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The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough: a study of magic and religion
by Sir James George Frazer
CONTENTS
Preface
Subject Index
Chapter 1. The King of the Wood 1. Diana and Virbius 2. Artemis and
Hippolytus 3. Recapitulation
Chapter 2. Priestly Kings
Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic 1. The Principles of Magic 2.
Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic 3. Contagious Magic 4. The Magician's
Progress
Chapter 4. Magic and Religion
Chapter 5. The Magical Control of the Weather 1. The Public Magician
2. The Magical Control of Rain 3. The Magical Control of the Sun 4.
The Magical Control of the Wind
Chapter 6. Magicians as Kings
Chapter 7. Incarnate Human Gods
Chapter 8. Departmental Kings of Nature
Chapter 9. The Worship of Trees 1. Tree-spirits 2. Beneficent Powers
of Tree-Spirits
Chapter 10. Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe
Chapter 11. The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation
Chapter 12. The Sacred Marriage 1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility 2.
The Marriage of the Gods
Chapter 13. The Kings of Rome and Alba 1. Numa and Egeria 2. The King
as Jupiter
Chapter 14. Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium
Chapter 15. The Worship of the Oak
Chapter 16. Dianus and Diana
Chapter 17. The Burden of Royalty 1. Royal and Priestly Taboos 2.
Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power
Chapter 18. The Perils of the Soul 1. The Soul as a Mannikin 2.
Absence and Recall of the Soul 3. The Soul as a Shadow and a
Reflection
Chapter 19. Tabooed Acts 1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers 2.
Taboos on Eating and Drinking 3. Taboos on Showing the Face 4. Taboos
on Quitting the House 5. Taboos on Leaving Food over
Chapter 20. Tabooed Persons 1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed 2. Mourners
tabooed 3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth 4. Warriors
tabooed 5. Manslayers tabooed 6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed
Chapter 21. Tabooed Things 1. The Meaning of Taboo 2. Iron tabooed
3. Sharp Weapons tabooed 4. Blood tabooed 5. The Head tabooed 6. Hair
tabooed 7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting 8. Disposal of Cut Hair and
Nails 9. Spittle tabooed 10. Foods tabooed 11. Knots and Rings tabooed
Chapter 22. Tabooed Words 1. Personal Names tabooed 2. Names of
Relations tabooed 3. Names of the Dead tabooed 4. Names of Kings and
other Sacred Persons tabooed 5. Names of Gods tabooed
Chapter 23. Our Debt to the Savage
Chapter 24. The Killing of the Divine King 1. The Mortality of the
Gods 2. Kings killed when their Strength fails 3. Kings killed at the
End of a Fixed Term
Chapter 25. Temporary Kings
Chapter 26. Sacrifice of the Kings Son
Chapter 27. Succession to the Soul
Chapter 28. The Killing of the Tree-Spirit 1. The Whitsuntide Mummers
2. Burying the Carnival 3. Carrying out Death 4. Bringing in Summer 5.
Battle of Summer and Winter 6. Death and Resurrection of Kostrubonko
7. Death and Revival of Vegetation 8. Analogous Rites in India 9. The
Magic Spring
Chapter 29. The Myth of Adonis
Chapter 30. Adonis in Syria
Chapter 31. Adonis in Cyprus
Chapter 32. The Ritual of Adonis
Chapter 33. The Gardens of Adonis
Chapter 34. The Myth and Ritual of Attis
Chapter 35. Attis as a God of Vegetation
Chapter 36. Human Representatives of Attis
Chapter 37. Oriental Religions in the West
Chapter 38. The Myth of Osiris
Chapter 39. The Ritual of Osiris 1. The Popular Rites 2. The Official
Rites
Chapter 40. The Nature of Osiris 1. Osiris a Corn-god 2. Osiris a
Tree-spirit 3. Osiris a God of Fertility 4. Osiris a God of the Dead
Chapter 41. Isis
Chapter 42. Osiris and the Sun
Chapter 43. Dionysus
Chapter 44. Demeter and Persephone
Chapter 45. Corn-Mother and Corn-Maiden in N. Europe
Chapter 46. Corn-Mother in Many Lands 1. The Corn-mother in America
2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies 3. The Spirit of the Corn
embodied in Human Beings 4. The Double Personification of the Corn as
Mother and Daughter
Chapter 47. Lityerses 1. Songs of the Corn Reapers 2. Killing the
Corn-spirit 3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops 4. The Corn-spirit slain
in his Human Representatives
Chapter 48. The Corn-Spirit as an Animal 1. Animal Embodiments of the
Corn-spirit 2. The Corn-spirit as a Wolf or a Dog 3. The Corn-spirit
as a Cock 4. The Corn-spirit as a Hare 5. The Corn-spirit as a Cat 6.
The Corn-spirit as a Goat 7. The Corn-spirit as a Bull, Cow, or Ox 8.
The Corn-spirit as a Horse or Mare 9. The Corn-spirit as a Pig (Boar
or Sow) 10. On the Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit
Chapter 49. Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals 1. Dionysus, the
Goat and the Bull 2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse 3. Attis, Adonis,
and the Pig 4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull 5. Virbius and the Horse
Chapter 50. Eating the God 1. The Sacrament of First-Fruits 2. Eating
the God among the Aztecs 3. Many Manii at Aricia
Chapter 51. Homeopathic Magic of a Flesh Diet
Chapter 52. Killing the Divine Animal 1. Killing the Sacred Buzzard
2. Killing the Sacred Ram 3. Killing the Sacred Serpent 4. Killing the
Sacred Turtles 5. Killing the Sacred Bear
Chapter 53. The Propitiation of Wild Animals By Hunters
Chapter 54. Types of Animal Sacrament 1. The Egyptian and the Aino
Types of Sacrament 2. Processions with Sacred Animals
Chapter 55. The Transference of Evil 1. The Transference to Inanimate
Objects 2. The Transference to Animals 3. The Transference to Men 4.
The Transference of Evil in Europe
Chapter 56. The Public Expulsion of Evils 1. The Omnipresence of
Demons 2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils 3. The Periodic Expulsion
of Evils
Chapter 57. Public Scapegoats 1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils 2.
The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle 3. The
Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle 4. On Scapegoats in
General
Chapter 58. Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity 1. The Human
Scapegoat in Ancient Rome 2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece 3.
The Roman Saturnalia
Chapter 59. Killing the God in Mexico
Chapter 60. Between Heaven and Earth 1. Not to touch the Earth 2. Not
to see the Sun 3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty 4. Reasons for the
Seclusion of Girls at Puberty
Chapter 61. The Myth of Balder
Chapter 62. The Fire-Festivals of Europe 1. The Fire-festivals in
general 2. The Lenten Fires 3. The Easter Fires 4. The Beltane Fires
5. The Midsummer Fires 6. The Halloween Fires 7. The Midwinter Fires
8. The Need-fire
Chapter 63. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals 1. On the
Fire-festivals in general 2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals 3.
The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals
Chapter 64. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires 1. The Burning
of Effigies in the Fires 2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the
Fires
Chapter 65. Balder and the Mistletoe
Chapter 66. The External Soul in Folk-Tales
Chapter 67. The External Soul in Folk-Custom 1. The External Soul in
Inanimate Things 2. The External Soul in Plants 3. The External Soul
in Animals 4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection
Chapter 68. The Golden Bough
Chapter 69. Farewell to Nemi
Preface
THE PRIMARY aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which
regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia. When I
first set myself to solve the problem more than thirty years ago, I
thought that the solution could be propounded very briefly, but I soon
found that to render it probable or even intelligible it was necessary
to discuss certain more general questions, some of which had hardly
been broached before. In successive editions the discussion of these
and kindred topics has occupied more and more space, the enquiry has
branched out in more and more directions, until the two volumes of the
original work have expanded into twelve. Meantime a wish has often
been expressed that the book should be issued in a more compendious
form. This abridgment is an attempt to meet the wish and thereby to
bring the work within the range of a wider circle of readers. While
the bulk of the book has been greatly reduced, I have endeavoured to
retain its leading principles, together with an amount of evidence
sufficient to illustrate them clearly. The language of the original
has also for the most part been preserved, though here and there the
exposition has been somewhat condensed. In order to keep as much of
the text as possible I have sacrificed all the notes, and with them
all exact references to my authorities. Readers who desire to
ascertain the source of any particular statement must therefore
consult the larger work, which is fully documented and provided with a
complete bibliography.
In the abridgment I have neither added new matter nor altered the
views expressed in the last edition; for the evidence which has come
to my knowledge in the meantime has on the whole served either to
confirm my former conclusions or to furnish fresh illustrations of old
principles. Thus, for example, on the crucial question of the practice
of putting kings to death either at the end of a fixed period or
whenever their health and strength began to fail, the body of evidence
which points to the wide prevalence of such a custom has been
considerably augmented in the interval. A striking instance of a
limited monarchy of this sort is furnished by the powerful mediaeval
kingdom of the Khazars in Southern Russia, where the kings were liable
to be put to death either on the expiry of a set term or whenever some
public calamity, such as drought, dearth, or defeat in war, seemed to
indicate a failure of their natural powers. The evidence for the
systematic killing of the Khazar kings, drawn from the accounts of old
Arab travellers, has been collected by me elsewhere.[1] Africa, again,
has supplied several fresh examples of a similar practice of regicide.
Among them the most notable perhaps is the custom formerly observed in
Bunyoro of choosing every year from a particular clan a mock king, who
was supposed to incarnate the late king, cohabited with his widows at
his temple-tomb, and after reigning for a week was strangled.[2] The
custom presents a close parallel to the ancient Babylonian festival of
the Sacaea, at which a mock king was dressed in the royal robes,
allowed to enjoy the real king's concubines, and after reigning for
five days was stripped, scourged, and put to death. That festival in
its turn has lately received fresh light from certain Assyrian
inscriptions,[3] which seem to confirm the interpretation which I
formerly gave of the festival as a New Year celebration and the parent
of the Jewish festival of Purim.[4] Other recently discovered
parallels to the priestly kings of Aricia are African priests and
kings who used to be put to death at the end of seven or of two years,
after being liable in the interval to be attacked and killed by a
strong man, who thereupon succeeded to the priesthood or the
kingdom.[5]
[1] J. G. Frazer, "The Killing of the Khazar Kings," _Folk-lore,_
xxviii. (1917), pp. 382-407.
[2] Rev. J. Roscoe, _The Soul of Central Africa_ (London, 1922), p.
200. Compare J. G. Frazer, &147;The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to
Central Africa," _Man,_ xx. (1920), p. 181.
[3] H. Zimmern, _Zum babylonischen Neujahrsfest_ (Leipzig, 1918).
Compare A. H. Sayce, in _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,_ July
1921, pp. 440-442.
[4] _The Golden Bough,_ Part VI. _The Scapegoat,_ pp. 354 _sqq.,_ 412
_sqq._
[5] P. Amaury Talbot in _Journal of the African Society,_ July 1916,
pp. 309 _sq.; id.,_ in _Folk-lore, xxvi._ (1916), pp. 79 _sq.;_ H. R.
Palmer, in _Journal of the African Society,_ July 1912, pp. 403, 407
_sq._
With these and other instances of like customs before us it is no
longer possible to regard the rule of succession to the priesthood of
Diana at Aricia as exceptional; it clearly exemplifies a widespread
institution, of which the most numerous and the most similar cases
have thus far been found in Africa. How far the facts point to an
early influence of Africa on Italy, or even to the existence of an
African population in Southern Europe, I do not presume to say. The
pre-historic historic relations between the two continents are still
obscure and still under investigation.
Whether the explanation which I have offered of the institution is
correct or not must be left to the future to determine. I shall always
be ready to abandon it if a better can be suggested. Meantime in
committing the book in its new form to the judgment of the public I
desire to guard against a misapprehension of its scope which appears
to be still rife, though I have sought to correct it before now. If in
the present work I have dwelt at some length on the worship of trees,
it is not, I trust, because I exaggerate its importance in the history
of religion, still less because I would deduce from it a whole system
of mythology; it is simply because I could not ignore the subject in
attempting to explain the significance of a priest who bore the title
of King of the Wood, and one of whose titles to office was the
plucking of a bough--the Golden Bough--from a tree in the sacred
grove. But I am so far from regarding the reverence for trees as of
supreme importance for the evolution of religion that I consider it to
have been altogether subordinate to other factors, and in particular
to the fear of the human dead, which, on the whole, I believe to have
been probably the most powerful force in the making of primitive
religion. I hope that after this explicit disclaimer I shall no longer
be taxed with embracing a system of mythology which I look upon not
merely as false but as preposterous and absurd. But I am too familiar
with the hydra of error to expect that by lopping off one of the
monster's heads I can prevent another, or even the same, from
sprouting again. I can only trust to the candour and intelligence of
my readers to rectify this serious misconception of my views by a
comparison with my own express declaration.
J. G. FRAZER.
1 BRICK COURT, TEMPLE, LONDON, June 1922.
I. The King of the Wood
1. Diana and Virbius
WHO does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough? The scene,
suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind
of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape,
is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi-- "Diana's
Mirror," as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that
calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever
forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on
its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens
descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the
solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might still linger by this
lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.
In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and
recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the
precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched,
stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of
the Wood. The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and
grove of Aricia. But the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was
situated about three miles off, at the foot of the Alban Mount, and
separated by a steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small
crater-like hollow on the mountain side. In this sacred grove there
grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably
far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand
he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if
at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a
priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or
later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the
rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only
succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he
retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.
The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the
title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was
visited by more evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in
summer and winter, in fair weather and in foul, he had to keep his
lonely watch, and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber it was at
the peril of his life. The least relaxation of his vigilance, the
smallest abatement of his strength of limb or skill of fence, put him
in jeopardy; grey hairs might seal his death-warrant. To gentle and
pious pilgrims at the shrine the sight of him might well seem to
darken the fair landscape, as when a cloud suddenly blots the sun on a
bright day. The dreamy blue of Italian skies, the dappled shade of
summer woods, and the sparkle of waves in the sun, can have accorded
but ill with that stern and sinister figure. Rather we picture to
ourselves the scene as it may have been witnessed by a belated
wayfarer on one of those wild autumn nights when the dead leaves are
falling thick, and the winds seem to sing the dirge of the dying year.
It is a sombre picture, set to melancholy music--the background of
forest showing black and jagged against a lowering and stormy sky, the
sighing of the wind in the branches, the rustle of the withered leaves
under foot, the lapping of the cold water on the shore, and in the
foreground, pacing to and fro, now in twilight and now in gloom, a
dark figure with a glitter of steel at the shoulder whenever the pale
moon, riding clear of the cloud-rack, peers down at him through the
matted boughs.
The strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in classical
antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find an explanation we
must go farther afield. No one will probably deny that such a custom
savours of a barbarous age, and, surviving into imperial times, stands
out in striking isolation from the polished Italian society of the
day, like a primaeval rock rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the
very rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a hope of
explaining it. For recent researches into the early history of man
have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many
superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude
philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous
custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if
we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we can
prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in
human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of
institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can
show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative
institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we
may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to
the priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct
evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount
to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable according to
the degree of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions I have
indicated. The object of this book is, by meeting these conditions, to
offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi.
I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come
down to us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana
at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of
the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy,
bringing with him the image of the Tauric Diana hidden in a faggot of
sticks. After his death his bones were transported from Aricia to Rome
and buried in front of the temple of Saturn, on the Capitoline slope,
beside the temple of Concord. The bloody ritual which legend ascribed
to the Tauric Diana is familiar to classical readers; it is said that
every stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar.
But transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the
sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be
broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could,
one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the
priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead
with the title of King of the Wood (_Rex Nemorensis_). According to
the public opinion of the ancients the fateful branch was that Golden
Bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed
the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the slave
represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the
priest was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the
Tauric Diana. This rule of succession by the sword was observed down
to imperial times; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking
that the priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more
stalwart ruffian to slay him; and a Greek traveller, who visited Italy
in the age of the Antonines, remarks that down to his time the
priesthood was still the prize of victory in a single combat.
Of the worship of Diana at Nemi some leading features can still be
made out. From the votive offerings which have been found on the site,
it appears that she was conceived of especially as a huntress, and
further as blessing men and women with offspring, and granting
expectant mothers an easy delivery. Again, fire seems to have played a
foremost part in her ritual. For during her annual festival, held on
the thirteenth of August, at the hottest time of the year, her grove
shone with a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was reflected by
the lake; and throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day was
kept with holy rites at every domestic hearth. Bronze statuettes found
in her precinct represent the goddess herself holding a torch in her
raised right hand; and women whose prayers had been heard by her came
crowned with wreaths and bearing lighted torches to the sanctuary in
fulfilment of their vows. Some one unknown dedicated a perpetually
burning lamp in a little shrine at Nemi for the safety of the Emperor
Claudius and his family. The terra-cotta lamps which have been
discovered in the grove may perhaps have served a like purpose for
humbler persons. If so, the analogy of the custom to the Catholic
practice of dedicating holy candles in churches would be obvious.
Further, the title of Vesta borne by Diana at Nemi points clearly to
the maintenance of a perpetual holy fire in her sanctuary. A large
circular basement at the north-east corner of the temple, raised on
three steps and bearing traces of a mosaic pavement, probably
supported a round temple of Diana in her character of Vesta, like the
round temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum. Here the sacred fire would
seem to have been tended by Vestal Virgins, for the head of a Vestal
in terra-cotta was found on the spot, and the worship of a perpetual
fire, cared for by holy maidens, appears to have been common in Latium
from the earliest to the latest times. Further, at the annual festival
of the goddess, hunting dogs were crowned and wild beasts were not
molested; young people went through a purificatory ceremony in her
honour; wine was brought forth, and the feast consisted of a kid cakes
served piping hot on plates of leaves, and apples still hanging in
clusters on the boughs.
But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser
divinities shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of
the clear water which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall
in graceful cascades into the lake at the place called Le Mole,
because here were established the mills of the modern village of Nemi.
The purling of the stream as it ran over the pebbles is mentioned by
Ovid, who tells us that he had often drunk of its water. Women with
child used to sacrifice to Egeria, because she was believed, like
Diana, to be able to grant them an easy delivery. Tradition ran that
the nymph had been the wife or mistress of the wise king Numa, that he
had consorted with her in the secrecy of the sacred grove, and that
the laws which he gave the Romans had been inspired by communion with
her divinity. Plutarch compares the legend with other tales of the
loves of goddesses for mortal men, such as the love of Cybele and the
Moon for the fair youths Attis and Endymion. According to some, the
trysting-place of the lovers was not in the woods of Nemi but in a
grove outside the dripping Porta Capena at Rome, where another sacred
spring of Egeria gushed from a dark cavern. Every day the Roman
Vestals fetched water from this spring to wash the temple of Vesta,
carrying it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In Juvenal's time
the natural rock had been encased in marble, and the hallowed spot was
profaned by gangs of poor Jews, who were suffered to squat, like
gypsies, in the grove. We may suppose that the spring which fell into
the lake of Nemi was the true original Egeria, and that when the first
settlers moved down from the Alban hills to the banks of the Tiber
they brought the nymph with them and found a new home for her in a
grove outside the gates. The remains of baths which have been
discovered within the sacred precinct, together with many terra-cotta
models of various parts of the human body, suggest that the waters of
Egeria were used to heal the sick, who may have signified their hopes
or testified their gratitude by dedicating likenesses of the diseased
members to the goddess, in accordance with a custom which is still
observed in many parts of Europe. To this day it would seem that the
spring retains medicinal virtues.
The other of the minor deities at Nemi was Virbius. Legend had it that
Virbius was the young Greek hero Hippolytus, chaste and fair, who
learned the art of venery from the centaur Chiron, and spent all his
days in the greenwood chasing wild beasts with the virgin huntress
Artemis (the Greek counterpart of Diana) for his only comrade. Proud
of her divine society, he spurned the love of women, and this proved
his bane. For Aphrodite, stung by his scorn, inspired his stepmother
Phaedra with love of him; and when he disdained her wicked advances
she falsely accused him to his father Theseus. The slander was
believed, and Theseus prayed to his sire Poseidon to avenge the
imagined wrong. So while Hippolytus drove in a chariot by the shore of
the Saronic Gulf, the sea-god sent a fierce bull forth from the waves.
The terrified horses bolted, threw Hippolytus from the chariot, and
dragged him at their hoofs to death. But Diana, for the love she bore
Hippolytus, persuaded the leech Aesculapius to bring her fair young
hunter back to life by his simples. Jupiter, indignant that a mortal
man should return from the gates of death, thrust down the meddling
leech himself to Hades. But Diana hid her favourite from the angry god
in a thick cloud, disguised his features by adding years to his life,
and then bore him far away to the dells of Nemi, where she entrusted
him to the nymph Egeria, to live there, unknown and solitary, under
the name of Virbius, in the depth of the Italian forest. There he
reigned a king, and there he dedicated a precinct to Diana. He had a
comely son, Virbius, who, undaunted by his father's fate, drove a team
of fiery steeds to join the Latins in the war against Aeneas and the
Trojans. Virbius was worshipped as a god not only at Nemi but
elsewhere; for in Campania we hear of a special priest devoted to his
service. Horses were excluded from the Arician grove and sanctuary
because horses had killed Hippolytus. It was unlawful to touch his
image. Some thought that he was the sun. "But the truth is," says
Servius, "that he is a deity associated with Diana, as Attis is
associated with the Mother of the Gods, and Erichthonius with Minerva,
and Adonis with Venus." What the nature of that association was we
shall enquire presently. Here it is worth observing that in his long
and chequered career this mythical personage has displayed a
remarkable tenacity of life. For we can hardly doubt that the Saint
Hippolytus of the Roman calendar, who was dragged by horses to death
on the thirteenth of August, Diana's own day, is no other than the
Greek hero of the same name, who, after dying twice over as a heathen
sinner, has been happily resuscitated as a Christian saint.
It needs no elaborate demonstration to convince us that the stories
told to account for Diana's worship at Nemi are unhistorical. Clearly
they belong to that large class of myths which are made up to explain
the origin of a religious ritual and have no other foundation than the
resemblance, real or imaginary, which may be traced between it and
some foreign ritual. The incongruity of these Nemi myths is indeed
transparent, since the foundation of the worship is traced now to
Orestes and now to Hippolytus, according as this or that feature of
the ritual has to be accounted for. The real value of such tales is
that they serve to illustrate the nature of the worship by providing a
standard with which to compare it; and further, that they bear witness
indirectly to its venerable age by showing that the true origin was
lost in the mists of a fabulous antiquity. In the latter respect these
Nemi legends are probably more to be trusted than the apparently
historical tradition, vouched for by Cato the Elder, that the sacred
grove was dedicated to Diana by a certain Egerius Baebius or Laevius
of Tusculum, a Latin dictator, on behalf of the peoples of Tusculum,
Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Cora, Tibur, Pometia, and Ardea. This
tradition indeed speaks for the great age of the sanctuary, since it
seems to date its foundation sometime before 495 B.C., the year in
which Pometia was sacked by the Romans and disappears from history.
But we cannot suppose that so barbarous a rule as that of the Arician
priesthood was deliberately instituted by a league of civilised
communities, such as the Latin cities undoubtedly were. It must have
been handed down from a time beyond the memory of man, when Italy was
still in a far ruder state than any known to us in the historical
period. The credit of the tradition is rather shaken than confirmed by
another story which ascribes the foundation of the sanctuary to a
certain Manius Egerius, who gave rise to the saying, "There are many
Manii at Aricia." This proverb some explained by alleging that Manius
Egerius was the ancestor of a long and distinguished line, whereas
others thought it meant that there were many ugly and deformed people
at Aricia, and they derived the name Manius from _Mania,_ a bogey or
bugbear to frighten children. A Roman satirist uses the name Manius as
typical of the beggars who lay in wait for pilgrims on the Arician
slopes. These differences of opinion, together with the discrepancy
between Manius Egerius of Aricia and Egerius Laevius of Tusculum, as
well as the resemblance of both names to the mythical Egeria, excite
our suspicion. Yet the tradition recorded by Cato seems too
circumstantial, and its sponsor too respectable, to allow us to
dismiss it as an idle fiction. Rather we may suppose that it refers to
some ancient restoration or reconstruction of the sanctuary, which was
actually carried out by the confederate states. At any rate it
testifies to a belief that the grove had been from early times a
common place of worship for many of the oldest cities of the country,
if not for the whole Latin confederacy.
2. Artemis and Hippolytus
I HAVE said that the Arician legends of Orestes and Hippolytus, though
worthless as history, have a certain value in so far as they may help
us to understand the worship at Nemi better by comparing it with the
ritual and myths of other sanctuaries. We must ask ourselves, Why did
the author of these legends pitch upon Orestes and Hippolytus in order
to explain Virbius and the King of the Wood? In regard to Orestes, the
answer is obvious. He and the image of the Tauric Diana, which could
only be appeased with human blood, were dragged in to render
intelligible the murderous rule of succession to the Arician
priesthood. In regard to Hippolytus the case is not so plain. The
manner of his death suggests readily enough a reason for the exclusion
of horses from the grove; but this by itself seems hardly enough to
account for the identification. We must try to probe deeper by
examining the worship as well as the legend or myth of Hippolytus.
He had a famous sanctuary at his ancestral home of Troezen, situated
on that beautiful, almost landlocked bay, where groves of oranges and
lemons, with tall cypresses soaring like dark spires above the garden
of Hesperides, now clothe the strip of fertile shore at the foot of
the rugged mountains. Across the blue water of the tranquil bay, which
it shelters from the open sea, rises Poseidon's sacred island, its
peaks veiled in the sombre green of the pines. On this fair coast
Hippolytus was worshipped. Within his sanctuary stood a temple with an
ancient image. His service was performed by a priest who held office
for life; every year a sacrificial festival was held in his honour;
and his untimely fate was yearly mourned, with weeping and doleful
chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of their
hair in his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen,
though the people would not show it. It has been suggested, with great
plausibility, that in the handsome Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut
off in his youthful prime, and yearly mourned by damsels, we have one
of those mortal lovers of a goddess who appear so often in ancient
religion, and of whom Adonis is the most familiar type. The rivalry of
Artemis and Phaedra for the affection of Hippolytus reproduces, it is
said, under different names, the rivalry of Aphrodite and Proserpine
for the love of Adonis, for Phaedra is merely a double of Aphrodite.
The theory probably does no injustice either to Hippolytus or to
Artemis. For Artemis was originally a great goddess of fertility, and,
on the principles of early religion, she who fertilises nature must
herself be fertile, and to be that she must necessarily have a male
consort. On this view, Hippolytus was the consort of Artemis at
Troezen, and the shorn tresses offered to him by the Troezenian youths
and maidens before marriage were designed to strengthen his union with
the goddess, and so to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, of
cattle, and of mankind. It is some confirmation of this view that
within the precinct of Hippolytus at Troezen there were worshipped two
female powers named Damia and Auxesia, whose connexion with the
fertility of the ground is unquestionable. When Epidaurus suffered
from a dearth, the people, in obedience to an oracle, carved images of
Damia and Auxesia out of sacred olive wood, and no sooner had they
done so and set them up than the earth bore fruit again. Moreover, at
Troezen itself, and apparently within the precinct of Hippolytus, a
curious festival of stone-throwing was held in honour of these
maidens, as the Troezenians called them; and it is easy to show that
similar customs have been practised in many lands for the express
purpose of ensuring good crops. In the story of the tragic death of
the youthful Hippolytus we may discern an analogy with similar tales
of other fair but mortal youths who paid with their lives for the
brief rapture of the love of an immortal goddess. These hapless lovers
were probably not always mere myths, and the legends which traced
their spilt blood in the purple bloom of the violet, the scarlet stain
of the anemone, or the crimson flush of the rose were no idle poetic
emblems of youth and beauty fleeting as the summer flowers. Such
fables contain a deeper philosophy of the relation of the life of man
to the life of nature--a sad philosophy which gave birth to a tragic
practice. What that philosophy and that practice were, we shall learn
later on.
3. Recapitulation
WE can now perhaps understand why the ancients identified Hippolytus,
the consort of Artemis, with Virbius, who, according to Servius, stood
to Diana as Adonis to Venus, or Attis to the Mother of the Gods. For
Diana, like Artemis, was a goddess of fertility in general, and of
childbirth in particular. As such she, like her Greek counterpart,
needed a male partner. That partner, if Servius is right, was Virbius.
In his character of the founder of the sacred grove and first king of
Nemi, Virbius is clearly the mythical predecessor or archetype of the
line of priests who served Diana under the title of Kings of the Wood,
and who came, like him, one after the other, to a violent end. It is
natural, therefore, to conjecture that they stood to the goddess of
the grove in the same relation in which Virbius stood to her; in
short, that the mortal King of the Wood had for his queen the woodland
Diana herself. If the sacred tree which he guarded with his life was
supposed, as seems probable, to be her special embodiment, her priest
may not only have worshipped it as his goddess but embraced it as his
wife. There is at least nothing absurd in the supposition, since even
in the time of Pliny a noble Roman used thus to treat a beautiful
beech-tree in another sacred grove of Diana on the Alban hills. He
embraced it, he kissed it, he lay under its shadow, he poured wine on
its trunk. Apparently he took the tree for the goddess. The custom of
physically marrying men and women to trees is still practised in India
and other parts of the East. Why should it not have obtained in
ancient Latium?
Reviewing the evidence as a whole, we may conclude that the worship of
Diana in her sacred grove at Nemi was of great importance and
immemorial antiquity; that she was revered as the goddess of woodlands
and of wild creatures, probably also of domestic cattle and of the
fruits of the earth; that she was believed to bless men and women with
offspring and to aid mothers in childbed; that her holy fire, tended
by chaste virgins, burned perpetually in a round temple within the
precinct; that associated with her was a water-nymph Egeria who
discharged one of Diana's own functions by succouring women in
travail, and who was popularly supposed to have mated with an old
Roman king in the sacred grove; further, that Diana of the Wood
herself had a male companion Virbius by name, who was to her what
Adonis was to Venus, or Attis to Cybele; and, lastly, that this
mythical Virbius was represented in historical times by a line of
priests known as Kings of the Wood, who regularly perished by the
swords of their successors, and whose lives were in a manner bound up
with a certain tree in the grove, because so long as that tree was
uninjured they were safe from attack.
Clearly these conclusions do not of themselves suffice to explain the
peculiar rule of succession to the priesthood. But perhaps the survey
of a wider field may lead us to think that they contain in germ the
solution of the problem. To that wider survey we must now address
ourselves. It will be long and laborious, but may possess something of
the interest and charm of a voyage of discovery, in which we shall
visit many strange foreign lands, with strange foreign peoples, and
still stranger customs. The wind is in the shrouds: we shake out our
sails to it, and leave the coast of Italy behind us for a time.
II. Priestly Kings
THE questions which we have set ourselves to answer are mainly two:
first, why had Diana's priest at Nemi, the King of the Wood, to slay
his predecessor? second, why before doing so had he to pluck the
branch of a certain tree which the public opinion of the ancients
identified with Virgil's Golden Bough?
The first point on which we fasten is the priest's title. Why was he
called the King of the Wood? Why was his office spoken of as a
kingdom?
The union of a royal title with priestly duties was common in ancient
Italy and Greece. At Rome and in other cities of Latium there was a
priest called the Sacrificial King or King of the Sacred Rites, and
his wife bore the title of Queen of the Sacred Rites. In republican
Athens the second annual magistrate of the state was called the King,
and his wife the Queen; the functions of both were religious. Many
other Greek democracies had titular kings, whose duties, so far as
they are known, seem to have been priestly, and to have centered round
the Common Hearth of the state. Some Greek states had several of these
titular kings, who held office simultaneously. At Rome the tradition
was that the Sacrificial King had been appointed after the abolition
of the monarchy in order to offer the sacrifices which before had been
offered by the kings. A similar view as to the origin of the priestly
kings appears to have prevailed in Greece. In itself the opinion is
not improbable, and it is borne out by the example of Sparta, almost
the only purely Greek state which retained the kingly form of
government in historical times. For in Sparta all state sacrifices
were offered by the kings as descendants of the god. One of the two
Spartan kings held the priesthood of Zeus Lacedaemon, the other the
priesthood of Heavenly Zeus.
This combination of priestly functions with royal authority is
familiar to every one. Asia Minor, for example, was the seat of
various great religious capitals peopled by thousands of sacred
slaves, and ruled by pontiffs who wielded at once temporal and
spiritual authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome. Such
priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pessinus. Teutonic kings, again, in
the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and to have
exercised the powers, of high priests. The Emperors of China offered
public sacrifices, the details of which were regulated by the ritual
books. The King of Madagascar was high-priest of the realm. At the
great festival of the new year, when a bullock was sacrificed for the
good of the kingdom, the king stood over the sacrifice to offer prayer
and thanksgiving, while his attendants slaughtered the animal. In the
monarchical states which still maintain their independence among the
Gallas of Eastern Africa, the king sacrifices on the mountain tops and
regulates the immolation of human victims; and the dim light of
tradition reveals a similar union of temporal and spiritual power, of
royal and priestly duties, in the kings of that delightful region of
Central America whose ancient capital, now buried under the rank
growth of the tropical forest, is marked by the stately and mysterious
ruins of Palenque.
When we have said that the ancient kings were commonly priests also,
we are far from having exhausted the religious aspect of their office.
In those days the divinity that hedges a king was no empty form of
speech, but the expression of a sober belief. Kings were revered, in
many cases not merely as priests, that is, as intercessors between man
and god, but as themselves gods, able to bestow upon their subjects
and worshippers those blessings which are commonly supposed to be
beyond the reach of mortals, and are sought, if at all, only by prayer
and sacrifice offered to superhuman and invisible beings. Thus kings
are often expected to give rain and sunshine in due season, to make
the crops grow, and so on. Strange as this expectation appears to us,
it is quite of a piece with early modes of thought. A savage hardly
conceives the distinction commonly drawn by more advanced peoples
between the natural and the supernatural. To him the world is to a
great extent worked by supernatural agents, that is, by personal
beings acting on impulses and motives like his own, liable like him to
be moved by appeals to their pity, their hopes, and their fears. In a
world so conceived he sees no limit to his power of influencing the
course of nature to his own advantage. Prayers, promises, or threats
may secure him fine weather and an abundant crop from the gods; and if
a god should happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate in
his own person, then he need appeal to no higher being; he, the
savage, possesses in himself all the powers necessary to further his
own well-being and that of his fellow-men.
This is one way in which the idea of a man-god is reached. But there
is another. Along with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual
forces, savage man has a different, and probably still older,
conception in which we may detect a germ of the modern notion of
natural law or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in
an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency. The
germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic magic, as it may
be called, which plays a large part in most systems of superstition.
In early society the king is frequently a magician as well as a
priest; indeed he appears to have often attained to power by virtue of
his supposed proficiency in the black or white art. Hence in order to
understand the evolution of the kingship and the sacred character with
which the office has commonly been invested in the eyes of savage or
barbarous peoples, it is essential to have some acquaintance with the
principles of magic and to form some conception of the extraordinary
hold which that ancient system of superstition has had on the human
mind in all ages and all countries. Accordingly I propose to consider
the subject in some detail.
III. Sympathetic Magic
1. The Principles of Magic
IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they
will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that
like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and,
second, that things which have once been in contact with each other
continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact
has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of
Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first
of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers
that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from
the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will
affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact,
whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of
Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based
on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic. To
denote the first of these branches of magic the term Homoeopathic is
perhaps preferable, for the alternative term Imitative or Mimetic
suggests, if it does not imply, a conscious agent who imitates,
thereby limiting the scope of magic too narrowly. For the same
principles which the magician applies in the practice of his art are
implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate
nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of Similarity
and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to human
actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well
as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an
abortive art. Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a
statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events
throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic: regarded as
a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compass their
ends, it may be called Practical Magic. At the same time it is to be
borne in mind that the primitive magician knows magic only on its
practical side; he never analyses the mental processes on which his
practice is based, never reflects on the abstract principles involved
in his actions. With him, as with the vast majority of men, logic is
implicit, not explicit: he reasons just as he digests his food in
complete ignorance of the intellectual and physiological processes
which are essential to the one operation and to the other. In short,
to him magic is always an art, never a science; the very idea of
science is lacking in his undeveloped mind. It is for the philosophic
student to trace the train of thought which underlies the magician's
practice; to draw out the few simple threads of which the tangled
skein is composed; to disengage the abstract principles from their
concrete applications; in short, to discern the spurious science
behind the bastard art.
If my analysis of the magician's logic is correct, its two great
principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications of the
association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on the association
of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association
of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of
assuming that things which resemble each other are the same:
contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which
have once been in contact with each other are always in contact. But
in practice the two branches are often combined; or, to be more exact,
while homoeopathic or imitative magic may be practised by itself,
contagious magic will generally be found to involve an application of
the homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus generally stated the two
things may be a little difficult to grasp, but they will readily
become intelligible when they are illustrated by particular examples.
Both trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It
could hardly be otherwise, since they are familiar in the concrete,
though certainly not in the abstract, to the crude intelligence not
only of the savage, but of ignorant and dull-witted people everywhere.
Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and the contagious, may
conveniently be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic
Magic, since both assume that things act on each other at a distance
through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to
the other by means of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible
ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a
precisely similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can
physically affect each other through a space which appears to be
empty.