 chapters 58 and 59 of The Golden Bough. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazier. Chapter 58. Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity. Section 1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome. We are now prepared to notice the use of the Human Scapegoat in Classical Antiquity. Every year, on the 14th of March, a man clad in skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Vetturius, that is, the Old Mars, and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon of the Old Roman year, which began on the 1st of March, the skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war, but a vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandmen prayed for the prosperity of his corn and his vines, his fruit trees and his copses. It was to Mars that the priestly college of the Arval brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops, addressed their petitions almost exclusively, and it was to Mars, as we saw, that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars under his title Mars of the Woods, or Mars Silvanus, that farmers offered sacrifice for the welfare of their cattle. We have already seen that cattle are commonly supposed to be under the special patronage of tree gods. Once more, the consecration of the vernal month of March to Mars seems to point him out as the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the Old Mars at the beginning of the new year in spring is identical with the Slavonic custom of carrying out death if the view here taken of the latter custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken Memorius Vetturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the Old Year rather than of the Old God of vegetation. It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in latter times, even by the people who practiced them. But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive. However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic ceremony, the representative of the God appears to have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation, but also as a scapegoat. His expulsion implies this, for there is no reason why the God of vegetation as such should be expelled from the city. But it is otherwise if he is also a scapegoat, it then becomes necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries that he may carry his sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Memorius Vetturius appears to have been driven away to the land of the Oscans, the enemies of Rome. Section 2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece The Ancient Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat. In Plutarch's native town of Caronia, a ceremony of this kind was performed by the chief magistrate at the town hall and by each householder at his own home. It was called the Expulsion of Hunger. A slave was beaten with rods of the Agnus Castus and turned out of doors with the words, Out with hunger and in with wealth and health. When Plutarch held the office of chief magistrate of his native town, he performed this ceremony at the town hall and he has recorded the discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise. But in civilized Greece, the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than the innocent right over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided. Whenever Marcel, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was ravaged by the plague, a man of the poorer classes used to offer himself as a scapegoat. For a whole year, he was maintained at the public expense, being fed on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the year, he was dressed in sacred garments, checked with holy branches, and led through the whole city while prayers were uttered that all the evils of the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the city or stoned to death by the people outside of the walls. The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense. And when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcast scapegoats. One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The former wore around his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white figs. Sometimes it seems the victim's slain on behalf of the women was a woman. They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently being stoned to death outside the city. But such sacrifices were not confined to extraordinary occasions of public calamity. It appears that every year at the festival of the Thargalia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death. The city of Abdera in Thrace was publicly purified once a year, and one of the burgers set apart for the purpose was stoned to death as a scapegoat or vicarious sacrifice for the life of all the others. Six days before his execution, he was excommunicated, quote, in order that he alone might bear the sins of all the people, close quote. From the Leather's Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island, the Leap Cadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a scapegoat. But to lighten his fall, they fastened live birds and feathers to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey him beyond the boundary. Probably these humane precautions were a mitigation of an earlier custom of fleeing the scapegoat into the sea to drown. The Leucadian ceremony took place at the time of a sacrifice to Apollo, who had a temple or sanctuary on the spot. Elsewhere, it was customary to cast a young man every year into the sea with the prayer, be thou our offscoring. This ceremony was supposed to rid the people of the evils by which they were beset, or according to a somewhat different interpretation, it redeemed them by paying the debt they owed to the sea god. As practiced by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the 6th century before Alreira, the custom of the scapegoat was as follows. When a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity, an ugly or deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils which afflicted the community. He was brought to a suitable place where dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese were put into his hand. These he ate. Then he was beaten seven times upon his genital organs with squills and branches of the wild fig and other wild trees while the flutes played a particular tune. Afterwards he was burned on a pyre built of the wood of forest trees and his ashes were cast into the sea. A similar custom appears to have been annually celebrated by the Asiatic Greeks at the Harvest Festival of the Thargelia. In the ritual, just described, the scourging of the victim with squills, branches of the wild fig, and so forth, cannot have been intended to aggravate his sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good enough to beat him with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has been explained by W. Monhardt. He points out that the ancients attributed to squills a magical power of averting evil influences and that accordingly they hung them up at the doors of their houses and made use of them in purificatory rites. Hence, the Arcadian custom of whipping the image of Pan with squills at a festival or whenever the hunters returned empty handed must have been meant not to punish the god but to purify him from the harmful influences which were impeding him in the exercise of his divine functions as a god who should supply the hunter with gain. Similarly, the object of beating the human scapegoat on the genital organs with squills and so on must have been to release his reproductive energies from any restraint or spell under which they might be laid by demoniacal or other malignant agency. And as the Thargelia at which he was annually sacrificed was an early harvest festival celebrated in May, we must recognize in him a representative of the creative and fertilizing god of vegetation. The representative of the god was annually slain for the purpose I have indicated, that of maintaining the divine life in perpetual vigor untainted by the weakness of age. And before he was put to death, it was not unnatural to stimulate his reproductive powers in order that these might be transmitted in full activity to his successor, the new god or new embodiment of the old god who was doubtless supposed immediately to take the place of the one slain. Similar reasoning would lead to a similar treatment of the scapegoat on special occasions such as drought or famine. If the crops did not answer to the expectation of the husbandman, this would be attributed to some failure in the generative powers of the gods whose function it was to produce the fruits of the earth. It might be thought that he was under a spell or was growing old and feeble. Accordingly, he was slain in the person of his representative with all the ceremonies already described in order that, born young again, he might infuse his own youthful vigor into the stagnant energies of nature. On the same principle, we can understand why Mammurius Feturius was beaten with rods, why the slave at the Chironian ceremony was beaten with the Agnus Castus, a tree to which magical properties were ascribed, why the effigy of death in some parts of Europe is assailed with sticks and stones, and why at Babylon the criminal who played the god was scourged before he was crucified. The purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the agony of the divine sufferer, but on the contrary, to dispel any malignant influences by which, at the supreme moment, he might conceivably be beset. Thus far, I have assumed that the human victims at the Thargelia represented the spirits of vegetation in general, but it has been well remarked by Mr. W. R. Patton that these poor wretches seem to have masqueraded as the spirits of fig trees in particular. He points out that the process of caprification, as it is called, that is the artificial fertilization of the cultivated fig trees by hanging strings of wild figs among the boughs, takes place in Greece and Asia Minor in June, about a month after the date of the Thargelia, and he suggests that the hanging of the black and white figs round the necks of the two human victims, one of whom represented the men and the other the women, may have been a direct imitation of the process of caprification designed on the principle of imitative magic to assist the fertilization of the fig trees. And since caprification is in fact a marriage of the male fig tree with the female fig tree, Mr. Patton further supposes that the loves of the trees may, on the same principle of imitative magic, have been simulated by a mock or even a real marriage between two human victims, one of whom appears sometimes to have been a woman. On this view, the practice of beating the human victims on their genitals with branches of wild fig trees and with squills was a charm intended to stimulate the generative powers of the man and woman who for the time being personated the male and the female fig trees respectively and who by their union in marriage, whether real or pretended, were believed to help the trees to bear fruit. The interpretation which I have adopted of the custom of beating the human scapegoat with certain plants is supported by many analogies. Thus, among the Kai of German New Guinea, when a man wishes to make his banana shoots bear fruits quickly, he beats them with a stick cut from a banana tree which has already borne fruit. Here it is obvious that fruitfulness is believed to inherit a stick cut from a fruitful tree and to be imparted by contact to the young banana plants. Similarly, in New Calcedonia, a man will beat his taro plants lightly with a branch saying as he does so, I beat this taro that it may grow. After which, he plants the branch in the ground at the end of the field. Among the Indians of Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon, when a man wishes to increase the size of his generative organ, he strikes it with the fruit of a white aquatic plant called aninga, which grows luxuriously on the banks of the river. The fruit, which is inedible, resembles a banana and is clearly chosen for this purpose on account of its shape. This ceremony should be performed three days before or after the new moon. In the county of Becas, in Hungary, barren women are fertilized by being struck with a stick, which has first been used to separate paring dogs. Here, a fertilizing virtue is clearly supposed to be inherent in the stick and to be conveyed by contact to women. The toragis of central syllabus at the plant Dresanas Terminalis has a strong soul, because when it is lubed, it soon grows up again. Hence, when a man is ill, his friends will sometimes beat him on the crown of the head with dresana leaves in order to strengthen his weak soul with a strong soul of the plant. These analogies, accordingly, support the interpretation which, following my predecessors W. Monhart and Mr. W. R. Patton, I have given of the beating inflicted on the human victims at the Greek Harvest Festival of the Thargelia. That beating, administered to the generative organs of the victims by fresh green plants and branches, is most naturally explained as a charm to increase the reproductive energies of the men or women, either by communicating to them the fruitfulness of the plants and branches, or by ridding them of the maleficent influences. And this interpretation is confirmed by the observation that the two victims represented the two sexes, one of them standing for the men in general and the other for the women. The season of the year when the ceremony was performed, namely the time of the corn harvest, tallies well with a theory that the right had an agricultural significance. Further, that it was above all intended to fertilize the fig trees, is strongly suggested by the strings of black and white figs which were hung around the necks of the victims, as well as by the blows which were given their genital organs with the branches of a wild fig tree. Since this procedure closely resembles the procedure which ancient and modern husband men in Greek lands have regularly resorted to for the purpose of actually fertilizing their fig trees. When we remember what an important part the artificial fertilization of the date palm tree appears to have played of old, not only in the husbandry, but in the religion of Mesopotamia, there seems no reason to doubt that the artificial fertilization of the fig tree may in like manner have vindicated for itself a place in the solemn ritual of Greek religion. If these considerations are just, we must apparently conclude that while the human victims at the Thargelia certainly appear in later classical times to have figured chiefly as public scapegoats who carried away with them the sins, misfortunes, and sorrows of the whole people, at an earlier time they may have been looked on as embodiments of vegetation, perhaps of the corn, but particularly of the fig trees, and that the beating which they received and the death which they died were intended primarily to brace and refresh the powers of vegetation, then beginning to droop at languish under the torrid heat of the Greek summer. The view here taken of the Greek scapegoat, if it is correct, obviates any objection which might otherwise be brought against the main argument of this book. To the theory that the priest of Arichia was slain as a representative of the spirit of the grove, it might have been objected that such a custom has no analogy in classical antiquity, but reasons have now been given for believing that the human being periodically and occasionally slain by the Asiatic Greeks were regularly treated as an embodiment of a divinity of vegetation. Probably the persons whom the Athenians kept to be sacrificed were similarly treated as divine, but that they were social outcasts did not matter. On the primitive view, a man is not chosen to be a mouthpiece or embodiment of a god on account of his high moral qualities or social rank. The divine aflatus descends equally on the good and the bad, the lofty and the lowly. If then the civilized Greeks of Asia and Athens habitually sacrificed men whom they regarded as incarnate gods, there can be no inherent improbability in the supposition that at the dawn of history a similar custom was observed by the semi-barbarous Latins in the Arichian grove. But to clinch the argument, it is clearly desirable to prove that the custom of putting to death a human representative of a god was known and practiced in ancient Italy elsewhere than in the Arichian grove. This proof I now propose to adduce. Section 3 The Roman Saturnalia We have seen that many peoples have been used to observe an annual period of license when the customary restraints of law and morality are thrown aside, when the whole population give themselves up to extravagant mirth and jollity, and when the darker passions find a vent which would never be allowed them in the more staid sober course of ordinary life. Such outbursts of the pent-up forces of human nature, too often degenerating into wild orgies of lust and crime, occur most commonly at the end of the year, and are frequently associated, as I have had occasion to point out, with one or other of the agricultural seasons, especially with the time of sowing or of harvest. Now of all these periods of license, the one which is best known and which in modern language has given its name to the rest, is the Saturnalia. This famous festival fell in December, the last month of the Roman year, and was popularly supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn, the god of sowing and of husbandry, who lived on earth long ago as a righteous and beneficent king of Italy, drew the rude and scattered dwellers on the mountains together, taught them to till the ground, gave them laws, and ruled in peace. His reign was the fabled golden age, the earth brought forth abundantly, no sound of war or discord troubled the happy world, no baleful love of lucre worked like poison in the blood of the industrious and contented peasantry. Slavery and private property were alike unknown. All men had all things in common. At last, the good god, the kindly king vanished suddenly, but his memory was cherished to distant ages. Shrines were reared in his honor, and many hills and high places in Italy bore his name. Yet, the bright tradition of his reign was crossed by a dark shadow. The altars are said to have been stained with the blood of human victims for whom a more merciful age afterwards substituted effigies. Of this gloomy side of the god's religion, there is little or no trace in the descriptions which ancient writers have left us of the Saturnalia. Feasting and revelry and all the mad pursuit of pleasure are the features that seem to have especially marked this carnival of antiquity. They went on for seven days in the streets and public squares and houses of ancient Rome from the 17th to the 23rd of December. But no feature of the festival is more remarkable. Nothing in it seems to have struck the ancients themselves more than the license granted to slaves at this time. The distinction between the free and the servile classes was temporarily abolished. The master intoxicated himself like his bedders, sit down at table with them and not even a word of reproof would be administered to him for conduct which at any other season might have been punished with stripes, imprisonment, or death. Nay, more masters actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table and not till the surf had done eating and drinking was the board cleared set for his master. So far was this inversion of ranks carried that each household became for a time a mimic republic in which the high offices of state were discharged by the slaves who gave their orders and laid down the law as if they were indeed infested with all the dignity of the consul ship, the praetor ship and the bench. Like the pale reflection of power thus accorded to the bondsmen of Saturnalia was the mock kingship for which Freeman cast lots at the same season. The person on whom the lot fell enjoyed the title of king and issued commands of a playful and ludicrous nature to his temporary subjects. One of them he might order to mix the wine, another to drink, another to sing, another to dance, another to speak in his own dispraise, another to carry a flute girl on his back around the house. Now when we remember that the liberty allowed to slaves at this festive season was supposed to be an imitation of the state of society in Saturn's time and that in general the Saturnalia passed for nothing more or less than a temporary revival or restoration of the reign of that merry monarch. We are tempted to surmise that the mock king who presided the rebels may have originally represented Saturn himself. The conjecture is strongly confirmed, if not established, by a very curious and interesting account of the way in which the Saturnalia was celebrated by the Roman soldiers stationed on the Danube in the reign of Maximian and Diocletian. The account is preserved in a narrative of the martyrdom of Saint Dacius, which was unearthed from a Greek manuscript in the Paris Library and published by Professor Franz Koumont of Ghent. Two brief descriptions of the event and of the custom are contained in manuscripts at Milan and Berlin. One of them had already seen the light in an obscure volume printed at Urbino in 1727, but its importance for the history of the Roman religion, both ancient and modern, appears to have been overlooked until Professor Koumont drew the attention of scholars to all three narratives by publishing them together some years ago. According to these narratives, which have all the appearance of being authentic and of which the longest is probably based on official documents, the Roman soldiers at Durustorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the following manner. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers, he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure however base and shameful. But if his reign was very, it was short and ended tragically, for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the God whom he personated. In the year AD 303 the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dacius, but he refused to play the part of the heathen God and soil his last days of debauchery. The threats and arguments of his commanding officer Bassus failed to shake his constancy and accordingly he was beheaded as the Christian martirologist records with minute accuracy at the Dorosterum by the soldier John on Friday the twentieth day of November being the 24th day of the moon at the fourth hour. Since this narrative was published by professor Cumont its historical character which had been doubted or denied has received strong information from an interesting discovery. In the crypt of the cathedral which crowns the promontory of Antcona there is preserved amongst other remarkable antiquities a white marble sarcophagus bearing a Greek inscription in characters of the age of Justinian to the following effect here lies the holy martyr Dacius brought from Dorosterum the sarcophagus was transferred to the crypt of the cathedral in 1848 from the church of San Pellegrino under the high altar of which as we learn from the Latin inscription let into the masonry the martyr's bones still repose with those of two other saints how long the sarcophagus was deposited in the church of San Pellegrino we do not know but it is recorded to have been there in the year 1650 we may suppose that the saints relics were transferred for safety to Antcona at some time in the troubled centuries which followed his martyrdom when Moesia was occupied and ravaged by successive hordes of barbarian invaders at all events it appears certain from the independent and mutually confirmatory evidence of the martyrology and the monuments that Dacius was no ethical saint but a real man who suffered death for his faith at Dorostrom in one of the early centuries of the Christian era finding the narrative of the nameless martyrologist thus established as to the principal fact recorded namely the martyrdom of Saint Dacius we may reasonably accept his testimony as to the manner and cause of the martyrdom all the more because his narrative is precise substantial and entirely free from the miraculous element accordingly I conclude that the account which he gives of the celebration of the Saturnalia among the Roman soldiers is trustworthy this account sets in a new and lurid light the office of the king of the Saturnalia the ancient lord of misrule who presided over the winter rebels at Rome in the time of Horus and Tacitus it seems to prove that his business had not always been that of a mere harlequin or Mary Andrew whose only care was that the revelry should run high and the fun grow fast and furious while the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth while the streets swarmed with festive crowds and through the clear frosty air far away to the north Soracti showed his coronal of snow when we compare this comic monarch of the gay the civilized metropolis with his grim counterpart of the rude camp on the Danube and when we remember the long array of similar figures ludicrous yet tragic who in other ages and in other lands wearing mock crowns and wrapped in sceptred pals have played their little pranks for a few brief hours or days then passed before their time death we can hardly doubt that in the king of the Saturnalia at Rome as he is depicted by classical writers we see only a feeble emasculated copy of that original whose strong features have been fortunately preserved for us by the obscure author of the martyrdom of St. Dacius in other words the martyrologist's account of the Saturnalia agrees so closely with the accounts of similar rights elsewhere which could not possibly have been known to him that the substantial accuracy of his description may be regarded as established and further since the custom of putting a mock king to death as a representative of a god cannot have grown out of a practice of appointing him to preside over a holiday rebel whereas the reverse may very well have happened we are justified in assuming that in an earlier and more barbarous age it was the universal practice in ancient Italy where ever the worship of Saturn prevailed to choose a man who played the part and enjoyed all the traditionary privileges of Saturn for a season and then died whether by his own or another's hand whether by the knife or the fire or on the gallows tree in the character of the good god who gave his life for the world in Rome itself and other great towns the growth of civilization had probably mitigated this cruel custom long before the Augustan age and transformed it into the innocent shape it wears in the writings of the few classical writers who bestow a passing notice on the holiday king of the Saturnalia but in remote districts the older and sterner practice may long have survived and even if after the unification of Italy the barbarous usage was suppressed by the Roman government the memory of it would be handed down by the peasants and would tend from time to dime as still happens with the lowest forms of superstition among ourselves to lead to a recrudescence of the practice especially among the rude soldiery on the outskirts of the empire over whom the once iron hand of Rome was beginning to relax its grasp the resemblance between the Saturnalia of ancient and the carnival of modern Italy has often been remarked but in the light of all the facts that have come before us we may well ask whether the resemblance does not amount to identity we have seen that in Italy Spain and France that is in the countries where the influence of Rome has been deepest and most lasting a conspicuous feature of the carnival is a burlesque figure personifying the festive season which after a short career of glory and dissipation is publicly shot, burnt or otherwise destroyed to the feigned grief or genuine delight of the populace if the view here suggested of the carnival is correct this grotesque personage is no other than a direct successor of the old king of the Saturnalia the master of the rebels the real man who personated Saturn and when the rebels were over suffered a real death in his assumed character the king of the bean on twelfth night and the medieval bishop of fools abbot of unreason or lord of misrule are figures of the same sort and may perhaps have had a similar origin whether that was so or not we may conclude with a fair degree of probability that if the king of the wood at Erychia lived and died as an incarnation of a sylvan deity he had of old a parallel to the throne in the men who year by year were slain in the character of king Saturn the god of the sown and sprouting seed chapter 59 killing the god in mexico by no people does the custom of sacrificing the human representative of a god appear to have been observed so commonly and with so much solemnity as by the Aztecs of ancient mexico the ritual of these remarkable sacrifices we are well acquainted for it has been fully described by the spaniards who conquered mexico in the 16th century and whose curiosity was naturally excited by the discovery in this distant region of a barbarous and cruel religion which presented many curious points of analogy to the doctrine and ritual of their own church they took captive says Jesuit Acosta quote such as they thought good and before they did sacrifice him unto their idols they gave him the name of the idol to whom he should be sacrificed and apparel him with the same ornaments like their idol saying that he did represent the same idol and during the time that this representation lasted which was for a year in some feasts in others six months was less they reverenced and worshiped him in the same manner as the proper idol and in the meantime he did drink, eat and was merry when he went through the streets the people came forth to worship him and everyone brought him in alms with children and sick folks that he might cure them and bless them suffering him to do all things at his pleasure only he was accompanied with 10 men lest he should fly and he to the end he might be reverenced as he passed sometimes sounded upon a small flute that the people might prepare to worship him the feasts being come and he grew fat they killed him opened him and ate him making a solemn sacrifice of him close quote this general description of the custom may now be illustrated by particular examples thus at the festival called Tochcatl the greatest festival of the Mexican year a young man was annually sacrificed in the character of Tixcatlipoca that is the god of gods after having been maintained and worshipped as the great deity in person for a whole year according to the old Franciscan monk Sahagun best authority on the Aztec religion the sacrifice of the human god fell at Easter or a few days later so that if he is right it would correspond in date as well as in character to the Christian festival of the death and resurrection of the redeemer more exactly he tells us that the sacrifice took place on the first day of the fifth Aztec month which according to him began on the 23rd or 27th day of April at this festival the great god died in the person of one human representative and came to life again in the person of another who was destined to enjoy the fatal honor of divinity for a year and to perish like all his predecessors at the end of it the young man singled out for this high dignity was carefully chosen from among the captives on the ground of his personal beauty he had to be of a bluenished body slim as a reed and straight as a pillar neither too tall nor too short if through high living he grew too fat he was obliged to reduce himself by drinking salt water and in order that he might behave in his lofty station with becoming grace and dignity he was carefully trained to comport himself like a gentleman of the first quality to speak correctly and elegantly to play the flute to smoke cigars and to snuff at flowers with a dandified air he was honorably lodged in the temple where the nobles waited on him and paid him homage bringing him meat and serving him like a prince the king himself saw to it that he was apparel and gorgeous attire quote for already he esteemed him as a god close quote eagle down was gummed to his head and white cock's feathers were stuck in his hair which drooped to his girdle a wreath of flowers like roasted maize crowned his brows and a garland of the same flowers passed over his shoulders and under his armpits golden ornaments hung from his nose golden armlets adorned his arms golden bells jingled on his legs at every step he took earrings of turquoise dangled from his ears bracelets of turquoise bedeckled his wrists necklaces of shells encircled his neck and depended on his breast he wore a mantle of network and round his middle a rich waste cloth when this bejeweled exquisite lounged through the streets plain on his flute puffing at a cigar and smelling at a nose gay the people whom he met threw themselves on the earth before him and prayed to him with sighs and tears taking up the dust in their hands and putting it in their mouths in token of the deepest humiliation and subjection women came forth with children in their arms and presented them to him saluting him as a god for he passed for our lord god the people acknowledged him as the lord all who thus worshiped him on his message he saluted gravely and courteously lest he should flee he was everywhere attended by a guard of eight pages in the royal livery four of them with shaven crowns like the palace slaves and four of them with the flowing locks of warriors and if he contrived to escape the captain of the guard had to take his place as the representative of the god and to die in his stead twenty days before he was to die his costume was changed and four damsels delicately nurtured and bearing the names of four goddesses the goddess of flowers the goddess of the young maze the goddess of our mother among the water and the goddess of salt were given him to be his brides and with them he consorted during the last five days divine honors were showered on the destined victim the king remained in his palace while the whole court went after the human god solemn banquets and dances followed each other in regular succession and had appointed places on the last day the young man attended by his wife and pages embarked in a canoe covered with a royal canopy and was ferried across the lake to a spot where a little hill rose from the edge of the water the mountain of parting because there his wife spayed him a last farewell then accompanied only by his pages he repaired to a small and lonely temple by the wayside like the Mexican temples in general it was built in the form of a pyramid and as the young man ascended the stairs he broke at every step one of the flutes on which he had played in the days of his glory on reaching the summit he was seized and held down by the priests on his back upon a block of stone while one of them cut open his breast thrust his hand into the wound and wrenching out his heart held it up in sacrifice to the sun the body of the dead god was not like the bodies of common victims sent rolling down the steps of the temple but was carried down to the foot where the head was cut off spitted on a pike such was the regular end of the man who personated the greatest god of the Mexican pantheon the honor of living for a short time in the character of a god and dying a violent death in the same capacity was not restricted to men in Mexico women were allowed or rather compelled to enjoy the glory and to share the doom as representatives of the masses thus at a great festival in September which was preceded by a strict fast of seven days they sanctified a young slave girl of 12 or 13 years the prettiest they could find to represent the maize goddess Chico Meco Huatl they invested her with the ornaments of the goddess putting a mitre on her head and maize cobs around her neck and in her hands fastening a green feather upright on the crown of her head to imitate an ear of maize this they did we are told in order to signify that the maize was almost ripe at the time of the festival but because it was still tender they chose a girl of tender years to play the part of the maize goddess the whole long day they led the poor child in all her finery with the green plume nodding on her head from house dancing merrily to cheer people after the dullness and privations of the fast in the evening all the people assembled at the temple the courts of which they lit up by a multitude of lanterns and candles there they passed the night without sleeping and at midnight while the trumpets flutes and horns discoursed solemn music a portable framework or palanquin was brought forth bedecked with festoons of maize cobs and peppers and filled with seeds of all sorts this the bearer sat down at the door of the chamber in which the wooden image of the goddess stood now the chamber was adorned and wreathed both outside and inside with wreaths of maize cobs peppers, pumpkins, roses and seeds of every kind a wonder to behold the whole floor was covered deep with these verdant offerings of the pious when the music ceased a solemn procession came forth of priests and dignitaries with flaring lights and smoking censors leading in their midst the girl who played the part of the goddess then they made her mount the framework where she stood upright on the maize and peppers and pumpkins with which it was strewed her hands resting on two banisters to keep her from falling the priests swung the smoking censors around her the music struck up again and while it played a great dignitary of the temple suddenly stepped up to her with a razor in his hand and adroitly shore off the green feather she wore on her head together with the hair in which it was fastened snipping the lock off by the root the feather and the hair he then presented to the wooden image of the goddess and elaborate ceremonies weeping and giving her thanks for the fruits of the year and the abundant crops which she had bestowed on the people that year and as she wept and prayed all the people standing in the courts of the temple wept and prayed with him when that ceremony was over the girl descended from the framework and was escorted to the place where she was to spend the rest of the night but all the people kept watch in the courts of the temple by the light of torches till break of day the morning being come and the courts of the temple being still crowded by the multitude who would have deemed it sacrilege to quit the precincts the priests again brought forth the damsel attired in the costume of the goddess with the mitre on her head and the cobs of maize about her neck again she mounted the portable framework or palanquin and stood on it supporting herself by her hands on the banisters then the elders of the temple lifted it on their shoulders and while some swung burning censures and others played on instruments were saying they carried it in procession through the great courtyard to the hall of the god Huizilopochtli and then back to the chamber where stood the wooden image of the maize goddess whom the girl personated there they caused the damsel to descend from the palanquin and to stand on the heaps of corn and vegetables that had been spread in profusion on the floor of the sacred chamber while she stood there all the elders and nobles came in a line one behind the other carrying saucers full of dry and clotted blood which they had drawn from their ears by way of penance during the seven days fast one by one they squatted on their haunches before her which was the equivalent of falling on their knees with us and scraping the crust of blood from the saucer cast it down before her as an offering in return for the benefits which she as the embodiment of the maize goddess had conferred upon them when the men had thus humbly offered their blood to the human representative of the goddess the women forming a long line did so likewise each of them dropping on her hands before the girl and scraping her blood from the saucer the ceremony lasted a long time for great and small young and old all without exception had to pass before the incarnate deity and make their offering when it was over the people returned home with glad hearts to feast on flesh and vines of every sort as merrily we are told as good Christians at Easter partake of meat and other carnal mercies after the long abstinence of Lent and when they had eaten and drunk their fill and rested after the night watch they returned quite refreshed to the temple to see the end of the festival and the end of the festival was this the multitude being assembled the priests solemnly incensed the girl who impersonated the goddess then they threw her on her back on the heap of corn and seeds cut off her head caught the gushing blood in a tub and sprinkled the blood on the wooden image of the goddess the walls of the chamber and the offerings of corn peppers, pumpkins, seeds and vegetables which cumbered the floor after that they flayed the headless trunk and one of the priests made shift to squeeze himself into the bloody skin having done so they clad him in all the robes which the girl had worn they put the miter on his head the necklace of golden maze cobs about his neck the maze cobs of feathers and gold in his hands and thus arrayed they led him forth in public all of them dancing to the tuck of drum while he acted as fugul man skipping and posturing instead of the procession as briskly as he could be expected to do incommodated as he was by the tight and clammy skin of the girl and by her clothes which must have been much too small for a grown man in the foregoing custom the identification of the young girl with the maze goddess appears to be complete the golden maze cobs which she wore around her neck the artificial maze cobs which she carried in her hands the green feather which was stuck in her hair in imitation we are told of a green ear of maze all set her forth as a personification of the corn spirit and we are expressly informed that she was especially chosen as a young girl to represent the young maze which at the time of the festival had not yet fully ripened further her identification with the corn and the corn goddess was clearly announced by making her stand on heaps of maze and there received the homage and blood offerings of the whole people who thereby returned her thanks for the benefits which in her character of a divinity she was supposed to have conferred upon them once more the practice of beheading her on a heap of corn and seeds and sprinkling her blood not only on the image of the maze goddess but on the piles of maze peppers, pumpkins, seeds and vegetables can seemingly have had no other object but to quicken and strengthen the crops of corn and the fruits of the earth in general by infusing into their representatives the blood of the corn goddess herself the analogy of this Mexican sacrifice the meaning which appears to be indisputable may be allowed to strengthen the interpretation which I have given of other human sacrifices offered for the crops if the Mexican girl whose blood was sprinkled on the maze indeed personated the maze goddess it becomes more than ever probable that the girl whose blood the ponies similarly sprinkled on the seed corn personated in like manner the female spirit of the corn and so with the other human beings the races have slaughtered for the sake of promoting the growth of the crops lastly the concluding act of the sacred drama in which the body of the dead maze goddess was flayed and her skin worn together with all her sacred insignia by a man who danced before the people in this grim attire seems to be best explained on the hypothesis that it was intended to ensure that the divine death should be immediately followed by the divine resurrection if this was so we may infer with some degree of probability that the practice of killing a human representative of a deity has commonly perhaps always been regarded merely as a means of perpetuating the divine energies in the fullness of youthful vigor untainted by the weakness and frailty of age from which they must have suffered if the deity had been allowed to die a natural death these Mexican rites suffice to prove that human sacrifices of the sort I suppose to have prevailed at Ericia were as a matter of fact regularly offered by a people whose level of culture was probably not inferior if indeed it was not distinctly superior to that occupied by the Italian races at the early period to which the origin of the Erician priesthood must be referred the positive and indubitable evidence of the prevalence of such sacrifices in one part of the world may reasonably be allowed to strengthen the probability of their prevalence in places for which the evidence is less full and trustworthy taken all together the facts which we have passed in review seem to show that the custom of killing men whom their worshipers regard as divine has prevailed in many parts of the world end of chapters 58 and 59