Chapter I: Periods of Licence

How are we to explain the obscure facts? Let us begin with a feature common to the Mœsian event of 303 A.D. and to the Sacæa. Both occur in a period of chartered licence, when slaves play the masters, and all is topsy-turvy. Mr. Frazer has collected many examples of festivals of licence, when laws lose their force.[2] The Roman slaves at the Saturnalia were not even reproved 'for conduct which at any other season might have been punished with stripes, imprisonment, or death.'[3]

Now pass the conjecture that in just one known place, Babylon, the stripes and death for the conduct usually punished with these penalties _were_ inflicted, after the period of licence, on just one person, and you get Dio's case of the mock-king of the Babylonian Sacæa.

Meanwhile observe that there was a Zoganes, or slave-lord, ruling in every Babylonian household, including that of the king. Each Zoganes was royally attired, and bore sway in the dwelling where, except in the five days of licence, he served. But for all that was done in these five days only one man was punished, and he was the king's Zoganes. Athenæus does not mention this; Hesychius is silent; Strabo does not even speak of the lordship of slaves. Our only evidence for the slaying of the king's Zoganes is Dio Chrysostom, putting the anecdote into a feigned discourse of Diogenes. The slaying occurs only in one place, as the Persians had only one king.

Meanwhile let us study in various regions the periods of licence. It seems as if human nature needed an annual 'burst.' Mr. Frazer suggests, as a magical motive, that the farmers thought by swilling and guzzling just before they proceeded to sow the fields that they thereby imparted additional vigour to the seed.[4] In fact, whether men fasted or feasted, were chaste or amorous, in all cases they acted for the benefit of the crops. Be it so, but why should non-agricultural savages have periods of licence? I venture to suggest that the agricultural motive in religion and ritual is at present rather over-worked. It is becoming as common an explanation of custom and belief as the recognition of the sun and the dawn everywhere used to be in mythology. To show that a period of licence with express and purposeful breach of the most sacred laws may exist without an agricultural motive, I shall prove later that it occurs among a non-agricultural set of savages, and, consequently, when found among agricultural peoples, may descend from some non-agricultural motive. Mr. Frazer himself elsewhere assigns a motive, not necessarily agricultural, for these chartered explosions of unlaw.

1. On the Gold Coast the period of licence precedes the annual ceremony of 'banishing the devil.' The season of the year is not given.

2. The feast of licence of the Hos of North-East India is called by Dalton 'a saturnale.' It is held in January, 'when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, are full of devilry.' With prayers for a good new year the devil is beaten out of the bounds.

3. At the similar Mundari festival 'the servants are feasted by their masters.' So far nothing is noted about swilling for the good of the crops; _that_ is not 'an excuse for the glass.'

4. In the Hindoo Koosh a little licence exists at the end of harvest: devils are driven out, and then seed is sown.

5. In Tonquin from January 25 to February 25 was a season of dormant law: 'only treason and murder were taken account of, and the malefactors detained till the great seal should come into operation again.' Then offerings were made to evil spirits, for 'it is usual and customary among them to feast the condemned before their execution.' The devils were then expelled.[5]

6. In Cambodia, after the expulsion of devils (_diabolo-fugium_), gambling is universal.

7. In Nepaul, in October, feasting and drinking occur, and presents are made by masters to slaves. There may be, perhaps, expulsion of devils; for the army fire salutes.[6]

In these cases of licence Mr. Frazer thinks that men rejoice either before the expulsion of devils, because that ceremony will carry off their sins, or after the expulsion, when their minds are at ease.[7] Thus men enjoy these bursts either, by the first hypothesis, to improve the prospects of agriculture; or, on the second theory, because a ceremony will cleanse the sins of the 'burst;' or because a ceremony has freed their minds from fear of devils. When the harvest is just in, then, in fact, men have plenty of food, and, as we saw, are 'full of devilry.' So they play it off. In at least four out of our seven cases fulness of bread and drink appears to me to account for the 'burst.'

This also explains (8) the Zulu licence at the rejoicing for the first fruits, 'a saturnalia, people are not supposed to be responsible for what they say or do.'[8]

9. The same facts mark the Pondo feast of first fruits.[9]

10. In Ashanti the harvest feast is in September. 'During its continuance the grossest licence prevails; theft, intrigue, and assault go unpunished, and both sexes abandon themselves to their passions.'[10] By an extraordinary coincidence, which Mr. Frazer does not quote, 'on the _fifth_ day' of the Ashanti harvest festival 'a criminal is sacrificed,' says Sir A. B. Ellis, 'sent as a messenger to the deceased kings.' Is the criminal attired as a mock-king?

I would venture to suggest, as a conclusion, that people indulge in these lawless excesses not so much to improve the prospects of farming as because they are 'full of devilry,' and that often they are full of devilry because they have ended their labours and are full of meat and drink. _Sine Bacche et Cerere friget Venus._ They therefore permit themselves a regular debauch; ranks are reversed, slaves lord it over their masters, laws are in abeyance; in Tonquin reviving law only takes notice of treason and murder. In Borne, at the Saturnalia, and at Purim among the Jews, however, a kind of Dickensite Christianicy prevailed at the period of licence; also in Persia, at the period called Purdaghân, which Hyde compares to the Sacæa and Purim: as does Lagarde, in writing on Purim.[11]

The reader will have observed that at not one of these many periods of licence, in widely severed regions and grades of civilisation, is a mock-king put to death. Indeed, nobody is put to death, except in Ashanti, and nobody is scourged. Thus, as I remarked before, the case of the mock-king at the Babylonian Sacæa is isolated, as far as our knowledge goes.