The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 04 of 12)

Religious suicides in India.

A similar mode of religious suicide seems to have been often adopted in India, especially in Malabar, during the Middle Ages. Thus we are told by Friar Jordanus that in the Greater India, by which he seems to mean Malabar and the neighbouring regions, many sacrifice themselves to the idols. When they are sick or involved in misfortune, they vow themselves to the idol in case they are delivered. Then, when they have recovered, they fatten themselves for one or two years; and when another festival comes round, they cover themselves with flowers, crown themselves with white garlands, and go singing and playing before the idol, when it is carried through the land. There, after they have shown off a great deal, they take a sword with two handles, like those used in currying leather, put it to the back of their neck, and cutting strongly with both hands sever their heads from their bodies before the idol.[105 - The Wonders of the East, by Friar Jordanus, translated by Col. Henry Yule (London, 1863, Hakluyt Society), pp. 32 sq.] Again, Nicolo Conti, who travelled in the East in the early part of the fifteenth century, informs us that in the city of Cambaita “many present themselves who have determined upon self immolation, having on their neck a broad circular piece of iron, the fore part of which is round and the hinder part extremely sharp. A chain attached to the fore part hangs suspended upon the breast, into which the victims, sitting down with their legs drawn up and their neck bent, insert their feet. Then, on the speaker pronouncing certain words, they suddenly stretch out their legs, and at the same time drawing up their neck, cut off their own head, yielding up their lives as a sacrifice to their idols. These men are regarded as saints.”[106 - India in the Fifteenth Century, being a Collection of Voyages to India in the century preceding the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, edited by R. H. Major (Hakluyt Society, London, 1857), “The Travels of Nicolo Conti in the East,” pp. 27 sq. An instrument of the sort described in the text (a crescent-shaped knife with chains and stirrups attached to it for the convenience of the suicide) used to be preserved at Kshira, a village of Bengal near Nadiya: it was called a karavat. See The Book of Ser Marco Polo, newly translated and edited by Colonel Henry Yule, Second Edition (London, 1875), ii. 334.] Among the Jaintias or Syntengs, a Khasi tribe of Assam, human sacrifices used to be annually offered on the Sandhi day in the month of Ashwin. Persons often came forward voluntarily and presented themselves as victims. This they generally did by appearing before the Rajah on the last day of Shravan and declaring that the goddess had called them to herself. After due enquiry, if the would-be victim were found suitable, it was customary for the Rajah to present him with a golden anklet and to give him permission to live as he chose and to do what he liked, the royal treasury undertaking to pay compensation for any damage he might do in the exercise of his remarkable privileges. But the enjoyment of these privileges was very short. On the day appointed the voluntary victim, after bathing and purifying himself, was dressed in new attire, daubed with red sandal-wood and vermilion, and bedecked with garlands. Thus arrayed, he sat for a time in meditation and prayer on a dais in front of the goddess; then he made a sign with his finger, and the executioner, after uttering the usual formulas, cut off his head, which was thereafter laid before the goddess on a golden plate. The lungs were cooked and eaten by such Kandra Yogis as were present, and it is said that the royal family partook of a small quantity of rice cooked in the blood of the victim. The ceremony was usually witnessed by crowds of spectators who assembled from all parts of the neighbouring hills. When the supply of voluntary victims fell short, emissaries were sent out to kidnap strangers from other territories, and it was the practice of such man-hunts that led to the annexation of the Jaintia country by the British.[107 - Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (London, 1907), pp. 102 sq., quoting Mr. Gait in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1898.]

Pretence of putting the king's proxy to death. Man killed at the installation of a king of Cassange.

When once kings, who had hitherto been bound to die a violent death at the end of a term of years, conceived the happy thought of dying by deputy in the persons of others, they would very naturally put it in practice; and accordingly we need not wonder at finding so popular an expedient, or traces of it, in many lands. Thus, for example, the Bhuiyas are an aboriginal race of north-eastern India, and one of their chief seats is Keonjhur. At the installation of a Rajah of Keonjhur a ceremony is observed which has been described as follows by an English officer who witnessed it: “Then the sword, a very rusty old weapon, is placed in the Raja's hands, and one of the Bhuiyas, named Anand Kopat, comes before him, and kneeling sideways, the Raja touches him on the neck as if about to strike off his head, and it is said that in former days there was no fiction in this part of the ceremony. The family of the Kopat hold their lands on the condition that the victim when required shall be produced. Anand, however, hurriedly arose after the accolade and disappeared. He must not be seen for three days; then he presents himself again to the Raja as miraculously restored to life.”[108 - E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), p. 146.] Here the custom of putting the king's proxy to death has dwindled, probably under English influence, to a mere pretence; but elsewhere it survives, or survived till recent times, in full force. Cassange, a native state in the interior of Angola, is ruled by a king, who bears the title of Jaga. When a king is about to be installed in office, some of the chiefs are despatched to find a human victim, who may not be related by blood or marriage to the new monarch. When he comes to the king's camp, the victim is provided with everything he requires, and all his orders are obeyed as promptly as those of the sovereign. On the day of the ceremony the king takes his seat on a perforated iron stool, his chiefs, councillors, and the rest of the people forming a great circle round about him. Behind the king sits his principal wife, together with all his concubines. An iron gong, with two small bells attached to it, is then struck by an official, who continues to ring the bells during the ceremony. The victim is then introduced and placed in front of the king, but with his back towards him. Armed with a scimitar the king then cuts open the man's back, extracts his heart, and having taken a bite out of it, spits it out and gives it to be burned. The councillors meantime hold the victim's body so that the blood from the wound spouts against the king's breast and belly, and, pouring through the hole in the iron stool, is collected by the chiefs in their hands, who rub their breasts and beards with it, while they shout, “Great is the king and the rites of the state!” After that the corpse is skinned, cut up, and cooked with the flesh of an ox, a dog, a hen, and some other animals. The meal thus prepared is served first to the king, then to the chiefs and councillors, and lastly to all the people assembled. Any man who refused to partake of it would be sold into slavery together with his family.[109 - F. T. Valdez, Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa (London, 1861), ii. 158-160. I have translated the title Maquita by “chief”; the writer does not explain it.] The distinction with which the human victim is here treated before his execution suggests that he is a substitute for the king.

Sacrifice of the king's sons in Sweden: evidence of a nine years' tenure of the throne.

Scandinavian traditions contain some hints that of old the Swedish kings reigned only for periods of nine years, after which they were put to death or had to find a substitute to die in their stead. Thus Aun or On, king of Sweden, is said to have sacrificed to Odin for length of days and to have been answered by the god that he should live so long as he sacrificed one of his sons every ninth year. He sacrificed nine of them in this manner, and would have sacrificed the tenth and last, but the Swedes would not allow him. So he died and was buried in a mound at Upsala.[110 - Ynglinga Saga, 29 (The Heimskringla, translated by S. Laing, i. 239 sq.). Compare H. M. Chadwick, The Cult of Othin (London, 1899), p. 4. According to Messrs. Laing and Chadwick the sacrifice took place every tenth year. But I follow Prof. K. Weinhold who translates “hit tiunda hvert ár” by “alle neun Jahre” (“Die mystische Neunzahl bei den Deutschen,” Abhandlungen der könig. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1897, p. 6). So in Latin decimo quoque anno should be translated “every ninth year.”] Another indication of a similar tenure of the crown occurs in a curious legend of the disposition and banishment of Odin. Offended at his misdeeds, the other gods outlawed and exiled him, but set up in his place a substitute, Oller by name, a cunning wizard, to whom they accorded the symbols both of royalty and of godhead. The deputy bore the name of Odin, and reigned for nearly ten years, when he was driven from the throne, while the real Odin came to his own again. His discomfited rival retired to Sweden and was afterwards slain in an attempt to repair his shattered fortunes.[111 - Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica, iii. pp. 129-131, ed. P. E. Müller (pp. 98 sq. of Oliver Elton's English translation).] As gods are often merely men who loom large through the mists of tradition, we may conjecture that this Norse legend preserves a confused reminiscence of ancient Swedish kings who reigned for nine or ten years together, then abdicated, delegating to others the privilege of dying for their country. The great festival which was held at Upsala every nine years may have been the occasion on which the king or his deputy was put to death. We know that human sacrifices formed part of the rites.[112 - Adam of Bremen, Descriptio insularum Aquilonis, 27 (Migne's Patrologia Latina, cxlvi. col. 644). See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. ii. pp. 364 sq.]

§ 4. Octennial Tenure of the Kingship

Limited tenure of the kingship in ancient Greece. The Spartan kings appear formerly to have held office for periods of eight years only. The dread of meteors shared by savages.

There are some grounds for believing that the reign of many ancient Greek kings was limited to eight years, or at least that at the end of every period of eight years a new consecration, a fresh outpouring of the divine grace, was regarded as necessary in order to enable them to discharge their civil and religious duties. Thus it was a rule of the Spartan constitution that every eighth year the ephors should choose a clear and moonless night and sitting down observe the sky in silence. If during their vigil they saw a meteor or shooting star, they inferred that the king had sinned against the deity, and they suspended him from his functions until the Delphic or Olympic oracle should reinstate him in them. This custom, which has all the air of great antiquity, was not suffered to remain a dead letter even in the last period of the Spartan monarchy; for in the third century before our era a king, who had rendered himself obnoxious to the reforming party, was actually deposed on various trumped-up charges, among which the allegation that the ominous sign had been seen in the sky took a prominent place.[113 - Plutarch, Agis, II. Plutarch says that the custom was observed “at intervals of nine years” (δι᾽ ἐτῶν ἐννέα), but the expression is equivalent to our “at intervals of eight years.” In reckoning intervals of time numerically the Greeks included both the terms which are separated by the interval, whereas we include only one of them. For example, our phrase “every second day” would be rendered in Greek διὰ τρίτης ἡμέρας, literally “every third day.” Again, a cycle of two years is in Greek trieteris, literally “a period of three years”; a cycle of eight years is ennaeteris, literally “a period of nine years”; and so forth. See Censorinus, De die natali, 18. The Latin use of the ordinal numbers is similar, e. g. our “every second year” would be tertio quoque anno in Latin. However, the Greeks and Romans were not always consistent in this matter, for they occasionally reckoned in our fashion. The resulting ambiguity is not only puzzling to moderns; it sometimes confused the ancients themselves. For example, it led to a derangement of the newly instituted Julian calendar, which escaped detection for more than thirty years. See Macrobius, Saturn. i. 14. 13 sq.; Solinus, i. 45-47. On the ancient modes of counting in such cases see A. Schmidt, Handbuch der griechischen Chronologie (Jena, 1888), pp. 95 sqq. According to Schmidt, the practice of adding both terms to the sum of the intervening units was not extended by the Greeks to numbers above nine.] When we compare this custom with the evidence to be presently adduced of an eight years' tenure of the kingship in Greece, we shall probably agree with K. O. Müller[114 - Die Dorier,

ii. 96.] that the quaint Spartan practice was much more than a mere antiquarian curiosity; it was the attenuated survival of an institution which may once have had great significance, and it throws an important light on the restrictions and limitations anciently imposed by religion on the Dorian kingship. What exactly was the import of a meteor in the opinion of the old Dorians we can hardly hope to determine; one thing only is clear, they regarded it as a portent of so ominous and threatening a kind that its appearance under certain circumstances justified and even required the deposition of their king. This exaggerated dread of so simple a natural phenomenon is shared by many savages at the present day; and we shall hardly err in supposing that the Spartans inherited it from their barbarous ancestors, who may have watched with consternation, on many a starry night among the woods of Germany, the flashing of a meteor through the sky. It may be well, even at the cost of a digression, to illustrate this primitive superstition by examples.

Superstitions of the Australian aborigines as to shooting stars.

Thus, shooting stars and meteors are viewed with apprehension by the natives of the Andaman Islands, who suppose them to be lighted faggots hurled into the air by the malignant spirit of the woods in order to ascertain the whereabouts of any unhappy wight in his vicinity. Hence if they happen to be away from their camp when the meteor is seen, they hide themselves and remain silent for a little before they venture to resume the work they were at; for example, if they are out fishing they will crouch at the bottom of the boat.[115 - E. Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, pp. 84 sq.] The natives of the Tully River in Queensland believe falling stars to be the fire-sticks carried about by the spirits of dead enemies. When they see one shooting through the air they take it as a sign that an enemy is near, and accordingly they shout and make as much noise as they can; next morning they all go out in the direction in which the star fell and look for the tracks of their foe.[116 - W. E. Roth, North Queensland Bulletin, No. 5, Superstition, Magic, and Medicine (Brisbane, 1903), p. 8.] The Turrbal tribe of Queensland thought that a falling star was a medicine-man flying through the air and dropping his fire-stick to kill somebody; if there was a sick man in the camp, they regarded him as doomed.[117 - A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 429.] The Ngarigo of New South Wales believed the fall of a meteor to betoken the place where their foes were mustering for war.[118 - A. W. Howitt, op. cit. p. 430. One of the earliest writers on New South Wales reports that the natives attributed great importance to the falling of a star (D. Collins,Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (London, 1804), p. 383).] The Kaitish tribe of central Australia imagine that the fall of a star marks the whereabouts of a man who has killed another by means of a magical pointing-stick or bone. If a member of any group has been killed in this way, his friends watch for the descent of a meteor, march in that direction, slay an enemy there, and leave his body lying on the ground. The friends of the murdered man understand what has happened, and bury his body where the star fell; for they recognise the spot by the softness of the earth.[119 - Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 627.] The Mara tribe of northern Australia suppose a falling star to be one of two hostile spirits, father and son, who live up in the sky and come down occasionally to do harm to men. In this tribe the profession of medicine-man is strictly hereditary in the stock which has the falling star for its totem;[120 - Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. 488, 627 sq.] if these wizards had ever developed into kings, the descent of a meteor at certain times might have had the same fatal significance for them as for the kings of Sparta. The Taui Islanders, to the west of the Bismarck Archipelago, make war in the direction in which they have observed a star to fall,[121 - G. Thilenius, Ethnographische Ergebnisse aus Melanesien, ii. (Halle, 1903) p. 129.] probably for a reason like that which induces the Kaitish to do the same.

Superstitions of the negroes and other African races as to shooting stars.

When the Baronga of south Africa see a shooting star they spit on the ground to avert the evil omen, and cry, “Go away! go away all alone!” By this they mean that the light, which is so soon to disappear, is not to take them with it, but to go and die by itself.[122 - H. A. Junod, Les Ba-ronga (Neuchatel, 1898), p. 470.] So when a Masai perceives the flash of a meteor he spits several times and says, “Be lost! go in the direction of the enemy!” after which he adds, “Stay away from me.”[123 - A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 316.] The Namaquas “are greatly afraid of the meteor which is vulgarly called a falling star, for they consider it a sign that sickness is coming upon the cattle, and to escape it they will immediately drive them to some other parts of the country. They call out to the star how many cattle they have, and beg of it not to send sickness.”[124 - J. Campbell, Travels in South Africa (London, 1815), pp. 428 sq.] The Bechuanas are also much alarmed at the appearance of a meteor. If they happen to be dancing in the open air at the time, they will instantly desist and retire hastily to their huts.[125 - Id., Travels in South Africa, Second Journey (London, 1822), ii. 204.] The Ewe negroes of Guinea regard a falling star as a powerful divinity, and worship it as one of their national gods, by the name of Nyikpla or Nyigbla. In their opinion the falling star is especially a war-god who marches at the head of the host and leads it to victory, riding like Castor and Pollux on horseback. But he is also a rain-god, and the showers are sent by him from the sky. Special priests are devoted to his worship, with a chief priest at their head, who resides in the capital. They are known by the red staves which they carry and by the high-pointed caps, woven of threads and palm-leaves, which they wear on their heads. In times of drought they call upon their god by night with wild howls. Once a year an ox is sacrificed to him at the capital, and the priests consume the flesh. On this occasion the people smear themselves with the pollen of a certain plant and go in procession through the towns and villages, singing, dancing, and beating drums.[126 - G. Zündel, “Land und Volk der Eweer auf der Sclavenküste in Westafrika,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, xii. (1877) pp. 415 sq.; C. Spiess, “Religionsbegriffe der Evheer in Westafrika,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, vi. (1903) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 112.]

Superstitions of the American Indians as to shooting stars.

By some Indians of California meteors were called “children of the moon,” and whenever young women saw one of them they fell to the ground and covered their heads, fearing that, if the meteor saw them, their faces would become ugly and diseased.[127 - Boscana, “Chinigchinich, a Historical Account of the Origin, etc., of the Indians of St. Juan Capistrano,” in A. Robinson's Life in California (New York, 1846), p. 299.] The Tarahumares of Mexico fancy that a shooting star is a dead sorcerer coming to harm a man who harmed him in life. Hence when they see one they huddle together and scream for terror.[128 - C. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico (London, 1903), i. 324 sq.] When a German traveller was living with the Bororos of central Brazil, a splendid meteor fell, spreading dismay through the Indian village. It was believed to be the soul of a dead medicine-man, who suddenly appeared in this form to announce that he wanted meat, and that, as a preliminary measure, he proposed to visit somebody with an attack of dysentery. Its appearance was greeted with yells from a hundred throats: men, women, and children swarmed out of their huts like ants whose nest has been disturbed; and soon watch-fires blazed, round which at a little distance groups of dusky figures gathered, while in the middle, thrown into strong relief by the flickering light of the fire, two red-painted sorcerers reeled and staggered in a state of frantic excitement, snorting and spitting towards the quarter of the sky where the meteor had run its brief but brilliant course. Pressing his right hand to his yelling mouth, each of them held aloft in his extended left, by way of propitiating the angry star, a bundle of cigarettes. “There!” they seemed to say, “all that tobacco will we give to ward off the impending visitation. Woe to you, if you do not leave us in peace.”[129 - K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens (Berlin, 1894), pp. 514 sq. The Peruvian Indians also made a prodigious noise when they saw a shooting star. See P. de Cieza de Leon, Travels (Hakluyt Society, London, 1864), p. 232.] The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco also stand in great fear of meteors, imagining them to be stones hurled from heaven at the wicked sorcerers who have done people to death by their charms.[130 - G. Kurze, “Sitten und Gebräuche der Lengua-Indianer,” Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft zu Jena, xxiii. (1905) p. 17; W. Barbrooke Grubb, An Unknown People in an Unknown Land (London, 1911), p. 163.] When the Abipones beheld a meteor flashing or heard thunder rolling in the sky, they imagined that one of their medicine-men had died, and that the flash of light and the peal of thunder were part of his funeral honours.[131 - M. Dobrizhoffer, Historia de Abiponibus (Vienna, 1784), ii. 86.]

Shooting stars regarded as demons.

When the Laughlan Islanders see a shooting star they make a great noise, for they think it is the old woman who lives in the moon coming down to earth to catch somebody, who may relieve her of her duties in the moon while she goes away to the happy spirit-land.[132 - W. Tetzlaff, “Notes on the Laughlan Islands,” Annual Report on British New Guinea, 1890-91 (Brisbane, 1892), p. 105.] In Vedic India a meteor was believed to be the embodiment of a demon, and on its appearance certain hymns or incantations, supposed to possess the power of killing demons, were recited for the purpose of expiating the prodigy.[133 - H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 267.] To this day in India, when women see a falling star, they spit thrice to scare the demon.[134 - W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India (Westminster, 1906), ii. 22.] Some of the Esthonians at the present time regard shooting stars as evil spirits.[135 - Holzmayer, “Osiliana,” Verhandlungen der gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat, vii. (1872) p. 48.] It is a Mohammedan belief that falling stars are demons or jinn who have attempted to scale the sky, and, being repulsed by the angels with stones, are hurled headlong, flaming, from the celestial vault. Hence every true believer at sight of a meteor should say, “I take refuge with God from the stoned devil.”[136 - Guillain, Documents sur l'histoire, la géographie, et le commerce de l'Afrique Orientale, ii. (Paris, N.D.) p. 97; C. Velten, Sitten und Gebräuche der Suaheli (Göttingen, 1903), pp. 339 sq.; C. B. Klunzinger, Upper Egypt (London, 1878), p. 405; Budgett Meakin, The Moors (London, 1902), p. 353.]

Shooting stars associated with the souls of the dead. Supposed relation of the stars to men.

A widespread superstition, of which some examples have already been given, associates meteors or falling stars with the souls of the dead. Often they are believed to be the spirits of the departed on their way to the other world. The Maoris imagine that at death the soul leaves the body and goes to the nether world in the form of a falling star.[137 - E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand (London, 1843), ii. 66. According to another account, meteors are regarded by the Maoris as betokening the presence of a god (R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants,

p. 147).] The Kingsmill Islanders deemed a shooting star an omen of death to some member of the family which occupied the part of the council-house nearest to the point of the sky whence the meteor took its flight. If the star was followed by a train of light, it foretold the death of a woman; if not, the death of a man.[138 - Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, v. 88.] When the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria see a shooting star, they think it is falling with the heart of a man who has been caught by a sorcerer and deprived of his fat.[139 - A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 369.] One evening when Mr. Howitt was talking with an Australian black, a bright meteor was seen shooting through the sky. The native watched it and remarked, “An old blackfellow has fallen down there.”[140 - A. W. Howitt, in Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 309.] Among the Yerrunthally tribe of Queensland the ideas on this subject were even more definite. They thought that after death they went to a place away among the stars, and that to reach it they had to climb up a rope; when they had clambered up they let go the rope, which, as it fell from heaven, appeared to people on earth as a falling star.[141 - E. Palmer, “Notes on some Australian Tribes,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884) p. 292. Sometimes apparently the Australian natives regard crystals or broken glass as fallen stars, and treasure them as powerful instruments of magic. See E. M. Curr, The Australian Race, iii. 29; W. E. Roth, North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 5, p. 8.] The natives of the Prince of Wales Islands, off Queensland, are much afraid of shooting stars, for they believe them to be ghosts which, in breaking up, produce young ones of their own kind.[142 - J. Macgillivray, Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake (London, 1852), ii. 30.] The natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain think that meteors are the souls of people who have been murdered or eaten; so at the sight of a meteor flashing they cry out, “The ghost of a murdered man!”[143 - P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Küstenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Münster, n. d.), p. 227.] According to the Sulka of New Britain meteors are souls which have been flung into the air in order to plunge into the sea; and the train of light which they leave behind them is a burning tail of dry coco-nut leaves which has been tied to them by other souls, in order to help them to wing their way through the air.[144 - P. Rascher, “Die Sulka,” Archiv für Anthropologie, xxix. (1904) p. 216.] The Caffres of South Africa often say that a shooting star is the sign of the death of some chief, and at sight of it they will spit on the ground as a mark of friendly feeling towards the dead man.[145 - Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood (London, 1906), p. 149.] Similarly the Ababua of the Congo valley think that a chief will die in the village into which a star appears to fall, unless the danger of death be averted by a particular dance.[146 - J. Halkin, Quelques Peuplades du district de l'Uelé (Liège, 1907), p. 102.] In the opinion of the Masai, the fall of a meteor signifies the death of some one; at sight of it they pray that the victim may be one of their enemies.[147 - O. Baumann, Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle (Berlin, 1894), p. 163.] The Wambugwe of eastern Africa fancy that the stars are men, of whom one dies whenever a star is seen to fall.[148 - O. Baumann, Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle (Berlin, 1894), p. 188.] The Tinneh Indians and the Tchiglit Esquimaux of north-western America believe that human life on earth is influenced by the stars, and they take a shooting star to be a sign that some one has died.[149 - E. Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjé (Paris, 1876), p. 60; id., Monographie des Esquimaux Tchiglit (Paris, 1876), p. 24.] The Lolos, an aboriginal tribe of western China, hold that for each person on earth there is a corresponding star in the sky. Hence when a man is ill, they sacrifice wine to his star and light four and twenty lamps outside of his room. On the day after the funeral they dig a hole in the chamber of death and pray the dead man's star to descend and be buried in it. If this precaution were not taken, the star might fall and hit somebody and hurt him very much.[150 - A. Henry, “The Lolos and other Tribes of Western China,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. (1903) p. 103.] In classical antiquity there was a popular notion that every human being had his own star in the sky, which shone bright or dim according to his good or evil fortune, and fell in the form of a meteor when he died.[151 - Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 28.]

Modern European beliefs as to meteors. Various beliefs as to stars and meteors.

Superstitions of the same sort are still commonly to be met with in Europe. Thus in some parts of Germany they say that at the birth of a man a new star is set in the sky, and that as it burns brilliantly or faintly he grows rich or poor; finally when he dies it drops from the sky in the likeness of a shooting star.[152 - F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 293; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 457, § 422; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 506, §§ 379, 380.] Similarly in Brittany, Transylvania, Bohemia, the Abruzzi, the Romagna, and the Esthonian island of Oesel it is thought by some that every man has his own particular star in the sky, and that when it falls in the shape of a meteor he expires.[153 - P. Sébillot, Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne, ii. 353; J. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen (Vienna, 1885), p. 300; W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens, p. 38; E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, i. 311; J. V. Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren, p. 31, § 164; Br. Jelínek, “Materialien zur Vorgeschichte und Volkskunde Böhmens,” Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, xxi. (1891) p. 25; G. Finamore, Credenze, usi e costumi Abruzzesi, pp. 47 sq.; M. Placucci, Usi e pregiudizj dei contadini della Romagna (Palermo, 1885), p. 141; Holzmayer, “Osiliana,” Verhandl. der gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat, vii. (1872) p. 48. The same belief is said to prevail in Armenia. See Minas Tchéraz, “Notes sur la mythologie arménienne,” Transactions of the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists (London, 1893), ii. 824. Bret Harte has employed the idea in his little poem, “Relieving Guard.”] A like belief is entertained by Polish Jews.[154 - H. Lew, “Der Tod und die Beerdigungs-gebräuche bei den polnischen Juden,” Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, xxxii. (1902) p. 402.] In Styria they say that when a shooting star is seen a man has just died, or a poor soul been released from purgatory.[155 - A. Schlossar, “Volksmeinung und Volksaberglaube aus der deutschen Steiermark,” Germania, N.R., xxiv. (1891) p. 389.] The Esthonians believe that if any one sees a falling star on New Year's night he will die or be visited by a serious illness that year.[156 - Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und Gewohnheiten (St. Petersburg, 1854), p. 73.] In Belgium and many parts of France the people suppose that a meteor is a soul which has just quitted the body, sometimes that it is specially the soul of an unbaptized infant or of some one who has died without absolution. At sight of it they say that you should cross yourself and pray, or that if you wish for something while the star is falling you will be sure to get it.[157 - E. Monseur, Le Folklore wallon, p. 61; A. de Nore, Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de France, pp. 101, 160, 223, 267, 284; B. Souché, Croyances, présages et traditions diverses, p. 23; P. Sébillot, Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne, ii. 352; J. Lecœur, Esquisses du bocage normand, ii. 13; L. Pineau, Folk-lore du Poitou (Paris, 1892), pp. 525 sq.] Among the Vosges Mountains in the warm nights of July it is not uncommon to see whole showers of shooting stars. It is generally agreed that these stars are souls, but some difference of opinion exists as to whether they are souls just taking leave of earth, or tortured by the fires of purgatory, or on their passage from purgatory to heaven.[158 - L. F. Sauvé. Le Folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges (Paris, 1889), pp. 196 sq.] The last and most cheering of these views is held by the French peasantry of Beauce and Perche and by the Italian peasantry of the Abruzzi, and charitable people pray for the deliverance of a soul at the sight of a falling star.[159 - F. Chapiseau, Le Folk-lore de la Beauce et du Perche (Paris, 1902), i. 290; G. Finamore, Credenze, usi e costumi Abruzzesi (Palermo, 1890), p. 48.] The downward direction of its flight might naturally suggest a different goal; and accordingly other people have seen in the transient flame of a meteor the descent of a soul from heaven to be born on earth. In the Punjaub, for example, Hindoos believe that the length of a soul's residence in the realms of bliss is exactly proportioned to the sums which the man distributed in charity during his life; and that when these are exhausted his time in heaven is up, and down he comes.[160 - North Indian Notes and Queries, i. p. 102, § 673. Compare id. p. 47, § 356; Indian Notes and Queries, iv. p. 184, § 674; W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 82.] In Polynesia a shooting star was held to be the flight of a spirit, and to presage the birth of a great prince.[161 - W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches,

iii. 171.] The Mandans of north America fancied that the stars were dead people, and that when a woman was brought to bed a star fell from heaven, and entering into her was born as a child.[162 - Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das Innere Nord-America (Coblenz, 1839-1841), ii. 152. It does not, however, appear from the writer's statement whether the descent of the soul was identified with the flight of a meteor or not.] On the Biloch frontier of the Punjaub each man is held to have his star, and he may not journey in particular directions when his star is in certain positions. If duty compels him to travel in the forbidden direction, he takes care before setting out to bury his star, or rather a figure of it cut out of cloth, so that it may not see what he is doing.[163 - D. C. J. Ibbetson, Outlines of Panjab Ethnography (Calcutta, 1883), p. 118, § 231.]

The fall of the king's star.

Which, if any, of these superstitions moved the barbarous Dorians of old to depose their kings whenever at a certain season a meteor flamed in the sky, we cannot say. Perhaps they had a vague general notion that its appearance signified the dissatisfaction of the higher powers with the state of the commonwealth; and since in primitive society the king is commonly held responsible for all untoward events, whatever their origin, the natural course was to relieve him of duties which he had proved himself incapable of discharging. But it may be that the idea in the minds of these rude barbarians was more definite. Possibly, like some people in Europe at the present day, they thought that every man had his star in the sky, and that he must die when it fell. The king would be no exception to the rule, and on a certain night of a certain year, at the end of a cycle, it might be customary to watch the sky in order to mark whether the king's star was still in the ascendant or near its setting. The appearance of a meteor on such a night – of a star precipitated from the celestial vault – might prove for the king not merely a symbol but a sentence of death. It might be the warrant for his execution.

Reasons for limiting a king's reign to eight years. The octennial cycle based on an attempt to reconcile solar and lunar time.

If the tenure of the regal office was formerly limited among the Spartans to eight years, we may naturally ask, why was that precise period selected as the measure of a king's reign? The reason is probably to be found in those astronomical considerations which determined the early Greek calendar. The difficulty of reconciling lunar with solar time is one of the standing puzzles which has taxed the ingenuity of men who are emerging from barbarism. Now an octennial cycle is the shortest period at the end of which sun and moon really mark time together after overlapping, so to say, throughout the whole of the interval. Thus, for example, it is only once in every eight years that the full moon coincides with the longest or shortest day; and as this coincidence can be observed with the aid of a simple dial, the observation is naturally one of the first to furnish a base for a calendar which shall bring lunar and solar times into tolerable, though not exact, harmony.[164 - L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, ii. 605 sqq. Ninety-nine lunar months nearly coincide with eight solar years, as the ancients well knew (Sozomenus, Historia ecclesiastica, vii. 18). On the religious and political import of the eight years' cycle in ancient Greece see especially K. O. Müller, Orchomenus und die Minyer,

pp. 213-218; id., Die Dorier,

i. 254 sq., 333 sq., 440, ii. 96, 483; id., Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (Göttingen, 1825), pp. 422-424.] But in early days the proper adjustment of the calendar is a matter of religious concern, since on it depends a knowledge of the right seasons for propitiating the deities whose favour is indispensable to the welfare of the community.[165 - “Ancient opinion even assigned the regulation of the calendar by the solstices and equinoxes to the will of the gods that sacrifices should be rendered at similar times in each year, rather than to the strict requirements of agriculture; and as religion undoubtedly makes larger demands on the cultivator as agriculture advances, the obligations of sacrifice may probably be reckoned as of equal importance with agricultural necessities in urging the formation of reckonings in the nature of a calendar” (E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, ii. 280).] No wonder, therefore, that the king, as the chief priest of the state, or as himself a god, should be liable to deposition or death at the end of an astronomical period. When the great luminaries had run their course on high, and were about to renew the heavenly race, it might well be thought that the king should renew his divine energies, or prove them unabated, under pain of making room for a more vigorous successor. In southern India, as we have seen, the king's reign and life terminated with the revolution of the planet Jupiter round the sun. In Greece, on the other hand, the king's fate seems to have hung in the balance at the end of every eight years, ready to fly up and kick the beam as soon as the opposite scale was loaded with a falling star.

The octennial cycle in relation to the Greek doctrine of rebirth.

The same train of thought may explain an ancient Greek custom which appears to have required that a homicide should be banished his country, and do penance for a period of eight or nine years.[166 - As to the eight years' servitude of Apollo and Cadmus for the slaughter of dragons, see below, p. 78 (#x_8_i7). For the nine years' penance of the man who had tasted human flesh at the festival of Zeus on Mount Lycaeus, see Pliny, Nat. hist. viii. 81 sq.; Augustine, De civitate Dei, xviii. 17; Pausanias, viii. 2. 6; compare Plato, Republic, viii. p. 565 D E. Any god who forswore himself by the water of Styx was exiled for nine years from the society of his fellow-gods (Hesiod, Theogony, 793-804). On this subject see further, E. Rohde, Psyche,

ii. 211 sq.; W. H. Roscher, “Die enneadischen und hebdomadischen Fristen und Wochen der ältesten Griechen,” Abhandlungen der philolog. – histor. Klasse der Königl. Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, xxi. No. 4 (1903), pp. 24 sqq.] With the beginning of a new cycle or great year, as it was called, it might be thought that all nature was regenerate, all old scores wiped out. According to Pindar, the dead whose guilt had been purged away by an abode of eight years in the nether world were born again on earth in the ninth year as glorious kings, athletes, and sages.[167 - Plato, Meno, p. 81 a-c; Pindar, ed. Boeckh, vol. iii. pp. 623 sq., Frag. 98.] The doctrine may well be an old popular belief rather than a mere poetical fancy. If so, it would supply a fresh reason for the banishment of a homicide during the years that the angry ghost of his victim might at any moment issue from its prison-house and pounce on him. Once the perturbed spirit had been happily reborn, he might be supposed to forgive, if not to forget, the man who had done him an injury in a former life.

The octennial cycle at Cnossus in Crete. King Minos and Zeus. Sacred marriage of the king and queen of Cnossus in the form of bull and cow as symbols of the sun and moon.

Whatever its origin may have been, the cycle of eight years appears to have coincided with the normal length of the king's reign in other parts of Greece besides Sparta. Thus Minos, king of Cnossus in Crete, whose great palace has been unearthed in recent years, is said to have held office for periods of eight years together. At the end of each period he retired for a season to the oracular cave on Mount Ida, and there communed with his divine father Zeus, giving him an account of his kingship in the years that were past, and receiving from him instructions for his guidance in those which were to come.[168 - Homer, Odyssey, xix. 178 sq., τῇσι δ᾽ ἐνὶ Κνωσός, μεγάλη πόλις, ἔνθα τε Μίνως ἐννέωρος βασίλευε Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής.with the Scholia; Plato, Laws, i. I. p. 624 a, b;[id.] Minos, 13 sq., pp. 319 sq.; Strabo, ix. 4. 8, p. 476; Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. xxxviii. 2; Etymologicum magnum, s. v. ἐννέωροι, p. 343, 23 sqq.; Valerius Maximus, i. 2, ext. I; compare Diodorus Siculus, v. 78. 3. Homer's expression, ἐννέωρος βασίλευε, has been variously explained. I follow the interpretation which appears to have generally found favour both with the ancients, including Plato, and with modern scholars. See K. Hoeck, Kreta, i. 244 sqq.; K. O. Müller,Die Dorier,

ii. 96; G. F. Unger, “Zeitrechnung der Griechen und Römer,” in Ivan Müller's Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, i. 569; A. Schmidt, Handbuch der griechischen Chronologie (Jena, 1888), p. 65; W. H. Roscher, “Die enneadischen und hebdomadischen Fristen und Wochen der ältesten Griechen,” Abhandlungen der philolog. – histor. Klasse der Königl. Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, xxi. No. 4 (Leipsic, 1903), pp. 22 sq.; E. Rohde, Psyche,

i. 128 sq. Literally interpreted, ἐννέωρος means “for nine years,” not “for eight years.” But see above, p. 59 (#x_7_i3), note

.] The tradition plainly implies that at the end of every eight years the king's sacred powers needed to be renewed by intercourse with the godhead, and that without such a renewal he would have forfeited his right to the throne. We may surmise that among the solemn ceremonies which marked the beginning or the end of the eight years' cycle the sacred marriage of the king with the queen played an important part, and that in this marriage we have the true explanation of the strange legend of Pasiphae and the bull. It was said that Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos, fell in love with a wondrous white bull which rose from the sea, and that in order to gratify her unnatural passion the artist Daedalus constructed a hollow wooden cow, covered with a cow's hide, in which the love-sick queen was hidden while the bull mounted it. The result of their union was the Minotaur, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull, whom the king shut up in the labyrinth, a building full of such winding and intricate passages that the prisoner might roam in it for ever without finding the way out.[169 - Apollodorus, iii. 1. 3 sq., iii. 15. 8; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 77; Schol. on Euripides, Hippolytus, 887; J. Tzetzes, Chiliades, i. 479 sqq.; Hyginus, Fabulae, 40; Virgil, Ecl. vi. 45 sqq.; Ovid, Ars amat. i. 289 sqq.] The legend appears to reflect a mythical marriage of the sun and moon, which was acted as a solemn rite by the king and queen of Cnossus, wearing the masks of a bull and cow respectively.[170 - K. Hoeck, Kreta, ii. (Göttingen, 1828) pp. 63-69; L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie,

ii. 119-123; W. H. Roscher, Über Selene mid Verwandtes (Leipsic, 1890), pp. 135-139; id., Nachträge zu meiner Schrift über Selene (Leipsic, 1895), p. 3; Türk, in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iii. 1666 sq.; A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxi. (1901) p. 181; A. B. Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” Classical Review, xvii. (1903) pp. 406-412; compare id., “The European Sky-god,” Folklore, xv. (1904) p. 272. All these writers, except Mr. Cook, regard Minos and Pasiphae as representing the sun and moon. Mr. Cook agrees so far as relates to Minos, but he supposes Pasiphae to be a sky-goddess or sun-goddess rather than a goddess of the moon. On the other hand, he was the first to suggest that the myth was periodically acted by the king and queen of Cnossus disguised in bovine form.] To a pastoral people a bull is the most natural type of vigorous reproductive energy,[171 - Compare The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 368 sq.] and as such is a fitting emblem of the sun. Islanders who, like many of the Cretans, see the sun daily rising from the sea, might readily compare him to a white bull issuing from the waves. Indeed, we are expressly told that the Cretans called the sun a bull.[172 - Bekker's Anecdota Graeca, i. 344, s. v. Ἀδιούνιος ταῦρος.] Similarly in ancient Egypt the sacred bull Mnevis of Heliopolis (the City of the Sun) was deemed an incarnation of the Sun-god,[173 - Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 13. 1 sq.; Diodorus Siculus, i. 84. 4, i. 88. 4; Strabo, xvii. 1. 22 and 27, pp. 803, 805; Aelian, De natura animalium, xi. II; Suidas, s. v. Ἆπις; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 14. 7; A. Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch, p. 552; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion (Berlin, 1905), p. 26; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (London, 1904), i. 330.] and for thousands of years the kings of Egypt delighted to be styled “mighty bull”; many of them inscribed the title on their serekh or cognisance, which set forth their names in their character of descendants of Horus.[174 - E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, i. 25.] The identification of Pasiphae, “she who shines on all,” with the moon was made long ago by Pausanias, who saw her image along with that of the sun in a sanctuary on that wild rocky coast of Messenia where the great range of Taygetus descends seaward in a long line of naked crags.[175 - Pausanias, i. 26. 1. For a description of the scenery of this coast, see Morritt, in Walpole's Memoirs relating to European Turkey, i.

p. 54.] The horns of the waxing or waning moon naturally suggest the resemblance of the luminary to a white cow; hence the ancients represented the goddess of the moon drawn by a team of white cattle.[176 - W. H. Roscher, Über Selene und Verwandtes, pp. 30-33.] When we remember that at the court of Egypt the king and queen figured as god and goddess in solemn masquerades, where the parts of animal-headed deities were played by masked men and women,[177 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 130 sqq. We are told that Egyptian sovereigns assumed the masks of lions, bulls, and serpents as symbols of power (Diodorus Siculus, i. 62. 4).] we need have no difficulty in imagining that similar dramas may have been performed at the court of a Cretan king, whether we suppose them to have been imported from Egypt or to have had an independent origin.

The same myth and custom of the marriage of the sun and moon appear in the stories of Zeus and Europa, of Minos and Britomartis. The conjunction of the sun and moon regarded as the best time for marriages. Octennial marriage of the king and queen as representatives of the sun and moon.

The stories of Zeus and Europa, and of Minos and Britomartis or Dictynna appear to be only different expressions of the same myth, different echoes of the same custom. The moon rising from the sea was the fair maiden Europa coming across the heaving billows from the far eastern land of Phoenicia, borne or pursued by her suitor the solar bull. The moon setting in the western waves was the coy Britomartis or Dictynna, who plunged into the sea to escape the warm embrace of her lover Minos, himself the sun. The story how the drowning maiden was drawn up in a fisherman's net may well be, as some have thought, the explanation given by a simple seafaring folk of the moon's reappearance from the sea in the east after she had sunk into it in the west.[178 - As to Minos and Britomartis or Dictynna, see Callimachus, Hymn to Diana, 189 sqq.; Pausanias, ii. 30. 3; Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. 40; Diodorus Siculus, v. 76. On Britomartis as a moon-goddess, see K. Hoeck, Kreta, ii. 170; W. H. Roscher, Über Selene und Verwandtes, pp. 45 sq., 116-118. Hoeck acutely perceived that the pursuit of Britomartis by Minos “is a trait of old festival customs in which the conceptions of the sun-god were transferred to the king of the island.” As to the explanation here adopted of the myth of Zeus and Europa, see K. Hoeck, Kreta, i. 90 sqq.; W. H. Roscher, op. cit. pp. 128-135. Moschus describes (ii. 84 sqq.) the bull which carried off Europa as yellow in colour with a silver circle shining on his forehead, and he compares the bull's horns to those of the moon.] To the mythical fancy of the ancients the moon was a coy or a wanton maiden, who either fled from or pursued the sun every month till the fugitive was overtaken and the lovers enjoyed each other's company at the time when the luminaries are in conjunction, namely, in the interval between the old and the new moon. Hence on the principles of sympathetic magic that interval was considered the time most favourable for human marriages. When the sun and moon are wedded in the sky, men and women should be wedded on earth. And for the same reason the ancients chose the interlunar day for the celebration of the Sacred Marriages of gods and goddesses. Similar beliefs and customs based on them have been noted among other peoples.[179 - See W. H. Roscher, op. cit. pp. 76-82. Amongst the passages of classical writers which he cites are Plutarch, De facie in orbe lunae, 30; id., Isis et Osiris, 52; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae compendium, 34, p. 72, ed. C. Lang; Proclus, on Hesiod, Works and Days, 780; Macrobius, Commentar. in Somnium Scipionis, i. 18. 10 sq.; Pliny, Nat. hist. ii. 45. When the sun and moon were eclipsed, the Tahitians supposed that the luminaries were in the act of copulation (J. Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), p. 346).] It is likely, therefore, that a king and queen who represented the sun and moon may have been expected to exercise their conjugal rights above all at the time when the moon was thought to rest in the arms of the sun. However that may have been, it would be natural that their union should be consummated with unusual solemnity every eight years, when the two great luminaries, so to say, meet and mark time together once more after diverging from each other more or less throughout the interval. It is true that sun and moon are in conjunction once every month, but every month their conjunction takes place at a different point in the sky, until eight revolving years have brought them together again in the same heavenly bridal chamber where first they met.

Octennial tribute of youths and maidens probably required as a means of renewing the sun's fire by human sacrifices. The Minotaur a bull-headed image of the sun.

Without being unduly rash we may surmise that the tribute of seven youths and seven maidens whom the Athenians were bound to send to Minos every eight years had some connexion with the renewal of the king's power for another octennial cycle. Traditions varied as to the fate which awaited the lads and damsels on their arrival in Crete; but the common view appears to have been that they were shut up in the labyrinth, there to be devoured by the Minotaur, or at least to be imprisoned for life.[180 - Plutarch, Theseus, 15 sq.; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 61; Pausanias, i. 27. 10; Ovid, Metam. viii. 170 sq. According to another account, the tribute of youths and maidens was paid every year. See Virgil, Aen. vi. 14 sqq., with the commentary of Servius; Hyginus, Fabulae, 41.] Perhaps they were sacrificed by being roasted alive in a bronze image of a bull, or of a bull-headed man, in order to renew the strength of the king and of the sun, whom he personated. This at all events is suggested by the legend of Talos, a bronze man who clutched people to his breast and leaped with them into the fire, so that they were roasted alive. He is said to have been given by Zeus to Europa, or by Hephaestus to Minos, to guard the island of Crete, which he patrolled thrice daily.[181 - Apollodorus, i. 9. 26; Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. iv. 1638 sqq., with the scholium; Agatharchides, in Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 443

, lines 22-25, ed. Bekker; Lucian, De saltatione, 49; Zenobius, v. 85; Suidas, s. v. Σαρδάνιος γέλως; Eustathius on Homer, Odyssey, xx. 302, p. 1893; Schol. on Plato, Republic, i. p. 337

.] According to one account he was a bull,[182 - Apollodorus, i. 9. 26.] according to another he was the sun.[183 - Hesychius, s. v. Ταλῶς.] Probably he was identical with the Minotaur, and stripped of his mythical features was nothing but a bronze image of the sun represented as a man with a bull's head. In order to renew the solar fires, human victims may have been sacrificed to the idol by being roasted in its hollow body or placed on its sloping hands and allowed to roll into a pit of fire. It was in the latter fashion that the Carthaginians sacrificed their offspring to Moloch. The children were laid on the hands of a calf-headed image of bronze, from which they slid into a fiery oven, while the people danced to the music of flutes and timbrels to drown the shrieks of the burning victims.[184 - Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14; Clitarchus, cited by Suidas, s. v. Σαρδάνιος γέλως, and by the Scholiast on Plato, Republic, p. 337

; Plutarch, De superstitione, 13; Paulus Fagius, quoted by Selden, De dis Syris (Leipsic, 1668), pp. 169 sq. The calf's head of the idol is mentioned only by P. Fagius, who drew his account from a book Jalkut by Rabbi Simeon.] The resemblance which the Cretan traditions bear to the Carthaginian practice suggests that the worship associated with the names of Minos and the Minotaur may have been powerfully influenced by that of a Semitic Baal.[185 - Compare M. Mayer, s. v. “Kronos,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie, iii. 1501 sqq.] In the tradition of Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, and his brazen bull[186 - J. Tzetzes, Chiliades, i. 646 sqq.] we may have an echo of similar rites in Sicily, where the Carthaginian power struck deep roots.

Dance of the youths and maidens at Cnossus.

But perhaps the youths and maidens who were sent across the sea to Cnossus had to perform certain religious duties before they were cast into the fiery furnace. The same cunning artist Daedalus who planned the labyrinth and contrived the wooden cow for Pasiphae was said to have made a dance for Ariadne, daughter of Minos. It represented youths and maidens dancing in ranks, the youths armed with golden swords, the maidens crowned with garlands.[187 - Homer, Iliad, xviii. 590 sqq.] Moreover, when Theseus landed with Ariadne in Delos on his return from Crete, he and the young companions whom he had rescued from the Minotaur are said to have danced a mazy dance in imitation of the intricate windings of the labyrinth; on account of its sinuous turns the dance was called “the Crane.”[188 - Plutarch, Theseus, 21; Julius Pollux, iv. 101.] Taken together, these two traditions suggest that the youths and maidens who were sent to Cnossus had to dance in the labyrinth before they were sacrificed to the bull-headed image. At all events there are good grounds for thinking that there was a famous dance which the ancients regularly associated with the Cretan labyrinth.

The game of Troy.