Chapter III: (continued) (7)

Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of a whole community is an animal or scapegoat. In the Central Provinces of India, when cholera breaks out in a village, every one retires after sunset to his house. The priests then parade the streets, taking from the roof of each house a straw, which is burnt with an offering of rice, _ghi_, and turmeric, at some shrine to the east of the village. Chickens daubed with vermilion are driven away in the direction of the smoke, and are believed to carry the disease with them. If they fail, goats are tried, and last of all pigs.(525) When cholera is very bad among the Bhárs, Malláns, and Kurmís of India, they take a goat or a buffalo—in either case the animal must be a female, and as black as possible—then they tie some grain, cloves, and red lead in a yellow cloth on its back, and turn it out of the village. It is conducted beyond the boundary, and is not allowed to return.(526) The people of the city and cantonments of Sagar being afflicted with a violent influenza, “I had an application from the old Queen Dowager of Sagar to allow of a noisy religious procession, for the purpose of imploring deliverance from this great calamity. Men, women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost to add to the noise by ’raising their voices in psalmody,’ beating upon their brass pots and pans with all their might, and discharging firearms where they could get them. Before the noisy crowd was to be driven a buffalo, which had been purchased by general subscription, in order that every family might participate in the merit. They were to follow it out eight miles, where it was to be turned loose for any man who would take it. If the animal returned the disease must return with it, and the ceremony be performed over again.... It was, however, subsequently determined that the animal should be a goat; and he was driven before the crowd accordingly. I have on several occasions been requested to allow of such noisy ceremonies in cases of epidemics.”(527) Once, when influenza was raging in Pithuria, a man had a small carriage made, after a plan of his own, for a pair of scapegoats, which were harnessed to it and driven to a wood at some distance, where they were let loose. From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats never returned; had they done so, “the disease must have come back with them.”(528) The idea of the scapegoat is not uncommon in the hills of the Eastern Ghats. In 1886, during a severe outbreak of small-pox, the people of Jeypur made “puja” to a goat, marched it to the Ghats, and let it loose on the plains.(529) In Southern Konkan, on the appearance of cholera, the villagers went in procession from the temple to the extreme boundaries of the village, carrying a basket of cooked rice covered with red powder, a wooden doll representing the pestilence, and a cock. The head of the cock was cut off at the village boundary, and the body was thrown away. When cholera was thus transferred from one village to another, the second village observed the same ceremony and passed on the scourge to its neighbours, and so on through a number of villages.(530) When the Aymara Indians were suffering from a plague, they loaded a llama with the clothes of the plague-stricken people, and drove the animal into the mountains, hoping that it would take the plague away with it.(531) Sometimes the scapegoat is a man. Some of the aboriginal tribes of China, as a protection against pestilence, select a man of great muscular strength to act the part of scapegoat. Having besmeared his face with paint, he performs many antics with the view of enticing all pestilential and noxious influences to attach themselves to him only. He is assisted by a priest. Finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and women beating gongs and tom-toms, is driven with great haste out of the town or village.(532) A Hindu cure for the murrain is to hire a man of the Chamár caste, turn his face away from the village, brand him with a red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle, taking the murrain with him. He must not look back.(533)

The mediate expulsion of evils by means of a scapegoat or other material vehicle, like the immediate expulsion of them in invisible form, tends to become periodic, and for a like reason. Thus every year, generally in March, the people of Leti, Moa, and Lakor send away all their diseases to sea. They make a prao about six feet long, rig it with sails, oars, rudder, etc., and every family deposits in it some rice, fruit, a fowl, two eggs, insects that ravage the fields, etc. Then they let it drift away to sea, saying, “Take away from here all kinds of sickness, take them to other islands, to other lands, distribute them in places that lie eastward, where the sun rises.”(534) The Biajas of Borneo annually send to sea a little bark laden with the sins and misfortunes of the people. The crew of any ship that falls in with the ill-omened bark at sea will suffer all the sorrows with which it is laden.(535) At the beginning of the dry season, every year, the Nicobar islanders carry the model of a ship through their villages. The devils are chased out of the huts, and driven on board the little ship, which is then launched and suffered to sail away with the wind.(536) At Sucla-Tirtha, in India, an earthen pot containing the accumulated sins of the people is (annually?) set adrift on the river. Legend says that the custom originated with a wicked priest who, after atoning for his guilt by a course of austerities and expiatory ceremonies, was directed to sail upon the river in a boat with white sails. If the white sails turned black, it would be a sign that his sins were forgiven him. They did so, and he joyfully allowed the boat to drift with his sins to sea.(537) Amongst many of the aboriginal tribes of China, a great festival is celebrated in the third month of every year. It is held by way of a general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total annihilation of the ills of the past twelve months. This annihilation is supposed to be effected in the following way. A large earthenware jar filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits of iron is buried in the earth. A train of gunpowder, communicating with the jar, is then laid; and a match being applied, the jar and its contents are blown up. The stones and bits of iron represent the ills and disasters of the past year, and the dispersion of them by the explosion is believed to remove the ills and disasters themselves. The festival is attended with much revelling and drunkenness.(538) At Old Calabar, in Guinea, the devils are expelled once every two years. A number of figures called _nabikems_ are made of sticks and bamboos, and fixed indiscriminately about the town. Some of them represent human beings, others birds, crocodiles, and so on. After three or four weeks the devils are expected to take up their abode in these figures. When the night comes for their general expulsion, the people feast and sally out in parties, beating at empty corners, and shouting with all their might. Shots are fired, the _nabikems_ are torn up with violence, set in flames, and flung into the river. The orgies last till daybreak, and the town is considered to be rid of evil influences for two years to come.(539) Mr. George Bogle, the English envoy sent to Tibet by Warren Hastings, witnessed the celebration of the Tibetan New Year’s Day at Teshu Lumbo the capital of the Teshu Lama. “The figure of a man, chalked upon paper, was laid upon the ground. Many strange ceremonies, which to me who did not understand them appeared whimsical, were performed about it; and a great fire being kindled in a corner of the court, it was at length held over it, and being formed of combustibles, vanished with much smoke and explosion. I was told it was a figure of the devil.”(540)

On one day of the year some of the people of the Western Himalayas take a dog, intoxicate him with spirits and bhang or hemp, and having fed him with sweetmeats, lead him round the village and let him loose. They then chase and kill him with sticks and stones, and believe that, when they have done so, no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the year.(541) In some parts of Breadalbane it was formerly the custom on New Year’s Day to take a dog to the door, give him a bit of bread, and drive him out, saying, “Get away you dog! Whatever death of men, or loss of cattle would happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it all light on your head!”(542) It appears that the white dogs annually sacrificed by the Iroquois at their New Year Festival are, or have been, regarded as scapegoats. According to Mr. J. V. H. Clark, who witnessed the ceremony in January 1841, on the first day of the festival all the fires in the village were extinguished, the ashes scattered to the winds, and a new fire was kindled with flint and steel. On a subsequent day, men dressed in fantastic costumes went round the village, gathering the sins of the people. On the morning of the last day of the festival, two white dogs, decorated with red paint, wampum, feathers, and ribbons were led out. They were soon strangled, and hung on a ladder. Firing and yelling succeeded, and half an hour later the dogs were taken into a house, “where the peoples’ sins were transferred to them.” The dogs were afterwards burnt on a pyre of wood.(543) According to the Rev. Mr. Kirkland, who wrote last century, the ashes of the pyre upon which one of the white dogs was burned were carried through the village and sprinkled at the door of every house.(544) Formerly, however, as we have seen, the Iroquois expulsion of evils was immediate and not by scapegoat.(545) The Jews annually laid all the sins of the people upon the head of a goat and sent it away into the wilderness.(546)

The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid, may also be a human being. At Onitsha, on the Quorra River, two human beings are annually sacrificed to take away the sins of the land. The victims are purchased by public subscription. All persons who, during the past year, have fallen into gross sins, such as incendiarism, theft, adultery, witchcraft, etc. are expected to contribute 28 _ngugas_, or a little over £2. The money thus collected is taken into the interior of the country and expended in the purchase of two sickly persons “to be offered as a sacrifice for all these abominable crimes—one for the land and one for the river.” A man from a neighbouring town is hired to put them to death. The sacrifice of one of these victims was witnessed by the Rev. J. C. Taylor on 27th February 1858. The sufferer was a woman, about nineteen or twenty years of age. She was dragged alive along the ground, face downwards, from the king’s house to the river, a distance of two miles. The crowds who accompanied her cried “Wickedness! wickedness!” The intention was “to take away the iniquities of the land. The body was dragged along in a merciless manner, as if the weight of all their wickedness was thus carried away.”(547) In Siam it was formerly the custom on one day of the year to single out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter through all the streets to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob insulted her and pelted her with dirt; and after having carried her through the whole city, they threw her on a dunghill or a hedge of thorns outside the ramparts, forbidding her ever to enter the walls again. They believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil spirits.(548) The people of Nias offer either a red horse or a buffalo as a public sacrifice to purify the land and obtain the favour of the gods. Formerly, it is said, a man was bound to the same stake as the buffalo, and when the animal was killed, the man was driven away; no one might receive him, converse with him, or give him food.(549) Doubtless he was supposed to carry away the sins and misfortunes of the people.

In Tibet the ceremony of the scapegoat is marked by some peculiar features. The Tibetan New Year begins with the new moon, which appears about 15th February. For twenty-three days afterwards the government of Lhásá, the capital, is taken out of the hands of the ordinary rulers and entrusted to the monk of the Debang monastery who offers to pay the highest sum for the privilege. The successful bidder is called the Jalno, and he announces the fact in person through the streets of Lhásá, bearing a silver stick. Monks from all the neighbouring monasteries and temples assemble to pay him homage. The Jalno exercises his authority in the most arbitrary manner for his own benefit, as all the fines which he exacts are his by purchase. The profit he makes is about ten times the amount of the purchase money. His men go about the streets in order to discover any conduct on the part of the inhabitants that can be found fault with. Every house in Lhásá is taxed at this time, and the slightest fault is punished with unsparing rigour by fines. This severity of the Jalno drives all working classes out of the city till the twenty-three days are over. Meantime, all the priests flock from the neighbourhood to the Máchindránáth temple, where they perform religious ceremonies. The temple is a very large one, standing in the centre of the city, surrounded by bazaars and shops. The idols in it are richly inlaid with gold and precious stones. Twenty-four days after the Jalno has ceased to have authority, he assumes it again, and for ten days acts in the same arbitrary manner as before. On the first of the ten days the priests assemble as before at the Máchindránáth temple, pray to the gods to prevent sickness and other evils among the people, “and, as a peace-offering, sacrifice one man. The man is not killed purposely, but the ceremony he undergoes often proves fatal.(550) Grain is thrown against his head, and his face is painted half white, half black.” On the tenth day, all the troops in Lhásá march to the temple and form in line before it. The victim is brought forth from the temple and receives small donations from the assembled multitude. He then throws dice with the Jalno. If the victim wins, much evil is foreboded; but if the Jalno wins, there is great rejoicing, for it is then believed that the victim has been accepted by the gods to bear all the sins of the people of Lhásá. Thereupon his face is painted half white and half black, a leathern coat is put on him, and he is marched to the walls of the city, followed by the whole populace, hooting, shouting, and firing volleys after him. When he is driven outside the city, the people return, and the victim is carried to the Sáme monastery. Should he die shortly afterwards, the people say it is an auspicious sign; but if not, he is kept a prisoner at the monastery for a whole year, after which he is allowed to return to Lhásá.(551)

Human scapegoats, as we shall see presently, were well known in classical antiquity, and even in mediæval Europe the custom seems not to have been wholly extinct. In the town of Halberstadt in Thüringen there was a church which was said to have been founded by Charlemagne. In this church every year a man was chosen, who was believed to be stained with heinous sins. On the first day of Lent he was brought to the church, dressed in mourning garb, with his head muffled up. At the close of the service he was turned out of the church. During the forty days of Lent he perambulated the city barefoot, neither entering the churches nor speaking to any one. The canons took it in turn to feed him. After midnight he was allowed to sleep on the streets. On the day before Good Friday, after the consecration of the holy oil, he was readmitted to the church and absolved from his sins. The people gave him money. He was called Adam, and was now believed to be in a state of innocence.(552) At Entlebuch in Switzerland, down to the close of last century, the custom of annually expelling a scapegoat was preserved in the ceremony of driving “Posterli” from the village into the lands of the neighbouring village. “Posterli” was represented by a lad disguised as an old witch or as a goat or an ass. Amid a deafening noise of horns, clarionets, bells, whips, etc. he was driven out. Sometimes “Posterli” was represented by a puppet, which was drawn in a sledge and left in a corner of the neighbouring village. The ceremony took place on the Thursday evening of the last week but one before Christmas.(553)

Sometimes the scapegoat is a divine animal. The people of Malabar share the Hindu reverence for the cow, to kill and eat which “they esteem to be a crime as heinous as homicide or wilful murder.” Nevertheless “the Bramans transfer the sins of the people into one or more Cows, which are then carry’d away, both the Cows and the Sins wherewith these Beasts are charged, to what place the Braman shall appoint.”(554) When the ancient Egyptians sacrificed a bull, they invoked upon its head all the evils that might otherwise befall themselves and the land of Egypt, and thereupon they either sold the bull’s head to the Greeks or cast it into the river.(555) Now, it cannot be said that in the times known to us the Egyptians worshipped bulls in general, for they seem to have commonly killed and eaten them.(556) But a good many circumstances point to the conclusion that originally all cattle, bulls as well as cows, were held sacred by the Egyptians. For not only were all cows esteemed holy by them and never sacrificed, but even bulls might not be sacrificed unless they had certain natural marks; a priest examined every bull before it was sacrificed; if it had the proper marks, he put his seal on the animal in token that it might be sacrificed; and if a man sacrificed a bull which had not been sealed, he was put to death. Moreover, the worship of the black bulls Apis and Mnevis, especially the former, played an important part in Egyptian religion; all bulls that died a natural death were carefully buried in the suburbs of the cities, and their bones were afterwards collected from all parts of Egypt and buried in a single spot; and at the sacrifice of a bull in the great rites of Isis all the worshippers beat their breasts and mourned.(557) On the whole, then, we are perhaps entitled to infer that bulls were originally, as cows were always, esteemed sacred by the Egyptians, and that the slain bull upon whose head they laid the misfortunes of the people was once a divine scapegoat. It seems not improbable that the lamb annually slain by the Madis of Central Africa is a divine scapegoat, and the same supposition may partly explain the Zuni sacrifice of the turtle.(558)

Lastly, the scapegoat may be a divine man. Thus, in November the Gonds of India worship Ghansyam Deo, the protector of the crops, and at the festival the god himself is said to descend on the head of one of the worshippers, who is suddenly seized with a kind of fit and, after staggering about, rushes off into the jungle, where it is believed that, if left to himself, he would die mad. As it is, he is brought back, but does not recover his senses for one or two days. “The idea is, that one man is thus singled out as a scapegoat for the sins of the rest of the village.”(559) In the temple of the Moon the Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves, of whom many were inspired and prophesied. When one of these men exhibited more than usual symptoms of inspiration and wandered solitary up and down the woods, like the Gond in the jungle, the high priest had him bound with a sacred chain and maintained him in luxury for a year. At the end of the year he was anointed with unguents and led forth to be sacrificed. A man whose business it was to slay these human victims and to whom practice had given dexterity, advanced from the crowd and thrust a sacred spear into the victim’s side, piercing his heart. From the manner in which the slain man fell, omens were drawn as to the welfare of the commonwealth. Then the body was carried to a certain spot where all the people stood upon it as a purificatory ceremony.(560) This last circumstance clearly indicates that the sins of the people were transferred to the victim, just as the Jewish priest transferred the sins of the people to the scapegoat by laying his hand on the animal’s head; and since the man was believed to be possessed by the divine spirit, we have here an undoubted example of a man-god slain to take away the sins and misfortunes of the people.

The foregoing survey of the custom of publicly expelling the accumulated evils of a village or district suggests a few general observations. In the first place, it will not be disputed that what I have called the immediate and the mediate expulsions of evil are identical in intention; in other words, that whether the evils are conceived of as invisible or as embodied in a material form, is a circumstance entirely subordinate to the main object of the ceremony, which is simply to effect a total clearance of all the ills that have been infesting a people. If any link were wanting to connect the two kinds of expulsion, it would be furnished by such a practice as that of sending the evils away in a boat. For here, on the one hand, the evils are invisible and intangible; and, on the other hand, there is a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away. And a scapegoat is nothing more than such a vehicle.

In the second place, when a general clearance of evils is resorted to periodically, the interval between the celebrations of the ceremony is commonly a year, and the time of year when the ceremony takes place usually coincides with some well-marked change of season—such as the close of winter in the arctic and temperate zones, and the beginning or end of the rainy season in the tropics. The increased mortality which such climatic changes are apt to produce, especially amongst ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed savages, is set down by primitive man to the agency of demons, who must accordingly be expelled. Hence, in New Britain and Peru, the devils are or were driven out at the beginning of the rainy season. When a tribe has taken to agriculture, the time for the general expulsion of devils is naturally made to agree with one of the great epochs of the agricultural year, as sowing or harvest; but, as these epochs themselves often coincide with changes of season, it does not follow that the transition from the hunting or pastoral to the agricultural life involves any alteration in the time of celebrating this great annual rite. Some of the agricultural communities of India and the Hindoo Koosh, as we have seen, hold their general clearance of demons at harvest, others at sowing-time. But, at whatever season of the year it is held, the general expulsion of devils commonly marks the beginning of the new year. For, before entering on a new year, people are anxious to rid themselves of the troubles that have harassed them in the past; hence the fact that amongst so many people—Iroquois, Tonquinese, Siamese, Tibetans, etc.—the beginning of the new year is inaugurated with a solemn and public banishment of evil spirits.

In the third place, it is to be observed that this public and periodic expulsion of devils is commonly preceded or followed by a period of general licence, during which the ordinary restraints of society are thrown aside, and all offences, short of the gravest, are allowed to pass unpunished. In Guinea and Tonquin the period of licence precedes the public expulsion of demons; and the suspension of the ordinary government in Lhásá previous to the expulsion of the scapegoat is perhaps a relic of a similar period of universal licence. Amongst the Hos the period of licence follows the expulsion of the devil. Amongst the Iroquois it hardly appears whether it preceded or followed the banishment of evils. In any case, the extraordinary relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct on such occasions is doubtless to be explained by the general clearance of evils which precedes or follows it. On the one hand, when a general riddance of evil and absolution from all sin is in immediate prospect, men are encouraged to give the rein to their passions, trusting that the coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast. On the other hand, when the ceremony has just taken place, men’s minds are freed from the oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy they overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality. When the ceremony takes place at harvest-time, the elation of feeling which it excites is further stimulated by the state of physical wellbeing produced by an abundant supply of food.(561)

Fourthly, the employment of a divine man or animal as a scapegoat is especially to be noted; indeed, we are here directly concerned with the custom of banishing evils only in so far as these evils are believed to be transferred to a god who is afterwards slain. It may be suspected that the custom of employing a divine man or animal as a public scapegoat is much more widely diffused than appears from the examples cited. For, as has already been pointed out, the custom of killing a god dates from so early a period of human history that in later ages, even when the custom continues to be practised, it is liable to be misinterpreted. The divine character of the animal or man is forgotten, and he comes to be regarded merely as an ordinary victim. This is especially likely to be the case when it is a divine man who is killed. For when a nation becomes civilised, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such criminals as would be put to death at any rate. Thus, as in the Sacaean festival at Babylon, the killing of a god may come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal.

If we ask why a dying god should be selected to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrows of the people, it may be suggested that in the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat we have a combination of two customs which were at one time distinct and independent. On the one hand we have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age. On the other hand we have seen that it has been customary to have a general expulsion of evils and sins once a year. Now, if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god as a scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away sin, but to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but, since he had to be killed at any rate, people may have thought that they might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sins, in order that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.

The use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity which, as we saw, appeared to hang about the European folk-custom of “carrying out Death.”(562) Grounds have been shown for believing that in this ceremony the so-called Death was originally the spirit of vegetation, who was annually slain in spring, in order that he might come to life again with all the vigour of youth. But, as we saw, there are certain features in the ceremony which are not explicable on this hypothesis alone. Such are the marks of joy with which the effigy of Death is carried out to be buried or burnt, and the fear and abhorrence of it manifested by the bearers. But these features become at once intelligible if we suppose that the Death was not merely the dying god of vegetation, but also a public scapegoat, upon whom were laid all the evils that had afflicted the people during the past year. Joy on such an occasion is natural and appropriate; and if the dying god appears to be the object of that fear and abhorrence which are properly due not to himself, but to the sins and misfortunes with which he is laden, this arises merely from the difficulty of distinguishing or at least of marking the distinction between the bearer and the burden. When the burden is of a baleful character, the bearer of it will be feared and shunned just as much as if he were himself instinct with those dangerous properties of which, as it happens, he is only the vehicle. Similarly we have seen that disease-laden and sin-laden boats are dreaded and shunned by East Indian peoples.(563) Again, the view that in these popular customs the Death is a scapegoat as well as a representative of the divine spirit of vegetation derives some support from the circumstance that its expulsion is always celebrated in spring and chiefly by Slavonic peoples. For the Slavonic year began in spring;(564) and thus, in one of its aspects, the ceremony of “carrying out Death” would be an example of the widespread custom of expelling the accumulated evils of the past year before entering on a new one.

We are now prepared to notice the use of the 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 Veturius,(565) that is, “the old Mars,”(566) and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year (which began on 1st 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 of vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of his corn and his vines, his fruit-trees and his copses;(567) it was to Mars that the priestly college of the Arval Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops,(568) addressed their petitions almost exclusively;(569) and it was to Mars, as we saw,(570) that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars, under his title of “Mars of the woods” (_Mars Silvanus_) that farmers offered sacrifice for the welfare of their cattle.(571) We have already seen that cattle are commonly supposed to be under the special patronage of tree-gods.(572) Once more, the fact that the vernal month of March was dedicated 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 Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of vegetation.(573) It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised 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 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, Mamurius Veturius appears to have been driven away to the land of the Oscans, the enemies of Rome.(574)

The ancient Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat. At Plutarch’s native town of Chaeronea in Boeotia, there was a ceremony of this kind 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.(575) The ceremony closely resembles the Japanese, Hindoo, and Highland customs already described.(576)

But in civilised Greece the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided. Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was ravaged by a 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, decked 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.(577) 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 outcasts as scapegoats. One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The former wore round his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white figs. Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on behalf of the women was a woman. They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently by being stoned to death outside the city.(578) But such sacrifices were not confined to extraordinary occasions of public calamity; it appears that every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death.(579)

From the Lover’s Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island, the Leucadians 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.(580) Doubtless these humane precautions were a mitigation of an earlier custom of flinging the scapegoat into the sea to drown. The custom of the scapegoat as practised by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the sixth century B.C. 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 by which the city was afflicted. 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. Afterwards he was burned on a pyre constructed of the wood of forest trees; and his ashes were cast into the sea.(581) A similar custom appears to have been annually celebrated by the Asiatic Greeks at the harvest festival of the Thargelia.(582)

In the ritual just described the beating of the victim with squills, branches of the wild fig, etc., 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. Mannhardt.(583) He points out that the ancients attributed to squills a magical power of averting evil influences, and accordingly hung them up at the doors of their houses and made use of them in purificatory rites.(584) Hence the Arcadian custom of beating the image of Pan with squills at a festival or whenever the hunters returned empty-handed,(585) 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 game. Similarly the object of beating the human scapegoat on the genital organs with squills, etc., 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,(586) we must recognise in him a representative of the creative and fertilising 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 vigour, 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.(587) 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 god whose function it was to produce the fruits of the earth. It might be thought 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 vigour into the stagnant energies of nature. On the same principle we can understand why Mamurius Veturius was beaten with rods, why the slave at the Chaeronean ceremony was beaten with the _agnus castus_ (a tree to which magical properties were ascribed),(588) why the effigy of Death in north 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.

The interpretation here given to the custom of beating the human scapegoat with certain plants is supported by many analogies. With the same intention some of the Brazilian Indians beat themselves on the genital organs with an aquatic plant, the white _aninga_, three days before or after the new moon.(589) We have already had examples of the custom of beating sick people with the leaves of certain plants or with branches in order to rid them of the noxious influences.(590) At the autumn festival in Peru people used to strike each other with torches saying, “Let all harm go away.”(591) Indians of the Quixos, in South America, before they set out on a long hunting expedition, cause their wives to whip them with nettles, believing that this renders them fleeter and helps them to overtake the peccaries. They resort to the same proceeding as a cure for sickness.(592) At Mowat in New Guinea small boys are beaten lightly with sticks during December “to make them grow strong and hardy.”(593) In Central Europe a similar custom is very commonly observed in spring. On the 1st of March the Albanians strike men and beasts with cornel branches, believing that this is very good for their health.(594) On Good Friday and the two previous days people in Croatia and Slavonia take rods with them to church, and when the service is over they beat each other “fresh and healthy.”(595) In some parts of Russia people returning from the church on Palm Sunday beat the children and servants who have stayed at home with palm branches, saying, “Sickness into the forest, health into the bones.”(596) In Germany the custom is widely known as _Schmeckostern_, being observed at Eastertide. People beat each other, especially with fresh green twigs of the birch. The beating is supposed to bring good luck; the person beaten will, it is believed, be free of vermin during the summer, or will have no pains in his back or his legs for a year.(597)

If the view here taken of the Greek scapegoat is correct, it obviates an objection which might otherwise be brought against the main argument of this chapter. To the theory that the priest of Nemi 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 was regularly treated as an embodiment of a divinity. Probably the persons whom the Athenians kept to be sacrificed were similarly treated as divine. That they were social outcasts did not matter. On the primitive view a man is not chosen to be the mouth-piece or embodiment of a god on account of his high moral qualities or social standing. The divine afflatus descends equally on the good and the bad, the lofty and the lowly. If then the civilised 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 Arician Grove.

§ 16.—Killing the god in Mexico.

But the religion of ancient Mexico, as it was found and described by the Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century, offers perhaps the closest parallels to the rule of the Arician priesthood, as I conceive that rule to have been originally observed. Certainly nowhere does the custom of killing the human representative of a god appear to have been carried out so systematically and on so extensive a scale as in Mexico. “They tooke a captive,” says Acosta, “such as they thought good; and afore they did sacrifice him unto their idolls, they gave him the name of the idoll, to whom hee should be sacrificed, and apparelled him with the same ornaments like their idoll, saying that he did represent the same idoll. And during the time that this representation lasted, which was for a yeere in some feasts, in others six moneths, and in others lesse, they reverenced and worshipped him in the same maner as the proper idoll; and in the meane time he did eate, drincke, and was merry. When hee went through the streetes the people came forth to worship him, and every one brought him an almes, with children and sicke folkes, that he might cure them, and bless them, suffering him to doe all things at his pleasure, onely hee was accompanied with tenne or twelve men lest he should flie. 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 feast being come, and hee growne fatte, they killed him, opened him, and eat him, making a solempne sacrifice of him.”(598) For example, at the annual festival of the great god Tezcatlipoca, which fell about Easter or a few days later, a young man was chosen to be the living image of Tezcatlipoca for a whole year. He had to be of unblemished body, and he was carefully trained to sustain his lofty role with becoming grace and dignity. During the year he was lapped in luxury, and the king himself took care that the future victim was apparelled in gorgeous attire, “for already he esteemed him as a god.” Attended by eight pages clad in the royal livery, the young man roamed the streets of the capital day and night at his pleasure, carrying flowers and playing the flute. All who saw him fell on their knees before him and adored him, and he graciously acknowledged their homage. Twenty days before the festival at which he was to be sacrificed, four damsels, delicately nurtured, and bearing the names of four goddesses, were given him to be his brides. For five days before the sacrifice divine honours were showered on him more abundantly than ever. The king remained in his palace, while the whole court went after the destined victim. Everywhere there were solemn banquets and balls. On the last day the young man, still attended by his pages, was ferried across the lake in a covered barge to a small and lonely temple, which, like the Mexican temples in general, rose in the form of a pyramid. As he ascended the stairs of the temple 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 on a block of stone, while a priest cut open his breast with a stone knife, and plucking out his heart, offered it to the sun. His head was hung among the skulls of previous victims, and his legs and arms were cooked and prepared for the table of the lords. His place was immediately filled up by another young man, who for a year was treated with the same profound respect, and at the end of it shared the same fate.(599)

The idea that the god thus slain in the person of his representative comes to life again immediately, was graphically represented in the Mexican ritual by skinning the slain man-god and clothing in his skin a living man, who thus became the new representative of the godhead. Thus at an annual festival a woman was sacrificed who represented Toci or the Mother of the Gods. She was dressed with the ornaments, and bore the name of the goddess, whose living image she was believed to be. After being feasted and diverted with sham fights for several days, she was taken at midnight to the summit of a temple, and beheaded on the shoulders of a man. The body was immediately flayed, and one of the priests, clothing himself in the skin, became the representative of the goddess Toci. The skin of the woman’s thigh was removed separately, and a young man who represented the god Cinteotl, the son of the goddess Toci, wrapt it round his face like a mask. Various ceremonies then followed, in which the two men, clad in the woman’s skin, played the parts respectively of the god and goddess.(600) Again, at the annual festival of the god Totec, a number of captives having been killed and skinned, a priest clothed himself in one of their skins, and thus became the image of the god Totec. Then wearing the ornaments of the god—a crown of feathers, golden necklaces and ear-rings, scarlet shoes, etc.—he was enthroned, and received offerings of the first fruits and first flowers of the season, together with bunches of the maize which had been kept for seed.(601) Every fourth year the Quauhtitlans offered sacrifices in honour of the god of fire. On the eve of the festival they sacrificed two slaves, skinned them, and took out their thigh bones. Next day two priests clothed themselves in the skins, took the bones in their hands, and with solemn steps and dismal howlings descended the stairs of the temple. The people, who were assembled in crowds below, called out, “Behold, there come our gods.”(602)

Thus it appears that human sacrifices of the sort I suppose to have prevailed at Aricia were, as a matter of fact, systematically offered on a large scale 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 Arician 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 evidence affords a fair presumption that the custom of killing men whom their worshippers regard as divine has prevailed in many parts of the world. Whether the general explanation which I have offered of that custom is adequate, and whether the rule that the priest of Aricia had to die a violent death is, as I have tried to show, a particular instance of the general custom, are questions which I must now leave to the judgment of the reader.