Chapter 9: Why Was the Mock-King of the Sacæa Whipped and Hanged?

Though I have tried to argue against Mr. Frazer’s theory of the cause of the ‘sacrifice’ of the mock Sacæan king, I am not prepared to offer a dogmatic counter-theory. The Sacæan case is unique, is isolated; we are acquainted with no other similar examples, and thus a rite which has an isolated existence may have had a singular cause. The cause may be hidden behind the scenes of history. Though I have not a firm hypothesis as to that cause, I shall end this chapter by throwing out a conjecture, for what it may be worth.

Meanwhile it may be asked why I call the adventure of the Sacæan mock-king ‘isolated and unique.’ Have we not other examples of temporary kings, holding office for three or four days, in a period of festivity and unreason? Certainly we have such kings, but all of them ‘scape whipping and hanging. And none of them was a slave or a criminal. These are not mere verbal, and probably not mere accidental, variations from the solitary Sacæan type. But we have the legend of St. Dasius? Yes, but, accepting the truth of that legend, it rather adds to than diminishes the difficulty of getting a clue to the origin of the Sacæan mock-king and his doom. Let us tabulate the facts:

A. SACÆA B. SATURNALIA

1. A condemned criminal. 1. A freeman selected by lot.

2. King of a thirty days’ revel. 2. King of a five days’ revel.

3. Is stripped and scourged. 3. Is not stripped or scourged.

4. Is hanged. 4. Is sacrificed at the altar of

Saturn; or sacrifices himself.

5. Is guessed to represent (a) a 5. Represents Saturn. Tammuz god, or (b) the king of Babylon; or both.

6. Has a pseudo-resurrection. 6. Has no known

pseudo-resurrection.

7. Lies with (a) the royal 7. Does not lie with royal concubines, (b) with a sacred concubines or with a sacred harlot. harlot.

8. In a period of topsy-turvy 8. In a period of topsy-turvy licence to slaves and free. licence to slaves and free.

9. Which is supposed to 9. Which is supposed to commemorate a victory over the commemorate the Golden Age of Sacæ. Saturn.

Under A, number 5--the item that the Sacæan mock-king represents the king of Babylon, or Tammuz, or both--number 6, the mock-king’s pseudo-resurrection, and number 7 (6), his amour with the sacred harlot, are all conjectures of Mr. Frazer’s. The real points of resemblance between the Sacæan and the Mœsian victim are (1) their mockery of royalty, (2) their death, occurring in very different circumstances, (3) during a period of licence, including the pretence of lordship by slaves in each household at Babylon; by free men at Rome.

The points of difference are numerous and essential, and the dates and durations of the Babylonian and Roman festivals vary widely.

Thus, I think, the Sacæan and Mœsian cases do not explain the meaning of what is a religious rite in Mœsia: a secular custom (as I believe) in Babylon. Again, the differences make it hard to conjecture, with MM. Cumont and Parmentier, that the Mœsian rite was introduced by Oriental soldiers of Rome, accustomed to the Babylonian Sacæa. But to suppose a native Roman survival or recrudescence is also difficult, because Greek and Roman poets, historians, antiquaries, and essayists, all writing on the Saturnalia, know of no such survival. Again, if originally Italian mock-kings were sacrificed yearly in many places, did they die as proxies for real local Italian kings, who would otherwise have been sacrificed? This, as we have seen, is impossible: men would never have accepted the crown on such conditions. Or did they die, like the Mexican victims, as man-gods slain for a real god Saturn? But the Mexican victim was a captive: free men would hardly draw lots for death.

There is no trace in Roman folk-custom of any mock slaying of the actual Roman Saturnalian kings of the brawls in each household. The Saturnalia were so remote in Lucian’s day from cruelty, that Dickens might have written, as Christmas papers, Lucian’s essays and letters on the subject. Universal kindness--the Scrooges feasting the Trotty Vecks of the period--universal giving of presents, and family games of forfeits and of chance (played for nuts) were the features of the Saturnalia. Wine flowed like water; but as to amorous licence at the Saturnalia, we only hear the complaint of the rich that the poor guests make too free with the ladies of the house.

The connection of the Saturnalia with Saturn, recognised by the Romans as ‘that old savage’ the Greek Cronos, may, or may not, have been original. The Saturnalia were not ‘saturnine.’ Was the theory of a golden age under Saturn not a reflection from the festive period, ‘the best day in the year, ‘ says Catullus, which had become associated with the name of Saturn?

Our evidence for sacrifice or hanging of a mock-king is so meagre and shadowy (in one case the dubious Dasius legend; in the other what Athenæus cites from Berosus, coupled with what Dio puts into the mouth of Diogenes, and with what Strabo tells about the Sacæa) that the ground will not bear the weight of Mr. Frazer’s high-piled, eighteen-storied castle of hypotheses. I do not, even so, absolutely impugn the truth of the two tales of the deaths of mock-kings; the undesigned coincidence of testimony I am willing to take for presumption of truth, though of four ancient witnesses who speak of the Sacæa, only one, Dio, alludes to the crowning, robing, stripping, scourging, and hanging of the mock-king of the festival.[1]

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.

II. THE DIVINE SCAPEGOAT

In many cases, however, at expulsion of the devils, the part of devil is played by a man who is driven away, often he is beaten away. Now I have already said that, by Mr. Frazer’s theory (as I understand it), the mock-king at the Sacæa was ‘sacrificed’ in a double rôle; namely both as the king’s proxy (the king being a god) and also as Tammuz, not to speak of Marduk and Humman. To this, of course, I replied (1) that no case seemed to be given of killing a king yearly to benefit a god; (2) that I could find no case of a king being killed by proxy; (3) that when kings really were killed, it was not annually nor by the infamous death of a malefactor (hanging); (4) that there was no proof of a man being killed as Tammuz; (5) that Tammuz is nowhere said to have been hanged, or crucified, or scourged; (6) that in no case known to me is sacrifice performed by hanging, still less (if possible) by hanging after a whipping. These arguments convince me that Mr. Frazer’s theory (if it is his theory) is unconvincing.

But I am not quite sure that Mr. Frazer really holds his Sacæan victim to have played two parts, at two distinct times of year. Now, however, in connection with human scapegoats, our author does certainly make a victim ‘double a part.’ First, it was usual to kill a beast-god or man-god ‘to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age.’ Next, there were human scapegoats, driven away with all evil on their heads. But, suggests Mr. Frazer, ‘if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god’ (god-man, king, or his proxy) ‘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 sin in order that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.’[12]

Even so, when a Dublin mob was about to throw a man over from the gallery of the theatre, some economist cried, ‘Don’t waste him: kill a fiddler with him’!

As proof that people might reason in this thrifty way we learn that, on March 15, a scapegoat man, called ‘Old Mars, ‘ was beaten at Borne and expelled. Mars, of course, was a god of vegetation, and here the man-god, ‘Old Mars, ‘ is both god and scapegoat. But he is not sacrificed, nor even hanged.[13]

In Athens during plague, drought, or famine two human scapegoats were done to death, and Mr. Frazer infers, but doubtfully, were stoned to death. This also occurred yearly at the Thargelia; the stoning is a conjecture. In Greek cities of Asia Minor, in times of calamity, an ugly or deformed man was made to eat dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese. Then he was beaten seven times in a special manner, with squills and myrtle boughs, was burned, and the ashes were thrown into the sea. The beating at once expelled evil influences and was good for the crops. So in this ugly poor devil ‘we must recognise a representative of the creating and fertilising god of vegetation.’ I really must try to save him from this general doom! These stupid cruelties, if they had the usual agricultural motive, worked magically not religiously, worked by sympathetic magic, not by divine interference. This creature, though supposed to be a god of vegetation, was confessedly in appearance no Adonis![14]

In rejecting the idea that this hideous wretch did duty as a god, Adonis, so fair that he won and so cold that he rejected the love of the golden Aphrodite, I may justify myself by Mr. Frazer’s example. I argue that the deformed victim was, if anything, used in magic, not in religion--not as embodying a god. In the same way Mr. Frazer himself says of the rites of the dying god of vegetation, all over Western Asia, that the ritual was ‘fundamentally a religious, or rather a magical, ceremony.’[15] So was the beating and death of the ugly deformed man (as to whom no evidence hints that he did duty for a god) a merely magical ceremony.