Chapter 49. Ancient Deities of
Vegetation as Animals.
Section 1. Dionysus, the Goat and
the Bull.
HOWEVER we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant
folk-lore the corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and
represented in animal form. May not this fact explain the relation in
which certain animals stood to the ancient deities of vegetation,
Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris? 1
To begin with Dionysus. We have seen that he was represented
sometimes as a goat and sometimes as a bull. As a goat he can
hardly be separated from the minor divinities, the Pans, Satyrs,
and Silenuses, all of whom are closely associated with him and
are represented more or less completely in the form of goats. Thus,
Pan was regularly portrayed in sculpture and painting with the
face and legs of a goat. The Satyrs were depicted with pointed
goat-ears, and sometimes with sprouting horns and short tails.
They were sometimes spoken of simply as goats; and in the drama
their parts were played by men dressed in goatskins. Silenus is
represented in art clad in a goatskin. Further, the Fauns, the
Italian counterpart of the Greek Pans and Satyrs, are described as
being half goats, with goat-feet and goat-horns. Again, all these
minor goat-formed divinities partake more or less clearly of the
character of woodland deities. Thus, Pan was called by the
Arcadians the Lord of the Wood. The Silenuses kept company with
the tree-nymphs. The Fauns are expressly designated as
woodland deities; and their character as such is still further
brought out by their association, or even identification, with
Silvanus and the Silvanuses, who, as their name of itself
indicates, are spirits of the woods. Lastly, the association of the
Satyrs with the Silenuses, Fauns, and Silvanuses, proves that the
Satyrs also were woodland deities. These goat-formed spirits of
the woods have their counterparts in the folk-lore of Northern
Europe. Thus, the Russian wood-spirits, called Ljeschie (from ljes,
"wood"), are believed to appear partly in human shape, but with
the horns, ears, and legs of goats. The Ljeschi can alter his
stature at pleasure; when he walks in the wood he is as tall as the
trees; when he walks in the meadows he is no higher than the
grass. Some of the Ljeschie are spirits of the corn as well as of the
wood; before harvest they are as tall as the corn-stalks, but after
it they shrink to the height of the stubble. This brings out-what we
have remarked before-the close connexion between tree-spirits
and corn-spirits, and shows how easily the former may melt into
the latter. Similarly the Fauns, though wood-spirits, were believed
to foster the growth of the crops. We have already seen how often
the corn-spirit is represented in folk-custom as a goat. On the
whole, then, as Mannhardt argues, the Pans, Satyrs, and Fauns
perhaps belong to a widely diffused class of wood-spirits
conceived in goat-form. The fondness of goats for straying in
woods and nibbling the bark of trees, to which indeed they are
most destructive, is an obvious and perhaps sufficient reason why
wood-spirits should so often be supposed to take the form of
goats. The inconsistency of a god of vegetation subsisting upon
the vegetation which he personifies is not one to strike the
primitive mind. Such inconsistencies arise when the deity, ceasing
to be immanent in the vegetation, comes to be regarded as its
owner or lord; for the idea of owning the vegetation naturally leads
to that of subsisting on it. Sometimes the corn-spirit, originally
conceived as immanent in the corn, afterwards comes to be
regarded as its owner, who lives on it and is reduced to poverty
and want by being deprived of it. Hence he is often known as "the
Poor Man" or "the Poor Woman." Occasionally the last sheaf is
left standing on the field for "the Poor Old Woman" or for "the Old
Rye-woman." 2
Thus the representation of wood-spirits in the form of goats
appears to be both widespread and, to the primitive mind, natural.
Therefore when we find, as we have done, that Dionysus-a
tree-god-is sometimes represented in goat-form, we can hardly
avoid concluding that this representation is simply a part of his
proper character as a tree-god and is not to be explained by the
fusion of two distinct and independent worships, in one of which
he originally appeared as a tree-god and in the other as a
goat. 3
Dionysus was also figured, as we have seen, in the shape of a
bull. After what has gone before we are naturally led to expect that
his bull form must have been only another expression for his
character as a deity of vegetation, especially as the bull is a
common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern Europe; and
the close association of Dionysus with Demeter and Persephone
in the mysteries of Eleusis shows that he had at least strong
agricultural affinities. 4
The probability of this view will be somewhat increased if it can
be shown that in other rites than those of Dionysus the ancients
slew an OX as a representative of the spirit of vegetation. This
they appear to have done in the Athenian sacrifice known as "the
murder of the OX" (bouphonia). It took place about the end of
June or beginning of July, that is, about the time when the
threshing is nearly over in Attica. According to tradition the
sacrifice was instituted to procure a cessation of drought and
dearth which had afflicted the land. The ritual was as follows.
Barley mixed with wheat, or cakes made of them, were laid upon
the bronze altar of Zeus Polieus on the Acropolis. Oxen were
driven round the altar, and the OX which went up to the altar and
ate the offering on it was sacrificed. The axe and knife with which
the beast was slain had been previously wetted with water brought
by maidens called "water-carriers." The weapons were then
sharpened and handed to the butchers, one of whom felled the
OX with the axe and another cut its throat with the knife. As soon
as he had felled the OX, the former threw the axe from him and
fled; and the man who cut the beast's throat apparently imitated his
example. Meantime the OX was skinned and all present partook of
its flesh. Then the hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up; next
the stuffed animal was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as if it
were ploughing. A trial then took place in an ancient law-court
presided over by the King (as he was called) to determine who
had murdered the OX. The maidens who had brought the water
accused the men who had sharpened the axe and knife; the men
who had sharpened the axe and knife blamed the men who had
handed these implements to the butchers; the men who had
handed the implements to the butchers blamed the butchers; and
the butchers laid the blame on the axe and knife, which were
accordingly found guilty, condemned, and cast into the sea. 5
The name of this sacrifice,-"the murder of the OX,"-the pains
taken by each person who had a hand in the slaughter to lay the
blame on some one else, together with the formal trial and
punishment of the axe or knife or both, prove that the OX was
here regarded not merely as a victim offered to a god, but as itself
a sacred creature, the slaughter of which was sacrilege or murder.
This is borne out by a statement of Varro that to kill an OX was
formerly a capital crime in Attica. The mode of selecting the victim
suggests that the OX which tasted the corn was viewed as the
corn-deity taking possession of his own. This interpretation is
supported by the following custom. In Beauce, in the district of
Orleans, on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of April they make a
straw man called "the great mondard." For they say that the old
mondard is now dead and it is necessary to make a new one. The
straw man is carried in solemn procession up and down the
village and at last is placed upon the oldest apple-tree. There he
remains till the apples are gathered, when he is taken down and
thrown into the water, or he is burned and his ashes cast into
water. But the person who plucks the first fruit from the tree
succeeds to the title of "the great mondard." Here the straw figure,
called "the great mondard" and placed on the oldest apple-tree in
spring, represents the spirit of the tree, who, dead in winter,
revives when the apple-blossoms appear on the boughs. Thus the
person who plucks the first fruit from the tree and thereby receives
the name of "the great mondard" must be regarded as a
representative of the tree-spirit. Primitive peoples are usually
reluctant to taste the annual first-fruits of any crop, until some
ceremony has been performed which makes it safe and pious for
them to do so. The reason of this reluctance appears to be a belief
that the first-fruits either belong to or actually contain a divinity.
Therefore when a man or animal is seen boldly to appropriate the
sacred first-fruits, he or it is naturally regarded as the divinity
himself in human or animal form taking possession of his own. The
time of the Athenian sacrifice, which fell about the close of the
threshing, suggests that the wheat and barley laid upon the altar
were a harvest offering; and the sacramental character of the
subsequent repast-all partaking of the flesh of the divine
animal-would make it parallel to the harvest-suppers of modern
Europe, in which, as we have seen, the flesh of the animal which
stands for the corn-spirit is eaten by the harvesters. Again, the
tradition that the sacrifice was instituted in order to put an end to
drought and famine is in favour of taking it as a harvest festival.
The resurrection of the corn-spirit, enacted by setting up the
stuffed OX and yoking it to the plough, may be compared with the
resurrection of the tree-spirit in the person of his representative,
the Wild Man. 6
The OX appears as a representative of the corn-spirit in other
parts of the world. At Great Bassam, in Guinea, two oxen are slain
annually to procure a good harvest. If the sacrifice is to be
effectual, it is necessary that the oxen should weep. So all the
women of the village sit in front of the beasts, chanting, "The OX
will weep; yes, he will weep!" From time to time one of the women
walks round the beasts, throwing manioc meal or palm wine upon
them, especially into their eyes. When tears roll down from the
eyes of the oxen, the people dance, singing, "The OX weeps! the
OX weeps!" Then two men seize the tails of the beasts and cut
them off at one blow. It is believed that a great misfortune will
happen in the course of the year if the tails are not severed at one
blow. The oxen are afterwards killed, and their flesh is eaten by
the chiefs. Here the tears of the oxen, like those of the human
victims amongst the Khonds and the Aztecs, are probably a
rain-charm. We have already seen that the virtue of the
corn-spirit, embodied in animal form, is sometimes supposed to
reside in the tail, and that the last handful of corn is sometimes
conceived as the tail of the corn-spirit. In the Mithraic religion this
conception is graphically set forth in some of the numerous
sculptures which represent Mithras kneeling on the back of a bull
and plunging a knife into its flank; for on certain of these
monuments the tail of the bull ends in three stalks of corn, and in
one of them corn-stalks instead of blood are seen issuing from the
wound inflicted by the knife. Such representations certainly
suggest that the bull, whose sacrifice appears to have formed a
leading feature in the Mithraic ritual, was conceived, in one at
least of its aspects, as an incarnation of the corn-spirit. 7
Still more clearly does the ox appear as a personification of the
corn-spirit in a ceremony which is observed in all the provinces
and districts of China to welcome the approach of spring. On the
first day of spring, usually on the third or fourth of February, which
is also the beginning of the Chinese New Year, the governor or
prefect of the city goes in procession to the east gate of the city,
and sacrifices to the Divine Husbandman, who is represented with
a bull's head on the body of a man. A large effigy of an ox, cow,
or buffalo has been prepared for the occasion, and stands outside
of the east gate, with agricultural implements beside it. The figure
is made of differently-coloured pieces of paper pasted on a
framework either by a blind man or according to the directions of a
necromancer. The colours of the paper prognosticate the
character of the coming year; if red prevails, there will be many
fires; if white, there will be floods and rain; and so with the other
colours. The mandarins walk slowly round the ox, beating it
severely at each step with rods of various hues. It is filled with five
kinds of grain, which pour forth when the effigy is broken by the
blows of the rods. The paper fragments are then set on fire, and a
scramble takes place for the burning fragments, because the
people believe that whoever gets one of them is sure to be
fortunate throughout the year. A live buffalo is next killed, and its
flesh is divided among the mandarins. According to one account,
the effigy of the ox is made of clay, and, after being beaten by the
governor, is stoned by the people till they break it in pieces, "from
which they expect an abundant year." Here the corn-spirit
appears to be plainly represented by the corn-filled ox, whose
fragments may therefore be supposed to bring fertility with
them. 8
On the whole we may perhaps conclude that both as a goat and
as a bull Dionysus was essentially a god of vegetation. The
Chinese and European customs which I have cited may perhaps
shed light on the custom of rending a live bull or goat at the rites
of Dionysus. The animal was torn in fragments, as the Khond
victim was cut in pieces, in order that the worshippers might each
secure a portion of the life-giving and fertilising influence of the
god. The flesh was eaten raw as a sacrament, and we may
conjecture that some of it was taken home to be buried in the
fields, or otherwise employed so as to convey to the fruits of the
earth the quickening influence of the god of vegetation. The
resurrection of Dionysus, related in his myth, may have been
enacted in his rites by stuffing and setting up the slain ox, as was
done at the Athenian bouphonia. 9
Section 2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse.
PASSING next to the corn-goddess Demeter, and remembering
that in European folk-lore the pig is a common embodiment of the
corn-spirit, we may now ask whether the pig, which was so
closely associated with Demeter, may not have been originally the
goddess herself in animal form. The pig was sacred to her; in art
she was portrayed carrying or accompanied by a pig; and the pig
was regularly sacrificed in her mysteries, the reason assigned
being that the pig injures the corn and is therefore an enemy of
the goddess. But after an animal has been conceived as a god, or
a god as an animal, it sometimes happens, as we have seen, that
the god sloughs off his animal form and becomes purely
anthropomorphic; and that then the animal, which at first had been
slain in the character of the god, comes to be viewed as a victim
offered to the god on the ground of its hostility to the deity; in
short, the god is sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his
own enemy. This happened to Dionysus, and it may have
happened to Demeter also. And in fact the rites of one of her
festivals, the Thesmophoria, bear out the view that originally the
pig was an embodiment of the corn-goddess herself, either
Demeter or her daughter and double Persephone. The Attic
Thesmophoria was an autumn festival, celebrated by women alone
in October, and appears to have represented with mourning rites
the descent of Persephone (or Demeter) into the lower world, and
with joy her return from the dead. Hence the name Descent or
Ascent variously applied to the first, and the name Kalligeneia
(fair-born) applied to the third day of the festival. Now it was
customary at the Thesmophoria to throw pigs, cakes of dough, and
branches of pine-trees into "the chasms of Demeter and
Persephone," which appear to have been sacred caverns or
vaults. In these caverns or vaults there were said to be serpents,
which guarded the caverns and consumed most of the flesh of the
pigs and dough-cakes which were thrown in.
Afterwards-apparently at the next annual festival-the decayed
remains of the pigs, the cakes, and the pine-branches were
fetched by women called "drawers," who, after observing rules of
ceremonial purity for three days, descended into the caverns,
and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands,
brought up the remains and placed them on the altar. Whoever got
a piece of the decayed flesh and cakes, and sowed it with the
seed-corn in his field, was believed to be sure of a good crop. 1
To explain the rude and ancient ritual of the Thesmophoria the
following legend was told. At the moment when Pluto carried off
Persephone, a swineherd called Eubuleus chanced to be herding
his swine on the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm
down which Pluto vanished with Persephone. Accordingly at the
Thesmophoria pigs were annually thrown into caverns to
commemorate the disappearance of the swine of Eubuleus. It
follows from this that the casting of the pigs into the vaults at the
Thesmophoria formed part of the dramatic representation of
Persephone's descent into the lower world; and as no image of
Persephone appears to have been thrown in, we may infer that
the descent of the pigs was not so much an accompaniment of her
descent as the descent itself, in short, that the pigs were
Persephone. Afterwards when Persephone or Demeter (for the two
are equivalent) took on human form, a reason had to be found for
the custom of throwing pigs into caverns at her festival; and this
was done by saying that when Pluto carried off Persephone there
happened to be some swine browsing near, which were
swallowed up along with her. The story is obviously a forced and
awkward attempt to bridge over the gulf between the old
conception of the corn-spirit as a pig and the new conception of
her as an anthropomorphic goddess. A trace of the older
conception survived in the legend that when the sad mother was
searching for traces of the vanished Persephone, the footprints of
the lost one were obliterated by the footprints of a pig; originally,
we may conjecture, the footprints of the pig were the footprints of
Persephone and of Demeter herself. A consciousness of the
intimate connexion of the pig with the corn lurks in the legend that
the swineherd Eubuleus was a brother of Triptolemus, to whom
Demeter first imparted the secret of the corn. Indeed, according to
one version of the story, Eubuleus himself received, jointly with
his brother Triptolemus, the gift of the corn from Demeter as a
reward for revealing to her the fate of Persephone. Further, it is to
be noted that at the Thesmophoria the women appear to have
eaten swine's flesh. The meal, if I am right, must have been a
solemn sacrament or communion, the worshippers partaking of the
body of the god. 2
As thus explained, the Thesmophoria has its analogies in the
folk-customs of Northern Europe which have been already
described. Just as at the Thesmophoria-an autumn festival in
honour of the corn-goddess-swine's flesh was partly eaten, partly
kept in caverns till the following year, when it was taken up to be
sown with the seed-corn in the fields for the purpose of securing
a good crop; so in the neighbourhood of Grenoble the goat killed
on the harvest-field is partly eaten at the harvest-supper, partly
pickled and kept till the next harvest; so at Pouilly the ox killed on
the harvest-field is partly eaten by the harvesters, partly pickled
and kept till the first day of sowing in spring, probably to be then
mixed with the seed, or eaten by the ploughmen, or both; so at
Udvarhely the feathers of the cock which is killed in the last sheaf
at harvest are kept till spring, and then sown with the seed on the
field; so in Hesse and Meiningen the flesh of pigs is eaten on Ash
Wednesday or Candlemas, and the bones are kept till
sowing-time, when they are put into the field sown or mixed with
the seed in the bag; so, lastly, the corn from the last sheaf is kept
till Christmas, made into the Yule Boar, and afterwards broken and
mixed with the seed-corn at sowing in spring. Thus, to put it
generally, the corn-spirit is killed in animal form in autumn; part of
his flesh is eaten as a sacrament by his worshippers; and part of it
is kept till next sowing-time or harvest as a pledge and security
for the continuance or renewal of the corn-spirit's energies. 3
If persons of fastidious taste should object that the Greeks never
could have conceived Demeter and Persephone to be embodied
in the form of pigs, it may be answered that in the cave of Phigalia
in Arcadia the Black Demeter was portrayed with the head and
mane of a horse on the body of a woman. Between the portraits of
a goddess as a pig, and the portrait of her as a woman with a
horse's head, there is little to choose in respect of barbarism. The
legend told of the Phigalian Demeter indicates that the horse was
one of the animal forms assumed in ancient Greece, as in modern
Europe, by the cornspirit. It was said that in her search for her
daughter, Demeter assumed the form of a mare to escape the
addresses of Poseidon, and that, offended at his importunity, she
withdrew in dudgeon to a cave not far from Phigalia in the
highlands of Western Arcadia. There, robed in black, she tarried
so long that the fruits of the earth were perishing, and mankind
would have died of famine if Pan had not soothed the angry
goddess and persuaded her to quit the cave. In memory of this
event, the Phigalians set up an image of the Black Demeter in the
cave; it represented a woman dressed in a long robe, with the
head and mane of a horse. The Black Demeter, in whose absence
the fruits of the earth perish, is plainly a mythical expression for
the bare wintry earth stripped of its summer mantle of green. 4
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
Section 4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull.
IN ANCIENT Egypt, within historical times, the pig occupied the
same dubious position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first
sight its uncleanness is more prominent than its sanctity. The
Egyptians are generally said by Greek writers to have abhorred
the pig as a foul and loathsome animal. If a man so much as
touched a pig in passing, he stepped into the river with all his
clothes on, to wash off the taint. To drink pig's milk was believed
to cause leprosy to the drinker. Swineherds, though natives of
Egypt, were forbidden to enter any temple, and they were the only
men who were thus excluded. No one would give his daughter in
marriage to a swineherd, or marry a swineherd's daughter; the
swineherds married among themselves. Yet once a year the
Egyptians sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris, and not only
sacrificed them, but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of
the year they would neither sacrifice them nor taste of their flesh.
Those who were too poor to offer a pig on this day baked cakes of
dough, and offered them instead. This can hardly be explained
except by the supposition that the pig was a sacred animal which
was eaten sacramentally by his worshippers once a year. 1
The view that in Egypt the pig was sacred is borne out by the
very facts which, to moderns, might seem to prove the contrary.
Thus the Egyptians thought, as we have seen, that to drink pig's
milk produced leprosy. But exactly analogous views are held by
savages about the animals and plants which they deem most
sacred. Thus in the island of Wetar (between New Guinea and
Celebes) people believe themselves to be variously descended
from wild pigs, serpents, crocodiles, turtles, dogs, and eels; a man
may not eat an animal of the kind from which he is descended; if
he does so, he will become a leper, and go mad. Amongst the
Omaha Indians of North America men whose totem is the elk,
believe that if they ate the flesh of the male elk they would break
out in boils and white spots in different parts of their bodies. In the
same tribe men whose totem is the red maize, think that if they ate
red maize they would have running sores all round their mouths.
The Bush negroes of Surinam, who practise totemism, believe that
if they ate the capiaï (an animal like a pig) it would give them
leprosy; perhaps the capiaï is one of their totems. The Syrians, in
antiquity, who esteemed fish sacred, thought that if they ate fish
their bodies would break out in ulcers, and their feet and stomach
would swell up. The Chasas of Orissa believe that if they were to
injure their totemic animal they would be attacked by leprosy and
their line would die out. These examples prove that the eating of a
sacred animal is often believed to produce leprosy or other
skin-diseases; so far, therefore, they support the view that the pig
must have been sacred in Egypt, since the effect of drinking its
milk was believed to be leprosy. 2
Again, the rule that, after touching a pig, a man had to wash
himself and his clothes, also favours the view of the sanctity of the
pig. For it is a common belief that the effect of contact with a
sacred object must be removed, by washing or otherwise, before
a man is free to mingle with his fellows. Thus the Jews wash their
hands after reading the sacred scriptures. Before coming forth from
the tabernacle after the sin-offering, the high priest had to wash
himself, and put off the garments which he had worn in the holy
place. It was a rule of Greek ritual that, in offering an expiatory
sacrifice, the sacrificer should not touch the sacrifice, and that,
after the offering was made, he must wash his body and his
clothes in a river or spring before he could enter a city or his own
house. The Polynesians felt strongly the need of ridding
themselves of the sacred contagion, if it may be so called, which
they caught by touching sacred objects. Various ceremonies were
performed for the purpose of removing this contagion. We have
seen, for example, how in Tonga a man who happened to touch a
sacred chief, or anything personally belonging to him, had to
perform a certain ceremony before he could feed himself with his
hands; otherwise it was believed that he would swell up and die,
or at least be afflicted with scrofula or some other disease. We
have seen, too, what fatal effects are supposed to follow, and do
actually follow, from contact with a sacred object in New Zealand.
In short, primitive man believes that what is sacred is dangerous; it
is pervaded by a sort of electrical sanctity which communicates a
shock to, even if it does not kill, whatever comes in contact with it.
Hence the savage is unwilling to touch or even to see that which
he deems peculiarly holy. Thus Bechuanas, of the Crocodile clan,
think it "hateful and unlucky" to meet or see a crocodile; the sight
is thought to cause inflammation of the eyes. Yet the crocodile is
their most sacred object; they call it their father, swear by it, and
celebrate it in their festivals. The goat is the sacred animal of the
Madenassana Bushmen; yet "to look upon it would be to render
the man for the time impure, as well as to cause him undefined
uneasiness." The Elk clan, among the Omaha Indians, believe that
even to touch the male elk would be followed by an eruption of
boils and white spots on the body. Members of the Reptile clan in
the same tribe think that if one of them touches or smells a snake,
it will make his hair white. In Samoa people whose god was a
butterfly believed that if they caught a butterfly it would strike them
dead. Again, in Samoa the reddish-seared leaves of the
banana-tree were commonly used as plates for handing food; but
if any member of the Wild Pigeon family had used banana leaves
for this purpose, it was supposed that he would suffer from
rheumatic swellings or an eruption all over the body like
chicken-pox. The Mori clan of the Bhils in Central India worship
the peacock as their totem and make offerings of grain to it; yet
members of the clan believe that were they even to set foot on the
tracks of a peacock they would afterwards suffer from some
disease, and if a woman sees a peacock she must veil her face
and look away. Thus the primitive mind seems to conceive of
holiness as a sort of dangerous virus, which a prudent man will
shun as far as possible, and of which, if he should chance to be
infected by it, he will carefully disinfect himself by some form of
ceremonial purification. 3
In the light of these parallels the beliefs and customs of the
Egyptians touching the pig are probably to be explained as based
upon an opinion of the extreme sanctity rather than of the extreme
uncleanness of the animal; or rather, to put it more correctly, they
imply that the animal was looked on, not simply as a filthy and
disgusting creature, but as a being endowed with high
supernatural powers, and that as such it was regarded with that
primitive sentiment of religious awe and fear in which the feelings
of reverence and abhorrence are almost equally blended. The
ancients themselves seem to have been aware that there was
another side to the horror with which swine seemed to inspire the
Egyptians. For the Greek astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus,
who resided fourteen months in Egypt and conversed with the
priests, was of opinion that the Egyptians spared the pig, not out
of abhorrence, but from a regard to its utility in agriculture; for,
according to him, when the Nile had subsided, herds of swine
were turned loose over the fields to tread the seed down into the
moist earth. But when a being is thus the object of mixed and
implicitly contradictory feelings, he may be said to occupy a
position of unstable equilibrium. In course of time one of the
contradictory feelings is likely to prevail over the other, and
according as the feeling which finally predominates is that of
reverence or abhorrence, the being who is the object of it will rise
into a god or sink into a devil. The latter, on the whole, was the
fate of the pig in Egypt. For in historical times the fear and horror
of the pig seem certainly to have outweighed the reverence and
worship of which he may once have been the object, and of
which, even in his fallen state, he never quite lost trace. He came
to be looked on as an embodiment of Set or Typhon, the Egyptian
devil and enemy of Osiris. For it was in the shape of a black pig
that Typhon injured the eye of the god Horus, who burned him
and instituted the sacrifice of the pig, the sun-god Ra having
declared the beast abominable. Again, the story that Typhon was
hunting a boar when he discovered and mangled the body of
Osiris, and that this was the reason why pigs were sacrificed once
a year, is clearly a modernised version of an older story that
Osiris, like Adonis and Attis, was slain or mangled by a boar, or
by Typhon in the form of a boar. Thus, the annual sacrifice of a
pig to Osiris might naturally be interpreted as vengeance inflicted
on the hostile animal that had slain or mangled the god. But, in the
first place, when an animal is thus killed as a solemn sacrifice
once and once only in the year, it generally or always means that
the animal is divine, that he is spared and respected the rest of
the year as a god and slain, when he is slain, also in the
character of a god. In the second place, the examples of Dionysus
and Demeter, if not of Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the
animal which is sacrificed to a god on the ground that he is the
god's enemy may have been, and probably was, originally the
god himself. Therefore, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris,
coupled with the alleged hostility of the animal to the god, tends to
show, first, that originally the pig was a god, and, second, that he
was Osiris. At a later age, when Osiris became anthropomorphic
and his original relation to the pig had been forgotten, the animal
was first distinguished from him, and afterwards opposed as an
enemy to him by mythologists who could think of no reason for
killing a beast in connexion with the worship of a god except that
the beast was the god's enemy; or, as Plutarch puts it, not that
which is dear to the gods, but that which is the contrary, is fit to
be sacrificed. At this later stage the havoc which a wild boar
notoriously makes amongst the corn would supply a plausible
reason for regarding him as the foe of the corn-spirit, though
originally, if I am right, the very freedom with which the boar
ranged at will through the corn led people to identify him with the
corn-spirit, to whom he was afterwards opposed as an enemy. 4
The view which identifies the pig with Osiris derives not a little
support from the sacrifice of pigs to him on the very day on which,
according to tradition, Osiris himself was killed; for thus the killing
of the pig was the annual representation of the killing of Osiris, just
as the throwing of the pigs into the caverns at the Thesmophoria
was an annual representation of the descent of Persephone into
the lower world; and both customs are parallel to the European
practice of killing a goat, cock, and so forth, at harvest as a
representative of the corn-spirit. 5
Again, the theory that the pig, originally Osiris himself,
afterwards came to be regarded as an embodiment of his enemy
Typhon, is supported by the similar relation of red-haired men and
red oxen to Typhon. For in regard to the red-haired men who
were burned and whose ashes were scattered with
winnowing-fans, we have seen fair grounds for believing that
originally, like the red-haired puppies killed at Rome in spring,
they were representatives of the corn-spirit himself that is, of
Osiris, and were slain for the express purpose of making the corn
turn red or golden. Yet at a later time these men were explained to
be representatives, not of Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon, and
the killing of them was regarded as an act of vengeance inflicted
on the enemy of the god. Similarly, the red oxen sacrificed by the
Egyptians were said to be offered on the ground of their
resemblance to Typhon; though it is more likely that originally they
were slain on the ground of their resemblance to the corn-spirit
Osiris. We have seen that the ox is a common representative of
the corn-spirit and is slain as such on the harvest-field. 6
Osiris was regularly identified with the bull Apis of Memphis and
the bull Mnevis of Heliopolis. But it is hard to say whether these
bulls were embodiments of him as the corn-spirit, as the red oxen
appear to have been, or whether they were not in origin entirely
distinct deities who came to be fused with Osiris at a later time.
The universality of the worship of these two bulls seems to put
them on a different footing from the ordinary sacred animals whose
worships were purely local. But whatever the original relation of
Apis to Osiris may have been, there is one fact about the former
which ought not to be passed over in a disquisition on the custom
of killing a god. Although the bull Apis was worshipped as a god
with much pomp and profound reverence, he was not suffered to
live beyond a certain length of time which was prescribed by the
sacred books, and on the expiry of which he was drowned in a
holy spring. The limit, according to Plutarch, was twenty-five
years; but it cannot always have been enforced, for the tombs of
the Apis bulls have been discovered in modern times, and from
the inscriptions on them it appears that in the twenty-second
dynasty two of the holy steers lived more than twenty-six
years. 7
Section 5. Virbius and the Horse.
WE are now in a position to hazard a conjecture as to the
meaning of the tradition that Virbius, the first of the divine Kings of
the Wood at Aricia, had been killed in the character of Hippolytus
by horses. Having found, first, that spirits of the corn are not
infrequently represented in the form of horses; and, second, that
the animal which in later legends is said to have injured the god
was sometimes originally the god himself, we may conjecture that
the horses by which Virbius or Hippolytus was said to have been
slain were really embodiments of him as a deity of vegetation. The
myth that he had been killed by horses was probably invented to
explain certain features in his worship, amongst others the custom
of excluding horses from his sacred grove. For myth changes
while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their
fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers
acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long
attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound
theory for an absurd practice. In the case before us we may be
sure that the myth is more modern than the custom and by no
means represents the original reason for excluding horses from the
grove. From their exclusion it might be inferred that horses could
not be the sacred animals or embodiments of the god of the grove.
But the inference would be rash. The goat was at one time a
sacred animal or embodiment of Athena, as may be inferred from
the practice of representing the goddess clad in a goat-skin
(aegis). Yet the goat was neither sacrificed to her as a rule, nor
allowed to enter her great sanctuary, the Acropolis at Athens. The
reason alleged for this was that the goat injured the olive, the
sacred tree of Athena. So far, therefore, the relation of the goat to
Athena is parallel to the relation of the horse to Virbius, both
animals being excluded from the sanctuary on the ground of injury
done by them to the god. But from Varro we learn that there was
an exception to the rule which excluded the goat from the
Acropolis. Once a year, he says, the goat was driven on to the
Acropolis for a necessary sacrifice. Now, as has been remarked
before, when an animal is sacrificed once and once only in the
year, it is probably slain, not as a victim offered to the god, but as
a representative of the god himself. Therefore we may infer that if a
goat was sacrificed on the Acropolis once a year, it was
sacrificed in the character of Athena herself; and it may be
conjectured that the skin of the sacrificed animal was placed on
the statue of the goddess and formed the aegis, which would thus
be renewed annually. Similarly at Thebes in Egypt rams were
sacred and were not sacrificed. But on one day in the year a ram
was killed, and its skin was placed on the statue of the god
Ammon. Now, if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove better, we
might find that the rule of excluding horses from it, like the rule of
excluding goats from the Acropolis at Athens, was subject to an
annual exception, a horse being once a year taken into the grove
and sacrificed as an embodiment of the god Virbius. By the usual
misunderstanding the horse thus killed would come in time to be
regarded as an enemy offered up in sacrifice to the god whom he
had injured, like the pig which was sacrificed to Demeter and
Osiris or the goat which was sacrificed to Dionysus, and possibly
to Athena. It is so easy for a writer to record a rule without noticing
an exception that we need not wonder at finding the rule of the
Arician grove recorded without any mention of an exception such
as I suppose. If we had had only the statements of Athenaeus and
Pliny, we should have known only the rule which forbade the
sacrifice of goats to Athena and excluded them from the Acropolis,
without being aware of the important exception which the fortunate
preservation of Varro's work has revealed to us. 1
The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been
sacrificed in the Arician grove as a representative of the deity of
the grove derives some support from the similar sacrifice of a
horse which took place once a year at Rome. On the fifteenth of
October in each year a chariot-race was run on the Field of
Mars. Stabbed with a spear, the right-hand horse of the victorious
team was then sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of ensuring good
crops, and its head was cut off and adorned with a string of
loaves. Thereupon the inhabitants of two wards-the Sacred Way
and the Subura-contended with each other who should get the
head. If the people of the Sacred Way got it, they fastened it to a
wall of the king's house; if the people of the Subura got it, they
fastened it to the Mamilian tower. The horse's tail was cut off and
carried to the king's house with such speed that the blood dripped
on the hearth of the house. Further, it appears that the blood of the
horse was caught and preserved till the twenty-first of April, when
the Vestal Virgins mixed it with the blood of the unborn calves
which had been sacrificed six days before. The mixture was then
distributed to shepherds, and used by them for fumigating their
flocks. 2
In this ceremony the decoration of the horse's head with a string
of loaves, and the alleged object of the sacrifice, namely, to
procure a good harvest, seem to indicate that the horse was killed
as one of those animal representatives of the corn-spirit of which
we have found so many examples. The custom of cutting off the
horse's tail is like the African custom of cutting off the tails of the
oxen and sacrificing them to obtain a good crop. In both the
Roman and the African custom the animal apparently stands for
the corn-spirit, and its fructifying power is supposed to reside
especially in its tail. The latter idea occurs, as we have seen, in
European folk-lore. Again, the practice of fumigating the cattle in
spring with the blood of the horse may be compared with the
practice of giving the Old Wife, the Maiden, or the clyack sheaf
as fodder to the horses in spring or the cattle at Christmas, and
giving the Yule Boar to the ploughing oxen or horses to eat in
spring. All these usages aim at ensuring the blessing of the
corn-spirit on the homestead and its inmates and storing it up for
another year. 3
The Roman sacrifice of the October horse, as it was called,
carries us back to the early days when the Subura, afterwards a
low and squalid quarter of the great metropolis, was still a
separate village, whose inhabitants engaged in a friendly contest
on the harvest-field with their neighbours of Rome, then a little
rural town. The Field of Mars on which the ceremony took place
lay beside the Tiber, and formed part of the king's domain down to
the abolition of the monarchy. For tradition ran that at the time
when the last of the kings was driven from Rome, the corn stood
ripe for the sickle on the crown lands beside the river; but no one
would eat the accursed grain and it was flung into the river in
such heaps that, the water being low with the summer heat, it
formed the nucleus of an island. The horse sacrifice was thus an
old autumn custom observed upon the king's corn-fields at the
end of the harvest. The tail and blood of the horse, as the chief
parts of the corn-spirit's representative, were taken to the king's
house and kept there; just as in Germany the harvest-cock is
nailed on the gable or over the door of the farmhouse; and as the
last sheaf, in the form of the Maiden, is carried home and kept
over the fireplace in the Highlands of Scotland. Thus the blessing
of the corn-spirit was brought to the king's house and hearth and,
through them, to the community of which he was the head.
Similarly in the spring and autumn customs of Northern Europe the
May-pole is sometimes set up in front of the house of the mayor or
burgomaster, and the last sheaf at harvest is brought to him as the
head of the village. But while the tail and blood fell to the king, the
neighbouring village of the Subura, which no doubt once had a
similar ceremony of its own, was gratified by being allowed to
compete for the prize of the horse's head. The Mamilian tower, to
which the Suburans nailed the horse's head when they
succeeded in carrying it off, appears to have been a peel-tower
or keep of the old Mamilian family, the magnates of the village.
The ceremony thus performed on the king's fields and at his house
on behalf of the whole town and of the neighbouring village
presupposes a time when each township performed a similar
ceremony on its own fields. In the rural districts of Latium the
villages may have continued to observe the custom, each on its
own land, long after the Roman hamlets had merged their separate
harvest-homes in the common celebration on the king's lands.
There is no intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the
sacred grove of Aricia, like the Field of Mars at Rome, may have
been the scene of a common harvest celebration, at which a
horse was sacrificed with the same rude rites on behalf of the
neighbouring villages. The horse would represent the fructifying
spirit both of the tree and of the corn, for the two ideas melt into
each other, as we see in customs like the Harvest-May. 4
