Section 3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig.
PASSING now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which
seem to show that these deities of vegetation had also, like other
deities of the same class, their animal embodiments. The
worshippers of Attis abstained from eating the flesh of swine. This
appears to indicate that the pig was regarded as an embodiment
of Attis. And the legend that Attis was killed by a boar points in the
same direction. For after the examples of the goat Dionysus and
the pig Demeter it may almost be laid down as a rule that an
animal which is said to have injured a god was originally the god
himself. Perhaps the cry of "Hyes Attes! Hyes Attes!" which was
raised by the worshippers of Attis, may be neither more nor less
than "Pig Attis! Pig Attis!"-hyes being possibly a Phrygian form of
the Greek hys, "a pig." 1
In regard to Adonis, his connexion with the boar was not always
explained by the story that he had been killed by the animal.
According to another story, a boar rent with his tusk the bark of
the tree in which the infant Adonis was born. According to yet
another story, he perished at the hands of Hephaestus on Mount
Lebanon while he was hunting wild boars. These variations in the
legend serve to show that, while the connexion of the boar with
Adonis was certain, the reason of the connexion was not
understood, and that consequently different stories were devised
to explain it. Certainly the pig ranked as a sacred animal among
the Syrians. At the great religious metropolis of Hierapolis on the
Euphrates pigs were neither sacrificed nor eaten, and if a man
touched a pig he was unclean for the rest of the day. Some
people said this was because the pigs were unclean; others said it
was because the pigs were sacred. This difference of opinion
points to a hazy state of religious thought in which the ideas of
sanctity and uncleanness are not yet sharply distinguished, both
being blent in a sort of vaporous solution to which we give the
name of taboo. It is quite consistent with this that the pig should
have been held to be an embodiment of the divine Adonis, and
the analogies of Dionysus and Demeter make it probable that the
story of the hostility of the animal to the god was only a late
misapprehension of the old view of the god as embodied in a pig.
The rule that pigs were not sacrificed or eaten by worshippers of
Attis and presumably of Adonis, does not exclude the possibility
that in these rituals the pig was slain on solemn occasions as a
representative of the god and consumed sacramentally by the
worshippers. Indeed, the sacramental killing and eating of an
animal implies that the animal is sacred, and that, as a general
rule, it is spared. 2
The attitude of the Jews to the pig was as ambiguous as that of
the heathen Syrians towards the same animal. The Greeks could
not decide whether the Jews worshipped swine or abominated
them. On the one hand they might not eat swine; but on the other
hand they might not kill them. And if the former rule speaks for the
uncleanness, the latter speaks still more strongly for the sanctity of
the animal. For whereas both rules may, and one rule must, be
explained on the supposition that the pig was sacred; neither rule
must, and one rule cannot, be explained on the supposition that
the pig was unclean. If, therefore, we prefer the former
supposition, we must conclude that, originally at least, the pig was
revered rather than abhorred by the Israelites. We are confirmed in
this opinion by observing that down to the time of Isaiah some of
the Jews used to meet secretly in gardens to eat the flesh of swine
and mice as a religious rite. Doubtless this was a very ancient
ceremony, dating from a time when both the pig and the mouse
were venerated as divine, and when their flesh was partaken of
sacramentally on rare and solemn occasions as the body and
blood of gods. And in general it may perhaps be said that all
so-called unclean animals were originally sacred; the reason for
not eating them was that they were divine. 3