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

Among the Romans that dance appears to have been known from the earliest times by the name of Troy or the Game of Troy. Tradition ran that it was imported into Italy by Aeneas, who transmitted it through his son Ascanius to the Alban kings, who in their turn handed it down to the Romans. It was performed by bands of armed youths on horseback. Virgil compares their complicated evolutions to the windings of the Cretan labyrinth;[189 - As to the Game of Troy, see Virgil, Aen. v. 545-603; Plutarch, Cato, 3; Tacitus, Annals, xi. 11; Suetonius, Augustus, 43; id., Tiberius, 6; id., Caligula, 18; id., Nero, 6; W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,

s. v. “Trojae ludus”; O. Benndorf, “Das Alter des Trojaspieles,” appended to W. Reichel's Über homerische Waffen (Vienna, 1894), pp. 133-139.] and that the comparison is more than a mere poetical flourish appears from a drawing on a very ancient Etruscan vase found at Tragliatella. The drawing represents a procession of seven beardless warriors dancing, accompanied by two armed riders on horseback, who are also beardless. An inscription proves that the scene depicted is the Game of Troy; and attached to the procession is a figure of the Cretan labyrinth,[190 - O. Benndorf, op. cit. pp. 133 sq.] the pattern of which is well known from coins of Cnossus on which it is often represented.[191 - B. V. Head, Historia numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 389-391.] The same pattern, identified by an inscription, “Labyrinthus, hic habitat Minotaurus,” is scratched on a wall at Pompeii; and it is also worked in mosaic on the floor of Roman apartments, with the figures of Theseus and the Minotaur in the middle.[192 - O. Benndorf, op. cit. pp. 134 sq.] Roman boys appear to have drawn the very same pattern on the ground and to have played a game on it, probably a miniature Game of Troy.[193 - Pliny, Nat. hist. xxxvi. 85.] Labyrinths of similar type occur as decorations on the floors of old churches, where they are known as “the Road of Jerusalem”; they were used for processions. The garden mazes of the Renaissance were modelled on them. Moreover, they are found very commonly in the north of Europe, marked out either by raised bands of turf or by rows of stones. Such labyrinths may be seen in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finnland, the south coast of Russian Lappland, and even in Iceland. They go by various names, such as Babylon, Wieland's House, Trojeborg, Tröburg, and so forth, some of which clearly indicate their connexion with the ancient Game of Troy. They are used for children's games.[194 - O. Benndorf, op. cit. p. 135; W. Meyer, “Ein Labyrinth mit Versen,” Sitzungsberichte der philosoph. philolog. und histor. Classe der k. b. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, 1882, vol. ii. pp. 267-300.]

The dance at Cnossus perhaps an imitation of the sun's course in the sky.

A dance or game which has thus spread over Europe and survived in a fashion to modern times must have been very popular, and bearing in mind how often with the decay of old faiths the serious rites and pageants of grown people have degenerated into the sports of children, we may reasonably ask whether Ariadne's Dance or the Game of Troy may not have had its origin in religious ritual. The ancients connected it with Cnossus and the Minotaur. Now we have seen reason to hold, with many other scholars, that Cnossus was the seat of a great worship of the sun, and that the Minotaur was a representative or embodiment of the sun-god. May not, then, Ariadne's dance have been an imitation of the sun's course in the sky? and may not its intention have been, by means of sympathetic magic, to aid the great luminary to run his race on high? We have seen that during an eclipse of the sun the Chilcotin Indians walk in a circle, leaning on staves, apparently to assist the labouring orb. In Egypt also the king, who embodied the sun-god, seems to have solemnly walked round the walls of a temple for the sake of helping the sun on his way.[195 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 312.] If there is any truth in this conjecture, it would seem to follow that the sinuous lines of the labyrinth which the dancers followed in their evolutions may have represented the ecliptic, the sun's apparent annual path in the sky. It is some confirmation of this view that on coins of Cnossus the sun or a star appears in the middle of the labyrinth, the place which on other coins is occupied by the Minotaur.[196 - B. V. Head, Historia numorum, p. 389.]

Conclusions as to the king of Cnossus.

On the whole the foregoing evidence, slight and fragmentary as it is, points to the conclusion that at Cnossus the king represented the sun-god, and that every eight years his divine powers were renewed at a great festival, which comprised, first, the sacrifice of human victims by fire to a bull-headed image of the sun, and, second, the marriage of the king disguised as a bull to the queen disguised as a cow, the two personating respectively the sun and the moon.

Octennial festivals of the Crowning at Delphi and the Laurel-bearing at Thebes. Both represented dramatically the slaying of a water-dragon.

Whatever may be thought of these speculations, we know that many solemn rites were celebrated by the ancient Greeks at intervals of eight years.[197 - Censorinus, De die natali, 18. 6.] Amongst them, two deserve to be noticed here, because it has been recently suggested, with some appearance of probability, that they were based on an octennial tenure of the kingship.[198 - The suggestion was made by Mr. A. B. Cook. The following discussion of the subject is founded on his ingenious exposition. See his article, “The European Sky-god,” Folklore, xv. (1904) pp. 402-424.] One was the Festival of the Crowning at Delphi; the other was the Festival of the Laurel-bearing at Thebes. In their general features the two festivals seem to have resembled each other very closely. Both represented dramatically the slaying of a great water-dragon by a god or hero; in both, the lad who played the part of the victorious god or hero crowned his brows with a wreath of sacred laurel and had to submit to a penance and purification for the slaughter of the beast. At Delphi the legendary slayer of the dragon was Apollo; at Thebes he was Cadmus.[199 - As to the Delphic festival see Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 12; id., De defectu oraculorum, 15; Strabo, ix. 3. 12, pp. 422 sq.; Aelian, Var. hist. iii. 1; Stephanus Byzantius, s. v. Δειπνίας; K. O. Müller, Die Dorier,

i. 203 sqq., 321-324; Aug. Mommsen, Delphika (Leipsic, 1878), pp. 206 sqq.; Th. Schreiber, Apollo Pythoktonos, pp. 9 sqq.; my note on Pausanias, ii. 7. 7 (vol. ii. 53 sqq.). As to the Theban festival, see Pausanias, ix. 10. 4, with my note; Proclus, quoted by Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 321, ed. Bekker; Aug. Boeckh, in his edition of Pindar, Explicationes, p. 590; K. O. Müller, Orchomenus und die Minyer,

pp. 215 sq.; id., Dorier,

i. 236 sq., 333 sq.; C. Boetticher, Der Baumkultus der Hellenen, pp. 386 sqq.; G. F. Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer,

ii. 479 sq.] At both places the legendary penance for the slaughter seems to have been servitude for eight years.[200 - Apollodorus, iii. 4. 2, iii. 10. 4; Servius, on Virgil, Aen. vii. 761. The servitude of Apollo is traditionally associated with his slaughter of the Cyclopes, not of the dragon. But see my note on Pausanias, ii. 7. 7 (vol. ii. pp. 53 sqq.).] The evidence for the rites of the Delphic festival is fairly complete, but for the Theban festival it has to be eked out by vase-paintings, which represent Cadmus crowned with laurel preparing to attack the dragon or actually in combat with the monster, while goddesses bend over the champion, holding out wreaths of laurel to him as the mede of victory.[201 - W. H. Roscher's Lexikon d. griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 830, 838, 839. On an Etruscan mirror the scene of Cadmus's combat with the dragon is surrounded by a wreath of laurel (Roscher, op. cit. ii. 862). Mr. A. B. Cook was the first to call attention to these vase-paintings in confirmation of my view that the Festival of the Laurel-bearing celebrated the destruction of the dragon by Cadmus (Folklore, xv. (1904) p. 411, note

).] It is true that in historical times Apollo appears to have ousted Cadmus from the festival, though not from the myth. But at Thebes the god was plainly a late intruder, for his temple lay outside the walls, whereas the most ancient sanctuaries stood in the oldest part of the city, the low hill which took its name of Cadmea from the genuine Theban hero Cadmus.[202 - Pausanias, ix. 10. 2; K. O. Müller, Die Dorier,

i. 237 sq.] It is not impossible that at Delphi also, and perhaps at other places where the same drama was acted,[203 - For evidence of the wide diffusion of the myth and the drama, see Th. Schreiber, Apollon Pythoktonos, pp. 39-50. The Laurel-bearing Apollo was worshipped at Athens, as we know from an inscription carved on one of the seats in the theatre. See E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, ii. (Cambridge, 1905) p. 467, No. 247.] Apollo may have displaced an old local hero in the honourable office of dragon-slayer.

Both at Delphi and at Thebes the dragon seems to have guarded the oracular spring and the oracular tree. The crown of laurel and the crown of oak. The Festival of Crowning at Delphi originally identical with the Pythian games.

Both at Thebes and at Delphi the dragon guarded a spring,[204 - Apollodorus, iii. 4. 3; Schol. on Homer, Iliad, ii. 494; Pausanias, ix. 10. 5; Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 300 sq. The writer of the Homeric hymn merely says that Apollo slew the Delphic dragon at a spring; but Pausanias (x. 6. 6) tells us that the beast guarded the oracle.] the water of which was probably deemed oracular. At Delphi the sacred spring may have been either Cassotis or the more famed Castaly, which issues from a narrow gorge, shut in by rocky walls of tremendous height, a little to the east of Apollo's temple. The waters of both were thought to be endowed with prophetic power.[205 - Pausanias, x. 8. 9, x. 24. 7, with my notes; Ovid, Amores, i. 15. 35 sq.; Lucian, Jupiter tragoedus, 30; Nonnus, Dionys. iv. 309 sq.; Suidas, s. v. Κασταλία.] Probably, too, the monster was supposed to keep watch and ward over the sacred laurel, from which the victor in the combat wreathed his brows; for in vase-paintings the Theban dragon appears coiled beside the holy tree,[206 - W. H. Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie, ii. 830, 838.] and Euripides describes the Delphic dragon as covered by a leafy laurel.[207 - Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1245 sq., where the reading κατάχαλκος is clearly corrupt.] At all oracular seats of Apollo his priestess drank of the sacred spring and chewed the sacred laurel before she prophesied.[208 - Lucian, Bis accusatus, I. So the priest of the Clarian Apollo at Colophon drank of a secret spring before he uttered oracles in verse (Tacitus, Annals, ii. 54; Pliny, Nat. hist. ii. 232).] Thus it would seem that the dragon, which at Delphi is expressly said to have been the guardian of the oracle,[209 - Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1245 sqq.; Apollodorus, i. 4. I; Pausanias, x. 6. 6; Aelian, Var. hist. iii. i; Hyginus, Fabulae, 140; Schol. on Homer, Iliad, ii. 519; Schol. on Pindar, Pyth. Argument, p. 298, ed. Boeckh.] had in its custody both the instruments of divination, the holy tree and the holy water. We are reminded of the dragon or serpent, slain by Hercules, which guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides in the happy garden.[210 - Euripides, Hercules Furens, 395 sqq.; Apollodorus, ii. 5. II; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 26; Eratosthenes, Catasterism. 3; Schol. on Euripides, Hippolytus, 742; Schol. on Apollonius Rhodius, Argon, iv. 1396.] But at Delphi the oldest sacred tree appears, as Mr. A. B. Cook has pointed out,[211 - A. B. Cook, “The European Sky-god,” Folklore, xv. (1904) p. 413.] to have been not a laurel but an oak. For we are told that originally the victors in the Pythian games at Delphi wore crowns of oak leaves, since the laurel had not yet been created.[212 - Ovid, Metam. i. 448 sqq.] Now, like the Festival of Crowning, the Pythian games were instituted to commemorate the slaughter of the dragon;[213 - Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. i. I, p. 2, and ii. 34, p. 29, ed. Potter; Aristotle, Peplos, Frag. (Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, ii. p. 189, No. 282, ed. C. Müller); John of Antioch, Frag. i. 20 (Frag. histor. Graec. iv. p. 539, ed. C. Müller); Jamblichus, De Pythagor. vit. x. 52; Schol. on Pindar, Pyth. Argum. p. 298, ed. Boeckh; Ovid, Metam. i. 445 sqq.; Hyginus, Fabulae, 140.] like it they were originally held every eighth year;[214 - Schol. on Pindar, l. c.; Censorinus, De die natali, 18. 6; compare Eustathius on Homer, Od. iii. 267, p. 1466. 29.] the two festivals were celebrated nearly at the same time of the year;[215 - Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, 3, compared with id. 15; Aug. Mommsen, Delphika, pp. 211, 214; Th. Schreiber, Apollon Pythoktonos (Leipsic, 1879), pp. 32 sqq.] and the representative of Apollo in the one and the victors in the other were adorned with crowns made from the same sacred laurel.[216 - Aelian, Var. hist. iii. I; Schol. on Pindar, l. c.] In short, the two festivals appear to have been in origin substantially identical; the distinction between them may have arisen when the Delphians decided to hold the Pythian games every fourth, instead of every eighth year.[217 - On the original identity of the festivals see Th. Schreiber, Apollon Pythoktonus, pp. 37 sq.; A. B. Cook, in Folklore, xv. (1904) pp. 404 sq.] We may fairly suppose, therefore, that the leaf-crowned victors in the Pythian games, like the laurel-wreathed boy in the Festival of Crowning, formerly acted the part of the god himself. But if in the beginning these actors in the sacred drama wore wreaths of oak instead of laurel, it seems to follow that the deity whom they personated was the oak-god Zeus rather than the laurel-god Apollo; from which again we may infer that Delphi was a sanctuary of Zeus and the oak before it became the shrine of Apollo and the laurel.[218 - The inference was drawn by Mr. A. B. Cook, whom I follow. See his article, “The European Sky-god,” Folk-lore, xv. (1904) pp. 412 sqq.]

Substitution of the laurel for the oak.

But why should the crown of oak have ceased to be the badge of victory? and why should a wreath of laurel have taken its place? The abandonment of the oak crown may have been a consequence of the disappearance of the oak itself from the neighbourhood of Delphi; in Greece, as in Italy, the deciduous trees have for centuries been retreating up the mountain sides before the advance of the evergreens.[219 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. p. 8.] When the last venerable oak, the rustling of whose leaves in the breeze had long been listened to as oracular, finally succumbed through age, or was laid low by a storm, the priests may have cast about for a tree of another sort to take its place. Yet they sought it neither in the lower woods of the valley nor in the dark forests which clothe the upper slopes of Parnassus above the frowning cliffs of Delphi. Legend ran that after the slaughter of the dragon, Apollo had purged himself from the stain of blood in the romantic Vale of Tempe, where the Peneus flows smoothly in a narrow defile between the lofty wooded steeps of Olympus and Ossa. Here the god crowned himself with a laurel wreath, and thither accordingly at the Festival of Crowning his human representative went to pluck the laurel for his brows.[220 - Aelian, Var. hist. iii. 1; Schol. on Pindar, Pyth. Argum. p. 298, ed. Boeckh.] The custom, though doubtless ancient, can hardly have been original. We must suppose that in the beginning the dragon-guarded tree, whether an oak or a laurel, grew at Delphi itself. But why should the laurel be chosen as a substitute for the oak? Mr. A. B. Cook has suggested a plausible answer. The laurel leaf resembles so closely the leaf of the ilex or holm-oak in both shape and colour that an untrained observer may easily confuse the two. The upper surface of both is a dark glossy green, the lower surface shews a lighter tint. Nothing, therefore, could be more natural than to make the new wreath out of leaves which looked so like the old oak leaves that the substitution might almost pass undetected.[221 - A. B. Cook, “The European Sky-god,” Folk-lore, xv. (1904) pp. 423 sq.]

Whether at Thebes, as at Delphi, the laurel had ousted the oak from the place of honour at the festival of the Slaying of the Dragon, we cannot say. The oak has long disappeared from the low hills and flat ground in the neighbourhood of Thebes, but as late as the second century of our era there was a forest of ancient oaks not many miles off at the foot of Mount Cithaeron.[222 - Pausanias, ix. 3. 4. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. ii. p. 140.]

Hypothesis of octennial kings at Delphi and Thebes, who personated dragons or serpents. Animals sacred to royal families. Greek stories of the transformation of gods into beasts point to a custom of a sacred marriage in which the actors masqueraded as animals.

It has been conjectured that in ancient days the persons who wore the wreath of laurel or oak at the octennial festivals of Delphi and Thebes were no other than the priestly kings, who personated the god, slew their predecessors in the guise of dragons, and reigned for a time in their stead.[223 - A. B. Cook, “The European Sky-god,” Folk-lore, xv. (1904) pp. 402 sqq.] The theory certainly cannot be demonstrated, but there is a good deal of analogy in its favour. An eight years' tenure of the kingship at Delphi and Thebes would accord with the similar tenure of the office at Sparta and Cnossus. And if the kings of Cnossus disguised themselves as bulls, there seems no reason why the kings of Delphi and Thebes should not have personated dragons or serpents. In all these cases the animal whose guise the king assumed would be sacred to the royal family. At first the relation of the beast to the man would be direct and simple; the creature would be revered for some such reason as that for which a savage respects a certain species of animals, for example, because he believes that his ancestors were beasts of the same sort, or that the souls of his dead are lodged in them. In later times the sanctity of the species would be explained by saying that a god had at some time, and for some reason or other, assumed the form of the animal. It is probably not without significance that in Greek mythology the gods in general, and Zeus in particular, are commonly said to have submitted to this change of shape for the purpose of prosecuting a love adventure. Such stories may well reflect a custom of a Sacred Marriage at which the actors played the parts of the worshipful animals. With the growth of culture these local worships, the relics of a barbarous age, would be explained away by tales of the loves of the gods, and, gradually falling out of practice, would survive only as myths.

Analogy of the Wolf Society of Arcadia to the Leopard Society of west Africa.

It is said that at the festival of the Wolf-god Zeus, held every nine years on the Wolf-mountain in Arcadia, a man tasted of the bowel of a human victim mixed with the bowels of animals, and having tasted it he was turned into a wolf, and remained a wolf for nine years, when he changed back again into a man if in the interval he had abstained from eating human flesh.[224 - Plato, Republic, viii. p. 565 d e; Polybius, vii. 13; Pliny, Nat. hist. viii. 81; Varro, cited by Augustine, De civitate Dei, xviii. 17; Pausanias, vi. 8. 2, viii. 2. 3-6.] The tradition points to the existence of a society of cannibal wolf-worshippers, one or more of whom personated, and were supposed to embody, the sacred animal for periods of nine years together. Their theory and practice would seem to have agreed with those of the Human Leopard Societies of western Africa, whose members disguise themselves in the skins of leopards with sharp claws of steel. In that guise they attack and kill men in order to eat their flesh or to extract powerful charms from their bodies.[225 - Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, pp. 536-543; T. J. Alldridge, The Sherbro and its Hinterland (London, 1901), pp. 153-159; compare R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (London, 1904), pp. 200-203.] Their mode of gaining recruits is like that of the Greek Wolf Society. When a visitor came to a village inhabited by a Leopard Society, “he was invited to partake of food, in which was mixed a small quantity of human flesh. The guest all unsuspectingly partook of the repast, and was afterwards told that human flesh formed one of the ingredients of the meal, and that it was then necessary that he should join the society, which was invariably done.”[226 - T. J. Alldridge, op. cit. p. 154.] As the ancient Greeks thought that a man might be turned into a wolf, so these negroes believe that he can be changed into a leopard; and, like the Greeks, some of them fancy that if the transformed man abstains during his transformation from preying on his fellows he can regain his human shape, but that if he once laps human blood he must remain a leopard for ever.[227 - A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, ii. 248.]

Legend of the transformation of Cadmus and Harmonia into serpents. Transmigration of the souls of the dead into serpents. Kings claim kinship with the most powerful animals.

The hypothesis that the ancient kings of Thebes and Delphi had for their sacred animal the serpent or dragon, and claimed kinship with the creature, derives some countenance from the tradition that at the end of their lives Cadmus and his wife Harmonia quitted Thebes and went to reign over a tribe of Encheleans or Eel-men in Illyria, where they were both finally transformed into dragons or serpents.[228 - Apollodorus, iii. 5. 4; Strabo, vii. 7. 8, p. 326; Ovid, Metam. iv. 563-603; Hyginus, Fabulae, 6; Nicander, Theriaca, 607 sqq.] To the primitive mind an eel is a water-serpent;[229 - A. van Gennep, Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar (Paris, 1904), p. 326.] it can hardly, therefore, be an accident that the serpent-killer afterwards reigned over a tribe of eel-men and himself became a serpent at last. Moreover, according to one account, his wife Harmonia was a daughter of the very dragon which he slew.[230 - Dercylus, quoted by a scholiast on Euripides, Phoenissae, 7; Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iv. 387. The writer rationalises the legend by representing the dragon as a Theban man of that name whom Cadmus slew. On the theory here suggested this Euhemeristic version of the story is substantially right.] The tradition would fit in well with the hypothesis that the dragon or serpent was the sacred animal of the old royal house of Thebes, and that the kingdom fell to him who slew his predecessor and married his daughter. We have seen reason to think that such a mode of succession to the throne was common in antiquity.[231 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 268 sqq.] The story of the final transformation of Cadmus and Harmonia into snakes may be a relic of a belief that the souls of the dead kings and queens of Thebes transmigrated into the bodies of serpents, just as Caffre kings turn at death into boa-constrictors or deadly black snakes.[232 - David Leslie, Among the Zulus and Amatongas, Second Edition (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 213. Compare H. Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu, Part II., pp. 196, 211.] Indeed the notion that the souls of the dead lodge in serpents is widely spread in Africa and Madagascar.[233 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 73 sqq.] Other African tribes believe that their dead kings and chiefs turn into lions, leopards, hyaenas, pythons, hippopotamuses, or other creatures, and the animals are respected and spared accordingly.[234 - D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, p. 615; Miss A. Werner, The Natives of British Central Africa (London, 1906), p. 64; L. Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa (London, 1898), p. 74; J. Roscoe, “The Bahima,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvii. (1907) pp. 101 sq.; Major J. A. Meldon, “Notes on the Bahima,” Journal of the African Society, No. 22 (January, 1907), pp. 151-153; J. A. Chisholm, “Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Winamwanga and Wiwa,” Journal of the African Society, No. 36 (July, 1910), pp. 374, 375; P. Alois Hamberger, in Anthropos, v. (1910) p. 802.] In like manner the Semang and other wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula imagine that the souls of their chiefs, priests, and magicians transmigrate at death into the bodies of certain wild beasts, such as elephants, tigers, and rhinoceroses, and that in their bestial form the dead men extend a benign protection to their living human kinsfolk.[235 - W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula (London, 1906), ii. 194, 197, 221, 227, 305.] Even during their lifetime kings in rude society sometimes claim kinship with the most formidable beasts of the country. Thus the royal family of Dahomey specially worships the leopard; some of the king's wives are distinguished by the title of Leopard Wives, and on state occasions they wear striped cloths to resemble the animal.[236 - A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, pp. 74 sq.] One king of Dahomey, on whom the French made war, bore the name of Shark; hence in art he was represented sometimes with a shark's body and a human head, sometimes with a human body and the head of a shark.[237 - This I learned from Professor F. von Luschan in the Anthropological Museum at Berlin.] The Trocadero Museum at Paris contains the wooden images of three kings of Dahomey who reigned during the nineteenth century, and who are all represented partly in human and partly in animal form. One of them, Guezo, bore the surname of the Cock, and his image represents him as a man covered with feathers. His son Guelelé, who succeeded him on the throne, was surnamed the Lion, and his effigy is that of a lion rampant with tail raised and hair on his body, but with human feet and hands. Guelelé was succeeded on the throne by his son Behanzin, who was surnamed the Shark, and his effigy portrays him standing upright with the head and body of a fish, the fins and scales being carefully represented, while his arms and legs are those of a man.[238 - M. Delafosse, in La Nature, No. 1086 (March 24th, 1894), pp. 262-266; J. G. Frazer, “Statues of Three Kings of Dahomey,” Man, viii. (1908) pp. 130-132. King Behanzin, surnamed the Shark, is doubtless the King of Dahomey referred to by Professor von Luschan (see the preceding note).] Again, a king of Benin was called Panther, and a bronze statue of him, now in the Anthropological Museum at Berlin, represents him with a panther's whiskers.[239 - The statue was pointed out to me and explained by Professor F. von Luschan.] Such portraits furnish an exact parallel to what I conceive to be the true story of the Minotaur. On the Gold Coast of Africa a powerful ruler is commonly addressed as “O Elephant!” or “O Lion!” and one of the titles of the king of Ashantee, mentioned at great ceremonies, is borri, the name of a venomous snake.[240 - A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, pp. 205 sq.] It has been argued that King David belonged to a serpent family, and that the brazen serpent, which down to the time of Hezekiah was worshipped with fumes of burning incense,[241 - 2 Kings xviii. 4.] represented the old sacred animal of his house.[242 - W. Robertson Smith, “Animal Worship and Animal Tribes,” Journal of Philology, ix. (1880) pp. 99 sq. Professor T. K. Cheyne prefers to suppose that the brazen serpent and the brazen “sea” in the temple at Jerusalem were borrowed from Babylon and represented the great dragon, the impersonation of the primaeval watery chaos. See Encyclopaedia Biblica, s. v. “Nehushtan,” vol. i. coll. 3387. The two views are perhaps not wholly irreconcilable. See below, pp. 111 (#litres_trial_promo)sq.] In Europe the bull, the serpent, and the wolf would naturally be on the list of royal beasts.

The serpent the royal animal at Athens and Salamis.

If the king's soul was believed to pass at death into the sacred animal, a custom might arise of keeping live creatures of the species in captivity and revering them as the souls of dead rulers. This would explain the Athenian practice of keeping a sacred serpent on the Acropolis and feeding it with honey cakes; for the serpent was identified with Erichthonius or Erechtheus, one of the ancient kings of Athens, of whose palace some vestiges have been discovered in recent times. The creature was supposed to guard the citadel. During the Persian invasion a report that the serpent had left its honey-cake untasted was one of the strongest reasons which induced the people to abandon Athens to the enemy; they thought that the holy reptile had forsaken the city.[243 - Herodotus, viii. 41; Plutarch, Themistocles, 10; Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 758 sq., with the Scholium; Philostratus, Imagines, ii. 17. 6. Some said that there were two serpents ,Hesychius and Photius, Lexicon, s. v. οἰκουρὸν ὄφιν. For the identity of the serpent with Erichthonius, see Pausanias, i. 24. 7; Hyginus, Astronomica, ii. 13; Tertullian, De spectaculis, 9; compare Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. vii. 24; and for the identity of Erichthonius and Erechtheus, see Schol. on Homer, Iliad, ii. 547; Etymologicum magnum, p. 371, s. v. Ἐρεχθεύς. According to some, the upper part of Erichthonius was human and the lower part or only the feet serpentine. See Hyginus, Fabulae, 166; id., Astronomica, ii. 13; Schol. on Plato, Timaeus, p. 23 d; Etymologicum magnum, l. c.; Servius on Virgil, Georg. iii. 13. See further my notes on Pausanias i. 18. 2 and i. 26. 5, vol. ii. pp. 168 sqq., 330 sqq.] Again, Cecrops, the first king of Athens, is said to have been half-serpent and half-man;[244 - Apollodorus, iii. 14. i; Aristophanes, Wasps, 438. Compare J. Tzetzes, Chiliades, v. 641.] in art he is represented as a man from the waist upwards, while the lower part of his body consists of the coils of a serpent.[245 - W. H. Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1019. Compare Euripides, Ion, 1163 sqq.] It has been suggested that like Erechtheus he was identical with the serpent on the Acropolis.[246 - O. Immisch, in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon d. griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 1023.] Once more, we are told that Cychreus gained the kingdom of Salamis by slaying a snake which ravaged the island,[247 - Apollodorus, iii. 12. 7; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 72; J. Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 110, 175, 451.] but that after his death he, like Cadmus, appeared in the form of the reptile.[248 - Pausanias, i. 36. 1. Another version of the story was that Cychreus bred a snake which ravaged the island and was driven out by Eurylochus, after which Demeter received the creature at Eleusis as one of her attendants (Hesiod, quoted by Strabo, ix. 1. 9, p. 393).] Some said that he was a man who received the name of Snake on account of his cruelty.[249 - Stephanus Byzantius, s. v. Κυχρεῖος πάγος; Eustathius, Commentary on Dionysius, 507, in Geographi Graeci minores, ed. C. Müller, ii. 314.] Such tales may preserve reminiscences of kings who assumed the style of serpents in their lifetime and were believed to transmigrate into serpents after death. Like the dragons of Thebes and Delphi, the Athenian serpent appears to have been conceived as a creature of the waters; for the serpent-man Erechtheus was identified with the water-god Poseidon,[250 - Hesychius, s. v. Ἐρεχθεύς; Athenagoras, Supplicatio pro Christianis, 1; [Plutarch], Vit. X. Orat. p. 843 b c; Corpus inscriptionum Atticarum, i. No. 387, iii. Nos. 276, 805; compare Pausanias, i. 26. 5.] and in his temple, the Erechtheum, where the serpent lived, there was a tank which went by the name of “the sea of Erechtheus.”[251 - Apollodorus, iii. 14. 1; Herodotus, viii. 55; compare Pausanias, viii. 10. 4.]

The wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia at Thebes may have been a dramatic representation of the marriage of the sun and moon at the end of the eight years' cycle.

If the explanation of the eight years' cycle which I have adopted holds good for Thebes and Delphi, the octennial festivals held at these places probably had some reference to the sun and moon, and may have comprised a sacred marriage of these luminaries. The solar character of Apollo, whether original or adventitious, lends some countenance to this view, but at both Delphi and Thebes the god was apparently an intruder who usurped the place of an older god or hero at the festival. At Thebes that older hero was Cadmus. Now Cadmus was a brother of Europa, who appears to have been a personification of the moon conceived in the form of a cow.[252 - See above, p. 73 (#x_7_i23).] He travelled westward seeking his lost sister till he came to Delphi, where the oracle bade him give up the search and follow a cow which had the white mark of the full moon on its flank; wherever the cow fell down exhausted, there he was to take up his abode and found a city. Following the cow and the directions of the oracle he built Thebes.[253 - Apollodorus, iii. 4. 1 sq.; Pausanias, ix. 12. 1 sq.; Schol. on Homer, Iliad, ii. 494; Hyginus, Fabulae, 178. The mark of the moon on the cow is mentioned only by Pausanias and Hyginus.] Have we not here in another form the myth of the moon pursued and at last overtaken by the sun? and the famous wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia, to attend which all the gods came down from heaven,[254 - Apollodorus, iii. 4. 2; Euripides, Phoenissae, 822 sq.; Pindar, Pyth. iii. 155 sqq.; Diodorus Siculus, v. 49. 1; Pausanias, iii. 18. 12, ix. 12. 3; Schol. on Homer, Iliad, ii. 494.] may it not have been at once the mythical marriage of the great luminaries and the ritual marriage of the king and queen of Thebes masquerading, like the king and queen of Cnossus, in the character of the lights of heaven at the octennial festival which celebrated and symbolised the conjunction of the sun and moon after their long separation, their harmony after eight years of discord? A better name for the bride at such a wedding could hardly have been chosen than Harmonia.

This theory confirmed by the astronomical symbols carried by the Laurel-bearer at the octennial festival of Laurel-bearing. The Olympic festival seems to have been based on the octennial cycle. Mythical marriage of the sun and moon at Olympia.

This theory is supported by a remarkable feature of the festival. At the head of the procession, immediately in front of the Laurel-bearer, walked a youth who carried in his hands a staff of olive-wood draped with laurels and flowers. To the top of the staff was fastened a bronze globe, with smaller globes hung from it; to the middle of the staff were attached a globe of medium size and three hundred and sixty-five purple ribbands, while the lower part of the staff was swathed in a saffron pall. The largest globe, we are told, signified the sun, the smaller the moon, and the smallest the stars, and the purple ribbands stood for the course of the year, being equal in number to the days comprised in it.[255 - Proclus, quoted by Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 321, ed. Bekker.] The choir of virgins who followed the Laurel-bearer singing hymns[256 - Proclus, l. c.] may have represented the Muses, who are said to have sung and played at the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia; down to late times the very spot in the market-place was shewn where they had discoursed their heavenly music.[257 - Pindar, Pyth. iii. 155 sqq.; Diodorus Siculus, v. 49. 1; Pausanias, ix. 12. 3; Schol. on Homer, Iliad, ii. 494.] We may conjecture that the procession of the Laurel-bearing was preceded by a dramatic performance of the Slaying of the Dragon, and that it was followed by a pageant representative of the nuptials of Cadmus and Harmonia in the presence of the gods. On this hypothesis Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, is only another form of his sister Europa, both of them being personifications of the moon. Accordingly in the Samothracian mysteries, in which the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia appears to have been celebrated, it was Harmonia and not Europa whose wanderings were dramatically represented.[258 - Schol. on Euripides, Phoenissae, 7 καὶ νῦν ἔτι ἐν τῇ Σαμοθρᾴκῃ ζητοῦσιν αὐτὴν [scil. Ἁρμονίαν] ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς. According to the Samothracian account, Cadmus in seeking Europa came to Samothrace, and there, having been initiated into the mysteries, married Harmonia (Diodorus Siculus, v. 48 sq.). It is probable, though it cannot be proved, that the legend was acted in the mystic rites.] The gods who quitted Olympus to grace the wedding by their presence were probably represented in the rites, whether celebrated at Thebes or in Samothrace, by men and women attired as deities. In like manner at the marriage of a Pharaoh the courtiers masqueraded in the likeness of the animal-headed Egyptian gods.[259 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 133. Mr. A. B. Cook has suggested that the central scene on the eastern frieze of the Parthenon represents the king and queen of Athens about to take their places among the enthroned deities. See his article “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” Classical Review, xviii. (1904) p. 371. As the scenes on the frieze appear to have been copied from the Panathenaiac festival, it would seem, on Mr. Cook's hypothesis, that the sacred marriage of the King and Queen was celebrated on that occasion in presence of actors who played the parts of gods and goddesses. In this connexion it may not be amiss to remember that in the eastern gable of the Parthenon the pursuit of the moon by the sun was mythically represented by the horses of the sun emerging from the sea on the one side, and the horses of the moon plunging into it on the other.]

Within historical times the great Olympic festival was always held at intervals of four, not of eight, years. Yet it too would seem to have been based on the octennial cycle. For it always fell on a full moon, at intervals of fifty and of forty-nine lunar months alternately.[260 - Schol. on Pindar, Olymp. iii. 35 (20).] Thus the total number of lunar months comprised in two successive Olympiads was ninety-nine, which is precisely the number of lunar months in the octennial cycle.[261 - Compare Aug. Boeckh, on Pindar, l. c., Explicationes, p. 138; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 366 sq.; G. F. Unger, “Zeitrechnung der Griechen und Römer,” in Iwan Müller's Handbuch der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, i. 605 sq. All these writers recognise the octennial cycle at Olympia.] It is possible that, as K. O. Müller conjectured,[262 - K. O. Müller, Die Dorier,

ii. 483; compare id. i. 254 sq.] the Olympic games may, like the Pythian, have originally been celebrated at intervals of eight instead of four years. If that was so, analogy would lead us to infer that the festival was associated with a mythical marriage of the sun and moon. A reminiscence of such a marriage appears to survive in the legend that Endymion, the son of the first king of Elis, had fifty daughters by the Moon, and that he set his sons to run a race for the kingdom at Olympia.[263 - Pausanias, v. 1. 4.] For, as scholars have already perceived, Endymion is the sunken sun overtaken by the moon below the horizon, and his fifty daughters by her are the fifty lunar months of an Olympiad or, more strictly speaking, of every alternate Olympiad.[264 - Aug. Boeckh, l. c.; A. Schmidt, Handbuch der griechischen Chronologie (Jena, 1888), pp. 50 sqq.; K. O. Müller, Die Dorier,

i. 438; W. H. Roscher, Selene und Verwandtes, pp. 2 sq., 80 sq., 101.] If the Olympic festival always fell, as many authorities have maintained, at the first full moon after the summer solstice,[265 - See Aug. Boeckh and L. Ideler, ll.cc. More recent writers would date it on the second full moon after the summer solstice, hence in August or the last days of July. See G. F. Unger, l. c.; E. F. Bischoff, “De fastis Graecorum antiquioribus,” Leipziger Studien zur classischen Philologie, vii. (1884) pp. 347 sq.; Aug. Mommsen, Über die Zeit der Olympien (Leipsic, 1891); and my note on Pausanias, v. 9. 3 (vol. iii. pp. 488 sq.).] the time would be eminently appropriate for a marriage of the luminaries, since both of them might then be conceived to be at the prime of their vigour.