; H.
          Winckler, in E. Schrader's Keilinschriften und das Alte
          Testament,3 p. 88. Kuinda was the name
          of a Cilician fortress a little way inland from Anchiale (Strabo,
          xiv. 5. 10, p. 672).


434.


E. Meyer, op.
          cit. i. § 393, p. 480; C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-assyrische
          Geschichte, p. 360. Sandon and Sandas occur
          repeatedly as names of Cilician men. They are probably identical
          with, or modified forms of, the divine name. See Strabo, xiv. 5.
          14, p. 674; Plutarch, Poplicola, 17; Corpus Inscriptionum
          Graecarum, ed. August Boeckh, etc. (Berlin,
          1828-1877) vol. iii. p. 200, No. 4401; Ch. Michel, Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques (Brussels, 1900), p. 718, No.
          878; R. Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, “Reisen in
          Kilikien,” Denkschriften der Kaiser. Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, Philosoph.-histor. Classe, xliv.
          (Vienna, 1896) No. vi. pp. 46, 131 sq.,
          140 (Inscriptions 115, 218, 232).


435.


Strabo, xiv. 5. 10, p. 672. The name
          of the high-priest Ajax, son of Teucer, occurs on coins of Olba,
          dating from about the beginning of our era (B. V. Head,
          Historia
          Numorum, Oxford, 1887, p. 609); and the name of
          Teucer is also known from inscriptions. See below, pp. 145, 151, 159.


436.


E. L. Hicks, “Inscriptions from Western Cilicia,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xii. (1891) pp. 226, 263; R.
          Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, “Reisen in
          Kilikien,” Denkschriften der Kaiser. Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, xliv. (1896) No. vi. pp. 53, 88.


437.


Ch. Michel, Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques, pp. 718 sqq.,
          No. 878. Tarkondimotos was the name of two kings of Eastern Cilicia
          in the first century b.c. One of them
          corresponded with Cicero and fell at the battle of Actium. See
          Cicero, Epist. ad Familiares, xv. 1. 2;
          Strabo, xiv. 5. 18, p. 676; Dio Cassius, xli. 63. 1, xlvii. 26. 2,
          l. 14. 2, li. 2. 2, li. 7. 4, liv. 9. 2; Plutarch, Antoninus, 61; B. V. Head,
          Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 618; W. Dittenberger,
          Orientis
          Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (Leipsic, 1903-1905),
          ii. pp. 494 sq., Nos. 752, 753. Moreover,
          Tarkudimme or Tarkuwassimi occurs as the name of a king of Erme (?)
          or Urmi (?) in a bilingual Hittite and cuneiform inscription
          engraved on a silver seal. See W. Wright, The Empire of the
          Hittites2 (London, 1886), pp. 163
          sqq.; L. Messerschmidt,
          Corpus
          Inscriptionum Hettiticarum, pp. 42 sq.,
          pl. xlii. 9; id., The
          Hittites, pp. 29 sq.; P.
          Jensen, Hittiter und Armenier
          (Strasburg, 1898), pp. 22, 50 sq. In this inscription Prof.
          Jensen suggests Tarbibi- as an alternative reading for Tarku-.
          Compare P. Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen
          Sprache (Göttingen, 1896), pp. 362-364.


438.


Isocrates, Or. ix.
          14 and 18 sq.; Pausanias, ii. 29. 2 and 4;
          W. E. Engel, Kypros, i. 212 sqq. As
          to the names Teucer and Teucrian see P. Kretschmer, op.
          cit. pp. 189-191. Prof. Kretschmer believes that the
          native population of Cyprus belonged to the non-Aryan stock of Asia
          Minor.


439.


W. E. Engel, Kypros,
          i. 216.


440.


Porphyry, De
          abstinentia, ii. 54 sq.;
          Lactantius, Divin. Inst. i. 21. As to the
          date when the custom was abolished, Lactantius says that it was
          done “recently in the reign of
          Hadrian.” Porphyry says that the practice was put down by
          Diphilus, king of Cyprus, “in the time of
          Seleucus the Theologian.” As nothing seems to be known as to
          the date of King Diphilus and Seleucus the Theologian, I have
          ventured to assume, on the strength of Lactantius's statement, that
          they were contemporaries of Hadrian. But it is curious to find
          kings of Cyprus reigning so late. Beside the power of the Roman
          governors, their authority can have been little more than nominal,
          like that of native rajahs in British India. Seleucus the
          Theologian may be, as J. A. Fabricius supposed (Bibliotheca
          Graeca,4 Hamburg, 1780-1809, vol. i.
          p. 86, compare p. 522), the Alexandrian grammarian who composed a
          voluminous work on the gods (Suidas, s.v.
          Σέλευκος). Suetonius tells an anecdote (Tiberius, 56) about a grammarian
          named Seleucus who flourished, and faded prematurely, at the court
          of Tiberius.


441.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 49.


442.


Diogenianus, Praefatio, in Paroemiographi
          Graeci, ed. E. L. Leutsch et F. G. Schneidewin
          (Göttingen, 1839-1851), i. 180. Raoul-Rochette regarded the custom
          as part of the ritual of the divine death and resurrection. He
          compared it with the burning of Melcarth at Tyre. See his memoir,
          “Sur l'Hercule Assyrien et
          Phénicien,” Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et
          Belles-Lettres, xvii. Deuxième Partie (1848), p.
          32.


443.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 54.


444.


A. H. Sayce, in W. Wright's
          Empire of
          the Hittites,2 p. 186; W. M. Ramsay,
          “Pre-Hellenic Monuments of
          Cappadocia,” Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et
          à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et Assyriennes, xiv.
          (1903) pp. 81 sq.; C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der
          Religion im Altertum, i. 251; W. Max Müller,
          Asien und
          Europa, p. 333; P. Jensen, Hittiter und
          Armenier, pp. 70, 150 sqq.,
          155 sqq.; F. Hommel, Grundriss der
          Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients, pp. 44,
          51 sq.; L. Messerschmidt,
          The
          Hittites, p. 40. Sir W. M. Ramsay thinks
          (l.c.) that Tark was the native
          name of the god who had his sanctuary at Dastarkon in Cappadocia
          and who was called by the Greeks the Cataonian Apollo: his
          sanctuary was revered all over Cappadocia (Strabo, xiv. 2. 5, p.
          537). Prof. Hommel holds that Tarku or Tarchu was the chief Hittite
          deity, worshipped all over the south of Asia Minor. Prof. W. Max
          Müller is of opinion that Targh or Tarkh did not designate any
          particular deity, but was the general Hittite name for “god.” There are grounds for holding that the
          proper name of the Hittite thunder-god was Teshub or Teshup. See
          above, p. 135 note.


445.


J. T. Bent, “Explorations in Cilicia Tracheia,” Proceedings of the
          Royal Geographical Society, N.S. xii. (1890) p. 458;
          id., “A
          Journey in Cilicia Tracheia,” Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, xii. (1891) p. 222; W. M. Ramsay,
          Historical Geography of Asia
          Minor (London, 1890), pp. 22, 364. Sir W. M. Ramsay
          had shown grounds for thinking that Olba was a Grecized form of a
          native name Ourba (pronounced Ourwa) before Mr. J. T. Bent
          discovered the site and the name.


446.


J. Theodore Bent, “Explorations in Cilicia Tracheia,” Proceedings of the
          Royal Geographical Society, N.S. xii. (1890) pp. 445,
          450-453; id., “A
          Journal in Cilicia Tracheia,” Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, xii. (1891) pp. 208, 210-212, 217-219; R.
          Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, “Reisen in
          Kilikien,” Denkschriften der kaiser. Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, Philosoph.-historische Classe, xliv.
          (Vienna, 1896) No. vi. pp. 49, 70; D. G. Hogarth and J. A. R.
          Munro, “Modern and Ancient Roads in Eastern
          Asia Minor,” Royal Geographical Society, Supplementary
          Papers, vol. iii. part 5 (London, 1893), pp. 653
          sq. As to the Cilician pirates
          see Strabo, xiv. 5. 2, pp. 668 sq.;
          Plutarch, Pompeius, 24; Appian,
          Bellum
          Mithridat. 92 sq.; Dio Cassius, xxxvi. 20-24
          [3-6], ed. L. Dindorf; Cicero, De imperio Cn.
          Pompeii, 11 sq.; Th. Mommsen, Roman
          History (London, 1868), iii. 68-70, iv. 40-45,
          118-120. As to the crests carved on their towns see J. T. Bent,
          “Cilician Symbols,” Classical
          Review, iv. (1890) pp. 321 sq.
          Among these crests are a club (the badge of Olba), a bunch of
          grapes, the caps of the Dioscuri, the three-legged symbol, and so
          on. As to the cedars and ship-building timber of Cilicia in
          antiquity see Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum, iii. 2. 6,
          iv. 5. 5. The cedars and firs have now retreated to the higher
          slopes of the Taurus. Great destruction is wrought in the forests
          by the roving Yuruks with their flocks; for they light their fires
          under the trees, tap the firs for turpentine, bark the cedars for
          their huts and bee-hives, and lay bare whole tracts of country that
          the grass may grow for their sheep and goats. See J. T. Bent, in
          Proceedings of the Royal Geographical
          Society, N.S. xii. (1890) pp. 453-458.


447.


D. G. Hogarth, A Wandering Scholar
          in the Levant (London, 1896), pp. 57 sq.


448.


J. Theodore Bent, “Explorations in Cilicia Tracheia,” Proceedings of the
          Royal Geographical Society, N.S. xii. (1890) pp. 445
          sq., 458-460; id.,
          “A Journey in Cilicia Tracheia,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xii. (1890) pp. 220-222; E. L.
          Hicks, “Inscriptions from Western
          Cilicia,” ib. pp. 262-270; R. Heberdey und
          A. Wilhelm, “Reisen in Kilikien,”
Denkschriften der kaiser. Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, Philos.-histor. Classe, xliv.
          (Vienna, 1896) No. vi. pp. 83-91; W. M. Ramsay and D. G. Hogarth,
          in American Journal of Archaeology,
          vi. (1890) p. 345; Ch. Michel, Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques, p. 858, No. 1231. In one
          place (Journal of Hellenic Studies,
          xii. 222) Bent gives the height of Olba as 3800 feet; but this is a
          misprint, for elsewhere (Proceedings of the Royal Geographical
          Society, N.S. xii. 446, 458) he gives the height as
          exactly 5850 or roughly 6000 feet. The misprint has unfortunately
          been repeated by Messrs. Heberdey and Wilhelm (op.
          cit. p. 84 note 1). The tall tower of Olba is figured
          on the coins of the city. See G. F. Hill, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia
          (London, 1900), pl. xxii. 8.


449.


Sir Charles Lyell, Principles of
          Geology12 (London, 1875), ii. 518
          sqq.; Encyclopaedia
          Britannica, Ninth Edition, s.v.
“Caves,” v. 265 sqq.
          Compare my notes on Pausanias, i. 35. 7, viii. 29. 1.


450.


J. T. Bent, in Proceedings of the
          Royal Geographical Society, N.S. xii. (1890) p.
          447.


451.


Fr. Beaufort, Karmania (London, 1817), pp. 240
          sq.


452.


Strabo, xiv. 5. 5, pp. 670
          sq.; Mela, i. 72-75, ed. G.
          Parthey; J. T. Bent, “Explorations in
          Cilicia Tracheia,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical
          Society, N.S. xii. (1890) pp. 446-448; id.,
          “A Journey in Cilicia Tracheia,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xii. (1891) pp. 212-214; R.
          Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, “Reisen in
          Kilikien,” Denkschriften der kaiser. Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, Philos.-histor. Classe, xliv. (1896)
          No. vi. pp. 70-79. Mr. D. G. Hogarth was so good as to furnish me
          with some notes embodying his recollections of the Corycian cave.
          All these modern writers confirm the general accuracy of the
          descriptions of the cave given by Strabo and Mela. Mr. Hogarth
          indeed speaks of exaggeration in Mela's account, but this is not
          admitted by Mr. A. Wilhelm. As to the ruins of the city of Corycus
          on the coast, distant about three miles from the cave, see Fr.
          Beaufort, Karmania (London, 1817), pp.
          232-238; R. Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, op.
          cit. pp. 67-70.


453.


The suggestion is Mr. A. B. Cook's.
          See his article, “The European
          Sky-god,” Classical Review, xvii. (1903)
          p. 418, note 2.


454.


J. T. Bent, in Proceedings of the
          Royal Geographical Society, N.S. xii. (1890) p. 448;
          id., in Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, xii. (1891) pp. 214-216. For the inscription
          containing the names of the priests see R. Heberdey und A. Wilhelm,
          op.
          cit. pp. 71-79; Ch. Michel, Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques, pp. 718 sqq.,
          No. 878; above, p. 145.


455.


Mela, i. 76, ed. G. Parthey (Berlin,
          1867). The cave of Typhon is described by J. T. Bent, ll.cc.


456.


Aeschylus, Prometheus
          Vinctus, 351-372.


457.


Pindar, Pyth.
          i. 30 sqq., who speaks of the giant as
          “bred in the many-named Cilician
          cave.”


458.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 6. 3.


459.


Pausanias, viii. 29. 1, with my notes.
          Pausanias mentions (viii. 32. 5) bones of superhuman size which
          were preserved at Megalopolis, and which popular superstition
          identified as the bones of the giant Hopladamus.


460.


Pausanias, viii. 29. 1.


461.


A. Holm, Geschichte Siciliens
          im Alterthum (Leipsic, 1870-1874), i. 57, 356.


462.


(Sir) Edward B. Tylor, Researches into the
          Early History of Mankind3
          (London, 1878), p. 322, who adduces much more evidence of the same
          sort.


463.


J. T. Bent, “Explorations in Cilicia Tracheia,” Proceedings of the
          Royal Geographical Society, N.S. xii. (1890) pp. 448
          sq.; id.,
          “A Journey in Cilicia Tracheia,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xii. (1891) pp. 208-210; R.
          Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, “Reisen in
          Kilikien,” Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Classe,
          xliv. (Vienna, 1896) No. vi. pp. 51-61.


464.


See above, pp. 26 sq.


465.


B. V. Head, Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 616. [However, Mr. G. F.
          Hill writes to me: “The attribution to
          Tarsus of the 'Atheh coins is unfounded. Head himself only gives it
          as doubtful. I should think they belong further East.” In
          the uncertainty which prevails on this point I have left the text
          unchanged. Note to Second Edition.]


466.




The name
            'Athar-'atheh occurs in a Palmyrene inscription. See G. A. Cooke,
            Text-book of North-Semitic
            Inscriptions, No. 112, pp. 267-270. In analysing
            Atargatis into 'Athar-'atheh ('Atar-'ata) I follow E. Meyer
            (Geschichte des
            Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 605, 650
            sq.), F. Baethgen
            (Beiträge zur semitischen
            Religionsgeschichte, pp. 68-75), Fr. Cumont
            (s.v. “Atargatis,” Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie
            der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ii. 1896),
            G. A. Cooke (l.c.), C. P. Tiele
            (Geschichte der Religion im
            Altertum, i. 245), F. Hommel (Grundriss der
            Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients, pp. 43
            sq.), Father Lagrange
            (Études
            sur les Religions Sémitiques,2
            p. 130), and L. B. Paton (s.v. “Atargatis,” J. Hastings's Encyclopaedia of
            Religion and Ethics, ii. 164 sq.).
            In the great temple at Hierapolis-Bambyce a mysterious golden
            image stood between the images of Atargatis and her male partner.
            It resembled neither of them, yet combined the attributes of
            other gods. Some interpreted it as Dionysus, others as Deucalion,
            and others as Semiramis; for a golden dove, traditionally
            associated with Semiramis, was perched on the head of the figure.
            The Syrians called the image by a name which Lucian translates
            “sign” (σημήιον). See Lucian,
            De dea
            Syria, 33. It has been plausibly conjectured by F.
            Baethgen that the name which Lucian translates “sign” was really 'Atheh (עתה), which could
            easily be confused with the Syriac word for “sign” (אהא). See F. Baethgen, op.
            cit. p. 73. A coin of Hierapolis, dating from the
            third century a.d., exhibits the
            images of the god and goddess seated on bulls and lions
            respectively, with the mysterious object between them enclosed in
            a shrine, which is surmounted by a bird, probably a dove. See J.
            Garstang, The Syrian Goddess (London,
            1913), pp. 22 sqq., 70 sq.,
            with fig. 7.


The modern
            writers cited at the beginning of this note have interpreted the
            Syrian 'Atheh as a male god, the lover of Atargatis, and
            identical in name and character with the Phrygian Attis. They may
            be right; but none of them seems to have noticed that the same
            name 'Atheh (עתה) is applied to a goddess at Tarsus.




467.


As to the image, see above, p.
          137.


468.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 31.


469.


Macrobius, Saturn,
          i. 23. 12 and 17-19. The Greek name of Baalbec was Heliopolis,
          “the City of the Sun.”


470.


G. A. Cooke, Text-book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, pp. 163, 164. The statue
          bears a long inscription, which in the style of its writing belongs
          to the archaic type represented by the Moabite Stone. The contents
          of the inscription show that it is earlier than the time of
          Tiglath-Pileser III. (745-727 b.c.). On Hadad, the
          Syrian thunder-god, see F. Baethgen, Beiträge zur
          semitischen Religionsgeschichte, pp. 66-68; C. P.
          Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im
          Altertum, i. 248 sq.; M.
          J. Lagrange, Études sur les Religions
          Sémitiques,2 pp. 92 sq.
          That Hadad was the consort of Atargatis at Hierapolis-Bambyce is
          the opinion of P. Jensen (Hittiter und Armenier, p. 171),
          who also indicates his character as a god both of thunder and of
          fertility (ib., p. 167). The view of Prof.
          J. Garstang is similar (The Syrian Goddess, pp. 25
          sqq.). That the name of the
          chief male god of Hierapolis-Bambyce was Hadad is rendered almost
          certain by coins of the city which were struck in the time of
          Alexander the Great by a priestly king Abd-Hadad, whose name means
          “Servant of Hadad.” See B. V. Head,
          Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 654; J. Garstang,
          The
          Syrian Goddess, p. 27, with fig. 5.


471.


H. Zimmern, in E. Schrader's
          Die
          Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,3
          pp. 442-449; M. Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und
          Assyriens (Giessen, 1905-1912), i. 146-150, with
          Bildermappe, plate 32, fig. 97.
          The Assyrian relief is also figured in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, s.v.
“Marduk,” ii. 2350. The Babylonian
          ramâmu “to scream, roar” has its equivalent in the
          Hebrew ra'am (רעם)
          “to thunder.” The two names Adad
          (Hadad) and Ramman occur together in the form Hadadrimmon in
          Zechariah, xii. 11 (with S. R. Driver's note, Century
          Bible).


472.


See above, pp. 121, 123.


473.


See above, p. 130. However, the animal seems to be rather a
          goat. See above, p. 133
          note.


474.


See above, p. 132.


475.


G. F. Hill, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia, pp.
          181, 182, 185, 188, 190, 228.


476.


E. Meyer, Geschichte des
          Alterthums, i. (Stuttgart, 1884) pp. 246 sq.; F.
          Baethgen, Beiträge zur semitischen
          Religionsgeschichte, pp. 76 sqq.
          The idolatrous Hebrews spread tables for Gad, that is, for Fortune
          (Isaiah lxv. 11, Revised Version).


477.


Macrobius, Saturn.
          iii. 8. 2; Servius on Virgil, Aen. ii. 632.


478.


Ephippus, cited by Athenaeus, xii. 53,
          p. 537.


479.


F. Baethgen, op.
          cit. p. 77; G. A. Cooke, Text-book of
          North-Semitic Inscriptions, p. 269.


480.


See above, p. 151.


481.


Strabo, xiv. 5. 16, p. 675.


482.


B. V. Head, Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 605 sq.; G.
          F. Hill, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Lycaonia,
          Isauria, and Cilicia, pp. cxvii. sqq.,
          95-98, plates xv. xvi. xl. 9; G. Macdonald, Catalogue of Greek
          Coins in the Hunterian Collection, ii. 536
          sq., pl. lix. 11-14. The male
          and female figures appear on separate coins. The attribution to
          Mallus of the coins with the female figure and conical stone has
          been questioned by Messrs. J. P. Six and G. F. Hill. I follow the
          view of Messrs. F. Imhoof-Blumer and B. V. Head. [However, Mr. G.
          F. Hill writes to me that the attribution of these coins to Mallus
          is no longer maintained by any one. Imhoof-Blumer himself now
          conjecturally assigns them to Aphrodisias in Cilicia, and Mr. Hill
          regards this conjecture as very plausible. See F. Imhoof-Blumer,
          Kleinasiatische Münzen (Vienna,
          1901-1902), ii. 435 sq. In the uncertainty which
          still prevails on the subject I have left the text unchanged. For
          my purpose it matters little whether this Cilician goddess was
          worshipped at Mallus or at Aphrodisias. Note to Second
          Edition.]


483.


See above, pp. 34 sq.


484.


Philo of Byblus, in Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii. 569. El
          is figured with three pairs of wings on coins of Byblus. See G.
          Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient
          Classique, ii. 174; M. J. Lagrange, Études sur les
          Religions Sémitiques,2 p.
          72.


485.


Imhoof-Blumer, s.v.
“Kronos,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1572; G. F.
          Hill, Catalogue of Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria,
          and Cilicia, pp. cxxii. 99, pl. xvii. 2.


486.


G. F. Hill, op.
          cit. pp. cxxi. sq., 98, pl. xvii. 1.


487.


Another native Cilician deity who
          masqueraded in Greek dress was probably the Olybrian Zeus of
          Anazarba or Anazarbus, but of his true nature and worship we know
          nothing. See W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones
          Selectae (Leipsic, 1903-1905), ii. p. 267, No. 577;
          Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἄδανα (where the MS.
          reading Ολυμβρος was wrongly changed by Salmasius into
          Ὄλυμπος).


488.


Strabo, xiv. 5. 19, p. 676. The
          expression of Strabo leaves it doubtful whether the ministers of
          the goddess were men or women. There was a headland called Sarpedon
          near the mouth of the Calycadnus River in Western Cilicia (Strabo,
          xiii. 4. 6, p. 627, xiv. 5. 4, p. 670), where Sarpedon or
          Sarpedonian Apollo had a temple and an oracle. The temple was hewn
          in the rock, and contained an image of the god. See R. Heberdey und
          A. Wilhelm, “Reisen in Kilikien,”
Denkschriften der kaiser. Akademie der
          Wissenschaften, Philosoph.-histor. Classe, xliv.
          (Vienna, 1896) No. vi. pp. 100, 107. Probably this Sarpedonian
          Apollo was a native deity akin to Sarpedonian Artemis.


489.


E. J. Davis, Life in Asiatic
          Turkey, pp. 128-134; J. T. Bent, “Recent Discoveries in Eastern Cilicia,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xi. (1890) pp. 234 sq.; E.
          L. Hicks, “Inscriptions from Eastern
          Cilicia,” ibid. pp. 243 sqq.;
          R. Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, op. cit. pp. 25 sqq.
          The site of Hieropolis-Castabala was first identified by J. T. Bent
          by means of inscriptions. As to the coins of the city, see Fr.
          Imhoof-Blumer, “Zur Münzkunde
          Kilikiens,” Zeitschrift für Numismatik, x.
          (1883) pp. 267-290; G. F. Hill, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia, pp.
          c.-cii. 82-84, pl. xiv. 1-6; G. Macdonald, Catalogue of Greek
          Coins in the Hunterian Collection, ii. 534
          sq.


490.


On the difference between Hieropolis
          and Hierapolis see (Sir) W. M. Ramsay, Historical Geography
          of Asia Minor, pp. 84 sq.
          According to him, the cities designated by such names grew up
          gradually round a sanctuary; where Greek influence prevailed the
          city in time eclipsed the sanctuary and became known as Hierapolis,
          or the Sacred City, but where the native element retained its
          predominance the city continued to be known as Hieropolis, or the
          City of the Sanctuary.


491.


E. L. Hicks, “Inscriptions from Eastern Cilicia,”
Journal
          of Hellenic Studies, xi. (1890) pp. 251-253; R.
          Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, op. cit. p. 26. These writers
          differ somewhat in their reading and restoration of the verses,
          which are engraved on a limestone basis among the ruins. I follow
          the version of Messrs. Heberdey and Wilhelm.


492.


J. T. Bent and E. L. Hicks,
          op.
          cit. pp. 235, 246 sq.; R.
          Heberdey und A. Wilhelm, op. cit. p. 27.


493.


Strabo, xii. 2. 7, p. 537. See above,
          p. 115. The Cilician
          Castabala, the situation of which is identified by inscriptions, is
          not mentioned by Strabo. It is very unlikely that, with his
          intimate knowledge of Asia Minor, he should have erred so far as to
          place the city in Cappadocia, to the north of the Taurus mountains,
          instead of in Cilicia, to the south of them. It is more probable
          that there were two cities of the same name, and that Strabo has
          omitted to mention one of them. Similarly, there were two cities
          called Comana, one in Cappadocia and one in Pontus; at both places
          the same goddess was worshipped with similar rites. See Strabo,
          xii. 2. 3, p. 535, xii. 3. 32, p. 557. The situation of the various
          Castabalas mentioned by ancient writers is discussed by F.
          Imhoof-Blumer, “Zur Münzkunde
          Kilikiens,” Zeitschrift für Numismatik, x.
          (1883) pp. 285-288.


494.


See The Magic Art and the
          Evolution of Kings, i. 37 sq.


495.


Jamblichus, De
          mysteriis, iii. 4.


496.


Another Cilician goddess was Athena of
          Magarsus, to whom Alexander the Great sacrificed before the battle
          of Issus. See Arrian, Anabasis, ii. 5. 9; Stephanus
          Byzantius, s.v. Μάγαρσος; J. Tzetzes,
          Schol. on
          Lycophron, 444. The name of the city seems to be
          Oriental, perhaps derived from the Semitic word for “cave” (מגרה). As to the importance of caves in
          Semitic religion, see W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the
          Semites,2 pp. 197 sqq.
          The site of Magarsus appears to be at Karatash, a hill rising from
          the sea at the southern extremity of the Cilician plain, about
          forty-five miles due south of Adana. The walls of the city, built
          of great limestone blocks, are standing to a height of several
          courses, and an inscription which mentions the priests of Magarsian
          Athena has been found on the spot. See R. Heberdey und A. Wilhelm,
          “Reisen in Kilikien,” Denkschriften der
          kaiser. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosoph.-histor.
          Classe, xliv. (1896) No. vi. pp. 6-10.


497.


E. T. Atkinson, The Himalayan
          Districts of the North-Western Provinces of India,
          ii. (Allahabad, 1884) pp. 826 sq.


498.


The Rev. G. E. White (Missionary at
          Marsovan, in the ancient Pontus), in a letter to me dated 19
          Southmoor Road, Oxford, February 11, 1907.


499.


Strabo, xiv. 5. 9, pp. 671
          sq.; Arrian, Anabasis, ii. 5; Athenaeus, xii.
          39, p. 530 a, b. Compare Stephanus
          Byzantius, s.v. Ἀγχιάλη; Georgius
          Syncellus, Chronographia, vol. i. p. 312,
          ed. G. Dindorf (Bonn, 1829). The site of Anchiale has not yet been
          discovered. At Tarsus itself the ruins of a vast quadrangular
          structure have sometimes been identified with the monument of
          Sardanapalus. See E. J. Davis, Life in Asiatic
          Turkey, pp. 37-39; G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez,
          Histoire
          de l'Art dans l'Antiquité, iv. 536 sqq.
          But Mr. D. G. Hogarth tells me that the ruins in question seem to
          be the concrete foundations of a Roman temple. The mistake had
          already been pointed out by Mr. R. Koldewey. See his article,
          “Das sogenannte Grab des Sardanapal zu
          Tarsus,” Aus der Anomia (Berlin, 1890),
          pp. 178-185.


500.


See G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez,
          Histoire
          de l'Art dans l'Antiquité, iv. 542 sq.
          They think that the figure probably represented the king in a
          common attitude of adoration, his right arm raised and his thumb
          resting on his forefinger.


501.


L. Messerschmidt, Corpus Inscriptionum
          Hettiticarum, pp. 17-19, plates xxi.-xxv.; G. Perrot
          et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iv. 492, 494 sq.,
          528-530, 547; J. Garstang, The Land of the Hittites, pp.
          107-122.


502.


Prof. W. Max Müller is of opinion that
          the Hittite civilization and the Hittite system of writing were
          developed in Cilicia rather than in Cappadocia (Asien und
          Europa, p. 350).


503.


According to Berosus and Abydenus it
          was not Sardanapalus (Ashurbanipal) but Sennacherib who built or
          rebuilt Tarsus after the fashion of Babylon, causing the river
          Cydnus to flow through the midst of the city. See Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, ii. 504, iv.
          282; C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-assyrische
          Geschichte, pp. 297 sq.


504.


Diodorus Siculus, ii. 27; Athenaeus,
          xii. 38, p. 529; Justin, i. 3.


505.


G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, iii. 422 sq. For
          the inscriptions referring to him and a full discussion of them,
          see C. F. Lehmann (-Haupt), Šamaš-šumukîn, König von Babylonien, 668-648
          v. Chr. (Leipsic, 1892).


506.


Abydenus, in Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iv. 282;
          Georgius Syncellus, Chronographia, i. p. 396, ed. G.
          Dindorf; E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i.
          (Stuttgart, 1884) pp. 576 sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, iii. 482-485. C. P.
          Tiele thought that the story of the death of Saracus might be a
          popular but mistaken duplicate of the death of Shamash-shumukin
          (Babylonisch-assyrische
          Geschichte, pp. 410 sq.).
          Zimri, king of Israel, also burned himself in his palace to escape
          falling into the hands of his enemies (1 Kings xvi. 18).


507.


Herodotus, i. 86 sq.


508.


Raoul-Rochette, “Sur l'Hercule Assyrien et Phénicien,”
Mémoires
          de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,
          xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848), p. 274.


509.


J. Darmesteter, The
          Zend-Avesta, vol. i. (Oxford, 1880) pp. lxxxvi.,
          lxxxviii-xc. (Sacred Books of the East, vol.
          iv.).


510.


Zend-Avesta, Vendîdâd, Fargard, v. 7. 39-44
          (Sacred
          Books of the East, iv. 60 sq.).


511.


Zend-Avesta, translated by J.
          Darmesteter, i. pp. xc. 9, 110 sq.
          (Sacred
          Books of the East, iv.).


512.


Strabo, xv. 3. 14, p. 732. Even gold,
          on account of its resemblance to fire, might not be brought near a
          corpse (id. xv. 3. 18, p. 734).


513.


Sardes fell in the autumn of 546
          b.c. (E. Meyer,
          Geschichte des Alterthums, i.
          (Stuttgart, 1884), p. 604). Bacchylides was probably born between
          512 and 505 b.c. See R. C. Jebb,
          Bacchylides, the Poems and
          Fragments (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 1 sq.


514.


Bacchylides, iii. 24-62.


515.


F. G. Welcker, Alte
          Denkmäler (Göttingen, 1849-1864), iii. pl. xxxiii.;
          A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen
          Altertums (Munich and Leipsic, 1885-1888), ii. 796,
          fig. 860; A. H. Smith, “Illustrations to
          Bacchylides,” Journal of Hellenic Studies,
          xviii. (1898) pp. 267-269; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, iii. 618 sq. It
          is true that Cambyses caused the dead body of the Egyptian king
          Amasis to be dragged from the tomb, mangled, and burned; but the
          deed is expressly branded by the ancient historian as an outrage on
          Persian religion (Herodotus, iii. 16).


516.


Raoul-Rochette, “Sur l'Hercule Assyrien et Phénicien,”
Mémoires
          de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,
          xvii. Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848), pp. 277 sq.; M.
          Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums,
          iv.5 330-332; E. Meyer,
          Geschichte des Alterthums, i.
          (Stuttgart, 1884) p. 604; G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
          Peuples de l'Orient Classique, iii. 618.


517.


Herodotus, i. 7.


518.


See above, pp. 115 sq., 173 sq.


519.


Hyginus, Fab.
          243; Pliny, viii. 155.


520.


See W. Robertson Smith, “Ctesias and the Semiramis Legend,” English Historical
          Review, ii. (1887) pp. 303-317. But the legend of
          Semiramis appears to have gathered round the person of a real
          Assyrian queen, by name Shammuramat, who lived towards the end of
          the ninth century b.c. and is known to us
          from historical inscriptions. See C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, Die historische
          Semiramis und ihre Zeit (Tübingen, 1910), pp. 1
          sqq.; id.,
          s.v. “Semiramis,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, iv. 678 sqq.;
          The
          Scapegoat, pp. 369 sqq.


521.


See above, p. 114.


522.


In ancient Greece we seem to have a
          reminiscence of widow-burning in the legend that when the corpse of
          Capaneus was being consumed on the pyre, his wife Evadne threw
          herself into the flames and perished. See Euripides, Supplices, 980 sqq.;
          Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 7. 1;
          Zenobius, Cent. i. 30; Ovid, Tristia, v. 14. 38.


523.


Isaiah xxx. 33. The Revised Version
          has “a Topheth” instead of
          “Tophet.” But Hebrew does not
          possess an indefinite article (the few passages of the Bible in
          which the Aramaic חת is so used are no exception to the rule), and
          there is no evidence that Tophet (Topheth) was ever employed in a
          general sense. The passage of Isaiah has been rightly interpreted
          by W. Robertson Smith in the sense indicated in the text, though he
          denies that it contains any reference to the sacrifice of the
          children. See his Lectures on the Religion of the
          Semites,2 pp. 372 sq. He
          observes (p. 372, note 3): “Saul's body was
          burned (1 Sam. xxxi. 12), possibly to save it from the risk of
          exhumation by the Philistines, but perhaps rather with a religious
          intention, and almost as an act of worship, since his bones were
          buried under the sacred tamarisk at Jabesh.” In 1 Chronicles
          x. 12 the tree under which the bones of Saul were buried is not a
          tamarisk but a terebinth or an oak.


524.


2 Chronicles xvi. 14, xxi. 19;
          Jeremiah xxxiv. 5. There is no ground for assuming, as the
          Authorized version does in Jeremiah xxxiv. 5, that only spices were
          burned on these occasions; indeed the burning of spices is not
          mentioned at all in any of the three passages. The “sweet odours and divers kinds of spices prepared by
          the apothecaries' art,” which were laid in the dead king's
          bed (2 Chronicles xvi. 14), were probably used to embalm him, not
          to be burned at his funeral. For though “great burnings” were regularly made for the
          dead kings of Judah, there is no evidence (apart from the doubtful
          case of Saul) that their bodies were cremated. They are regularly
          said to have been buried, not burnt. The passage of Isaiah seems to
          show that what was burned at a royal funeral was a great, but
          empty, pyre. That the burnings for the kings formed part of a
          heathen custom was rightly perceived by Renan (Histoire du peuple
          d'Israel, iii. 121, note).


525.


Josephus, Bell.
          Jud. v. 4. 1. See Encyclopaedia
          Biblica, s.v. “Jerusalem,” vol. ii. 2423 sq.


526.


As to the Moloch worship, see Note I.
          at the end of the volume. I have to thank the Rev. Professor R. H.
          Kennett for indicating to me the inference which may be drawn from
          the identification of the Valley of Hinnom with the Tyropoeon.


527.


W. M. Thomson, The Land and the
          Book, Central Palestine and Phoenicia (London, 1883),
          pp. 575-579; Ed. Robinson, Biblical Researches in
          Palestine3 (London, 1867), ii. 430.
          sq.; K. Baedeker, Palestine and
          Syria4 (Leipsic, 1906), p.
          255.


528.


Herodotus, v. 92. 7.


529.


C. Bock, Temples and
          Elephants (London, 1884), pp. 73-76.


530.


This view was maintained long ago by
          Raoul-Rochette in regard to the deaths both of Sardanapalus and of
          Croesus. He supposed that “the Assyrian
          monarch, reduced to the last extremity, wished, by the mode of
          death which he chose, to give to his sacrifice the form of an
          apotheosis and to identify himself with the national god of his
          country by allowing himself to be consumed, like him, on a pyre....
          Thus mythology and history would be combined in a legend in which
          the god and the monarch would finally be confused. There is nothing
          in this which is not conformable to the ideas and habits of Asiatic
          civilization.” See his memoir, “Sur
          l'Hercule Assyrien et Phénicien,” Mémoires de
          l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, xvii.
          Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1848), pp. 247 sq.,
          271 sqq. The notion of regeneration
          by fire was fully recognized by Raoul-Rochette (op.
          cit. pp. 30 sq.). It deserves to be noted
          that Croesus burned on a huge pyre the great and costly offerings
          which he dedicated to Apollo at Delphi. He thought, says Herodotus
          (i. 50), that in this way the god would get possession of the
          offerings.


531.




As to Isis see
            Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 16. As to
            Demeter see Homer, Hymn to Demeter, 231-262;
            Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 1; Ovid,
            Fasti, iv. 547-560. As to
            Thetis see Apollonius Rhodius, Argon, iv. 865-879;
            Apollodorus, Bibl. iii. 13. 6. Most of
            these writers express clearly the thought that the fire consumed
            the mortal element, leaving the immortal. Thus Plutarch says,
            περικαίειν τὰ θνητὰ τοῦ σώματος. Apollodorus says (i. 5. 1), εἰς
            πῦρ κατετίθει τὸ βρέφος καὶ περιῄρει τὰς θνητὰς σάρκας αὐτοῦ, and
            again (iii. 13. 6), εἰς τὸ πῦρ ἐγκρυβοῦσα τῆς νυκτὸς ἔφθειρεν ὂ
            ἦν αὐτῷ θνητὸν πατρῷον. Apollonius Rhodius says,


ἡ μὲν γὰρ
            βροτέας αἰεὶ περὶ σάρκας ἔδαιεν νύκτα διὰ μέσσην φλογμῷ
            πυρός.


And Ovid
            has,


“Inque foco pueri corpus
            vivente favilla Obruit, humanum purget ut ignis
            onus.”


On the custom
            of passing children over a fire as a purification, see my note,
            “The Youth of Achilles,”
Classical Review, vii. (1893)
            pp. 293 sq. On the purificatory virtue which the Greeks ascribed
            to fire see also Erwin Rohde, Psyche3
            (Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), ii. 101, note 2. The Warramunga of
            Central Australia have a tradition of a great man who
            “used to burn children in the fire so as
            to make them grow strong” (B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen,
            The
            Northern Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1904,
            p. 429).




532.


She is said to have thus restored the
          youth of her husband Jason, her father-in-law Aeson, the nurses of
          Dionysus, and all their husbands (Euripides, Medea,
          Argum.; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Knights, 1321; compare Plautus,
          Pseudolus, 879 sqq.);
          and she applied the same process with success to an old ram
          (Apollodorus, Bibl. i. 9. 27; Pausanias, viii.
          11. 2; Hyginus, Fab. 24).


533.


Pindar, Olymp.
          i. 40 sqq., with the Scholiast; J.
          Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 152.


534.


Jamblichus, De
          mysteriis, v. 12.


535.


Lucian, De morte
          Peregrini, 27 sq.


536.


Diogenes Laertius, viii. 2. 69
          sq.


537.


Lucian, De morte
          Peregrini, 25; Strabo, xv. 1. 64 and 68, pp. 715,
          717; Arrian, Anabasis, vii. 3.


538.


The Dying God, pp. 42
          sqq.


539.


Herodotus, i. 7.


540.


Joannes Lydus, De
          magistratibus, iii. 64.


541.


See above, p. 144, note 2.


542.


Plutarch, Quaestiones
          Graecae, 45. Zeus Labrandeus was worshipped at the
          village of Labraunda, situated in a pass over the mountains, near
          Mylasa in Caria. The temple was ancient. A road called the Sacred
          Way led downhill for ten miles to Mylasa, a city of white marble
          temples and colonnades which stood in a fertile plain at the foot
          of a precipitous mountain, where the marble was quarried.
          Processions bearing the holy emblems went to and fro along the
          Sacred Way from Mylasa to Labraunda. See Strabo, xiv. 2. 23, pp.
          658 sq. The double-headed axe
          figures on the ruins and coins of Mylasa (Ch. Fellows, An Account of
          Discoveries in Lycia, London, 1841, p. 75; B. V.
          Head, Historia Numorum, Oxford, 1887,
          pp. 528 sq.). A horseman carrying a
          double-headed axe is a type which occurs on the coins of many towns
          in Lydia and Phrygia. At Thyatira this axe-bearing hero was called
          Tyrimnus, and games were held in his honour. He was identified with
          Apollo and the sun. See B. V. Head, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lydia (London, 1901), p. cxxviii. On a
          coin of Mostene in Lydia the double-headed axe is represented
          between a bunch of grapes and ears of corn, as if it were an emblem
          of fertility (B. V. Head, op. cit. p. 162, pl. xvii.
          11).


543.


L. Preller, Griechische
          Mythologie, i.4 (Berlin, 1894) pp. 141
          sq. As to the Hittite
          thunder-god and his axe see above, pp. 134 sqq.


544.


Nicolaus Damascenus, in Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii. 382
          sq.


545.


Ibid. iii. 381.


546.


Herodotus, i. 84.


547.


Eusebius, Chronic. i. 69, ed. A. Schoene
          (Berlin, 1866-1875).


548.


Herodotus, i. 50. At Thebes there was
          a stone lion which was said to have been dedicated by Hercules
          (Pausanias, ix. 17. 2).


549.


B. V. Head, Historia
          Numorum (Oxford, 1887), p. 553; id.,
          Catalogue
          of the Greek Coins of Lydia (London, 1901), pp.
          xcviii, 239, 240, 241, 244, 247, 253, 254, 264, with plates xxiv.
          9-11, 13, XXV. 2, 12, xxvii. 8.


550.


See above, p. 143.


551.


Herodotus, ii. 106; G. Perrot et Ch.
          Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, iv. 742-752; L. Messerschmidt,
          Corpus
          Inscriptionum Hettiticarum, pp. 33-37, with plates
          xxxvii., xxxviii.; J. Garstang, The Land of the
          Hittites, pp. 170-173, with plate liv.


552.


Pausanias, iii. 24. 2, v. 13. 7 with
          my note; G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, op.
          cit. iv. 752-759; L. Messerschmidt, op.
          cit. pp. 37 sq., pl. xxxix. 1; J. Garstang,
          The Land
          of the Hittites, pp. 167-170, with plate liii. Unlike
          most Hittite sculptures the figure of Mother Plastene is carved
          almost in the round. The inscriptions which accompany both these
          Lydian monuments are much defaced.


553.


The suggestion that the Heraclid kings
          of Lydia were Hittites, or under Hittite influence, is not novel.
          See W. Wright, Empire of the Hittites, p. 59;
          E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i.
          (Stuttgart, 1884) p. 307, § 257; Fr. Hommel, Grundriss der
          Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients, p. 54,
          note 2; L. Messerschmidt, The Hittites, p. 22.


554.


See above, pp. 110 sqq.


555.


Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
          Antiquit.
          Roman. i. 27. 1.


556.


Nonnus, Dionys.
          xxv. 451-551; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxv. 14. The story,
          as we learn from Pliny, was told by Xanthus, an early historian of
          Lydia.


557.


Thus Glaucus, son of Minos, was
          restored to life by the seer Polyidus, who learned the trick from a
          serpent. See Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 3. 1. For
          references to other tales of the same sort see my note on
          Pausanias, ii. 10. 3 (vol. iii. pp. 65 sq.).
          The serpent's acquaintance with the tree of life in the garden of
          Eden perhaps belongs to the same cycle of stories.


558.


B. V. Head, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lydia, pp. cxi-cxiii, with pl. xxvii.
          12. On the coins the champion's name appears as Masnes or Masanes,
          but the reading is doubtful. The name Masnes occurred in Xanthus's
          history of Lydia (Fragmenta Historicorum
          Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iv. 629). It is probably
          the same with Manes, the name of a son of Zeus and Earth, who is
          said to have been the first king of Lydia (Dionysius
          Halicarnasensis, Ant. Rom. i. 27. 1). Manes was
          the father of King Atys (Herodotus, i. 94). Thus Tylon was
          connected with the royal family of Lydia through his champion as
          well as in the ways mentioned in the text.


559.


Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
          l.c.


560.


See above, p. 183.


561.


B. V. Head, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lydia, p. cxiii.


562.


B. V. Head, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lydia, pp. cx, cxiii. The festival
          seems to be mentioned only on coins.


563.


See above, p. 154.


564.


V. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und
          Haustiere7 (Berlin, 1902), p. 261. He
          would derive the name from the Semitic, or at all events the
          Cilician language. The Hebrew word for saffron is karkôm. As to the spring flowers
          of North-Western Asia Minor, W. M. Leake remarks (April 1, 1800)
          that “primroses, violets, and crocuses, are
          the only flowers to be seen” (Journal of a Tour in
          Asia Minor, London, 1824, p. 143). Near Mylasa in
          Caria, Fellows saw (March 20, 1840) the broom covered with yellow
          blossoms and a great variety of anemones, like “a rich Turkey carpet, in which the green grass did not
          form a prominent colour amidst the crimson, lilac, blue, scarlet,
          white, and yellow flowers” (Ch. Fellows, An Account of
          Discoveries in Lycia, London, 1841, pp. 65, 66). In
          February the yellow stars of Gagea arvensis cover the rocky
          and grassy grounds of Lycia, and the field-marigold often meets the
          eye. At the same season in Lycia the shrub Colutea arborescens opens its
          yellow flowers. See T. A. B. Spratt and E. Forbes, Travels in
          Lycia (London, 1847), ii. 133. I must leave it to
          others to identify the Golden Flower of Sardes.


565.


Strabo, xii. 2. 7, p. 538. Mount
          Argaeus still retains its ancient name in slightly altered forms
          (Ardjeh, Erdjich, Erjäus). Its height is about
          13,000 feet. In the nineteenth century it was ascended by at least
          two English travellers, W. J. Hamilton and H. F. Tozer. See W. J.
          Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and
          Armenia, ii. 269-281; H. F. Tozer, Turkish Armenia and
          Eastern Asia Minor, pp. 94, 113-131; Élisée Reclus,
          Nouvelle
          Géographie Universelle (Paris, 1879-1894), ix.
          476-478. A Hittite inscription is carved at a place called Tope
          Nefezi, near Asarjik, on the slope of Mount Argaeus. See J.
          Garstang, The Land of the Hittites, pp.
          152 sq.


566.


H. F. Tozer, op.
          cit. pp. 125-127.


567.


Strabo, xv. 3. 14 sq.,
          pp. 732 sq. A bundle of twigs, called
          the Barsom (Beresma in the
          Avesta), is still used by the Parsee priests in chanting their
          liturgy. See M. Haug, Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings and
          Religion of the Parsis3
          (London, 1884), pp. 4, note 1, 283. When a potter in Southern India
          is making a pot which is to be worshipped as a household deity, he
          “should close his mouth with a bandage, so
          that his breath may not defile the pot.” See E. Thurston,
          Castes
          and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), iv.
          151.


568.


Baron Charles Hügel, Travels in Kashmir
          and the Panjab (London, 1845), pp. 42-46; W. Crooke,
          Things
          Indian (London, 1906), p. 219.


569.


Jonas Hanway, An Historical Account
          of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea: with the Author's
          Journal of Travels, Second Edition (London, 1754), i.
          263. For later descriptions of the fires and fire-worshippers of
          Baku, see J. Reinegg, Beschreibung des Kaukasus
          (Gotha, Hildesheim, and St. Petersburg, 1796-1797), i. 151-159; A.
          von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia (Leipsic, 1856),
          ii. 80-85. Compare W. Crooke, Things Indian, p. 219.


570.


Strabo, xii. 8. 18 sq., p.
          579; xiii. 4. 11, p. 628. The wine of the district is mentioned by
          Vitruvius (viii. 3. 12) and Pliny (Nat.
          Hist. xiv. 75).


571.


W. J. Hamilton, Researches in Asia
          Minor, Pontus, and Armenia, i. 136-140, ii. 131-138.
          One of the three recent cones described by Strabo is now called the
          Kara
          Devlit, or Black Inkstand. Its top is about 2500 feet
          above the sea, but only 500 feet above the surrounding plain. The
          adjoining town of Koula, built of the black lava on which it
          stands, has a sombre and dismal look. Another of the cones, almost
          equally high, has a crater of about half a mile in circumference
          and three or four hundred feet deep.


572.


Strabo, xiii. 4. 11, p. 628. Compare
          his account of the Catanian vineyards (vi. 2. 3, p. 269).


573.


Strabo, xii. 8. 16-18, pp. 578
          sq.; xiii. 4. 10 sq., p.
          628.


574.


Strabo, xii. 8. 18, p. 579. Compare
          Tacitus, Annals, xii. 58.


575.


Strabo, i. 3. 16, p. 57. Compare
          Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis, 11; Pliny,
          Nat.
          Hist. ii. 202; Justin, xxx. 4. The event seems to
          have happened in 197 b.c. Several other islands
          are known to have appeared in the same bay both in ancient and
          modern times. So far as antiquity is concerned, the dates of their
          appearance are given by Pliny, but some confusion on the subject
          has crept into his mind, or rather, perhaps, into his text. See the
          discussion of the subject in W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek
          and Roman Geography (London, 1873), ii. 1158-1160. As
          to the eruptions in the bay of Santorin, the last of which occurred
          in 1866 and produced a new island, see Sir Charles Lyell,
          Principles of
          Geology12 (London, 1875), i. 51, ii.
          65 sqq.; C. Neumann und J. Partsch,
          Physikalische Geographie von
          Griechenland (Breslau, 1885), pp. 272 sqq.
          There is a monograph on Santorin and its eruptions (F. Fouqué,
          Santorin
          et ses éruptions, Paris, 1879). Strabo has given a
          brief but striking account of Rhodes, its architecture, its
          art-treasures, and its constitution (xiv. 2. 5, pp. 652
          sq.). As to the Rhodian schools
          of art see H. Brunn, Geschichte der griechischen
          Künstler (Stuttgart, 1857-1859), i. 459 sqq.,
          ii. 233 sqq., 286 sq.


576.


Aristophanes, Acharn.
          682; Pausanias, iii. 11. 9, vii. 21. 7; Plutarch, Theseus, 36; Aristides,
          Isthmic. vol. i. p. 29, ed. G.
          Dindorf (Leipsic, 1829); Appian, Bell.
          Civ. v. 98; Macrobius, Saturn.
          i. 17. 22; G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecarum2 (Leipsic, 1898-1901), ii.
          p. 230, No. 543.


577.


Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae
          Compendium, 22.


578.


Xenophon, Hellenica, iv. 7. 4. As to the
          Spartan headquarters staff (οἱ περὶ δαμοσίαν), see id. iv.
          5. 8, vi. 4. 14; Xenophon, Respublica Lacedaem. xiii. 1,
          xv. 4. Usually the Spartans desisted from any enterprise they had
          in hand when an earthquake happened (Thucydides, iii. 59. 1, v. 50.
          5, vi. 95. 1).


579.


Thucydides, v. 70. 1. The use of the
          music, Thucydides tells us, was not to inspire the men, but to
          enable them to keep step, and so to march in close order. Without
          music a long line of battle was apt to straggle in advancing to the
          charge. As missiles were little used in Greek warfare, there was no
          need to hurry the advance over the intervening ground; so it was
          made deliberately and with the bands playing. The air to which the
          Spartans charged was called Castor's tune. It was the king in
          person who gave the word for the flutes to strike up. See Plutarch,
          Lycurgus, 22.


580.


Xenophon, Respublica
          Lacedaem. xi. 3; Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1140; Aristotle,
          cited by a scholiast on Aristophanes, Acharn.
          320; Plutarch, Instituta Laconica, 24. When a
          great earthquake had destroyed the city of Sparta and the
          Messenians were in revolt, the Spartans sent a messenger to Athens
          asking for help. Aristophanes (Lysistrata,
          1138 sqq.) describes the man as if he
          had seen him, sitting as a suppliant on the altar with his pale
          face and his red coat.


581.


I have assumed that the sun shone on
          the Spartans at Thermopylae. For the battle was fought in the
          height of summer, when the Greek sky is generally cloudless, and on
          that particular morning the weather was very still. The evening
          before, the Persians had sent round a body of troops by a difficult
          pass to take the Spartans in the rear; day was breaking when they
          neared the summit, and the first intimation of their approach which
          reached the ears of the Phocian guards posted on the mountain was
          the loud crackling of leaves under their feet in the oak forest.
          Moreover, the famous Spartan saying about fighting in the shade of
          the Persian arrows, which obscured the sun, points to bright, hot
          weather. It was at high noon, and therefore probably in the full
          blaze of the mid-day sun, that the last march-out took place. See
          Herodotus, vii. 215-226; and as to the date of the battle (about
          the time of the Olympic games) see Herodotus, vii. 206, viii. 12
          and 26; G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte,
          ii.2 (Gotha, 1895) p. 673, note
          9.


582.


S. Müller, Reizen en
          Onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel (Amsterdam,
          1857), ii. 264 sq. Compare A. Bastian,
          Indonesien (Berlin, 1884-1889),
          ii. 3. The beliefs and customs of the East Indian peoples in regard
          to earthquakes have been described by G. A. Wilken, Het animisme bij de
          volken van den Indischen Archipel, Tweede Stuk
          (Leyden, 1885), pp. 247-254; id., Verspreide
          Geschriften (The Hague, 1912), iii. 274-281. Compare
          id., Handleiding voor de
          vergelijkende Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië
          (Leyden, 1893), pp. 604 sq.; and on primitive
          conceptions of earthquakes in general, E. B. Tylor, Primitive
          Culture2 (London, 1873), i. 364-366;
          R. Lasch, “Die Ursache und Bedeutung der
          Erdbeben im Volksglauben und Volksbrauch,” Archiv für
          Religionswissenschaft, v. (1902) pp. 236-257,
          369-383.


583.


Epiphanius, Adversus
          Haereses, ii. 2. 23 (Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, xlii. 68).


584.


H. N. van der Tuuk, “Notes on the Kawi Language and Literature,”
Journal
          of the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S. xiii. (1881) p.
          50.


585.


J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en
          kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The
          Hague, 1886), p. 398; compare id. pp. 330, 428.


586.


G. Bamler, “Tami,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch
          Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) p. 492.


587.


Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at
          Home (London, 1910), p. 54.


588.


De St. Cricq, “Voyage du Pérou au Brésil par les fleuves Ucayali et
          Amazone, Indiens Conibos,” Bulletin de la
          Société de Géographie (Paris), ive
          Série, vi. (1853) p. 292.


589.


Miss Alice Werner, The Natives of
          British Central Africa (London, 1906), p. 56.


590.


Mgr. Lechaptois, Aux Rives du
          Tanganika (Algiers, 1913), p. 217.


591.


Rev. J. Roscoe, The
          Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 313 sq.


592.


W. Ködding, “Die batakschen Götter und ihr Verhältniss zum
          Brahmanismus,” Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift,
          xii. (1885) p. 405.


593.


G. A. Wilken, “Het Animisme bij de volken van den Indischen
          Archipel,” Verspreide Geschriften, ii. 279;
          H. N. van der Tuuk, op. cit. pp. 49 sq.


594.


J. G. F. Riedel, “De Topantunuasu of oorspronkelijke Volkstammen van
          Central Selebes,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde
          van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxv. (1886) p. 95.


595.


John Williams, Narrative of
          Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands
          (London, 1838), p. 379.


596.


G. Turner, Samoa
          (London, 1884), p. 211; Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the
          United States Exploring Expedition, New Edition (New
          York, 1851), ii. 131.


597.


A. Schadenburg, “Die Bewohner von Süd-Mindanao und der Insel
          Samal,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie,
          xvii. (1885) p. 32.


598.


W. Mariner, Account of the
          Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Edition (London,
          1818), ii. 112 sq.


599.


Sangermano, Description of the
          Burmese Empire (Rangoon, 1885), p. 130.


600.


P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Küstenbewohner
          der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Münster,
          n.d.), p. 336.


601.


A. Pinart, “Les Indiens de l'État de Panama,” Revue
          d'Ethnographie, vi. (1887) p. 119.


602.


E. J. Payne, History of the New
          World called America, i. (Oxford, 1892) p. 469.


603.


A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking
          Peoples of the Gold Coast (London, 1887), pp. 35
          sq.


604.


J. Jackson, in J. E. Erskine's
          Journal
          of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific
          (London, 1853), p. 473. My friend, the late Mr. Lorimer Fison,
          wrote to me (December 15, 1906) that the name of the Fijian
          earthquake god is Maui, not A Dage, as Jackson says. Mr. Fison
          adds, “I have seen Fijians stamping and
          smiting the ground and yelling at the top of their voices in order
          to rouse him.”


605.


J. T. Nieuwenhuisen en H. C. B. von
          Rosenberg, “Verslag omtrent het eiland
          Nias,” Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap
          van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxx. (Batavia, 1863) p.
          118; Th. C. Rappard, “Het eiland Nias en
          zijne bewoners,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde
          van Nederlandsch-Indië, lxii. (1909) p. 582. In
          Soerakarta, a district of Java, when an earthquake takes place the
          people lie flat on their stomachs on the ground, and lick it with
          their tongues so long as the earthquake lasts. This they do in
          order that they may not lose their teeth prematurely. See J. W.
          Winter, “Beknopte Beschrijving van het hof
          Soerokarta in 1824,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde
          van Nederlandsch-Indië, liv. (1902) p. 85. The
          connexion of ideas in this custom is not clear.


606.


On this question see C. Neumann und J.
          Partsch, Physikalische Geographie von
          Griechenland (Breslau, 1885), pp. 332-336. As to the
          frequency of earthquakes in Achaia and Asia Minor see Seneca,
          Epist. xiv. 3. 9; and as to
          Achaia in particular see C. Neumann und J. Partsch, op.
          cit. pp. 324-326. On the coast of Achaia there was a
          chain of sanctuaries of Poseidon (L. Preller, Griechische
          Mythologie, i.4 575).


607.


See Sir Ch. Lyell, Principles of
          Geology,12 ii. 147 sqq.;
          J. Milne, Earthquakes (London, 1886), pp.
          165 sqq.


608.


See, for example, Thucydides, iii.
          89.


609.


Strabo, viii. 7. 1 sq.,
          pp. 384 sq.; Diodorus Siculus, xv. 49;
          Aelian, Nat. Anim. xi. 19; Pausanias,
          vii. 24. 5 sq. and 12, vii. 25. 1 and
          4.


610.


Diodorus Siculus, xv. 49. 4
          sq. Among the most famous seats
          of the worship of Poseidon in Peloponnese were Taenarum in Laconia,
          Helice in Achaia, Mantinea in Arcadia, and the island of Calauria,
          off the coast of Troezen. See Pausanias, ii. 33. 2, iii. 25. 4-8,
          vii. 24. 5 sq., viii. 10. 2-4. Laconia as
          well as Achaia has suffered much from earthquakes, and it contained
          many sanctuaries of Poseidon. We may suppose that the deity was
          worshipped here chiefly as the earthquake god, since the rugged
          coasts of Laconia are ill adapted to maritime enterprise, and the
          Lacedaemonians were never a seafaring folk. See C. Neumann und J.
          Partsch, Physikalische Geographie von
          Griechenland, pp. 330 sq.,
          335 sq. For Laconian sanctuaries of
          Poseidon see Pausanias, iii. 11. 9, iii. 12. 5, iii. 14. 2 and 7,
          iii. 15. 10, iii. 20. 2, iii. 21. 5, iii. 25. 4.


611.


Sir Ch. Lyell, Principles of
          Geology,12 i. 391 sqq.,
          590.


612.


“Extract from
          a Letter of Mr. Alexander Loudon,” Journal of the Royal
          Geographical Society, ii. (1832) pp. 60-62; Sir Ch.
          Lyell, Principles of
          Geology,12 i. 590.


613.


Sir Ch. Lyell, l.c.


614.


Lucretius, vi. 738 sqq.


615.


Strabo, v. 4. 5, p. 244, xii. 8. 17,
          p. 579, xiii. 4. 14, p. 629, xiv. 1. 11 and 44, pp. 636, 649;
          Cicero, De divinatione, i. 36. 79;
          Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 208. Compare
          [Aristotle,] De mundo, 4, p. 395 B, ed.
          Bekker.


616.


Servius on Virgil, Aen.
          vii. 84, who says that some people looked on Mefitis as a god, the
          male partner of Leucothoë, to whom he stood as Adonis to Venus or
          as Virbius to Diana. As to Mefitis see L. Preller, Römische
          Mythologie3 (Berlin, 1881-1883), ii.
          144 sq.; R. Peter, s.v.
“Mefitis” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2519
          sqq.


617.


Virgil, Aen.
          vii. 563-571, with the commentary of Servius; Cicero, De
          divinatione, i. 36. 79; Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. ii. 208.


618.


Letter of Mr. Hamilton (British Envoy
          at the Court of Naples), in Journal of the Royal Geographical
          Society, ii. (1832) pp. 62-65; W. Smith's
          Dictionary of Greek and Roman
          Geography, i. 127; H. Nissen, Italische
          Landeskunde (Berlin, 1883-1902), i. 242, 271, ii. 819
          sq. Another place in Italy
          infested by poisonous exhalations is the grotto called dei cani at Naples. It is
          described by Addison in his “Remarks on
          Several Parts of Italy” (Works,
          London, 1811, vol. ii. pp. 89-91).


619.


Strabo, xiv. 1. 11, p. 636.


620.


Strabo, xiv. 1. 44, pp. 649
          sq. A coin of Nysa shows the
          bull carried to the sacrifice by six naked youths and preceded by a
          naked flute-player. See B. V. Head, Catalogue of the
          Greek Coins of Lydia, pp. lxxxiii. 181, pl. xx. 10.
          Strabo was familiar with this neighbourhood, for he tells us (xiv.
          1. 48, p. 650) that in his youth he studied at Nysa under the
          philosopher Aristodemus.


621.


Some of the ancients assigned
          Hierapolis to Lydia, and others to Phrygia (W. M. Ramsay,
          Cities
          and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. (Oxford, 1895) pp. 84
          sq.


622.


Strabo, xiii. 4. 14, pp. 629
          sq.; Dio Cassius, lxviii. 27. 3;
          Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 208; Ammianus
          Marcellinus, xxiii. 6. 18.


623.


Ammianus Marcellinus (l.c.)
          speaks as if the cave no longer existed in his time.


624.


Strabo, xiii. 4. 14, pp. 629, 630;
          Vitruvius, viii. 3. 10. For modern descriptions of Hierapolis see
          R. Chandler, Travels in Asia
          Minor2 (London, 1776), pp.
          228-235; Ch. Fellows, Journal written during an Excursion in Asia
          Minor (London, 1839), pp. 283-285; W. J. Hamilton,
          Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and
          Armenia, i. 517-521; E. Renan, Saint
          Paul, pp. 357 sq.; E. J. Davis, Anatolica (London, 1874), pp.
          97-112; É. Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie Universelle,
          ix. 510-512; W. Cochran, Pen and Pencil Sketches in Asia
          Minor (London, 1887), pp. 387-390; W. M. Ramsay,
          Cities
          and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. 84 sqq.
          The temperature of the hot pool varies from 85 to 90 degrees
          Fahrenheit. The volcanic district of Tuscany which skirts the
          Apennines abounds in hot calcareous springs which have produced
          phenomena like those of Hierapolis. Indeed the whole ground is in
          some places coated over with tufa and travertine, which have been
          deposited by the water, and, like the ground at Hierapolis, it
          sounds hollow under the foot. See Sir Ch. Lyell, Principles of
          Geology,12 i. 397 sqq. As
          to the terraces of Rotomahana in New Zealand, which were destroyed
          by an eruption of Mount Taravera in 1886, see R. Taylor,
          Te Ika A
          Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants2
          (London, 1870), pp. 464-469.


625.


Athenaeus, xii. 6. p. 512.


626.


Aristophanes, Clouds,
          1044-1054.


627.


Scholiast on Aristophanes,
          Clouds, 1050; Scholiast on
          Pindar, Olymp. xii. 25; Suidas and
          Hesychius, s.v. Ἡράκλεια λουτρά;
          Apostolius, viii. 66; Zenobius, vi. 49; Diogenianus, v. 7;
          Plutarch, Proverbia Alexandrinorum, 21;
          Diodorus Siculus, iv. 23. 1, v. 3. 4. Another story was that
          Hercules, like Moses, produced the water by smiting the rock with
          his club (Antoninus Liberalis, Transform.
          4).


628.


Apostolius, viii. 68; Zenobius, vi.
          49; Diogenianus, v. 7; Plutarch, Proverbia
          Alexandrinorum, 21.


629.


Lucian, Dialogi
          Deorum, 13.


630.


Strabo, ix. 4. 13, p. 428.


631.


Herodotus, vii. 176; Pausanias, iv.
          35. 9; Philostratus, Vit. Sophist. ii. 1. 9.


632.


Scholiast on Aristophanes,
          Clouds, 1050.


633.


I have described Thermopylae as I saw
          it in November 1895. Compare W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern
          Greece (London, 1835), ii. 33 sqq.;
          E. Dodwell, Classical and Topographical Tour through
          Greece (London, 1819), ii. 66 sqq.;
          K. G. Fiedler, Reise durch alle Theile des Königreichs
          Griechenland (Leipsic, 1840-1841), i. 207
          sqq.; L. Ross, Wanderungen in
          Griechenland (Halle, 1851), i. 90 sqq.;
          C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland
          (Leipsic, 1862-1872), i. 92 sqq.


634.


Thucydides, iii. 87 and 89; Strabo, i.
          3. 20, pp. 60 sq.; C. Neumann und J. Partsch,
          Physikalische Geographie von
          Griechenland, pp. 321-323.


635.


Aristotle, Meteora, ii. 8, p. 366
          a, ed. Bekker; Strabo, ix.
          4. 2, p. 425. Aristotle expressly recognized the connexion of the
          springs with earthquakes, which he tells us were very common in
          this district. As to the earthquakes of Euboea see also Thucydides,
          iii. 87, 89; Strabo, i. 3. 16 and 20, pp. 58, 60 sq.


636.


Plutarch, Sulla,
          26.


637.


Plutarch, Quaest.
          Conviviales, iv. 4. 1; id.,
          De
          fraterno Amore, 17.


638.


As to the hot springs of Aedepsus (the
          modern Lipso) see K. G. Fiedler,
          Reise
          durch alle Theile des Königreichs Griechenland, i.
          487-492; H. N. Ulrichs, Reisen und Forschungen in
          Griechenland (Bremen, 1840—Berlin, 1863), ii.
          233-235; C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland, ii.
          409; C. Neumann und J. Partsch, Physikalische
          Geographie von Griechenland, pp. 342-344.


639.


Strabo, i. 3. 20, p. 60.


640.


Athenaeus, iii. 4, p. 73 e, d.


641.


The hot springs of Himera (the modern
          Termini) were said to have been
          produced for the refreshment of the weary Hercules. See Diodorus
          Siculus, iv. 23. 1, v. 3. 4; Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp.
          xii. 25. The hero is said to have taught the Syracusans to
          sacrifice a bull annually to Persephone at the Blue Spring
          (Cyane) near Syracuse; the beasts
          were drowned in the water of the pool. See Diodorus Siculus, iv.
          23. 4, v. 4. 1 sq. As to the spring, which is
          now thickly surrounded by tall papyrus-plants introduced by the
          Arabs, see K. Baedeker, Southern Italy7
          (Leipsic, 1880), pp. 356, 357.


642.


The splendid baths of Allifae in
          Samnium, of which there are considerable remains, were sacred to
          Hercules. See G. Wilmanns, Exempla Inscriptionum Latinarum
          (Berlin, 1873), vol. i. p. 227, No. 735 c; H. Nissen, Italische
          Landeskunde, ii. 798. It is characteristic of the
          volcanic nature of the springs that the same inscription which
          mentions these baths of Hercules records their destruction by an
          earthquake.


643.


H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, vol. ii. Pars i. (Berlin, 1902) p. 113, No.
          3891.


644.


Speaking of thermal springs Lyell
          observes that the description of them “might almost with equal propriety have been given
          under the head of ‘igneous causes,’
          as they are agents of a mixed nature, being at once igneous and
          aqueous” (Principles of
          Geology,12 i. 392).


645.


See above, p. 194.


646.


S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic
          Religion To-day (Chicago, New York, and Toronto,
          1902), pp. 116 sq.; Mrs. H. H. Spoer,
          “The Powers of Evil in Jerusalem,”
Folk-lore, xviii. (1907) p. 55.
          See above, p. 78.


647.


Josephus, Antiquit.
          Jud. xvii. 6. 5. The medical properties of the spring
          are mentioned by Pliny (Nat. Hist. v. 72).


648.


C. L. Irby and J. Mangles,
          Travels
          in Egypt and Nubia, Syria and the Holy Land (London,
          1844), pp. 144 sq.; W. Smith, Dictionary of Greek
          and Roman Geography (London, 1873), i. 482,
          s.v. “Callirrhoë”; K. Baedeker, Syria and
          Palestine4 (Leipsic, 1906), p. 148; H.
          B. Tristram, The Land of Moab (London, 1873),
          pp. 233-250, 285 sqq.; Jacob E. Spafford,
          “Around the Dead Sea by Motor Boat,”
The
          Geographical Journal, xxxix. (1912) pp. 39
          sq. The river formed by the
          springs is now called the Zerka.


649.


Antonin Jaussen, Coutumes des Arabes
          au pays de Moab (Paris, 1908), pp. 359 sq. The
          Arabs think that the evil spirits let the hot water out of hell,
          lest its healing properties should assuage the pains of the damned.
          See H. B. Tristram, The Land of Moab (London, 1873),
          p. 247.


650.


W. Ellis, Polynesian
          Researches, Second Edition (London, 1832-1836), iv.
          235 sqq. Mr. Ellis was the first
          European to visit and describe the tremendous volcano. His visit
          was paid in the year 1823. Compare The Encyclopaedia
          Britannica,9 xi. 531.


651.


W. Ellis, op.
          cit. iv. 246 sq.


652.


W. Ellis, op.
          cit. iv. 248-250.


653.


W. Ellis, op.
          cit. iv. 207, 234-236. The berries resemble currants
          in shape and size and grow on low bushes. “The branches small and clear, leaves alternate, obtuse
          with a point, and serrated; the flower was monopetalous, and, on
          being examined, determined the plant to belong to the class
          decandria and order monogynia. The native name of
          the plant is ohelo” (W. Ellis,
          op.
          cit. iv. 234).


654.


W. Ellis, op.
          cit. iv. 263.


655.


W. Ellis, op.
          cit. iv. 350.


656.


W. Ellis, op.
          cit. iv. 309-311.


657.


W. Ellis, op.
          cit. iv. 361.


658.


Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés,
          Historia
          General y Natural de las Indias (Madrid, 1851-1855),
          iv. 74.


659.


A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den
          Indischen Archipel (The Hague, 1906), pp. 497
          sq.


660.


W. B. d'Almeida, Life in
          Java (London, 1864), i. 166-173.


661.


J. H. F. Kohlbrugge, “Die Tĕnggĕresen, ein alter Javanischer
          Volksstamm,” Bijdragentot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van
          Nederlandsch-Indië, liii. (1901) pp. 84,
          144-147.


662.


J. H. F. Kohlbrugge, op.
          cit. pp. 100 sq.


663.


I. A. Stigand, “The Volcano of Smeroe, Java,” The Geographical
          Journal, xxviii. (1906) pp. 621, 624.


664.


Pausanias, iii. 23. 9. Some have
          thought that Pausanias confused the crater of Etna with the
          Lago
          di Naftia, a pool near Palagonia in the interior of
          Sicily, of which the water, impregnated with naphtha and sulphur,
          is thrown into violent ebullition by jets of volcanic gas. See
          [Aristotle,] Mirab. Auscult. 57; Macrobius,
          Saturn. v. 19. 26 sqq.;
          Diodorus Siculus, xi. 89; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v.
          Παλική; E. H. Bunbury, s.v. “Palicorum Iacus,” in W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek
          and Roman Geography, ii. 533 sq. The
          author of the ancient Latin poem Aetna
          says (vv. 340 sq.) that people offered incense
          to the celestial deities on the top of Etna.


665.


See above, pp. 190 sq.


666.


On Mount Chimaera in Lycia a flame
          burned perpetually which neither earth nor water could extinguish.
          See Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 236, v. 100;
          Servius on Virgil, Aen. vi. 288; Seneca,
          Epist. x. 3. 3; Diodorus, quoted
          by Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 212 b, 10 sqq.,
          ed. Im. Bekker (Berlin, 1824). This perpetual flame was
          rediscovered by Captain Beaufort near Porto Genovese on the coast
          of Lycia. It issues from the side of a hill of crumbly serpentine
          rock, giving out an intense heat, but no smoke. “Trees, brushwood, and weeds grow close round this
          little crater, a small stream trickles down the hill hard bye, and
          the ground does not appear to feel the effect of its heat at more
          than a few feet distance.” The fire is not accompanied by
          earthquakes or noises; it ejects no stones and emits no noxious
          vapours. There is nothing but a brilliant and perpetual flame, at
          which the shepherds often cook their food. See Fr. Beaufort,
          Karmania (London, 1817), p. 46;
          compare T. A. B. Spratt and E. Forbes, Travels in
          Lycia (London, 1847), ii. 181 sq.


667.


In the foregoing discussion I have
          confined myself, so far as concerns Asia, to the volcanic regions
          of Cappadocia, Lydia, and Caria. But Syria and Palestine, the home
          of Adonis and Melcarth, “abound in volcanic
          appearances, and very extensive areas have been shaken, at
          different periods, with great destruction of cities and loss of
          lives. Continual mention is made in history of the ravages
          committed by earthquakes in Sidon, Tyre, Berytus, Laodicea, and
          Antioch, and in the island of Cyprus. The country around the Dead
          Sea exhibits in some spots layers of sulphur and bitumen, forming a
          superficial deposit, supposed by Mr. Tristram to be of volcanic
          origin” (Sir Ch. Lyell, Principles of
          Geology,12 i. 592 sq.).
          As to the earthquakes of Syria and Phoenicia see Strabo, i. 3. 16,
          p. 58; Lucretius, vi. 585; Josephus, Antiquit.
          Jud. xv. 5. 2; id., Bell.
          Jud. i. 19. 3; W. M. Thomson, The Land and the
          Book, Central Palestine and Phoenicia, pp. 568-574;
          Ed. Robinson, Biblical Researches in
          Palestine,3 ii. 422-424; S. R. Driver,
          on Amos iv. 11 (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges).
          It is said that in the reign of the Emperor Justin the city of
          Antioch was totally destroyed by a dreadful earthquake, in which
          three hundred thousand people perished (Procopius, De Bello
          Persico, ii. 14). The destruction of Sodom and
          Gomorrah (Genesis xix. 24-28) has been plausibly explained as the
          effect of an earthquake liberating large quantities of petroleum
          and inflammable gases. See H. B. Tristram, The Land of
          Israel, Fourth Edition (London, 1882), pp. 350-354;
          S. R. Driver, The Book of Genesis4
          (London, 1905), pp. 202 sq.


668.


Plutarch, Alcibiades, 18; id.,
          Nicias, 13; Zenobius,
          Centur. i. 49; Theocritus, xv.
          132 sqq.; Eustathius on Homer,
          Od. xi. 590.


669.


Besides Lucian (cited below) see
          Origen, Selecta in Ezechielem (Migne's
          Patrologia Graeca, xiii. 800),
          δοκοῦσι γὰρ κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν τελετάς τινας ποιεῖν πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι
          θρηνοῦσιν αὐτὸν [scil. Ἄδωνιν] ὡς τεθνηκότα, δεύτερον δὲ ὅτι
          χαίρουσιν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ ὡς ἀπὸ νεκρῶν ἀναστάντι. Jerome, Commentar. in
          Ezechielem, viii. 13, 14 (Migne's Patrologia
          Latina, xxv. 82, 83): “Quem nos
          Adonidem interpretati sumus, et
          Hebraeus et Syrus sermo Thamuz (תמוז) vocat: unde quia juxta gentilem fabulam, in
          mense Junis amasius Veneris et pulcherrimus juvenis occisus, et
          deinceps revixisse narratur, eundem Junium mensem eodem appellant
          nomine, et anniversariam ei celebrant solemnitatem, in qua
          plangitur a mulieribus quasi mortuus, et postea reviviscens canitur
          atque laudatur ... interfectionem et resurrectionem Adonidis
          planctu et gaudio prosequens.” Cyril of
          Alexandria, In Isaiam, lib. ii. tomus iii.
          (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxx. 441),
          ἐπλάττοντο τοίνυν Ἔλληνες ἑορτὴν ἐπὶ τούτῳ τοιαύτην. Προσεποιοῦντο
          μὲν γὰρ λυπουμένῃ τῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ, διὰ τὸ τεθνάναι τὸν Ἄδωνιν,
          συνολοφύρεσθαι καὶ θρηνεῖν; ἀνελθούσης δὲ ἐξ ᾅδου, καὶ μὴν καὶ
          ηὐρῆσθαι λεγούσης τὸν ζητούμενον, συνήδεσθαι καὶ ἀνασκιρτᾶν; καὶ
          μεχρὶ τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς καιρῶν ἐν τοῖς κατ᾽ Ἀλεξάνδρειαν ἱεροῖς
          ἐτελεῖτο τὸ παίγνιον τοῦτο. From this testimony of Cyril we learn
          that the festival of the death and resurrection of Adonis was
          celebrated at Alexandria down to his time, that is, down to the
          fourth or even the fifth century, long after the official
          establishment of Christianity.


670.


Theocritus, xv.


671.


W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und
          Feldkulte (Berlin, 1877), p. 277.


672.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 6. See above, p. 38. The flutes used by the
          Phoenicians in the lament for Adonis are mentioned by Athenaeus
          (iv. 76, p. 174 f), and by Pollux (iv.
          76), who say that the same name gingras was applied by the
          Phoenicians both to the flute and to Adonis himself. Compare F. C.
          Movers, Die Phoenizier, i. 243
          sq. We have seen that flutes
          were also played in the Babylonian rites of Tammuz (above, p.
          9). Lucian's words, ἐς τὸν
          ἠέρα πέμπουσι, imply that the ascension of the god was supposed to
          take place in the presence, if not before the eyes, of the
          worshipping crowds. The devotion of Byblus to Adonis is noticed
          also by Strabo (xvi. 2. 18, p. 755).


673.




Lucian,
            De dea
            Syria, 8. The discoloration of the river and the
            sea was observed by H. Maundrell on 17/27 March 1696/1697. See
            his Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, at
            Easter, a.d.
1697, Fourth
            Edition (Perth, 1800), pp. 59 sq.;
            id., in Bohn's Early Travels in
            Palestine, edited by Thomas Wright (London, 1848),
            pp. 411 sq. Renan remarked the
            discoloration at the beginning of February (Mission de
            Phénicie, p. 283). In his well-known lines on the
            subject Milton has laid the mourning in summer:—


“Thammuz came next behind,

Whose annual wound in Lebanon
            allur'd

The Syrian damsels to lament his
            fate

In amorous ditties all a
            summer's day.”




674.


Ovid, Metam.
          x. 735; Servius on Virgil, Aen. v. 72; J. Tzetzes,
          Schol. on
          Lycophron, 831. Bion, on the other hand, represents
          the anemone as sprung from the tears of Aphrodite (Idyl.
          i. 66).


675.


W. Robertson Smith, “Ctesias and the Semiramis Legend,” English Historical
          Review, ii. (1887) p. 307, following Lagarde. Compare
          W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun, pp. 88
          sq.


676.


J. Tzetzes, Schol. on
          Lycophron, 831; Geoponica, xi. 17; Mythographi
          Graeci, ed. A. Westermann, p. 359. Compare Bion,
          Idyl. i. 66; Pausanias, vi. 24.
          7; Philostratus, Epist. i. and iii.


677.


Plutarch, Alcibiades, 18; id.,
          Nicias, 13. The date of the
          sailing of the fleet is given by Thucydides (vi. 30, θέρους
          μεσοῦντος ἤδη), who, with his habitual contempt for the
          superstition of his countrymen, disdains to notice the coincidence.
          Adonis was also bewailed by the Argive women (Pausanias, ii. 20.
          6), but we do not know at what season of the year the lamentation
          took place. Inscriptions prove that processions in honour of Adonis
          were held in the Piraeus, and that a society of his worshippers
          existed at Loryma in Caria. See G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecarum,2 Nos. 726, 741 (vol. ii. pp.
          564, 604).


678.


Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 9.
          15.


679.


The Dying God, pp. 261-266.


680.


In the Alexandrian ceremony, however,
          it appears to have been the image of Adonis only which was thrown
          into the sea.


681.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 14. 4;
          Scholiast on Theocritus, i. 109; Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. 34; J. Tzetzes,
          Scholia
          on Lycophron, 829; Ovid, Metamorph. x. 489 sqq.;
          Servius on Virgil, Aen. v. 72, and on Bucol.
          x. 18; Hyginus, Fab. 58, 164; Fulgentius, iii.
          8. The word Myrrha or Smyrna is borrowed from the Phoenician
          (Liddell and Scott, Greek Lexicon, s.v.
          σμύρνα). Hence the mother's name, as well as the son's, was taken
          directly from the Semites.


682.


W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und
          Feldkulte, p. 383, note 2.


683.


Above, p. 9.


684.


Jeremiah xliv. 17-19.


685.


Scholiast on Theocritus, iii. 48;
          Hyginus, Astronom. ii. 7; Lucian,
          Dialog.
          deor. xi. 1; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae
          Compendium, 28, p. 54, ed. C. Lang (Leipsic, 1881);
          Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 14. 4.


686.


The arguments which tell against the
          solar interpretation of Adonis are stated more fully by the learned
          and candid scholar Graf Baudissin (Adonis und
          Esmun, pp. 169 sqq.), who himself formerly
          accepted the solar theory but afterwards rightly rejected it in
          favour of the view “dass Adonis die Frühlingsvegetation darstellt,
          die im Sommer abstirbt” (op.
          cit. p. 169).


687.


Bailly, Lettres sur l'Origine
          des Sciences (London and Paris, 1777), pp. 255
          sq.; id.,
          Lettres
          sur l'Atlantide de Platon (London and Paris, 1779),
          pp. 114-125. Carlyle has described how through the sleety drizzle
          of a dreary November day poor innocent Bailly was dragged to the
          scaffold amid the howls and curses of the Parisian mob
          (French
          Revolution, bk. v. ch. 2). My friend the late
          Professor C. Bendall showed me a book by a Hindoo gentleman in
          which it is seriously maintained that the primitive home of the
          Aryans was within the Arctic regions. See Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak,
          The
          Arctic Home in the Vedas (Poona and Bombay,
          1903).


688.


Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae
          Compendium, 28, pp. 54 sq.,
          ed. C. Lang (Leipsic, 1881), τοιοῦτον γάρ τι καὶ παρ᾽ Αἰγυπτίοις ὁ
          ζητούμενος καὶ ἀνευρισκόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς Ἴσιδος Ὄσιρις ἐμφαίνει καὶ
          παρὰ Φοίνιξιν ὁ ἀνὰ μέρος παρ᾽ ἔξ μῆνας ὑπὲρ γῆν τε καὶ ὑπὸ γῆν
          γινόμενος Ἄδωνις, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀδεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις οὔτως ὠνομασμένου
          τοῦ Δημητριακοῦ καρποῦ. τοῦτον δὲ πλήξας κάπρος ἀνελεῖν λέγεται διὰ
          τὸ τὰς ὗς δοκεῖν ληιβότειρας εἶναι ἢ τὸν τῆς ὕνεως ὀδόντα
          αἰνιττομένων αὐτῶν, ὑφ᾽ οὖ κατὰ γῆς κρύπτεται τὸ σπέρμα. Scholiast
          on Theocritus, iii. 48, ὁ Ἄδωνις, ἤγουν ὁ σῖτος ὁ σπειρόμενος, ἔξ
          μῆνας ἐν τῇ γῇ ποιεῖ ἀπο τῆς σπορᾶς καὶ ἔξ μῆνας ἔχει αὐτὸν ἡ
          Ἀφροδίτη, τουτέστιν ἡ εὐκρασία τοῦ ἀέρος. καὶ ἐκτότε λαμβάνουσιν
          αὐτὸν οἱ ἄνθρωποι. Origen, Selecta in Ezechielem (Migne's
          Patrologia Graeca, xiii. 800),
          οἱ δὲ περὶ τὴν ἀναγωγὴν τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν μύθων δεινοὶ καὶ μυθικῆς
          νομιζομένης θεολογίας, φασί τὸν Ἄδωνιν σύμβολον εἶναι τῶν τῆς γῆς
          καρπῶν, θρηνουμένων μὲν ὅτε σπείρονται, ἀνισταμένων δέ, καὶ διὰ
          τοῦτο χαίρειν ποιούντων τοὺς γεωργοὺς ὅτε φύονται. Jerome,
          Commentar. in Ezechielem, viii.
          13, 14 (Migne's Patrologia Latina, xxv. 83),
          “Eadem gentilitas
          hujuscemodi fabulas poetarum, quae habent turpitudinem,
          interpretatur subtiliter, interfectionem et resurrectionem Adonidis
          planctu et gaudio prosequens: quorum alterum in seminibus, quae
          moriuntur in terra, alterum in segetibus, quibus mortua semina
          renascuntur, ostendi putat.” Ammianus
          Marcellinus, xix. 1. 11, “in sollemnibus Adonidis sacris, quod
          simulacrum aliquod esse frugum adultarum religiones mysticae
          docent.” Id. xxii. 9. 15, “amato Veneris, ut fabulae
          fingunt, apri dente ferali deleto, quod in adulto flore sectarum
          est indicium frugum.” Clement of Alexandria,
          Hom. 6. 11 (quoted by W.
          Mannhardt, Antique Wald- und Feldkulte, p.
          281), λαμβάνουσι δὲ καὶ Ἄδωνιν εἰς ὡραίους καρπούς. Etymologieum
          Magnum s.v. Ἄδωνις κύριον; δύναται καὶ
          ὁ καρπὸς εἶναι ἄδωνις; οἶον ἀδώνειος καρπός, ἀρέσκων. Eusebius,
          Praepar.
          Evang. iii. II. 9, Ἄδωνις τῆς τῶν τελείων καρπῶν
          ἐκτομῆς σύμβολον. Sallustius philosophus, “De diis et mundo,” iv. Fragmenta
          Philosophorum Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii.
          32, οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι ... αὐτὰ τὰ σώματα θεοὺς νομίσαντες ... Ἴσιν μὲν
          τὴν γῆν ... Ἄδωνιν δὲ καρπούς. Joannes Lydus, De
          mensibus, iv. 4, τῷ Ἀδώνιδι, τουτέστι τῷ Μαΐῳ ... ἢ
          ὡς ἄλλοις, δοκεῖ, Ἄδωνις μέν ἐστιν ὁ καρπός, κτλ. The view that
          Tammuz or Adonis is a personification of the dying and reviving
          vegetation is now accepted by many scholars. See P. Jensen,
          Kosmologie der Babylonier
          (Strasburg, 1890), p. 480; id., Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und
          Epen, pp. 411, 560; H. Zimmern, in E. Schrader's
          Keilinschriften und das Alte
          Testament,3 p. 397; A. Jeremias,
          s.v. “Nergal,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, iii. 265; R. Wünsch,
          Das
          Frühlingsfest der Insel Malta (Leipsic, 1902), p. 21;
          M. J. Lagrange, Études sur les Religions
          Sémitiques,2 pp. 306 sqq.;
          W. W. Graf Baudissin, “Tammuz,”
Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie
          und Kirchengeschichte; id.,
          Esmun und
          Adonis, pp. 81, 141, 169, etc.; and Ed. Meyer,
          Geschichte des
          Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 394, 427. Prof.
          Jastrow regards Tammuz as a god both of the sun and of vegetation
          (Religion
          of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 547, 564, 574, 588).
          But such a combination of disparate qualities seems artificial and
          unlikely.


689.


D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der
          Ssabismus (St. Petersburg, 1856), ii. 27;
          id., Ueber Tammûz und die
          Menschenverehrung bei den alten Babylioniern (St.
          Petersburg, 1860), p. 38. Compare W. W. Graf Baudissin,
          Adonis
          und Esmun, pp. 111 sqq.


690.


M. J. Lagrange, Études sur les
          Religions Sémitiques2
          (Paris, 1905), pp. 307 sq.


691.


Hence Philo of Alexandria dates the
          corn-reaping in the middle of spring (Μεσοῦντος δὲ ἔαρος ἄμητος
          ἐνίσταται, De special. legibus, i. 183,
          vol. v. p. 44, ed. L. Cohn). On this subject Professor W. M.
          Flinders Petrie writes to me: “The Coptic
          calendar puts on April 2 beginning of wheat harvest in Upper Egypt,
          May 2 wheat harvest, Lower Egypt. Barley is two or three weeks
          earlier than wheat in Palestine, but probably less in Egypt. The
          Palestine harvest is about the time of that in North Egypt.”
          With regard to Palestine we are told that “the harvest begins with the barley in April; in the
          valley of the Jordan it begins at the end of March. Between the end
          of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest an
          interval of two or three weeks elapses. Thus as a rule the business
          of harvest lasts about seven weeks” (J. Benzinger,
          Hebräische Archäologie, Freiburg
          i. B. and Leipsic, 1894, p. 209). “The
          principal grain crops of Palestine are barley, wheat, lentils,
          maize, and millet. Of the latter there is very little, and it is
          all gathered in by the end of May. The maize is then only just
          beginning to shoot. In the hotter parts of the Jordan valley the
          barley harvest is over by the end of March, and throughout the
          country the wheat harvest is at its height at the end of May,
          excepting in the highlands of Galilee, where it is about a
          fortnight later” (H. B. Tristram, The Land of
          Israel, Fourth Edition, London, 1882, pp. 583
          sq.). As to Greece, Professor E.
          A. Gardner tells me that harvest is from April to May in the plains
          and about a month later in the mountains. He adds that “barley may, then, be assigned to the latter part of
          April, wheat to May in the lower ground, but you know the great
          difference of climate between different parts; there is the same
          difference of a month in the vintage.” Mrs. Hawes (Miss
          Boyd), who excavated at Gournia, tells me that in Crete the barley
          is cut in April and the beginning of May, and that the wheat is cut
          and threshed from about the twentieth of June, though the dates
          naturally vary somewhat with the height of the place above the sea.
          June is also the season when the wheat is threshed in Euboea (R. A.
          Arnold, From the Levant, London, 1868,
          i. 250). Thus it seems possible that the spring festival of Adonis
          coincided with the cutting of the first barley in March, and his
          summer festival with the threshing of the last wheat in June.
          Father Lagrange (op. cit. pp. 305 sq.)
          argues that the rites of Adonis were always celebrated in summer at
          the solstice of June or soon afterwards. Baudissin also holds that
          the summer celebration is the only one which is clearly attested,
          and that if there was a celebration in spring it must have had a
          different signification than the death of the god. See his
          Adonis
          und Esmun, pp. 132 sq.


692.


Diodorus Siculus, i. 14. 2. See below,
          vol. ii. pp. 45 sq.


693.


Spirits of the Corn and of the
          Wild, ii. 180 sqq., 204 sqq.


694.


W. Mannhardt, Mythologische
          Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), pp. 1 sqq.;
          Spirits
          of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 216 sqq.


695.


T. B. Macaulay, History of
          England, chapter xx. vol. iv. (London, 1855) p.
          410.


696.


This explanation of the name
          Anthesteria, as applied to a
          festival of the dead, is due to Mr. R. Wünsch (Das Frühlingsfest der
          Insel Malta, Leipsic, 1902, pp. 43 sqq.).
          I cannot accept the late Dr. A. W. Verrall's ingenious derivation
          of the word from a verb ἀναθέσσασθαι in the sense of “to conjure up” (“The
          Name Anthesteria,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx.
          (1900) pp. 115-117). As to the festival see E. Rohde, Psyche3
          (Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), i. 236 sqq.;
          Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
          Religion2 (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 32
          sqq. In Annam people offer food
          to their dead on the graves when the earth begins to grow green in
          spring. The ceremony takes place on the third day of the third
          month, the sun then entering the sign of Taurus. See Paul Giran,
          Magie et
          Religion Annamites (Paris, 1912), pp. 423
          sq.


697.


E. Renan, Mission de
          Phénicie (Paris, 1864), p. 216.


698.


For the authorities see Raoul
          Rochette, “Mémoire sur les jardins
          d'Adonis,” Revue Archéologique, viii.
          (1851) pp. 97-123; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und
          Feldkulte, p. 279, note 2, and p. 280, note 2. To the
          authorities cited by Mannhardt add Theophrastus, Hist.
          Plant. vi. 7. 3; id.,
          De Causis
          Plant. i. 12. 2; Gregorius Cyprius, i. 7; Macarius,
          i. 63; Apostolius, i. 34; Diogenianus, i. 14; Plutarch,
          De sera
          num. vind. 17. Women only are mentioned as planting
          the gardens of Adonis by Plutarch, l.c.;
          Julian, Convivium, p. 329 ed. Spanheim
          (p. 423 ed. Hertlein); Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi.
          590. On the other hand, Apostolius and Diogenianus (ll.cc.)
          say φυτεύοντες ἢ φυτεύουσαι. The earliest extant Greek writer who
          mentions the gardens of Adonis is Plato (Phaedrus, p. 276 b). The procession at the
          festival of Adonis is mentioned in an Attic inscription of 302 or
          301 b.c. (G. Dittenberger,
          Sylloge
          Inscriptionum Graecarum,2
          vol. ii. p. 564, No. 726). Gardens of Adonis are perhaps alluded to
          by Isaiah (xvii. 10, with the commentators).


699.


In hot southern countries like Egypt
          and the Semitic regions of Western Asia, where vegetation depends
          chiefly or entirely upon irrigation, the purpose of the charm is
          doubtless to secure a plentiful flow of water in the streams. But
          as the ultimate object and the charms for securing it are the same
          in both cases, I have not thought it necessary always to point out
          the distinction.


700.


The Dying God, pp. 232, 233
          sqq.


701.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, i. 272 sqq.


702.


W. Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus der
          Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme (Berlin, 1875), p.
          214; W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Branch
          der Romänen Siebenbürgens (Hermannstadt, 1866), pp.
          18 sq. The custom of throwing water
          on the last wagon-load of corn returning from the harvest-field has
          been practised within living memory in Wigtownshire, and at Orwell
          in Cambridgeshire. See J. G. Frazer, “Notes
          on Harvest Customs,” Folk-lore Journal, vii. (1889)
          pp. 50, 51. (In the first of these passages the Orwell at which the
          custom used to be observed is said to be in Kent; this was a
          mistake of mine, which my informant, the Rev. E. B. Birks, formerly
          Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, afterwards corrected.) Mr. R.
          F. Davis writes to me (March 4, 1906) from Campbell College,
          Belfast: “Between 30 and 40 years ago I was
          staying, as a very small boy, at a Nottinghamshire farmhouse at
          harvest-time, and was allowed—as a great privilege—to ride home on
          the top of the last load. All the harvesters followed the waggon,
          and on reaching the farmyard we found the maids of the farm
          gathered near the gate, with bowls and buckets of water, which they
          proceeded to throw on the men, who got thoroughly
          drenched.”


703.


G. A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und
          Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens
          (Hermanstadt, 1880), p. 24; H. von Wlislocki, Sitten und Brauch der
          Siebenbürger Sachsen (Hamburg, 1888), p. 32.


704.


G. Drosinis, Land und Leute in
          Nord-Euböa (Leipsic, 1884), p. 53.


705.


Matthäus Prätorius, Deliciae
          Prussicae (Berlin, 1871), p. 55; W. Mannhardt,
          Baumkultus, pp. 214 sq.,
          note.


706.


M. Prätorius, op.
          cit. p. 60; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 215, note.


707.


H. Prahn, “Glaube und Brauch in der Mark Brandenburg,”
Zeitschrift des Vereins für
          Volkskunde, i. (1891) p. 186.


708.


O. Hartung, “Zur Volkskunde aus Anhalt,” Zeitschrift des
          Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897) p. 150.


709.


W. Kolbe, Hessische
          Volks-Sitten und Gebräuche (Marburg, 1888), p.
          51.


710.


Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des
          Königreichs Bayern, ii. (Munich, 1863) p. 297.


711.


E. H. Meyer, Badisches
          Volksleben (Strasburg, 1900), p. 420.


712.


J. Walter Fewkes, “The Tusayan New Fire Ceremony,” Proceedings of the
          Boston Society of Natural History, xxvi. (1895) p.
          446.


713.


“Lettre du
          curé de Santiago Tepehuacan à son évêque,” Bulletin de la
          Société de Géographie (Paris), Deuxième Série, ii.
          (1834) pp. 181 sq.


714.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 59 sqq.


715.


E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology
          of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), p. 259.


716.


E. T. Dalton, op.
          cit. p. 188. As to the influence which trees are
          supposed to exercise on the crops, see The Magic Art and the
          Evolution of Kings, ii. 47 sqq.


717.


Lieut.-Col. James Tod, Annals and
          Antiquities of Rajast'han, i. (London, 1829) pp.
          570-572.


718.


G. F. D'Penha, “A Collection of Notes on Marriage Customs in the
          Madras Presidency,” Indian Antiquary, xxv. (1896) p.
          144; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern
          India (Madras, 1906), p. 2.


719.


E. T. Atkinson, The Himalayan
          Districts of the North-Western Provinces of India,
          ii. (Allahabad, 1884) p. 870.


720.


W. Crooke, Popular Religion and
          Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii.
          293 sq. Compare Baboo Ishuree Dass,
          Domestic
          Manners and Customs of the Hindoos of Northern India
          (Benares, 1860), pp. 111 sq. According to the latter
          writer, the festival of Salono [not Salonan] takes place in August,
          and the barley is planted by women and girls in baskets a few days
          before the festival, to be thrown by them into a river or tank when
          the grain has sprouted to the height of a few inches.


721.


Mrs. J. C. Murray-Aynsley,
          “Secular and Religious Dances,”
Folk-lore
          Journal, v. (1887) pp. 253 sq. The
          writer thinks that the ceremony “probably
          fixes the season for sowing some particular crop.”


722.


Gazetteer of the Bombay
          Presidency, xx. (Bombay, 1884) p. 454. This passage
          was pointed out to me by my friend Mr. W. Crooke.


723.


Gazetteer of the Bombay
          Presidency, xx. 443, 460.


724.


Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des
          Königreichs Bayern (Munich, 1860-1867), ii. 298.


725.


Antonio Bresciani, Dei costumi dell'
          isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi popoli
          orientali (Rome and Turin, 1866), pp. 427
          sq.; R. Tennant, Sardinia and its
          Resources (Rome and London, 1885), p. 187; S.
          Gabriele, “Usi dei contadini della
          Sardegna,” Archivio per lo Studio delle Tradizioni
          Popolari, vii. (1888) pp. 469 sq.
          Tennant says that the pots are kept in a dark warm place, and that
          the children leap across the fire.


726.


G. Pitrè, Usi e Costumi,
          Credenze e Pregiudizi del Popolo Siciliano (Palermo,
          1889), ii. 271-278. Compare id., Spettacoli e Feste
          Popolari Siciliane (Palermo, 1881), pp. 297
          sq. In the Abruzzi also young
          men and young women become gossips by exchanging nosegays on St.
          John's Day, and the tie thus formed is regarded as sacred. See G.
          Finamore, Credenze, Usi e Costumi
          Abruzzesi (Palermo, 1890), pp. 165 sq.


727.


R. Wünsch, Das Frühlingsfest der
          Insel Malta, pp. 47-57.


728.


See above, pp. 10, note 1, 224 sq., 226.


729.


J. Grimm, Deutsche
          Mythologie,4 i. 490.


730.


G. Finamore, Credenze, Usi e
          Costumi Abruzzesi, pp. 156-160. A passage in Isaiah
          (xxvi. 19) seems to imply that dew possessed the magical virtue of
          restoring the dead to life. In this passage of Isaiah the customs
          which I have cited in the text perhaps favour the ordinary
          interpretation of טל אורת as “dew of
          herbs” (compare 2 Kings iv. 39) against the interpretation
          “dew of lights,” which some modern
          commentators (Dillmann, Skinner, Whitehouse), following Jerome,
          have adopted.


731.


G. Pitrè, Feste patronali in
          Sicilia (Turin and Palermo, 1900), pp. 488,
          491-493.


732.


G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e Feste
          Popolari Siciliane, p. 307.


733.


Petrarch, Epistolae de rebus
          familiaribus, i. 4 (vol. i. pp. 44-46 ed. J.
          Fracassetti, Florence, 1859-1862). The passage is quoted by J.
          Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i.
          489 sq.


734.


J. Grimm, op.
          cit. i. 489.


735.


Letter of Dr. Otero Acevado, of
          Madrid, Le Temps, September 1898.


736.


J. Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage
          Normand (Condé-sur-Noireau, 1883-1887), ii. 8; A. de
          Nore, Coutumes, Mythes et Traditions des provinces
          de France (Paris and Lyons, 1846), p. 150.


737.


A. de Nore, op.
          cit. p. 20; Bérenger-Féraud, Réminiscences
          populaires de la Provence (Paris, 1885), pp.
          135-141.


738.


A. Breuil, “Du
          Culte de St. Jean Baptiste,” Mémoires de la
          Société des Antiquaires de Picardie, viii. (1845) pp.
          237 sq. Compare Balder the
          Beautiful, i. 193 sq.


739.


Diego Duran, Historia de las
          Indias de Nueva España, edited by J. F. Ramirez
          (Mexico, 1867-1880), ii. 293.


740.


Augustine, Opera,
          v. (Paris, 1683) col. 903; id., Pars Secunda, coll. 461
          sq. The second of these passages
          occurs in a sermon of doubtful authenticity. Both have been quoted
          by J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i.
          490.


741.


E. Doutté, Magie et Religion
          dans l'Afrique du Nord (Algiers, 1908), pp. 567
          sq.; E. Westermarck,
          “Midsummer Customs in Morocco,”
Folk-lore, xvi. (1905) pp. 31
          sq.; id.,
          Ceremonies and Beliefs connected with
          Agriculture, Certain Dates of the Solar Year, and the
          Weather (Helsingfors, 1913), pp. 84-86. See
          Balder
          the Beautiful, i. 216.


742.


Balder the Beautiful, i. 160
          sqq.


743.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 65 sq.


744.


The Dying God, p. 262.


745.


L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in
          Sweden (London, 1870), p. 257.


746.


Balder the Beautiful, i. 328
          sqq., ii. 21 sqq.


747.


W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 464; K. von
          Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain (Munich, 1855),
          p. 183. For more evidence see Balder the Beautiful, i. 165,
          166, 166 sq., 168, 173, 174.


748.


The use of gardens of Adonis to
          fertilize the human sexes appears plainly in the corresponding
          Indian practices. See above, pp. 241, 242, 243.


749.


G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e Feste
          Popolari Siciliane, pp. 296 sq.


750.


G. Pitrè, op.
          cit. pp. 302 sq.; Antonio de Nino,
          Usi e
          Costumi Abruzzesi (Florence, 1879-1883), i. 55
          sq.; A. de Gubernatis,
          Usi
          Nuziali in Italia e presso gli altri Popoli
          Indo-Europei (Milan, 1878), pp. 39 sq.
          Compare L. Passarini, “Il Comparatico e la
          Festa di S. Giovanni nelle Marche e in Roma,” Archivio per lo
          Studio delle Tradizioni Popolari, i. (1882) p. 135.
          At Smyrna a blossom of the Agnus
          castus is used on St. John's Day for a similar
          purpose, but the mode in which the omens are drawn is somewhat
          different. See Teofilo, “La notte di San
          Giovanni in Oriente,” Archivio per lo Studio delle Tradizioni
          Popolari, vii. (1888) pp. 128-130.


751.


Matthäus Prätorius, Deliciae
          Prussicae (Berlin, 1871), p. 56.


752.


The Dying God, pp. 261
          sq.


753.


The Dying God, pp. 233
          sqq., 261 sqq.


754.


G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e Feste
          Popolari Siciliane, p. 211.


755.


Κήπους ὡσίουν ἐπιταφίους Ἀδώνιδι,
          Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 590.


756.


Vincenzo Dorsa, La tradizione
          Greco-Latina negli usi e nelle credenze popolari della Calabria
          Citeriore (Cosenza, 1884), p. 50.


757.


C. Wachsmuth, Das alte Griechenland
          im neuen (Bonn, 1864), pp. 26. sq. The
          writer compares these ceremonies with the Eleusinian rites. But I
          agree with Mr. R. Wünsch (Das Frühlingsfest der Insel
          Malta, pp. 49 sq.) that the resemblance to the
          Adonis festival is still closer. Compare V. Dorsa, La tradizione
          Greco-Latina negli usi e nelle credenze popolari della Calabria
          Citeriore, pp. 49 sq.
          Prof. Wachsmuth's description seems to apply to Athens. In the
          country districts the ritual is apparently similar. See R. A.
          Arnold, From the Levant (London, 1868),
          pp. 251 sq., 259 sq. So
          in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem the death and
          burial of Christ are acted over a life-like effigy. See Henry
          Maundrell, Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at
          Easter, a.d.1697,
          Fourth Edition (Perth, 1800), pp. 110 sqq.;
          id., in Th. Wright's
          Early
          Travels in Palestine (London, 1848), pp.
          443-445.


758.


G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e Feste
          Popolari Siciliane, pp. 217 sq.


759.


G. Finamore, Credenze, Usi e
          Costumi Abruzzesi, pp. 118-120; A. de Nino,
          Usi e
          Costumi Abruzzesi, i. 64 sq.,
          ii. 210-212. At Roccacaramanico part of the Easter spectacle is the
          death of Judas, who, personated by a living man, pretends to hang
          himself upon a tree or a great branch, which has been brought into
          the church and planted near the high altar for the purpose (A. de
          Nino, op.
          cit. ii. 211).


760.


The drama of the death and
          resurrection of Christ was formerly celebrated at Easter in
          England. See Abbot Gasquet, Parish Life in Mediaeval
          England, pp. 177 sqq.,
          182 sq.


761.


The comparison has already been made
          by A. Maury, who also compares the Easter ceremonies of the
          Catholic Church with the rites of Adonis (Histoire des
          Religions de la Grèce Antique, Paris, 1857-1859, vol.
          iii. p. 221).


762.


Jerome, Epist.
          lviii. 3 (Migne's Patrologia Latina, xxii.
          581).


763.


Bethlehem is בית-לחם, literally
          “House of Bread.” The name is
          appropriate, for “the immediate
          neighbourhood is very fertile, bearing, besides wheat and barley,
          groves of olive and almond, and vineyards. The wine of Bethlehem
          (‘Talhamī’) is among the best of
          Palestine. So great fertility must mean that the site was occupied,
          in spite of the want of springs, from the earliest times”
          (George Adam Smith, s.v. “Bethlehem,” Encyclopaedia
          Biblica, i. 560). It was in the harvest-fields of
          Bethlehem that Ruth, at least in the poet's fancy, listened to the
          nightingale “amid the alien
          corn.”


764.


John vi. 35.


765.


Above, p. 227.


766.


Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 9. 14,
          “Urbique propinquans
          in speciem alicujus numinis votis excipitur publicis, miratus voces
          multitudinis magnae, salutare sidus inluxisse eois partibus
          adclamantis.” We may compare the greeting
          which a tribe of South American Indians used to give to a
          worshipful star after its temporary disappearance. “The Abipones think that the Pleiades, composed of
          seven stars, is an image of their ancestor. As the constellation is
          invisible for some months in the sky of South America, they believe
          that their ancestor is ill, and every year they are mortally afraid
          that he will die. But when the said stars reappear in the month of
          May, they imagine that their ancestor is recovered from his
          sickness and has returned; so they hail him with joyous shouts and
          the glad music of pipes and war-horns. They congratulate him on his
          recovery. ‘How we thank you! At last you
          have come back? Oh, have you happily recovered?’ With such
          cries they fill the air, attesting at once their gladness and their
          folly.” See M. Dobrizhoffer, Historia de
          Abiponibus (Vienna, 1784), ii. 77.


767.


M. Jastrow, The Religion of
          Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 370 sqq.;
          H. Zimmern, in E. Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
          Testament,3 p. 424.


768.


Sozomenus, Historia
          Ecclesiastica, ii. 5 (Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, lxvii. 948). The connexion of the meteor with
          the festival of Adonis is not mentioned by Sozomenus, but is
          confirmed by Zosimus, who says (Hist.
          i. 58) that a light like a torch or a globe of fire was seen on the
          sanctuary at the seasons when the people assembled to worship the
          goddess and to cast their offerings of gold, silver, and fine
          raiment into a lake beside the temple. As to Aphaca and the grave
          of Adonis see above, pp. 28 sq.


769.


Matthew ii. 1-12.


770.


Diodorus Siculus, iii. 59. 7;
          Sallustius philosophus, “De diis et
          mundo,” iv., Fragmenta Philosophorum
          Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii. 33; Scholiast
          on Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 8; Firmicus
          Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum,
          3 and 22. The ancient evidence, literary and inscriptional, as to
          the myth and ritual of Attis has been collected and discussed by
          Mr. H. Hepding in his monograph, Attis, seine Mythen
          und sein Kult (Giessen, 1903).


771.


Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium
          haeresium, v. 9, p. 168 ed. L. Duncker and F. G.
          Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859); Socrates, Historia
          Ecclesiastica, iii. 23. 51 sqq.


772.


Ovid, Fasti,
          iv. 223 sqq.; Tertullian, Apologeticus, 15; id.,
          Ad
          Nationes, i. 10; Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, iv. 35. As to Cybele, the Great Mother, the
          Mother of the Gods, conceived as the source of all life, both
          animal and vegetable, see Rapp, in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, s.v.
“Kybele,” ii. 1638 sqq.


773.


Scholiast on Lucian, Jupiter
          Tragoedus, 8, p. 60 ed. H. Rabe (Leipsic, 1906),
          (vol. iv. p. 173 ed. C. Jacobitz); Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium
          haeresium, v. 9, pp. 168, 170 ed. Duncker and
          Schneidewin.


774.


Pausanias, vii. 17. 11; Hippolytus,
          Refutatio
          omnium haeresium, v. 9, pp. 166, 168 ed. Duncker and
          Schneidewin; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 6.


775.


See above, pp. 99 sqq.


776.


S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic
          Religion To-day, pp. 115 sq. See
          above, pp. 78, 213 sqq.


777.


That Attis was killed by a boar was
          stated by Hermesianax, an elegiac poet of the fourth century
          b.c. (Pausanias, vii. 17);
          compare Scholiast on Nicander, Alexipharmaca,
          8. The other story is told by Arnobius (Adversus
          Nationes, v. 5 sqq.) on the authority of
          Timotheus, who professed to derive it from recondite antiquarian
          works and from the very heart of the mysteries. It is obviously
          identical with the account which Pausanias (l.c.)
          mentions as the story current in Pessinus. According to Servius (on
          Virgil, Aen. ix. 115), Attis was found
          bleeding to death under a pine-tree, but the wound which robbed him
          of his virility and his life was not inflicted by himself. The
          Timotheus cited by Pausanias may be the Timotheus who was consulted
          by Ptolemy Soter on religious matters and helped to establish the
          worship of Serapis. See Plutarch, Isis et
          Osiris, 28; Franz Cumont, Les Religions
          Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain2
          (Paris, 1909), pp. 77, 113, 335.


778.


Pausanias, vii. 17. 10; Julian,
          Orat. v. 177 b, p. 229, ed. F. C.
          Hertlein (Leipsic, 1875-1876). Similarly at Comana in Pontus, the
          seat of the worship of the goddess Ma, pork was not eaten, and
          swine might not even be brought into the city (Strabo, xii. 8. 9,
          p. 575). As to Comana see above, p. 39.


779.


S. Sophronius, “SS. Cyri et Joannis Miracula,” Migne's
          Patrologia Graeca, lxxxvii. Pars
          Tertia, col. 3624, πρὸς πλάνην Ἑλληνικὴν ἀποκλίνουσαν [scil.
          τὴν Ἰουλίαν] καὶ ταύτῃ διὰ τὸν Ἀδώνιδος Θάνατον τὰ κρέα
          παραιτεῖσθαι τὰ ὕεια.


780.


Ovid, Metam.
          x. 103 sqq.


781.


Livy, xxix. chs. 10, 11, and 14; Ovid,
          Fasti, iv. 259 sqq.;
          Herodian, ii. 11. As to the stone which represented the goddess see
          Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, vii. 49.


782.


Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. xviii. 16.


783.


Lucretius, ii. 598 sqq.;
          Catullus, lxiii.; Varro, Satir. Menipp., ed. F. Bücheler
          (Berlin, 1882), pp. 176, 178; Ovid, Fasti,
          iv. 181 sqq., 223 sqq.,
          361 sqq.; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
          Antiquit.
          Rom. ii. 19, compare Polybius, xxii. 18 ed. L.
          Dindorf (Leipsic, 1866-1868).


784.




Joannes Lydus,
            De
            mensibus, iv. 41. See Robinson Ellis, Commentary on
            Catullus (Oxford, 1876), pp. 206 sq.;
            H. Hepding, Attis, pp. 142 sqq.;
            Fr. Cumont, Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme
            Romain2 (Paris, 1909), pp. 83
            sq.


It is held by
            Prof. A. von Domaszewski that the Claudius who incorporated the
            Phrygian worship of the sacred tree in the Roman ritual was not
            the emperor of the first century but the emperor of the third
            century, Claudius Gothicus, who came to the throne in 268
            a.d. See A. von
            Domaszewski, “Magna Mater in Latin
            Inscriptions,” The Journal of Roman Studies,
            i. (1911) p. 56. The later date, it is said, fits better with the
            slow development of the worship. But on the other hand this view
            is open to certain objections. (1) Joannes Lydus, our only
            authority on the point, appears to identify the Claudius in
            question with the emperor of the first century. (2) The great and
            widespread popularity of the Phrygian worship in the Roman empire
            long before 268 a.d. is amply attested
            by an array of ancient writers and inscriptions, especially by a
            great series of inscriptions referring to the colleges of
            Tree-bearers (Dendrophori),
            from which we learn that one of these colleges, devoted to the
            worship of Cybele and Attis, existed at Rome in the age of the
            Antonines, about a century before the accession of Claudius
            Gothicus. (3) Passages of the Augustan historians (Aelius
            Lampridius, Alexander Severus, 37;
            Trebellius Pollio, Claudius, iv. 2) refer to the
            great spring festival of Cybele and Attis in a way which seems to
            imply that the festival was officially recognized by the Roman
            government before Claudius Gothicus succeeded to the purple; and
            we may hesitate to follow Prof. von Domaszewski in simply
            excising these passages as the work of an “impudent forger.” (4) The official
            establishment of the bloody Phrygian superstition suits better
            the life and character of the superstitious, timid, cruel,
            pedantic Claudius of the first century than the gallant soldier
            his namesake in the third century. The one lounged away his
            contemptible days in the safety of the palace, surrounded by a
            hedge of lifeguards. The other spent the two years of his brief
            but glorious reign in camps and battlefields on the frontier,
            combating the barbarian enemies of the empire; and it is probable
            that he had as little leisure as inclination to pander to the
            superstitions of the Roman populace. For these reasons it seems
            better with Mr. Hepding and Prof. Cumont to acquiesce in the
            traditional view that the rites of Attis were officially
            celebrated at Rome from the first century onward.


An
            intermediate view is adopted by Prof. G. Wissowa, who, brushing
            aside the statement of Joannes Lydus altogether, would seemingly
            assign the public institution of the rites to the middle of the
            second century a.d. on the ground that
            the earliest extant evidence of their public celebration refers
            to that period (Religion und Kultus der
            Römer,2 Munich, 1912, p. 322).
            But, considering the extremely imperfect evidence at our disposal
            for the history of these centuries, it seems rash to infer that
            an official cult cannot have been older than the earliest notice
            of it which has chanced to come down to us.




785.


Arrian, Tactica, 33; Servius on Virgil,
          Aen. xii. 836.


786.


On the festival see J. Marquardt,
          Römische
          Staatsverwaltung, iii.2
          (Leipsic, 1885) pp. 370 sqq.; the calendar of
          Philocalus, in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
          vol. i.2 Pars prior (Berlin, 1893),
          p. 260, with Th. Mommsen's commentary (pp. 313 sq.);
          W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, pp.
          291 sqq.; id.,
          Baumkultus, pp. 572 sqq.;
          G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der
          Römer,2 pp. 318 sqq.;
          H. Hepding, Attis, pp. 147 sqq.;
          J. Toutain, Les Cultes Païens dans l'Empire
          Romain, ii. (Paris, 1911) pp. 82 sqq.


787.


Julian, Orat.
          v. 168 c, p. 218 ed. F. C.
          Hertlein (Leipsic, 1875-1876); Joannes Lydus, De
          mensibus, iv. 41; Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, v. chs. 7, 16, 39; Firmicus Maternus,
          De errore
          profanarum religionum, 27; Sallustius philosophus,
          “De diis et mundo,” iv.,
          Fragmenta
          Philosophorum Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii.
          33. As to the guild of Tree-bearers (Dendrophori) see Joannes Lydus,
          l.c.; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, Nos. 4116 sq.,
          4171-4174, 4176; H. Hepding, Attis, pp. 86, 92, 93, 96, 152
          sqq.; F. Cumont, s.v.
“Dendrophori,” in Pauly-Wissowa's
          Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
          Altertumswissenschaft, v. 1. coll. 216-219; J.
          Toutain, Les Cultes Païens dans l'Empire
          Romain, ii. 82 sq., 92 sq.


788.


Julian, l.c.
          and 169 c, p. 219 ed. F. C.
          Hertlein. The ceremony may have been combined with the old
          tubilustrium or purification of
          trumpets, which fell on this day. See Joannes Lydus, De
          mensibus, iv. 42; Varro, De lingua
          Latina, vi. 14; Festus, pp. 352, 353 ed. C. O.
          Müller; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the
          Republic (London, 1899), p. 62.


789.


Trebellius Pollio, Claudius, 4; Tertullian,
          Apologeticus, 25.


790.


Lucian, Deorum
          dialogi, xii. 1; Seneca, Agamemnon, 686 sqq.;
          Martial, xi. 84. 3 sq.; Valerius Flaccus,
          Argonaut. viii. 239 sqq.;
          Statius, Theb. x. 170 sqq.;
          Apuleius, Metam. viii. 27; Lactantius,
          Divinarum
          Institutionum Epitome, 23 (18, vol. i. p. 689 ed.
          Brandt and Laubmann); H. Hepding, Attis,
          pp. 158 sqq. As to the music of these
          dancing dervishes see also Lucretius, ii. 618 sqq.


791.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, i. 90 sq., 101 sq.


792.


Minucius Felix, Octavius, 22 and 24; Lactantius,
          Divin.
          Instit. i. 21. 16; id.,
          Epitoma, 8; Schol. on Lucian,
          Jupiter
          Tragoedus, 8 (p. 60 ed. H. Rabe); Servius on Virgil,
          Aen. ix. 115; Prudentius,
          Peristephan. x. 1066
          sqq.; “Passio Sancti Symphoriani,” chs. 2 and 6
          (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, v. 1463,
          1466); Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 14;
          Scholiast on Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 8; H. Hepding,
          Attis, pp. 163 sq. A
          story told by Clement of Alexandria (Protrept. ii. 15, p. 13 ed.
          Potter) suggests that weaker brethren may have been allowed to
          sacrifice the virility of a ram instead of their own. We know from
          inscriptions that rams and bulls were regularly sacrificed at the
          mysteries of Attis and the Great Mother, and that the testicles of
          the bulls were used for a special purpose, probably as a fertility
          charm. May not the testicles of the rams have been employed for the
          same purpose? and may not those of both animals have been
          substitutes for the corresponding organs in men? As to the
          sacrifices of rams and bulls see G. Zippel, “Das Taurobolium,” Festschrift zum
          fünfzigjährigen Doctorjubiläum L. Friedlaender
          (Leipsic, 1895), pp. 498 sqq.; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, Nos. 4118 sqq.;
          J. Toutain, Les Cultes Païens dans l'Empire
          Romain, ii. 84 sqq.


793.


Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, v. 5 sq.


794.


Strabo, xiv. 1. 23, p. 641.


795.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 15, 27, 50-53.


796.


Lucian, op.
          cit. 10.


797.


Lucian, op.
          cit. 15.


798.


Lucian, De dea
          Syria, 49-51.


799.




Catullus,
            Carm. lxiii. I agree with Mr.
            H. Hepding (Attis, p. 140) in thinking
            that the subject of the poem is not the mythical Attis, but one
            of his ordinary priests, who bore the name and imitated the
            sufferings of his god. Thus interpreted the poem gains greatly in
            force and pathos. The real sorrows of our fellow-men touch us
            more nearly than the imaginary pangs of the gods.


As the
            sacrifice of virility and the institution of eunuch priests
            appear to be rare, I will add a few examples. At Stratonicea in
            Caria a eunuch held a sacred office in connexion with the worship
            of Zeus and Hecate (Corpus Inscriptionum
            Graecarum, No. 2715). According to Eustathius (on
            Homer, Iliad, xix. 254, p. 1183) the
            Egyptian priests were eunuchs who had sacrificed their virility
            as a first-fruit to the gods. In Corea “during a certain night, known as Chu-il, in the twelfth moon,
            the palace eunuchs, of whom there are some three hundred, perform
            a ceremony supposed to ensure a bountiful crop in the ensuing
            year. They chant in chorus prayers, swinging burning torches
            around them the while. This is said to be symbolical of burning
            the dead grass, so as to destroy the field mice and other
            vermin.” See W. Woodville Rockhill, “Notes on some of the Laws, Customs, and
            Superstitions of Korea,” The American
            Anthropologist, iv. (Washington, 1891) p. 185.
            Compare Mrs. Bishop, Korea and her Neighbours
            (London, 1898), ii. 56 sq. It appears that among the
            Ekoi of Southern Nigeria both men and women are, or used to be,
            mutilated by the excision of their genital organs at an annual
            festival, which is celebrated in order to produce plentiful
            harvests and immunity from thunderbolts. The victims apparently
            die from loss of blood. See P. Amaury Talbot, In the Shadow of
            the Bush (London, 1912), pp. 74 sqq.
            Mr. Talbot writes to me: “A horrible case
            has just happened at Idua, where, at the new yam planting, a man
            cut off his own membrum
            virile” (letter dated Eket, Nr Calabar,
            Southern Nigeria, Feb. 7th, 1913). Amongst the Ba-sundi and
            Ba-bwende of the Congo many youths are castrated “in order to more fittingly offer themselves to the
            phallic worship, which increasingly prevails as we advance from
            the coast to the interior. At certain villages between Manyanga
            and Isangila there are curious eunuch dances to celebrate the new
            moon, in which a white cock is thrown up into the air alive, with
            clipped wings, and as it falls towards the ground it is caught
            and plucked by the eunuchs. I was told that originally this used
            to be a human sacrifice, and that a young boy or girl was thrown
            up into the air and torn to pieces by the eunuchs as he or she
            fell, but that of late years slaves had got scarce or manners
            milder, and a white cock was now substituted” (H. H.
            Johnston, “On the Races of the
            Congo,” Journal of the Anthropological
            Institute, xiii. (1884) p. 473; compare
            id., The River
            Congo, London, 1884, p. 409). In India, men who are
            born eunuchs or in some way deformed are sometimes dedicated to a
            goddess named Huligamma. They wear female attire and might be
            mistaken for women. Also men who are or believe themselves
            impotent will vow to dress as women and serve the goddess in the
            hope of recovering their virility. See F. Fawcett, “On Basivis,” Journal of the
            Anthropological Society of Bombay, ii. 343
            sq. In Pegu the English
            traveller, Alexander Hamilton, witnessed a dance in honour of the
            gods of the earth. “Hermaphrodites, who
            are numerous in this country, are generally chosen, if there are
            enough present to make a set for the dance. I saw nine dance like
            mad folks for above half-an-hour; and then some of them fell in
            fits, foaming at the mouth for the space of half-an-hour; and,
            when their senses are restored, they pretend to foretell plenty
            or scarcity of corn for that year, if the year will prove sickly
            or salutary to the people, and several other things of moment,
            and all by that half hour's conversation that the furious dancer
            had with the gods while she was in a trance” (A. Hamilton,
            “A New Account of the East
            Indies,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and
            Travels, viii. 427). So in the worship of Attis the
            Archigallus or head of the eunuch priests prophesied; perhaps he
            in like manner worked himself up to the pitch of inspiration by a
            frenzied dance. See H. Dessau, Inscriptiones
            Latinae Selectae, vol. ii. Pars i. pp. 142, 143,
            Nos. 4130, 4136; G. Wilmanns, Exempla
            Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin, 1873), vol. i. p.
            36, Nos. 119a, 120; J. Toutain, Les Cultes Païens
            dans l'Empire Romain, ii. 93 sq.
            As to the sacrifice of virility in the Syrian religion compare
            Th. Nöldeke, “Die Selbstentmannung bei
            den Syrern,” Archiv für
            Religionswissenschaft, x. (1907) pp. 150-152.




800.


Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, v. 7 and 16; Servius on Virgil,
          Aen. ix. 115.


801.


Diodorus Siculus, iii. 59; Arrian,
          Tactica, 33; Scholiast on
          Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 8; Firmicus
          Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum,
          3 and 22; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 16;
          Servius on Virgil, Aen. ix. 115.


802.


See above, p. 267.


803.


Arnobius, l.c.;
          Sallustius philosophus, “De diis et
          mundo,” iv., Fragmenta Philosophorum
          Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii. 33.


804.


Above, p. 230.


805.


See below, p. 274.


806.




Firmicus
            Maternus, De errore profanarum
            religionum, 22, “Nocte quadam simulacrum in
            lectica supinum ponitur et per numeros digestis fletibus
            plangitur: deinde cum se ficta lamentatione satiaverint, lumen
            infertur: tunc a sacerdote omnium qui flebant fauces unguentur,
            quibus perunctis hoc lento murmure
            susurrat:


θαρρεῖτε
            μύσται τοῦ θέου σεσωσμένου; ἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτήρια.


Quid miseros hortaris
            gaudeant? quid deceptos homines laetari compellis? quam illis
            spem, quam salutem funesta persuasione promittis? Dei tui mors
            nota est, vita non paret.... Idolum sepelis, idolum plangis,
            idolum de sepultura proferis, et miser cum haec feceris, gaudes.
            Tu deum tuum liberas, tu jacentia lapidis membra componis, tu
            insensibile corrigis saxum.” In this passage
            Firmicus does not expressly mention Attis, but that the reference
            is to his rites is made probable by a comparison with chapter 3
            of the same writer's work. Compare also Damascius, in Photius's
            Bibliotheca, p. 345
            a, 5 sqq.,
            ed. I. Bekker (Berlin, 1824), τότε τῇ Ἱεραπόλει ἐγκαθευδήσας
            ἐδόκουν ὄναρ ὁ Ἄττης γένεσθαι, καί μοι ἐπιτελεῖσθαι παρὰ τῆς
            μητρὸς τῶν θεῶν τὴν τῶν ἱλαρίων καλουμένων ἑορτήν; ὅπερ ἐδήλου
            τὴν ἐξ ᾅδου γεγονυῖαν ἡμῶν σωτηρίαν. See further Fr. Cumont,
            Les
            Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme
            Romain2 (Paris, 1909), pp. 89
            sq.




807.


Macrobius, Saturn.
          i. 21. 10; Flavius Vopiscus, Aurelianus, i. 1; Julian,
          Or. v. pp. 168 d, 169 d; Damascius, l.c.;
          Herodian, i. 10. 5-7; Sallustius philosophus, “De diis et mundo,” Fragmenta
          Philosophorum Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii.
          33. In like manner Easter Sunday, the Resurrection-day of Christ,
          was called by some ancient writers the Sunday of Joy (Dominica Gaudii). The emperors
          used to celebrate the happy day by releasing from prison all but
          the worst offenders. See J. Bingham, The Antiquities of
          the Christian Church, bk. xx. ch. vi. §§ 5
          sq. (Bingham's Works
          (Oxford, 1855), vii. 317 sqq.).


808.


Aelius Lampridius, Alexander
          Severus, 37.


809.


Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
          i.2 Pars prior (Berlin, 1893),
          pp. 260, 313 sq.; H. Hepding, Attis,
          pp. 51, 172.


810.


Ovid, Fasti,
          iv. 337-346; Silius Italicus, Punic. viii. 365; Valerius
          Flaccus, Argonaut. viii. 239 sqq.;
          Martial, iii. 47. 1 sq.; Ammianus Marcellinus,
          xxiii. 3. 7; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, vii. 32;
          Prudentius, Peristephon. x. 154 sqq.
          For the description of the image of the goddess see Arnobius,
          Adversus
          Nationes, vii. 49. At Carthage the goddess was
          carried to her bath in a litter, not in a wagon (Augustine,
          De
          civitate Dei, ii. 4). The bath formed part of the
          festival in Phrygia, whence the custom was borrowed by the Romans
          (Arrian, Tactica, 33). At Cyzicus the
          Placianian Mother, a form of Cybele, was served by women called
          “marine” (Θαλάσσιαι), whose duty it
          probably was to wash her image in the sea (Ch. Michel, Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques, Brussels, 1900, pp. 403
          sq., No. 537). See further J.
          Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung,
          iii.2 373; H. Hepding,
          Attis, pp. 133 sq.


811.


Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 15, p. 13 ed.
          Potter; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum,
          18.


812.


Above, p. 272.


813.


H. Hepding, Attis,
          p. 185.


814.


Prudentius, Peristephan. x. 1006-1050;
          compare Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum,
          28. 8. That the bath of bull's blood (taurobolium) was believed to
          regenerate the devotee for eternity is proved by an inscription
          found at Rome, which records that a certain Sextilius Agesilaus
          Aedesius, who dedicated an altar to Attis and the Mother of the
          Gods, was taurobolio criobolioque in
          aeternum renatus (Corpus Inscriptionum
          Latinarum, vi. No. 510; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, No. 4152). The phrase arcanis perfusionibus in aeternum
          renatus occurs in a dedication to Mithra
          (Corpus
          Inscriptionum Latinarum, vi. No. 736), which,
          however, is suspected of being spurious. As to the inscriptions
          which refer to the taurobolium see G. Zippel,
          “Das Taurobolium,” in Festschrift zum
          fünfzigjährigen Doctorjubiläum L. Friedlaender dargebracht von
          seinen Schülern (Leipsic, 1895), pp. 498-520; H.
          Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae,
          vol. ii. Pars i. pp. 140-147, Nos. 4118-4159. As to the origin of
          the taurobolium and
          the meaning of the word, see Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments
          Figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (Brussels,
          1896-1899), i. 334 sq.; id.,
          Les
          Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme
          Romain,2 pp. 100 sqq.;
          J. Toutain, Les Cultes Païens dans l'Empire
          Romain, ii. 84 sqq.; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus
          der Römer,2 pp. 322 sqq.
          The taurobolium
          seems to have formed no part of the original worship of Cybele and
          to have been imported into it at a comparatively late date, perhaps
          in the second century of our era. Its origin is obscure. In the
          majority of the older inscriptions the name of the rite appears as
          tauropolium, and it has been
          held that this is the true form, being derived from the worship of
          the Asiatic goddess Artemis Tauropolis (Strabo, xii. 2. 7, p. 537).
          This was formerly the view of Prof. F. Cumont (s.v.
“Anaitis,” in Pauly-Wissowa's
          Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
          Altertumswissenschaft, i. 2. col. 2031); but he now
          prefers the form taurobolium,
          and would deduce both the name and the rite from an ancient
          Anatolian hunting custom of lassoing wild bulls.


815.


Sallustius philosophus, “De diis et mundo,” iv., Fragmenta
          Philosophorum Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii.
          33.


816.


Sallustius philosophus, l.c.


817.


Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
          vi. Nos. 497-504; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae,
          Nos. 4145, 4147-4151, 4153; Inscriptiones Graecae Siciliae et
          Italiae, ed. G. Kaibel (Berlin, 1890), p. 270, No.
          1020; G. Zippel, op. cit. pp. 509 sq.,
          519; H. Hepding, Attis, pp. 83, 86-88, 176; Ch.
          Huelsen, Topographie der Stadt Rom im Alterthum, von H.
          Jordan, i. 3 (Berlin, 1907), pp. 658 sq.


818.


Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
          xiii. No. 1751; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae,
          No. 4131; G. Wilmanns, Exempla Inscriptionum Latinarum
          (Berlin, 1873), vol. ii. p. 125, No. 2278; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus
          der Römer,2 p. 267; H. Hepding,
          Attis, pp. 169-171, 176.


819.


Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,
          xiii. No. 1751; G. Wilmanns, Exempla Inscriptionum Latinarum,
          vol. i. pp. 35-37, Nos. 119, 123, 124; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, Nos. 4127, 4129, 4131, 4140; G. Wissowa,
          Religion
          und Kultus der Römer,2
          pp. 322 sqq.; H. Hepding, Attis,
          p. 191.


820.


As to the monuments see H. Dessau,
          Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae,
          Nos. 4143, 4152, 4153; H. Hepding, Attis,
          pp. 82, 83, 88, 89.


821.


Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum
          religionum, 27.


822.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 47 sq., 71; Spirits of the Corn
          and of the Wild, i. 138, 143, 152, 153, 154, 155,
          156, 157, 158.


823.


Etymologicum Magnum, p. 220, line 20,
          Γάλλος, ὁ φιλοπάτωρ Πτολεμαῖος; διὰ τὸ φύλλα κισσοῦ κατέστιχθαι, ὡς
          οἱ γάλλοι. ᾽Αεὶ γὰρ ταῖς Διονυσιακαῖς τελεταῖς κισσῷ ἐστεφανοῦντο.
          But there seems to be some confusion here between the rites of
          Dionysus and those of Attis; ivy was certainly sacred to Dionysus
          (Pausanias, i. 31. 6 with my note). Compare C. A. Lobeck,
          Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829),
          i. 657, who, in the passage quoted, rightly defends the readings
          κατέστιχθαι and ἐστεφανοῦντο.


824.


Encyclopaedia
          Britannica,9 xix. 105. Compare
          Athenaeus, ii. 49, p. 57. The nuts of the silver-pine (Pinus edulis) are a favourite
          food of the Californian Indians (S. Powers, Tribes of
          California (Washington, 1877), p. 421); the Wintun
          Indians hold a pine-nut dance when the nuts are fit to be gathered
          (ib. p. 237). The Shuswap Indians
          of British Columbia collect the cones of various sorts of pines and
          eat the nutlets which they extract from them. See G. M. Dawson,
          “Notes on the Shuswap People of British
          Columbia,” Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal
          Society of Canada, ix. (Montreal, 1892) Transactions,
          section ii. p. 22. With regard to the Araucanian Indians of South
          America we read that “the great staple
          food, the base of all their subsistence, save among the coast
          tribes, was the piñon, the fruit of the
          Araucanian pine (Araucaria
          imbricata). Every year during the autumn months
          excursions are made by the whole tribe to the pine forests, where
          they remain until they have collected sufficient for the following
          year. Each tribe has its own district, inherited by custom from
          generation to generation and inviolate, by unwritten law, from
          other tribes, even in time of warfare. This harvest was formerly of
          such supreme importance, that all inter-tribal quarrels and
          warfares were suspended by mutual accord during this
          period.” See R. E. Latcham, “Ethnology of the Araucanos,” Journal of the Royal
          Anthropological Institute, xxxix. (1909) p. 341. The
          Gilyaks of the Amoor valley in like manner eat the nutlets of the
          Siberian stone-pine (L. von Schrenk, Die Völker des
          Amur-Landes, iii. 440). See also the commentators on
          Herodotus, iv. 109 φθειροτραγέουσι.


825.


Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. xiv. 103.


826.


Strabo, x. 3. 12 sqq.,
          pp. 469 sqq. However, tipsy people were
          excluded from the sanctuary of Attis (Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, v. 6).


827.


Scholiast on Lucian, Dial.
          Meretr. ii. 1, p. 276 ed. H. Rabe (Leipsic,
          1906).


828.


Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium
          haeresium, v. 8 and 9, pp. 162, 168 ed. Duncker and
          Schneidewin; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum
          religionum, 3; Sallustius philosophus, “De diis et mundo,” Fragmenta
          Philosophorum Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii.
          33. Others identified him with the spring flowers. See Eusebius,
          Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 11.
          8 and 12, iii. 13. 10 ed. F. A. Heinichen (Leipsic, 1842-1843);
          Augustine, De civitate Dei, vii. 25.


829.


W. Helbig, Führer durch die
          öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in
          Rom2 (Leipsic, 1899), i. 481,
          No. 721.


830.


The urn is in the Lateran Museum at
          Rome (No. 1046). It is not described by W. Helbig in his
          Führer.2
          The inscription on the urn (M. Modius Maxximus archigallus coloniae
          Ostiens) is published by H. Dessau (Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, No. 4162), who does not notice the curious
          and interesting composition of the cock's tail. The bird is chosen
          as an emblem of the priest with a punning reference to the word
          gallus, which in Latin means a
          cock as well as a priest of Attis.


831.


Gregory of Tours, De gloria
          confessorum, 77 (Migne's Patrologia
          Latina, lxxi. 884). That the goddess here referred to
          was Cybele and not a native Gallic deity, as I formerly thought
          (Lectures
          on the Early History of the Kingship, p. 178), seems
          proved by the “Passion of St.
          Symphorian,” chs. 2 and 6 (Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, v. 1463, 1466). Gregory and the author of the
          “Passion of St. Symphorian” call the
          goddess simply Berecynthia, the latter writer adding “the Mother of the Demons,” which is plainly a
          Christian version of the title “Mother of
          the Gods.”


832.


Above, p. 265. In the island of Thera an ox, wheat, barley,
          wine, and “other first-fruits of all that
          the seasons produce” were offered to the Mother of the Gods,
          plainly because she was deemed the source of fertility. See G.
          Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecarum,2 vol. ii. p. 426, No.
          630.


833.


H. Hepding, Attis,
          pp. 215-217; compare id. p. 175 note 7.


834.


Ptolemaeus, Nov.
          Hist. i. p. 183 of A. Westermann's Mythographi
          Graeci (Brunswick, 1843).


835.


Pausanias, viii. 25. 5 sq.


836.


Aelian, Nat.
          Anim. xii. 30. The place was in Mesopotamia, and the
          goddess was probably Astarte. So Lucian (De dea
          Syria) calls the Astarte of Hierapolis “the Assyrian Hera.”


837.


Pausanias, ii. 38. 2.


838.


Julian, Orat.
          v. 173 sqq. (pp. 225 sqq.
          ed. F. C. Hertlein); H. Hepding, Attis,
          pp. 155-157. However, apples, pomegranates, and dates were also
          forbidden. The story that the mother of Attis conceived him through
          contact with a pomegranate (above, pp. 263, 269) might explain the prohibition of that fruit.
          But the reasons for tabooing apples and dates are not apparent,
          though Julian tried to discover them. He suggested that dates may
          have been forbidden because the date-palm does not grow in Phrygia,
          the native land of Cybele and Attis.


839.


P. Kretschmer, Einleitung in die
          Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (Göttingen,
          1896), p. 355.


840.


Diodorus Siculus, iii. 58. 4;
          Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, i.
          9, p. 168 ed. Duncker and Schneidewin. A Latin dedication to
          Atte Papa has been found at
          Aquileia (F. Cumont, in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopädie der
          classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ii. 2180,
          s.v. “Attepata” H. Hepding, Attis,
          p. 86). Greek dedications to Papas or to Zeus Papas occur in
          Phrygia (H. Hepding, Attis, pp. 78 sq.).
          Compare A. B. Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the
          Oak,” Classical Review, xviii. (1904)
          p. 79.


841.


Arnobius, Adversus
          Nationes, v. 6 and 13.


842.


(Sir) Edward B. Tylor, Primitive
          Culture2 (London, 1873), i.
          223.


843.


Rapp, s.v.
“Kybele,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1648.


844.


She is called a “motherless virgin” by Julian (Or. v.
          166 b, p. 215 ed. F. C.
          Hertlein), and there was a Parthenon or virgin's chamber in
          her sanctuary at Cyzicus (Ch. Michel, Recueil
          d'Inscriptions Grecques, p. 404, No. 538). Compare
          Rapp, in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm.
          Mythologie, ii. 1648; Wagner, s.v.
“Nana,” ibid.
          iii. 4 sq. Another great goddess of
          fertility who was conceived as a Virgin Mother was the Egyptian
          Neith or Net. She is called “the Great
          Goddess, the Mother of All the Gods,” and was believed to
          have brought forth Ra, the Sun, without the help of a male partner.
          See C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im
          Altertum, i. 111; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the
          Egyptians (London, 1904), i. 457-462. The latter
          writer says (p. 462): “In very early times
          Net was the personification of the eternal female principle of life
          which was self-sustaining and self-existent, and was secret and
          unknown, and all-pervading; the more material thinkers, whilst
          admitting that she brought forth her son Rā without the aid of a
          husband, were unable to divorce from their minds the idea that a
          male germ was necessary for its production, and finding it
          impossible to derive it from a being external to the goddess,
          assumed that she herself provided not only the substance which was
          to form the body of Rā but also the male germ which fecundated it.
          Thus Net was the type of partheno-genesis.”


845.


Quoted by Eustathius on Homer,
          Il. v. 408; Fragmenta
          Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii. 592,
          Frag. 30.


846.


(Sir) Edward B. Tylor, Primitive
          Culture,2 i. 321 sqq.,
          ii. 270 sqq. For example, the Ewe people
          of Togo-land, in West Africa, think that the Earth is the wife of
          the Sky, and that their marriage takes place in the rainy season,
          when the rain causes the seeds to sprout and bear fruit. These
          fruits they regard as the children of Mother Earth, who in their
          opinion is the mother also of men and of gods. See J. Spieth,
          Die
          Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), pp. 464, 548. In the
          regions of the Senegal and the Niger it is believed that the
          Sky-god and the Earth-goddess are the parents of the principal
          spirits who dispense life and death, weal and woe, among mankind.
          The eldest son of Sky and Earth is represented in very various
          forms, sometimes as a hermaphrodite, sometimes in semi-animal
          shape, with the head of a bull, a crocodile, a fish, or a serpent.
          His name varies in the different tribes, but the outward form of
          his ceremonies is everywhere similar. His rites, which are to some
          extent veiled in mystery, are forbidden to women. See Maurice
          Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal-Niger (Paris,
          1912), iii. 173-175.


847.


Hesiod, Theogony, 159 sqq.


848.


Porphyry, De antro
          nympharum, 16; Aristides, Or.
          iii. (vol. i. p. 35 ed. G. Dindorf, Leipsic, 1829); Scholiast on
          Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. iv. 983.


849.


A. Lang, Custom and
          Myth (London, 1884), pp. 45 sqq.;
          id., Myth, Ritual, and
          Religion (London, 1887), i. 299 sqq. In
          Egyptian mythology the separation of heaven and earth was ascribed
          to Shu, the god of light, who insinuated himself between the bodies
          of Seb (Keb) the earth-god and of Nut the sky-goddess. On the
          monuments Shu is represented holding up the star-spangled body of
          Nut on his hands, while Seb reclines on the ground. See A.
          Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient
          Egyptians (London, 1897), pp. 230 sq.; E.
          A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii.
          90, 97 sq., 100, 105; A. Erman,
          Die
          ägyptische Religion2
          (Berlin, 1909), pp. 35 sq.; C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der
          Religion im Altertum, i. 33 sq.
          Thus contrary to the usual mythical conception the Egyptians
          regarded the earth as male and the sky as female. An allusion in
          the Book
          of the Dead (ch. 69, vol. ii. p. 235, E. A. Wallis
          Budge's translation, London, 1901) has been interpreted as a hint
          that Osiris mutilated his father Seb at the separation of earth and
          heaven, just as Cronus mutilated his father Uranus. See H. Brugsch,
          Religion
          und Mythologie der alten Aegypter (Leipsic,
          1885-1888), p. 581; E. A. Wallis Budge, op.
          cit. ii. 99 sq. Sometimes the Egyptians
          conceived the sky as a great cow standing with its legs on the
          earth. See A. Erman, Die ägyptische
          Religion,2 pp. 7, 8.


850.


Compare The Dying
          God, pp. 105 sqq.


851.


Julian, Or. v.
          pp. 165 b, 170 d
          (pp. 214, 221, ed. F. C. Hertlein); Sallustius philosophus,
          “De diis et mundo,” iv. Fragmenta
          Philosophorum Graecorum, ed. F. G. A. Mullach, iii.
          33.


852.


Drexler, s.v.
“Men,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2745; H.
          Hepding, Attis, p. 120, note 8.


853.


H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, vol. ii. Pars i. pp. 145 sq.,
          Nos. 4146-4149; H. Hepding, Attis, pp. 82, 86 sq., 89
          sq. As to Men Tyrannus, see
          Drexler, s.v. “Men,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Myth. ii. 2687 sqq.


854.


On the other hand Sir W. M. Ramsay
          holds that Attis and Men are deities of similar character and
          origin, but differentiated from each other by development in
          different surroundings (Cities and Bishoprics of
          Phrygia, i. 169); but he denies that Men was a
          moon-god (op. cit. i. 104, note 4).


855.


In letters of Eumenes and Attalus,
          preserved in inscriptions at Sivrihissar, the priest at Pessinus is
          addressed as Attis. See A. von Domaszewski, “Briefe der Attaliden an den Priester von
          Pessinus,” Archaeologische-epigraphische Mittheilungen
          aus Oesterreich-Ungarn, viii. (1884) pp. 96, 98; Ch.
          Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques,
          pp. 57 sq. No. 45; W. Dittenberger,
          Orientis
          Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (Leipsic, 1903-1905),
          vol. i. pp. 482 sqq. No. 315. For more evidence
          of inscriptions see H. Hepding, Attis,
          p. 79; Rapp, s.v. “Attis,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, i. 724. See also Polybius, xxii.
          18 (20), (ed. L. Dindorf), who mentions a priest of the Mother of
          the Gods named Attis at Pessinus.


856.


The conjecture is that of Henzen, in
          Annal. d.
          Inst. 1856, p. 110, referred to by Rapp, l.c.


857.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 75 sq.; The Dying
          God, pp. 151 sq., 209.


858.


Article “Phrygia,” in Encyclopaedia
          Britannica, 9th ed. xviii. (1885) p. 853. Elsewhere,
          speaking of the religions of Asia Minor in general, the same writer
          says: “The highest priests and priestesses
          played the parts of the great gods in the mystic ritual, wore their
          dress, and bore their names” (Cities and Bishoprics
          of Phrygia, i. 101).


859.


Strabo, xii. 5. 3, p. 567.


860.


(Sir) W. M. Ramsay, “A Study of Phrygian Art,” Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, ix. (1888) pp. 379 sqq.;
          id., “A
          Study of Phrygian Art,” Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, x. (1889) pp. 156 sqq.;
          G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans
          l'Antiquité, v. 82 sqq.


861.


Herodotus, i. 94. According to Sir W.
          M. Ramsay, the conquering and ruling caste in Lydia belonged to the
          Phrygian stock (Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix.
          (1888) p. 351).


862.


Herodotus, i. 34-45. The tradition
          that Croesus would allow no iron weapon to come near Atys suggests
          that a similar taboo may have been imposed on the Phrygian priests
          named Attis. For taboos of this sort see Taboo and the Perils
          of the Soul, pp. 225 sqq.


863.


H. Stein on Herodotus, i. 43; Ed.
          Meyer, s.v. “Atys,” in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie der
          classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ii. 2 col.
          2262.


864.


See above, pp. 13, 16
sq., 48 sqq.


865.


The Dying God, pp. 161
          sqq.


866.


See (Sir) W. M. Ramsay, s.v.
“Phrygia,” Encyclopaedia
          Britannica, 9th ed. xviii. 849 sq.;
          id., “A
          Study of Phrygian Art,” Journal of Hellenic
          Studies, ix. (1888) pp. 350 sq.
          Prof. P. Kretschmer holds that both Cybele and Attis were gods of
          the indigenous Asiatic population, not of the Phrygian invaders
          (Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen
          Sprache, Göttingen, 1896, pp. 194 sq.).


867.


Diodorus Siculus, iii. 58 sq. As
          to Marsyas in the character of a shepherd or herdsman see Hyginus,
          Fab. 165; Nonnus, Dionys.
          i. 41 sqq. He is called a Silenus by
          Pausanias (i. 24. 1).


868.


Pausanias, x. 30. 9.


869.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 4. 2; Hyginus,
          Fab. 165. Many ancient writers
          mention that the tree on which Marsyas suffered death was a pine.
          See Apollodorus, l.c.; Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 301 sq.,
          with the Scholiast's note; Lucian, Tragodopodagra, 314 sq.;
          Archias Mitylenaeus, in Anthologia Palatina, vii. 696;
          Philostratus, Junior, Imagines, i. 3; Longus,
          Pastor. iv. 8; Zenobius,
          Cent. iv. 81; J. Tzetzes,
          Chiliades, i. 353 sqq. Pliny
          alone declares the tree to have been a plane, which according to
          him was still shown at Aulocrene on the way from Apamea to Phrygia
          (Nat.
          Hist. xvi. 240). On a candelabra in the Vatican the
          defeated Marsyas is represented hanging on a pine-tree (W. Helbig,
          Führer,2 i.
          225 sq.); but the monumental
          evidence is not consistent on this point (Jessen, s.v.
“Marsyas,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2442). The
          position which the pine held in the myth and ritual of Cybele
          supports the preponderance of ancient testimony in favour of that
          tree.


870.


Herodotus, vii. 26; Xenophon,
          Anabasis, i. 2. 8; Livy,
          xxxviii. 13. 6; Quintus Curtius, iii. 1. 1-5; Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. v. 106. Herodotus calls the river the
          Catarrhactes.


871.


Aelian, Var.
          Hist. xiii. 21.


872.


Catullus, lxiii. 22; Lucretius, ii.
          620; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 181 sq.,
          341; Polyaenus, Stratagem. viii. 53. 4. Flutes
          or pipes often appear on her monuments. See H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, Nos. 4100, 4143, 4145, 4152, 4153.


873.


Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium
          haeresium, v. 9, p. 168, ed. Duncker and
          Schneidewin.


874.


Adam of Bremen, Descriptio insularum
          Aquilonis, 27 (Migne's Patrologia
          Latina, cxlvi. 643).


875.


S. Bugge, Studien über die
          Entstehung der nördischen Götter- und Heldensagen
          (Munich, 1889), pp. 339 sqq.; K. Simrock, Die
          Edda8 (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 382;
          K. Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde (Berlin,
          1870-1900), iv. 244 sq.; H. M. Chadwick,
          The Cult
          of Othin (London, 1899), pp. 3-20. The old English
          custom of hanging and disembowelling traitors was probably derived
          from a practice of thus sacrificing them to Odin; for among many
          races, including the Teutonic and Latin peoples, capital punishment
          appears to have been originally a religious rite, a sacrifice or
          consecration of the criminal to the god whom he had offended. See
          F. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde (Heilbronn,
          1879), pp. 8 sq.; K. von Amira, in H. Paul's
          Grundriss
          der germanischen Philologie,2
          iii. (Strasburg, 1900) pp. 197 sq.; G.
          Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford,
          1883), i. 410; W. Golther, Handbuch der germanischen
          Mythologie (Leipsic, 1895), pp. 548 sq.;
          Th. Mommsen, Roman History, bk. i. ch. 12
          (vol. i. p. 192, ed. 1868); id., Römisches
          Strafrecht (Leipsic, 1899), pp. 900 sqq.;
          F. Granger, The Worship of the Romans
          (London, 1895), pp. 259 sqq.; E. Westermarck,
          The
          Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, i.
          (London, 1906) pp. 439 sq. So, too, among barbarous
          peoples the slaughter of prisoners in war is often a sacrifice
          offered by the victors to the gods to whose aid they ascribe the
          victory. See A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold
          Coast (London, 1887), pp. 169 sq.; W.
          Ellis, Polynesian
          Researches2 (London, 1832-1836), i.
          289; Diodorus Siculus, xx. 65; Strabo, vii. 2. 3, p. 294; Caesar,
          De bello
          Gallico, vi. 17; Tacitus, Annals,
          i. 61, xiii. 57; Procopius, De bello Gothico, ii. 15. 24, ii. 25.
          9; Jornandes, Getica, vi. 41; J. Grimm,
          Deutsche
          Mythologie4 (Berlin, 1875-1878), i. 36
          sq.; Fr. Schwally, Semitische
          Kriegsaltertümer (Leipsic, 1901), pp. 29 sqq.


876.


Havamal, 139 sqq.
          (K. Simrock, Die Edda,8 p.
          55; K. Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, v. 270
          sq.).


877.


Fay-Cooper Cole, The Wild Tribes of
          Davao District, Mindanao (Chicago, 1913), pp. 114
          sqq. (Field Museum of
          Natural History, Publication 170).


878.


Pausanias, viii. 23. 6 sq. The
          story, mentioned by Pausanias, that some children tied a rope round
          the neck of the image of Artemis was probably invented to explain a
          ritual practice of the same sort, as scholars have rightly
          perceived. See L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,
          i.4 305, note 2; L. R. Farnell,
          The Cults
          of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909), ii. 428
          sq.; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische
          Feste (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 232 sqq.
          The Arcadian worship of the Hanged Artemis was noticed by
          Callimachus. See Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 38, p. 32, ed.
          Potter.


879.


Eustathius on Homer, Od.
          xii. 85, p. 1714; I. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca (Berlin,
          1814-1821), i. 336 sq., s.v.
          Ἄγαλμα Ἑκάτης. The goddess Hecate was sometimes identified with
          Artemis, though in origin probably she was quite distinct. See L.
          R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States,
          ii. 499 sqq.


880.


Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. xiii.


881.


Pausanias, iii. 19. 9 sq.


882.


H. von Fritze, “Zum griechischen Opferritual,” Jahrbuch des kaiser.
          deutsch. Archäologischen Instituts, xviii. (1903) pp.
          58-67. In the ritual of Eleusis the sacrificial oxen were sometimes
          lifted up by young men from the ground. See G. Dittenberger,
          Sylloge
          Inscriptionum Graecarum,2
          vol. ii. pp. 166 sq. No. 521 (ἤραντο δὲ καὶ τοῖς
          μυστηρίοις τοὺς βοῦς ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι τῇ θυσίαι, κτλ.); E. S. Roberts
          and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy,
          ii. (Cambridge, 1905) pp. 176 sq., No. 65. In this inscription
          the word ἤραντο is differently interpreted by P. Stengel, who
          supposes that it refers merely to turning backwards and upwards the
          head of the victim. See P. Stengel, “Zum
          griechischen Opferritual,” Jahrbuch des kaiser.
          deutsch. Archäologischen Instituts, xviii. (1903) pp.
          113-123. But it seems highly improbable that so trivial an act
          should be solemnly commemorated in an inscription among the
          exploits of the young men (epheboi) who performed it. On
          the other hand, we know that at Nysa the young men did lift and
          carry the sacrificial bull, and that the act was deemed worthy of
          commemoration on the coins. See above, p. 206. The Wajagga of East Africa dread the ghosts
          of suicides; so when a man has hanged himself they take the rope
          from his neck and hang a goat in the fatal noose, after which they
          slay the animal. This is supposed to appease the ghost and prevent
          him from tempting human beings to follow his bad example. See B.
          Gutmann, “Trauer und Begrabnissitten der
          Wadschagga,” Globus, lxxxix. (1906) p.
          200.


883.


See above, p. 146.


884.


The Scapegoat, pp. 294
          sqq.


885.


Herodotus, iv. 71 sq.


886.


Jean du Plan de Carpin, Historia
          Mongalorum, ed. D'Avezac (Paris, 1838), cap. iii. §
          iii.


887.


Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, texte Arabe accompagné
          d'une traduction, par C. Défrémery et B. R.
          Sanguinetti (Paris, 1853-1858), iv. 300 sq. For
          more evidence of similar customs, observed by Turanian peoples, see
          K. Neumann, Die Hellenen im Skythenlande
          (Berlin, 1855), pp. 237-239.


888.


Captain R. Fitz-roy, Narrative of the
          Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships “Adventure” and “Beagle” (London, 1839), ii. 155
          sq.


889.


Herodotus, iv. 103. Many Scythians
          flayed their dead enemies, and, stretching the skin on a wooden
          framework, carried it about with them on horseback (Herodotus, iv.
          64). The souls of the dead may have been thought to attend on and
          serve the man who thus bore their remains about with him. It is
          also possible that the custom was nothing more than a barbarous
          mode of wreaking vengeance on the dead. Thus a Persian king has
          been known to flay an enemy, stuff the skin with chaff, and hang it
          on a high tree (Procopius, De bello Persico, i. 5. 28).
          This was the treatment which the arch-heretic Manichaeus is said to
          have received at the hands of the Persian king whose son he failed
          to cure (Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica, i. 22;
          Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxvii. 137,
          139). Still such a punishment may have been suggested by a
          religious rite. The idea of crucifying their human victims appears
          to have been suggested to the negroes of Benin by the crucifixes of
          the early Portuguese missionaries. See H. Ling Roth, Great
          Benin (Halifax, 1903), pp. 14 sq.


890.


W. H. Furness, Home-Life of Borneo
          Head-Hunters (Philadelphia, 1902), p. 59. According
          to Messrs. Hose and McDougall, the spirits which animate the skulls
          appear not to be those of the persons from whose shoulders the
          heads were taken. However, the spirits (called Toh) reside in or about the
          heads, and “it is held that in some way
          their presence in the house brings prosperity to it, especially in
          the form of good crops; and so essential to the welfare of the
          house are the heads held to be that, if through fire a house has
          lost its heads and has no occasion for war, the people will beg a
          head, or even a fragment of one, from some friendly house, and will
          instal it in their own with the usual ceremonies.” See Ch.
          Hose and W. McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo
          (London, 1912), ii. 20, 23.


891.


Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests
          of the Far East2 (London, 1863), i.
          197.


892.


Hugh Low, Sarawak
          (London, 1848), pp. 206 sq. In quoting this passage I
          have taken the liberty to correct a grammatical slip.


893.




Spenser St.
            John, op. cit. i. 204. See further
            G. A. Wilken, “Iets over de
            schedelvereering,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde
            van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxviii. (1889) pp. 89-129;
            id., Verspreide
            Geschriften (The Hague, 1912), iv. 37-81. A
            different view of the purpose of head-hunting is maintained by
            Mr. A. C. Kruyt, in his essay, “Het
            koppensnellen der Toradja's van Midden-Celebes, en zijne
            Beteekenis,” Verslagen en Mededeelingen der koninklijke
            Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde,
            Vierde Reeks, iii. 2 (Amsterdam, 1899), pp. 147 sqq.


The natives of
            Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, think it necessary to
            obtain the heads of their enemies for the purpose of celebrating
            the final obsequies of a dead chief. Their notion seems to be
            that the ghost of the deceased ruler demands this sacrifice in
            his honour, and will punish the omission of it by sending
            sickness or other misfortunes on the survivors. Thus among these
            people the custom of head-hunting is based on their belief in
            human immortality and on their conception of the exacting demands
            which the dead make upon the living. When the skulls have been
            presented to a dead chief, the priest prays to him for his
            blessing on the sowing and harvesting of the rice, on the
            fruitfulness of women, and so forth. See C. Fries, “Das ‘Koppensnellen’
            auf Nias,” Allgemeine
            Missions-Zeitschrift, February, 1908, pp. 73-88.
            From this account it would seem that it is not the spirits of the
            slain men, but the ghost of the dead chief from whom the
            blessings of fertility and so forth are supposed to emanate.
            Compare Th. C. Rappard, “Het eiland Nias
            en zijne bewoners,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde
            van Nederlandsch-Indië, lxii. (1909) pp.
            609-611.




894.


Spirits of the Corn and of the
          Wild, ii. 4-7.


895.


Spirits of the Corn and of the
          Wild, ii. 169 sqq.


896.


H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae
          Selectae, Nos. 4099, 4100, 4103, 4105, 4106, 4116,
          4117, 4119, 4120, 4121, 4123, 4124, 4127, 4128, 4131, 4136, 4139,
          4140, 4142, 4156, 4163, 4167; H. Hepding, Attis,
          pp. 85, 86, 93, 94, 95, Inscr. Nos. 21-24, 26, 50, 51, 52, 61, 62,
          63. See further, J. Toutain, Les Cultes Païens dans l'Empire
          Romain (Paris, 1911), pp. 73 sqq.,
          103 sqq.


897.


S. Dill, Roman Society in the
          Last Century of the Western Empire2
          (London, 1899), p. 16.


898.


Augustine, De civitate
          Dei, vii. 26.


899.


But the two were publicly worshipped
          at Dyme and Patrae in Achaia (Pausanias, vii. 17. 9, vii. 20. 3),
          and there was an association for their worship at Piraeus. See P.
          Foucart, Des Associations Religieuses chez les
          Grecs (Paris, 1873), pp. 85 sqq.,
          196; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques,
          p. 772, No. 982.


900.


Rapp, s.v.
“Kybele,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1656.


901.


As to the savage theory of inspiration
          or possession by a deity see (Sir) Edward B. Tylor, Primitive
          Culture,2 ii. 131 sqq. As
          to the savage theory of a new birth see Balder the
          Beautiful, ii. 251 sqq. As
          to the use of blood to wash away sins see The Magic Art and the
          Evolution of Kings, ii. 107 sqq.;
          Psyche's
          Task, Second Edition, pp. 44 sq., 47
          sqq., 116 sq.
          Among the Cameroon negroes accidental homicide can be expiated by
          the blood of an animal. The relations of the slayer and of the
          slain assemble. An animal is killed and every person present is
          smeared with its blood on his face and breast. They think that the
          guilt of manslaughter is thus atoned for, and that no punishment
          will overtake the homicide. See Missionary Autenrieth, “Zur Religion der Kamerun-Neger,” in
          Mitteilungen der geographischen Gesellschaft
          zu Jena, xii. (1893) pp. 93 sq. In
          Car Nicobar a man possessed by devils is cleansed of them by being
          rubbed all over with pig's blood and beaten with leaves. The devils
          are thus transferred to the leaves, which are thrown into the sea
          before daybreak. See V. Solomon, “Extracts
          from diaries kept in Car Nicobar,” in Journal of the
          Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 227.
          Similarly the ancient Greeks purified a homicide by means of pig's
          blood and laurel leaves. See my note on Pausanias, ii. 31. 8 (vol.
          iii. pp. 276-279). The original idea of thus purging a manslayer
          was probably to rid him of the angry ghost of his victim, just as
          in Car Nicobar a man is rid of devils in the same manner. The
          purgative virtue ascribed to the blood in these ceremonies may be
          based on the notion that the offended spirit accepts it as a
          substitute for the blood of the guilty person. This was the view of
          C. Meiners (Geschichte der Religionen,
          Hanover, 1806-1807, ii. 137 sq.) and of E. Rohde
          (Psyche,3
          Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903, ii. 77 sq.).


902.


A good instance of such an attempt to
          dress up savagery in the garb of philosophy is the fifth speech of
          the emperor Julian, “On the Mother of the
          Gods” (pp. 206 sqq. ed. F. C. Hertlein,
          Leipsic, 1875-1876).


903.


As to the diffusion of Oriental
          religions in the Roman Empire see G. Boissier, La Religion Romaine
          d'Auguste aux Antonins5
          (Paris, 1900), i. 349 sqq.; J. Reville, La Religion à Rome
          sous les Sévères (Paris, 1886), pp. 47 sqq.;
          S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the
          Western Empire2 (London, 1899), pp. 76
          sqq.


904.


Compare Servius on Virgil,
          Aen. ii. 604, vi. 661; Origen,
          Contra
          Celsum, viii. 73 (Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, xi. 1628); G. Boissier, La Religion Romaine
          d'Auguste aux Antonins5
          (Paris, 1900), i. 357 sq.; E. Westermarck,
          The
          Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (London,
          1906-1908), i. 345 sq.; H. H. Milman, History of Latin
          Christianity,4 i. 150-153, ii. 90. In the
          passage just cited Origen tells us that the Christians refused to
          follow the Emperor to the field of battle even when he ordered them
          to do so; but he adds that they gave the emperor the benefit of
          their prayers and thus did him more real service than if they had
          fought for him with the sword. On the decline of the civic virtues
          under the influence of Christian asceticism see W. E. H. Lecky,
          History
          of European Morals from Augustus to
          Charlemagne3 (London, 1877), ii. 139
          sqq.


905.


To prevent misapprehension I will add
          that the spread of Oriental religions was only one of many causes
          which contributed to the downfall of ancient civilization. Among
          these contributory causes a friend, for whose judgment and learning
          I entertain the highest respect, counts bad government and a
          ruinous fiscal system, two of the most powerful agents to blast the
          prosperity of nations, as may be seen in our own day by the blight
          which has struck the Turkish empire. It is probable, too, as my
          friend thinks, that the rapid diffusion of alien faiths was as much
          an effect as a cause of widespread intellectual decay. Such
          unwholesome growths could hardly have fastened upon the
          Graeco-Roman mind in the days of its full vigour. We may remember
          the energy with which the Roman Government combated the first
          outbreak of the Bacchic plague (Th. Mommsen, Roman
          History, iii. 115 sq.,
          ed. 1894). The disastrous effects of Roman financial oppression on
          the industries and population of the empire, particularly of
          Greece, are described by George Finlay (Greece under the
          Romans,2 Edinburgh and London, 1857,
          pp. 47 sqq.).


906.


See Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments
          figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (Brussels,
          1896-1899); id., s.v.
“Mithras,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 3028
          sqq. Compare id.,
          Les
          Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme
          Romain2 (Paris, 1909), pp. 207
          sqq.


907.


Fr. Cumont, Textes et
          Monuments, i. 333 sqq.


908.


E. Renan, Marc-Aurèle et la Fin
          du Monde Antique (Paris, 1882), pp. 576 sqq.;
          Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments, i. 339
          sqq.


909.


Tertullian, De
          corona, 15; id., De praescriptione
          haereticorum, 40; Justin Martyr, Apologia, i. 66; id.,
          Dialogus
          cum Tryphone, 78 (Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, vi. 429, 660). Tertullian explained in like
          manner the resemblance of the fasts of Isis and Cybele to the fasts
          of Christianity (De jejunio, 16). Justin Martyr
          thought that by listening to the words of the inspired prophets the
          devils discovered the divine intentions and anticipated them by a
          series of profane and blasphemous imitations. Among these
          travesties of Christian truth he enumerates the death,
          resurrection, and ascension of Dionysus, the virgin birth of
          Perseus, and Bellerophon mounted on Pegasus, whom he regards as a
          parody of Christ riding on an ass. See Justin Martyr, Apology, i. 54.


910.


J. de Acosta, Natural and Moral
          History of the Indies, translated by E. Grimston
          (London, 1880), bk. v. chs. 11, 16, 17, 18, 24-28, vol. ii. pp. 324
          sq., 334 sqq.,
          356 sqq.


911.


Compare S. Dill, Roman Society in the
          Last Century of the Western Empire2
          (London, 1899), pp. 80 sqq.; id.,
          Roman
          Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (London, 1904),
          pp. 619 sqq.


912.


E. Renan, Marc-Aurèle et la Fin
          du Monde Antique (Paris, 1882), pp. 579 sq.;
          Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments, i.
          338.


913.


Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. xviii. 221; Columella, De re
          rustica, ix. 14. 12; L. Ideler, Handbuch der
          mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin,
          1825-1826), ii. 124; G. F. Unger, in Iwan Müller's Handbuch der
          klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, i.1
          (Nördlingen, 1886) p. 649.


914.


In the calendar of Philocalus the
          twenty-fifth of December is marked N.
          Invicti, that is, Natalis Solis Invicti. See
          Corpus
          Inscriptionum Latinarum, i.2
          Pars prior (Berlin, 1893), p. 278, with Th. Mommsen's commentary,
          pp. 338 sq.


915.


Cosmas Hierosolymitanus, Commentarii in Sancti
          Gregorii Nazianzeni Carmina (Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, xxxviii. 464): ταύτην [Christmas] ἧγον
          ἔκπαλαι δὲ τὴν ἡμέραν ἑορτὴν Ἔλληνες, καθ᾽ ἤν ἐτελοῦντο κατὰ τὸ
          μεσονύκτιον, ἐν ἀδύτοις τισὶν ὑπεισερχόμενοι, ὄθεν ἐξιόντες
          ἔκραζον: “Ἡ παρθένος ἕτεκεν, αὔξει
          φῶς.” ταύτην Ἐπιφάνιος ὁ μέγας τῆς Κυπρίων ἱερεύς φησι τὴν
          ἑορτὴν καὶ Σαῤῥακηνούς ἄγειν τῇπαρ᾽ αὐτῶν σεβομένῃ Ἀφροδίτῃ, ἤν δὴ
          Χαμαρᾶ τῇ αὐτῶν προσαγορεύουσι γλώττῃ. The passage is quoted, with
          some verbal variations, by Ch. Aug. Lobeck, Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829),
          ii. 1227 note 2. See Franz Cumont, “Le
          Natalis Invicti,” Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions
          et Belles-Lettres, 1911 (Paris, 1911), pp. 292-298,
          whose learned elucidations I follow in the text. That the festival
          of the Nativity of the Sun was similarly celebrated in Egypt may be
          inferred from a Greek calendar drawn up by the astrologer Antiochus
          in Lower Egypt at the end of the second or the beginning of the
          third century a.d.; for under the 25th
          December the calendar has the entry, “Birthday of the Sun, the light waxes” (Ἡλίου
          γενέθλιον; αὔξει φῶς). See F. Cumont, op.
          cit. p. 294.


916.


Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 18. 10.


917.


F. Cumont, s.v.
“Caelestis,” in Pauly-Wissowa's
          Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
          Altertumswissenschaft, v. i. 1247 sqq.
          She was called the Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah vii. 18, xliv. 18),
          the Heavenly Goddess (Herodotus, iii. 8; Pausanias, i. 14. 7), or
          the Heavenly Virgin (Tertullian, Apologeticus, 23; Augustine,
          De
          civitate Dei, ii. 4). The Greeks spoke of her as the
          Heavenly Aphrodite (Herodotus, i. 105; Pausanias, i. 14. 7). A
          Greek inscription found in Delos contains a dedication to Astarte
          Aphrodite; and another found in the same island couples Palestinian
          Astarte and Heavenly Aphrodite. See G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
          Graecorum,2 vol. ii. pp. 619
          sq., No. 764; R. A. Stewart
          Macalister, The Philistines, their History and
          Civilization (London, 1913), p. 94.


918.


Dedications to Mithra the Unconquered
          Sun (Soli
          invicto Mithrae) have been found in abundance. See
          Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments, ii. 99
          sqq. As to the worship of the
          Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus)
          see H. Usener, Das Weihnachtsfest2
          (Bonn, 1911), pp. 348 sqq.


919.


Fr. Cumont, op.
          cit. i. 325 sq., 339.


920.


J. Bingham, The Antiquities of
          the Christian Church, bk. xx. ch. iv. (Bingham's
          Works, vol. vii. pp. 279
          sqq., Oxford, 1855); C. A.
          Credner, “De natalitiorum Christi
          origine,” Zeitschrift für die historische
          Theologie, iii. 2 (1833), pp. 236 sqq.;
          Mgr. L. Duchesne, Origines du Culte
          Chrétien3 (Paris, 1903), pp. 257
          sqq.; Th. Mommsen, in
          Corpus
          Inscriptionum Latinarum, i.2
          Pars prior, p. 338. The earliest mention of the festival of
          Christmas is in the calendar of Philocalus, which was drawn up at
          Rome in 336 a.d. The words are
          VIII.
          kal. jan., natus Christus in
          Betleem Judee (L. Duchesne, op.
          cit. p. 258).


921.


Quoted by C. A. Credner, op.
          cit. p. 239, note 46; by Th. Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum
          Latinarum, i.2 Pars prior, pp. 338
          sq.; and by H. Usener,
          Das
          Weihnachtsfest2 (Bonn, 1911), pp. 349
          sq.


922.


Augustine, Serm.
          cxc. 1 (Migne's Patrologia Latina, xxxviii.
          1007).


923.


Leo the Great, Serm.
          xxii. (al. xxi.) 6 (Migne's
          Patrologia Latina, liv. 198).
          Compare St. Ambrose, Serm. vi. 1 (Migne's
          Patrologia Latina, xvii.
          614).


924.


A. Credner, op.
          cit. pp. 236 sqq.; E. B. Tylor, Primitive
          Culture,2 ii. 297 sq.;
          Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments, i. 342, 355
          sq.; Th. Mommsen, in
          Corpus
          Inscriptionum Latinarum, i.2
          Pars prior, pp. 338 sq.; H. Usener, Das
          Weihnachtsfest2 (Bonn, 1911), pp. 348
          sqq. A different explanation of
          Christmas has been put forward by Mgr. Duchesne. He shows that
          among the early Christians the death of Christ was commonly
          supposed to have fallen on the twenty-fifth of March, that day
          having been “chosen arbitrarily, or rather
          suggested by its coincidence with the official equinox of
          spring.” It would be natural to assume that Christ had lived
          an exact number of years on earth, and therefore that his
          incarnation as well as his death took place on the twenty-fifth of
          March. In point of fact the Church has placed the Annunciation and
          with it the beginning of his mother's pregnancy on that very day.
          If that were so, his birth would in the course of nature have
          occurred nine months later, that is, on the twenty-fifth of
          December. Thus on Mgr. Duchesne's theory the date of the Nativity
          was obtained by inference from the date of the Crucifixion, which
          in its turn was chosen because it coincided with the official
          equinox of spring. Mgr. Duchesne does not notice the coincidence of
          the vernal equinox with the festival of Attis. See his work,
          Origines
          du Culte Chrétien3
          (Paris, 1903), pp. 261-265, 272. The tradition that both the
          conception and the death of Christ fell on the twenty-fifth of
          March is mentioned and apparently accepted by Augustine
          (De
          Trinitate, iv. 9, Migne's Patrologia
          Latina, xlii. 894).


925.


See above, pp. 253 sqq.


926.


However, the lament for Adonis is
          mentioned by Ovid (Ars Amat. i. 75 sq.)
          along with the Jewish observance of the Sabbath.


927.


See above, pp. 268 sqq.


928.


Columella, De re
          rustica, ix. 14. 1; Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. xviii. 246; Macrobius, Saturn.
          i. 21. 10; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen
          Chronologie, ii. 124.


929.


Mgr. L. Duchesne, Origines du Culte
          Chrétien,3 pp. 262 sq.
          That Christ was crucified on the twenty-fifth of March in the year
          29 is expressly affirmed by Tertullian (Adversus
          Judaeos, 8, vol. ii. p. 719, ed. F. Oehler),
          Hippolytus (Commentary on Daniel, iv. 23,
          vol. i. p. 242, ed. Bonwetsch and Achelis), and Augustine
          (De
          civitate Dei, xviii. 54; id.,
          De
          Trinitate, iv. 9). See also Thesaurus Linguae
          Latinae, iv. (Leipsic, 1906- 1909) col. 1222,
          s.v. “Crucimissio”: “pol.
          silv. fast. Mart 25
          aequinoctium. principium veris. crucimissio gentilium. Christus
          passus hoc die.” From this last testimony we
          learn that there was a gentile as well as a Christian crucifixion
          at the spring equinox. The gentile crucifixion was probably the
          affixing of the effigy of Attis to the tree, though at Rome that
          ceremony appears to have taken place on the twenty-second rather
          than on the twenty-fifth of March. See above, p. 267. The
          Quartodecimans of Phrygia celebrated the twenty-fifth of March as
          the day of Christ's death, quoting as their authority certain acts
          of Pilate; in Cappadocia the adherents of this sect were divided
          between the twenty-fifth of March and the fourteenth of the moon.
          See Epiphanius, Adversus Haeres. l. 1 (vol. ii.
          p. 447, ed. G. Dindorf; Migne's Patrologia
          Graeca, xli. 884 sq.).
          In Gaul the death and resurrection of Christ were regularly
          celebrated on the twenty-fifth and twenty-seventh of March as late
          as the sixth century. See Gregory of Tours, Historia
          Francorum, viii. 31. 6 (Migne's Patrologia
          Latina, lxxi. 566); S. Martinus Dumiensis (bishop of
          Braga), De Pascha, 1 (Migne's
          Patrologia Latina, lxxii. 50),
          who says: “A
          plerisque Gallicanis episcopis usque ante non multum tempus
          custoditum est, ut semper VIII. Kal. April. diem Paschae celebrent,
          in quo facta Christi resurrectio traditur.”
          According to this last testimony, it was the resurrection, not the
          crucifixion, of Christ that was celebrated on the twenty-fifth of
          March; but Mgr. Duchesne attributes the statement to a mistake of
          the writer. With regard to the Roman practice the twenty-fifth and
          twenty-seventh of March are marked in ancient Martyrologies as the
          dates of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. See Vetustius
          Occidentalis Ecclesiae Martyrologium, ed. Franciscus
          Maria Florentinus (Lucca, 1667), pp. 396 sq.,
          405 sq. On this subject Mgr.
          Duchesne observes: “Hippolytus, in his
          Paschal Table, marks the Passion of Christ in a year in which the
          fourteenth of Nisan falls on Friday twenty-fifth March. In his
          commentary on Daniel he expressly indicates Friday the twenty-fifth
          of March and the consulship of the two Gemini. The Philocalien
          Catalogue of the Popes gives the same date as to day and year. It
          is to be noted that the cycle of Hippolytus and the Philocalien
          Catalogue are derived from official documents, and may be cited as
          evidence of the Roman ecclesiastical usage” (Origines du Culte
          Chrétien,3 p. 262).


930.


Mgr. L. Duchesne, op.
          cit. p. 263.


931.


Mgr. L. Duchesne, l.c. A
          sect of the Montanists held that the world began and that the sun
          and moon were created at the spring equinox, which, however, they
          dated on the twenty-fourth of March (Sozomenus, Historia
          Ecclesiastica, vii. 18). At Henen-Su in Egypt there
          was celebrated a festival of the “hanging
          out of the heavens,” that is, the supposed reconstituting of
          the heavens each year in the spring (E. A. Wallis Budge,
          The Gods
          of the Egyptians, ii. 63). But the Egyptians thought
          that the creation of the world took place at the rising of Sirius
          (Porphyry, De antro nympharum, 24; Solinus,
          xxxii. 13), which in antiquity fell on the twentieth of July (L.
          Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen
          Chronologie, i. 127 sqq.).


932.


See above, pp. 263, 281
sqq.


933.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, ii. 324 sqq.


934.


Above, pp. 246 sqq.


935.


The Magic Art and the Evolution of
          Kings, i. 14 sqq.


936.


See below, vol. ii. pp. 81
          sqq.


937.


Above, pp. 302 sqq.


938.


Another instance of the substitution
          of a Christian for a pagan festival may be mentioned. On the first
          of August the people of Alexandria used to commemorate the defeat
          of Mark Antony by Augustus and the entrance of the victor into
          their city. The heathen pomp of the festival offended Eudoxia, wife
          of Theodosius the Younger, and she decreed that on that day the
          Alexandrians should thenceforth celebrate the deliverance of St.
          Peter from prison instead of the deliverance of their city from the
          yoke of Antony and Cleopatra. See L. Ideler, Handbuch der
          mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i.
          154.


939.


Lactantius, De mortibus
          persecutorum, 2; id.,
          Divin.
          Institut. iv. 10. 18. As to the evidence of the
          Gallic usage see S. Martinus Dumiensis, quoted above, p. 307 note.


940.


The passage occurs in the 84th of the
          Quaestiones Veteris et Novi
          Testamenti (Migne's Patrologia
          Latina, xxxv. 2279), which are printed in the works
          of Augustine, though internal evidence is said to shew that they
          cannot be by that Father, and that they were written three hundred
          years after the destruction of Jerusalem. The writer's words are as
          follows: “Diabolus autem, qui est satanas, ut fallaciae
          suae auctoritatem aliquam possit adhibere, et mendacia sua
          commentitia veritate colorare, primo mense quo sacramenta dominica
          scit celebranda, quia non mediocris potentiae est, Paganis quae
          observarent instituit mysteria, ut animas eorum duabus ex causis in
          errore detineret: ut quia praevenit veritatem fallacia, melius
          quiddam fallacia videretur, quasi antiquitate praejudicans
          veritati. Et quia in primo mense, in quo aequinoctium habent
          Romani, sicut et nos, ea ipsa observatio ab his custoditur; ita
          etiam per sanguinem dicant expiationem fieri, sicut et nos per
          crucem: hac versutia Paganos detinet in errore, ut putent veritatem
          nostram imitationem potius videri quam veritatem, quasi per
          aemulationem superstitione quadam inventam. Nec enim verum potest,
          inquiunt, aestimari quod postea est inventum. Sed quia apud nos pro
          certo veritas est, et ab initio haec est, virtutum atque
          prodigiorum signa perhibent testimonium, ut, teste virtute, diaboli
          improbitas innotescat.” I have to thank my
          learned friend Professor Franz Cumont for pointing out this passage
          to me. He had previously indicated and discussed it (“La Polémique de l'Ambrosiaster contre les
          Païens,” Revue d'Histoire et de Littérature
          religieuses, viii. (1903) pp. 419 sqq.).
          Though the name of Attis is not mentioned in the passage, I agree
          with Prof. Cumont in holding that the bloody expiatory rites at the
          spring equinox, to which the writer refers, can only be those of
          the Day of Blood which formed part of the great aequinoctial
          festival of Attis. Compare F. Cumont, Les Religions
          Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain2
          (Paris, 1909), pp. 106 sq., 333 sq.


941.


On the decadence of Buddhism and its
          gradual assimilation to those popular Oriental superstitions
          against which it was at first directed, see Monier Williams,
          Buddhism2
          (London, 1890), pp. 147 sqq.


942.


The historical reality both of Buddha
          and of Christ has sometimes been doubted or denied. It would be
          just as reasonable to question the historical existence of
          Alexander the Great and Charlemagne on account of the legends which
          have gathered round them. The great religious movements which have
          stirred humanity to its depths and altered the beliefs of nations
          spring ultimately from the conscious and deliberate efforts of
          extraordinary minds, not from the blind unconscious co-operation of
          the multitude. The attempt to explain history without the influence
          of great men may flatter the vanity of the vulgar, but it will find
          no favour with the philosophic historian.


943.


G. F. Schömann, Griechische
          Alterthümer4 (Berlin, 1897-1902), ii.
          473; L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,
          i.4 (Berlin, 1894) pp. 248
          sq.; Greve, s.v.
“Hyakinthos,” in W. H. Roscher's
          Lexikon
          der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i. 2763 sq.
          Other views of Hyacinth have been expressed by G. F. Welcker
          (Griechische Götterlehre,
          Göttingen, 1857-1862, i. 472), G. F. Unger (“Der Isthmientag und die Hyakinthien,”
Philologus, xxxvii. (1877) pp.
          20 sqq.), E. Rohde (Psyche,3 i.
          137 sqq.) and S. Wide (Lakonische
          Kulte, Leipsic, 1893, p. 290).


944.


Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 3. 3, iii. 10.
          3; Nicander, Ther. 901 sqq.,
          with the Scholiast's note; Lucian, De
          saltatione, 45; Pausanias, iii. 1. 3, iii. 19. 5; J.
          Tzetzes, Chiliades, i. 241 sqq.;
          Ovid, Metam. x. 161-219; Pliny,
          Nat.
          Hist. xxi. 66.


945.


Theophrastus, Histor.
          Plant. vi. 8. 1 sq. That the hyacinth was a
          spring flower is plainly indicated also by Philostratus
          (Imag. i. 23. 1) and Ovid
          (Metam. x. 162-166). See further
          Greve, s.v. “Hyakinthos,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, i. 2764; J. Murr, Die Pflanzenwelt in
          der griechischen Mythologie (Innsbruck, 1890), pp.
          257 sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der
          Indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901),
          pp. 383 sq. Miss J. E. Harrison was so
          kind as to present me with two specimens of the flower (Delphinium Ajacis) on which the
          woful letters were plainly visible. A flower similarly marked, of a
          colour between white and red, was associated with the death of Ajax
          (Pausanias, i. 35. 4). But usually the two flowers were thought to
          be the same (Ovid, Metam. xiii. 394 sqq.;
          Scholiast on Theocritus, x. 28; Pliny, Nat.
          Hist. xxi. 66; Eustathius on Homer, Iliad,
          ii. 557, p. 285).


946.


Xenophon, Hellenica, iv. 5. 7-17;
          Pausanias, iii. 10. 1.


947.


Pausanias, iii. 1. 3, iii. 19.
          1-5.


948.


Hesychius, s.v.
          Ἑκατομβεύς; G. F. Unger in Philologus, xxxvii. (1877) pp.
          13-33; Greve, s.v. “Hyakinthos,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech.
          und röm. Mythologie, i. 2762; W. Smith, Dictionary of Greek
          and Roman Antiquities,3 i.
          339. From Xenophon (Hellenica, iv. 5) we learn that
          in 390 b.c. the Hyacinthian
          followed soon after the Isthmian festival, which that year fell in
          spring. Others, however, identifying Hecatombeus with the Attic
          month Hecatombaeon, would place the Hyacinthia in July (K. O.
          Müller, Dorier,2
          Breslau, 1844, i. 358). In Rhodes, Cos, and other Greek states
          there was a month called Hyacinthius, which probably took its name
          from the Hyacinthian festival. The month is thought to correspond
          to the Athenian Scirophorion and therefore to June. See E. Bischof,
          “De fastis Graecorum antiquioribus,”
Leipziger
          Studien für classische Philologie, vii. (1884) pp.
          369 sq., 381, 384, 410, 414
          sq.; G. Dittenberger,
          Sylloge
          Inscriptionum Graecarum,2
          vol. i. pp. 396, 607, Nos. 614, note 3, 744, note 1. If this latter
          identification of the month is correct, it would furnish an
          argument for dating the Spartan festival of Hyacinth in June also.
          The question is too intricate to be discussed here.


949.


Athenaeus, iv. 17, pp. 139
          sq. Strabo speaks (vi. 3. 2, p.
          278) of a contest at the Hyacinthian festival. It may have been the
          chariot races mentioned by Athenaeus.


950.


Hesychius, s.v.
          Πολύβοια.


951.


E. Rohde, Psyche,3 i.
          137 sqq.


952.


Pausanias, iii. 19. 3. The Greek word
          here used for sacrifice (ἐναγίζειν) properly denotes sacrifices
          offered to the heroic or worshipful dead; another word (θύειν) was
          employed for sacrifices offered to gods. The two terms are
          distinguished by Pausanias here and elsewhere (ii. 10. 1, ii. 11.
          7). Compare Herodotus, ii. 44. Sacrifices to the worshipful dead
          were often annual. See Pausanias, iii. 1. 8, vii. 19. 10, vii. 20.
          9, viii. 14. 11, viii. 41. 1, ix. 38. 5, x. 24. 6. It has been
          observed by E. Rehde (Psyche,3 i.
          139, note 2) that sacrifices were frequently offered to a hero
          before a god, and he suggests with much probability that in these
          cases the worship of the hero was older than that of the
          deity.


953.


Pausanias, iii. 19. 14.


954.


See above, p. 44; and below, vol. ii. pp. 213 sqq.