In the preceding chapter we saw that a system of sacred prostitution was regularly carried on all over Western Asia, and that both in Phoenicia and in Cyprus the practice was specially associated with the worship of Adonis. As the explanation which I have adopted of the custom has been rejected in favour of another by writers whose opinions are entitled to be treated with respect, I shall devote the present chapter to a further consideration of the subject, and shall attempt to gather, from a closer scrutiny and a wider survey of the field, such evidence as may set the custom and with it the worship of Adonis in a clearer light. At the outset it will be well to examine the alternative theory which has been put forward to explain the facts.

It has been proposed to derive the religious prostitution of Western Asia from a purely secular and precautionary practice of destroying a bride's virginity before handing her over to her husband in order that “the bridegroom's intercourse should be safe from a peril that is much dreaded by men in a certain stage of culture.”184 Among [pg 058] the objections which may be taken to this view are the following:—

(1) The theory fails to account for the deeply religious character of the customs as practised in antiquity all over Western Asia. That religious character appears from the observance of the custom at the sanctuaries of a great goddess, the dedication of the wages of prostitution to her, the belief of the women that they earned her favour by prostituting themselves,185 and the command of a male deity to serve him in this manner.186

(2) The theory fails to account for the prostitution of married women at Heliopolis187 and apparently also at Babylon and Byblus; for in describing the practice at the two latter places our authorities, Herodotus and Lucian, speak only of women, not of virgins.188 In Israel also we know from Hosea that young married women prostituted themselves at the sanctuaries on the hilltops under the shadow of the sacred oaks, poplars, and terebinths.189 The prophet makes no mention of virgins participating in these orgies. They may have done so, but his language does not imply it: he speaks only of “your daughters” and “your daughters-in-law.” The prostitution of married women is wholly inexplicable on the hypothesis here criticized. Yet it can hardly be separated from the prostitution of virgins, which in some places at least was carried on side by side with it.

(3) The theory fails to account for the repeated and professional prostitution of women in Lydia, Pontus, Armenia, and apparently all over Palestine.190 Yet this habitual prostitution can in its turn hardly be separated [pg 059] from the first prostitution in a woman's life. Or are we to suppose that the first act of unchastity is to be explained in one way and all the subsequent acts in quite another? that the first act was purely secular and all the subsequent acts purely religious?

(4) The theory fails to account for the Ḳedeshim (“sacred men”) side by side with the Ḳedeshoth (“sacred women”) at the sanctuaries;191 for whatever the religious functions of these “sacred men” may have been, it is highly probable that they were analogous to those of the “sacred women” and are to be explained in the same way.

(5) On the hypothesis which I am considering we should expect to find the man who deflowers the maid remunerated for rendering a dangerous service; and so in fact we commonly find him remunerated in places where the supposed custom is really practised.192 But in Western Asia it was just the contrary. It was the woman who was paid, not the man; indeed, so well was she paid that in Lydia and Cyprus the girls earned dowries for themselves in this fashion.193 This clearly shows that it was the woman, and not the man, who was believed to render the service. Or are we to suppose that the man had to pay for rendering a dangerous service?194

These considerations seem to prove conclusively that whatever the remote origin of these Western Asiatic customs may have been, they cannot have been observed in historical [pg 060] times from any such motive as is assumed by the hypothesis under discussion. At the period when we have to do with them the customs were to all appearance purely religious in character, and a religious motive must accordingly be found for them. Such a motive is supplied by the theory I have adopted, which, so far as I can judge, adequately explains all the known facts.

At the same time, in justice to the writers whose views I have criticized, I wish to point out that the practice from which they propose to derive the sacred prostitution of Western Asia has not always been purely secular in character. For, in the first place, the agent employed is sometimes reported to be a priest;195 and, in the second place, the sacrifice of virginity has in some places, for example at Rome and in parts of India, been made directly to the image of a male deity.196 The meaning of these practices is very obscure, and in the present state of our ignorance on the subject it is unsafe to build conclusions on them. It is possible that what seems to be a purely secular precaution may be only a degenerate form of a religious rite; and on the other hand it is possible that the religious rite may go back to a purely physical preparation for marriage, such as is still observed among the aborigines of Australia.197 But even if such an [pg 061] historical origin could be established, it would not explain the motives from which the customs described in this volume were practised by the people of Western Asia in historical times. The true parallel to these customs is the sacred prostitution which is carried on to this day by dedicated women in India and Africa. An examination of these modern practices may throw light on the ancient customs.

In India the dancing-girls dedicated to the service of the Tamil temples take the name of deva-dasis, “servants or slaves of the gods,” but in common parlance they are spoken of simply as harlots. Every Tamil temple of note in Southern India has its troop of these sacred women. Their official duties are to dance twice a day, morning and evening, in the temple, to fan the idol with Tibetan ox-tails, to dance and sing before it when it is borne in procession, and to carry the holy light called Kúmbarti. Inscriptions show that in a.d. 1004 the great temple of the Chola king Rajaraja at Tanjore had attached to it four hundred “women of the temple,” who lived at free quarters in the streets round about it and were allowed land free of taxes out of its endowment. From infancy they are trained to dance and sing. In order to obtain a safe delivery expectant mothers will often vow to dedicate their child, if she should prove to be a girl, to the service of God. Among the weavers of Tiru-kalli-kundram, a little town in the Madras Presidency, the eldest daughter of every family is devoted to the temple. Girls thus made over to the deity are formally married, sometimes to the idol, sometimes to a sword, before they enter on their duties; from which it appears that they are often, if not regularly, regarded as the wives of the god.198 [pg 062] Among the Kaikolans, a large caste of Tamil weavers who are spread all over Southern India, at least one girl in every family should be dedicated to the temple service. The ritual, as it is observed at the initiation of one of these girls in Coimbatore, includes “a form of nuptial ceremony. The relations are invited for an auspicious day, and the maternal uncle, or his representative, ties a gold band on the girl's forehead, and, carrying her, places her on a plank before the assembled guests. A Brahman priest recites the mantrams, and prepares the sacred fire (hōmam). The uncle is presented with new cloths by the girl's mother. For the actual nuptials a rich Brahman, if possible, and, if not, a Brahman of more lowly status is invited. A Brahman is called in, as he is next in importance to, and the representative of the idol. It is said that, when the man who is to receive her first favours, joins the girl, a sword must be placed, at least for a few minutes, by her side.” When one of these dancing-girls dies, her body is covered with a new cloth which has been taken for the purpose from the idol, and flowers are supplied from the temple to which she belonged. No worship is performed in the temple until the last rites have been performed over her body, because the idol, being deemed her husband, is held to be in that state of ceremonial pollution common to human mourners which debars him from the offices of religion.199 In Mahratta such a female devotee is called Murli. Common folk believe that from time to time the shadow of the god falls on her and [pg 063] possesses her person. At such times the possessed woman rocks herself to and fro, and the people occasionally consult her as a soothsayer, laying money at her feet and accepting as an oracle the words of wisdom or folly that drop from her lips.200 Nor is the profession of a temple prostitute adopted only by girls. In Tulava, a district of Southern India, any woman of the four highest castes who wearies of her husband or, as a widow and therefore incapable of marriage, grows tired of celibacy, may go to a temple and eat of the rice offered to the idol. Thereupon, if she is a Brahman, she has the right to live either in the temple or outside of its precincts, as she pleases. If she decides to live in it, she gets a daily allowance of rice, and must sweep the temple, fan the idol, and confine her amours to the Brahmans. The male children of these women form a special class called Moylar, but are fond of assuming the title of Stanikas. As many of them as can find employment hang about the temple, sweeping the areas, sprinkling them with cow-dung, carrying torches before the gods, and doing other odd jobs. Some of them, debarred from these holy offices, are reduced to the painful necessity of earning their bread by honest work. The daughters are either brought up to live like their mothers or are given in marriage to the Stanikas. Brahman women who do not choose to live in the temples, and all the women of the three lower castes, cohabit with any man of pure descent, but they have to pay a fixed sum annually to the temple.201

In Travancore a dancing-girl attached to a temple is known as a Dâsî, or Dêvadâsî, or Dêvaratiâl, “a servant of God.” The following account of her dedication and way of life deserves to be quoted because, while it ignores the baser side of her vocation, it brings clearly out the idea of her marriage to the deity. “Marriage in the case of a Dêvaratiâl in its original import is a renunciation of ordinary family life and a consecration to the service of God. With a lady-nurse at a Hospital, or a sister at a Convent, a Dêvadâsî at a Hindu shrine, such as she probably was in the early ages of Hindu [pg 064] spirituality, would have claimed favourable comparison. In the ceremonial of the dedication-marriage of the Dâsî, elements are not wanting which indicate a past quite the reverse of disreputable. The girl to be married is generally from six to eight years in age. The bridegroom is the presiding deity of the local temple. The ceremony is done at his house. The expenses of the celebration are supposed to be partly paid from his funds. To instance the practice at the Suchîndram temple, a Yôga or meeting of the chief functionaries of the temple arranges the preliminaries. The girl to be wedded bathes and goes to the temple with two pieces of cloth, a tâli, betel, areca-nut, etc. These are placed by the priest at the feet of the image. The girl sits with the face towards the deity. The priest kindles the sacred fire and goes through all the rituals of the Tirukkalyânam festival. He then initiates the bride into the Panchâkshara mantra, if in a Saiva temple, and the Ashtâkshara, if in a Vaishnava temple. On behalf of the divine bridegroom, he presents one of the two cloths she has brought as offering and ties the Tâli around her neck. The practice, how old it is not possible to say, is then to take her to her house where the usual marriage festivities are celebrated for four days. As in Brahminical marriages, the Nalunku ceremony, i.e. the rolling of a cocoanut by the bride to the bridegroom and vice versa a number of times to the accompaniment of music, is gone through, the temple priest playing the bridegroom's part. Thenceforth she becomes the wife of the deity in the sense that she formally and solemnly dedicates the rest of her life to his service with the same constancy and devotion that a faithful wife united in holy matrimony shows to her wedded lord. The life of a Dêvadâsî bedecked with all the accomplishments that the muses could give was one of spotless purity. Even now she is maintained by the temple. She undertakes fasts in connection with the temple festivals, such as the seven days' fast for the Apamârgam ceremony. During the period of this fast, strict continence is enjoined; she is required to take only one meal, and that within the temple—in fact to live and behave at least for a term, in the manner ordained for her throughout life. Some of the details of her daily work seem interesting; she attends [pg 065] the Dîpâradhana, the waving of lighted lamps in front of the deity at sunset every day; sings hymns in his praise, dances before his presence, goes round with him in his processions with lights in hand. After the procession, she sings a song or two from Jayadêva's Gîtagôvinda and with a few lullaby hymns, her work for the night is over. When she grows physically unfit for these duties, she is formally invalided by a special ceremony, i.e. Tôtuvaikkuka, or the laying down of the ear-pendants. It is gone through at the Maha Raja's palace, whereafter she becomes a Tâikkizhavi (old mother), entitled only to a subsistence-allowance. When she dies, the temple contributes to the funeral expenses. On her death-bed, the priest attends and after a few ceremonies immediately after death, gets her bathed with saffron-powder.”202

Still more instructive for our present purpose are the West African customs. Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast “recruits for the priesthood are obtained in two ways, viz. by the affiliation of young persons, and by the direct consecration of adults. Young people of either sex dedicated or affiliated to a god are termed kosio, from kono, ‘unfruitful,’ because a child dedicated to a god passes into his service and is practically lost to his parents, and si, ‘to run away.’ As the females become the ‘wives’ of the god to whom they are dedicated, the termination si in võdu-si [another name for these dedicated women], has been translated ‘wife’ by some Europeans; but it is never used in the general acceptation of that term, being entirely restricted to persons consecrated to the gods. The chief business of the female kosi is prostitution, and in every town there is at least one institution in which the best-looking girls, between ten and twelve years of age, are received. Here they remain for three years, learning the chants and dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and prostituting themselves to the [pg 066] priests and the inmates of the male seminaries; and at the termination of their novitiate they become public prostitutes. This condition, however, is not regarded as one for reproach; they are considered to be married to the god, and their excesses are supposed to be caused and directed by him. Properly speaking, their libertinage should be confined to the male worshippers at the temple of the god, but practically it is indiscriminate. Children who are born from such unions belong to the god.”203 These women are not allowed to marry since they are deemed the wives of a god.204

Again, in this part of Africa “the female Kosio of Dañh-gbi, or Dañh-sio, that is, the wives, priestesses, and temple prostitutes of Dañh-gbi, the python-god, have their own organization. Generally they live together in a group of houses or huts inclosed by a fence, and in these inclosures the novices undergo their three years of initiation. Most new members are obtained by the affiliation of young girls; but any woman whatever, married or single, slave or free, by publicly simulating possession, and uttering the conventional cries recognized as indicative of possession by the god, can at once join the body, and be admitted to the habitations of the order. The person of a woman who has joined in this manner is inviolable, and during the period of her novitiate she is forbidden, if single, to enter the house of her parents, and, if married, that of her husband. This inviolability, while it gives women opportunities of gratifying an illicit passion, at the same time serves occasionally to save the persecuted slave, or neglected wife, from the ill-treatment of the lord and master; for she has only to go through the conventional form of possession and an asylum is assured.”205 The python-god marries these women secretly in his temple, and they father their offspring on him; but it is the priests who consummate the union.206

For our purpose it is important to note that a close [pg 067] connexion is apparently supposed to exist between the fertility of the soil and the marriage of these women to the serpent. For the time when new brides are sought for the reptile-god is the season when the millet is beginning to sprout. Then the old priestesses, armed with clubs, run frantically through the streets shrieking like mad women and carrying off to be brides of the serpent any little girls between the ages of eight and twelve whom they may find outside of the houses. Pious people at such times will sometimes leave their daughters at their doors on purpose that they may have the honour of being dedicated to the god.207 The marriage of wives to the serpent-god is probably deemed necessary to enable him to discharge the important function of making the crops to grow and the cattle to multiply; for we read that these people “invoke the snake in excessively wet, dry, or barren seasons; on all occasions relating to their government and the preservation of their cattle; or rather, in one word, in all necessities and difficulties, in which they do not apply to their new batch of gods.”208 Once in a bad season the Dutch factor Bosman found the King of Whydah in a great rage. His Majesty explained the reason of his discomposure by saying “that that year he had sent much larger offerings to the snake-house than usual, in order to obtain a good crop; and that one of his vice-roys (whom he shewed me) had desired him afresh, in the name of the priests, who threatened a barren year, to send yet more. To which he answered that he did not intend to make any further offerings this year; and if the snake would not bestow a plentiful harvest on them, he might let it alone; for (said he) I cannot be more damaged thereby, the greatest part of my corn being already rotten in the field.”209

The Akikuyu of British East Africa “have a custom which reminds one of the West African python-god and his wives. At intervals of, I believe, several years the medicine-men order huts to be built for the purpose of worshipping a river snake. The snake-god requires wives, and women or [pg 068] more especially girls go to the huts. Here the union is consummated by the medicine-men. If the number of females who go to the huts voluntarily is not sufficient, girls are seized and dragged there. I believe the offspring of such a union is said to be fathered by God (Ngai): at any rate there are children in Kikuyu who are regarded as the children of God.”210

Among the negroes of the Slave Coast there are, as we have seen, male kosio as well as female kosio; that is, there are dedicated men as well as dedicated women, priests as well as priestesses, and the ideas and customs in regard to them seem to be similar. Like the women, the men undergo a three years' novitiate, at the end of which each candidate has to prove that the god accepts him and finds him worthy of inspiration. Escorted by a party of priests he goes to a shrine and seats himself on a stool that belongs to the deity. The priests then anoint his head with a mystic decoction and invoke the god in a long and wild chorus. During the singing the youth, if he is acceptable to the deity, trembles violently, simulates convulsions, foams at the mouth, and dances in a frenzied style, sometimes for more than an hour. This is the proof that the god has taken possession of him. After that he has to remain in a temple without speaking for seven days and nights. At the end of that time, he is brought out, a priest opens his mouth to show that he may now use his tongue, a new name is given him, and he is fully ordained.211 Henceforth he is regarded as the priest and medium of the deity whom he serves, and the words which he utters in that morbid state of mental excitement which passes for divine inspiration, are accepted by the hearers as the very words of the god spoken by the mouth of the man.212 Any crime which a priest committed in a state of frenzy used to remain unpunished, no doubt because the act was thought to be the act of the god. But this benefit of clergy was so much abused that under King Gezo the law had to be altered; and although, while he is still possessed [pg 069] by the god, the inspired criminal is safe, he is now liable to punishment as soon as the divine spirit leaves him. Nevertheless on the whole among these people “the person of a priest or priestess is sacred. Not only must a layman not lay hands on or insult one; he must be careful not even to knock one by accident, or jostle against one in the street. The Abbé Bouche relates213 that once when he was paying a visit to the chief of Agweh, one of the wives of the chief was brought into the house by four priestesses, her face bloody, and her body covered with stripes. She had been savagely flogged for having accidentally trodden upon the foot of one of them; and the chief not only dared not give vent to his anger, but had to give them a bottle of rum as a peace-offering.”214

Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, who border on the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast to the west, the customs and beliefs in regard to the dedicated men and dedicated women, the priests and priestesses, are very similar. These persons are believed to be from time to time possessed or inspired by the deity whom they serve; and in that state they are consulted as oracles. They work themselves up to the necessary pitch of excitement by dancing to the music of drums; each god has his special hymn, sung to a special beat of the drum, and accompanied by a special dance. It is while thus dancing to the drums that the priest or priestess lets fall the oracular words in a croaking or guttural voice which the hearers take to be the voice of the god. Hence dancing has an important place in the education of priests and priestesses; they are trained in it for months before they may perform in public. These mouthpieces of the deity are consulted in almost every concern of life and are handsomely paid for their services.215 “Priests marry like any other members of the community, and purchase wives; but priestesses are never married, nor can any ‘head money’ be paid for a priestess. The reason appears to be that a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would [pg 070] be the case if she married one. This prohibition extends to marriage only, and a priestess is not debarred from sexual commerce. The children of a priest or priestess are not ordinarily educated for the priestly profession, one generation being usually passed over, and the grandchildren selected. Priestesses are ordinarily most licentious, and custom allows them to gratify their passions with any man who may chance to take their fancy.”216 The ranks of the hereditary priesthood are constantly recruited by persons who devote themselves or who are devoted by their relations or masters to the profession. Men, women, and even children can thus become members of the priesthood. If a mother has lost several of her children by death, she will not uncommonly vow to devote the next born to the service of the gods; for in this way she hopes to save the child's life. So when the child is born it is set apart for the priesthood, and on arriving at maturity generally fulfils the vow made by the mother and becomes a priest or priestess. At the ceremony of ordination the votary has to prove his or her vocation for the sacred life in the usual way by falling into or simulating convulsions, dancing frantically to the beat of drums, and speaking in a hoarse unnatural voice words which are deemed to be the utterance of the deity temporarily lodged in the body of the man or woman.217

Thus in Africa, and sometimes if not regularly in India, the sacred prostitutes attached to temples are regarded as the wives of the god, and their excesses are excused on the ground that the women are not themselves, but that they act under the influence of divine inspiration. This is in substance the explanation which I have given of the custom of sacred prostitution as it was practised in antiquity by the peoples [pg 071] of Western Asia. In their licentious intercourse at the temples the women, whether maidens or matrons or professional harlots, imitated the licentious conduct of a great goddess of fertility for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of fields and trees, of man and beast; and in discharging this sacred and important function the women were probably supposed, like their West African sisters, to be actually possessed by the goddess. The hypothesis at least explains all the facts in a simple and natural manner; and in assuming that women could be married to gods it assumes a principle which we know to have been recognized in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt.218 At Babylon a woman regularly slept in the great bed of Bel or Marduk, which stood in his temple on the summit of a lofty pyramid; and it was believed that the god chose her from all the women of Babylon and slept with her in the bed. However, unlike the Indian and West African wives of gods, this spouse of the Babylonian deity is reported by Herodotus to have been chaste.219 Yet we may doubt whether she was so; for these wives or perhaps paramours of Bel are probably to be identified with the wives or votaries of Marduk mentioned in the code of Hammurabi, and we know from the code that female votaries of the gods might be mothers and married to men.220 At Babylon the sun-god Shamash as well as Marduk had human wives formerly dedicated to his service, and they like the votaries of Marduk might have children.221 It is significant that a name for these Babylonian votaries was ḳadishtu, which is the same word as ḳedesha, “consecrated woman,” the regular Hebrew word for a temple harlot.222 It is true that the law [pg 072] severely punished any disrespect shown to these sacred women;223 but the example of West Africa warns us that a formal respect shown to such persons, even when it is enforced by severe penalties, need be no proof at all of their virtuous character.224 In Egypt a woman used to sleep in the temple of Ammon at Thebes, and the god was believed to visit her.225 Egyptian texts often mention her as “the divine consort,” and in old days she seems to have usually been the Queen of Egypt herself.226 But in the time of Strabo, at the beginning of our era, these consorts or concubines of Ammon, as they were called, were beautiful young girls of noble birth, who held office only till puberty. During their term of office they prostituted themselves freely to any man who took their fancy. After puberty they were given in marriage, and a ceremony of mourning was performed for them as if they were dead.227 When they died in good earnest, their bodies were laid in special graves.228

As in West Africa the dedicated women have their counterpart in the dedicated men, so it was in Western Asia; for there the sacred men (ḳedeshim) clearly corresponded to the sacred women (ḳedeshoth), in other words, the sacred male slaves229 of the temples were the complement of the sacred female slaves. And as the characteristic feature of the dedicated men in West Africa is their supposed possession or inspiration by the deity, so we may conjecture was it with the sacred male slaves (the ḳedeshim) of Western Asia; they, too, may have been regarded as temporary or permanent embodiments of the deity, possessed from time to time by [pg 073] his divine spirit, acting in his name, and speaking with his voice.230 At all events we know that this was so at the sanctuary of the Moon among the Albanians of the Caucasus. The sanctuary owned church lands of great extent peopled by sacred slaves, and it was ruled by a high-priest, who ranked next after the king. Many of these slaves were inspired by the deity and prophesied; and when one of them had been for some time in this state of divine frenzy, wandering alone in the forest, the high-priest had him caught, bound with a sacred chain, and maintained in luxury for a year. Then the poor wretch was led out, anointed with unguents, and sacrificed with other victims to the Moon. The mode of sacrifice was this. A man took a sacred spear, and thrust it through the victim's side to the heart. As he staggered and fell, the rest observed him closely and drew omens from the manner of his fall. Then the body was dragged or carried away to a certain place, where all his fellows stood upon it by way of purification.231 In this custom the prophet, or rather the maniac, was plainly supposed to be moon-struck in the most literal sense, that is, possessed or inspired by the deity of the Moon, who was perhaps thought by the Albanians, as by the Phrygians,232 to be a male god, since his chosen minister and mouthpiece was a man, not a woman.233 It can hardly therefore be deemed improbable that at other sanctuaries of Western Asia, where sacred men were kept, these ministers of religion should have discharged a similar prophetic function, even though they did not share the tragic [pg 074] fate of the moon-struck Albanian prophet. Nor was the influence of these Asiatic prophets confined to Asia. In Sicily the spark which kindled the devastating Servile War was struck by a Syrian slave, who simulated the prophetic ecstasy in order to rouse his fellow-slaves to arms in the name of the Syrian goddess. To inflame still more his inflammatory words this ancient Mahdi ingeniously interlarded them with real fire and smoke, which by a common conjurer's trick he breathed from his lips.234

In like manner the Hebrew prophets were believed to be temporarily possessed and inspired by a divine spirit who spoke through them, just as a divine spirit is supposed by West African negroes to speak through the mouth of the dedicated men his priests. Indeed the points of resemblance between the prophets of Israel and West Africa are close and curious. Like their black brothers, the Hebrew prophets employed music in order to bring on the prophetic trance;235 like them, they received the divine spirit through the application of a magic oil to their heads;236 like them, they were apparently distinguished from common people by certain marks on the face;237 and like [pg 075] them they were consulted not merely in great national emergencies but in the ordinary affairs of everyday life, in which they were expected to give information and advice for a small fee. For example, Samuel was consulted about lost asses,238 just as a Zulu diviner is consulted about lost cows;239 and we have seen Elisha acting as a dowser when water ran short.240 Indeed, we learn that the old name for a prophet was a seer,241 a word which may be understood to imply that his special function was divination rather than prophecy in the sense of prediction. Be that as it may, prophecy of the Hebrew type has not been limited to Israel; it is indeed a phenomenon of almost world-wide occurrence; in many lands and in many ages the wild, whirling words of frenzied men and women have been accepted as the utterances of an indwelling deity.242 What does distinguish Hebrew prophecy from all others is that the genius of a few members of the profession wrested this vulgar but powerful instrument from baser uses, and by wielding it in the interest of a high morality rendered a service of incalculable value to humanity. That is indeed the glory of Israel, but it is not the side of prophecy with which we are here concerned.

More to our purpose is to note that prophecy of the ordinary sort appears to have been in vogue at Byblus, the sacred city of Adonis, centuries before the life-time of the earliest Hebrew prophet whose writings have come down to us. When the Egyptian traveller, Wen-Ammon, was lingering in the port of Byblus, under the King's orders to quit the place, the spirit of God came on one of the royal [pg 076] pages or henchmen, and in a prophetic frenzy he announced that the King should receive the Egyptian stranger as a messenger sent from the god Ammon.243 The god who thus took possession of the page and spoke through him was probably Adonis, the god of the city. With regard to the office of these royal pages we have no information; but as ministers of a sacred king and liable to be inspired by the deity, they would naturally be themselves sacred; in fact they may have belonged to the class of sacred slaves or ḳedeshim. If that was so it would confirm the conclusion to which the foregoing investigation points, namely, that originally no sharp line of distinction existed between the prophets and the ḳedeshim; both were “men of God,” as the prophets were constantly called;244 in other words, they were inspired mediums, men in whom the god manifested himself from time to time by word and deed, in short temporary incarnations of the deity. But while the prophets roved freely about the country, the ḳedeshim appear to have been regularly attached to a sanctuary; and among the duties which they performed at the shrines there were clearly some which revolted the conscience of men imbued with a purer morality. What these duties were, we may surmise partly from the behaviour of the sons of Eli to the women who came to the tabernacle,245 partly from the beliefs and practices [pg 077] as to “holy men” which survive to this day among the Syrian peasantry.

Of these “holy men” we are told that “so far as they are not impostors, they are men whom we would call insane, known among the Syrians as mejnûn, possessed by a jinn or spirit. They often go in filthy garments, or without clothing. Since they are regarded as intoxicated by deity, the most dignified men, and of the highest standing among the Moslems, submit to utter indecent language at their bidding without rebuke, and ignorant Moslem women do not shrink from their approach, because in their superstitious belief they attribute to them, as men possessed by God, a divine authority which they dare not resist. Such an attitude of compliance may be exceptional, but there are more than rumours of its existence. These ‘holy men’ differ from the ordinary derwishes whom travellers so often see in Cairo, and from the ordinary madmen who are kept in fetters, so that they may not do injury to themselves and others. But their appearance, and the expressions regarding them, afford some illustrations of the popular estimate of ancient seers, or prophets, in the time of Hosea: ‘The prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad’;246 and in the time of Jeremiah,247 the man who made himself a prophet was considered as good as a madman.”248 To complete the parallel these vagabonds “are also believed to be possessed of prophetic power, so that they are able to foretell the future, and warn the people among whom they live of impending danger.”249

We may conjecture that with women a powerful motive for submitting to the embraces of the “holy men” is a hope of obtaining offspring by them. For in Syria it is still believed that even dead saints can beget children on barren women, who accordingly resort to their shrines in order to obtain the wish of their hearts. For example, at the Baths of Solomon in Northern Palestine, blasts of hot air escape from the ground; and one of them, named Abu Rabah, is a famous resort of childless wives who wish to satisfy their maternal longings. They let the hot air stream up over their bodies and really believe that children born to them after such a visit are begotten by the saint of the shrine.250 But the saint who enjoys the highest reputation in this respect is St. George. He reveals himself at his shrines which are scattered all over the country; at each of them there is a tomb or the likeness of a tomb. The most celebrated of these sanctuaries is at Kalat el Hosn in Northern Syria. Barren women of all sects, including Moslems, resort to it. “There are many natives who shrug their shoulders when this shrine is mentioned in connection with women. But it is doubtless true that many do not know what seems to be its true character, and who think that the most puissant saint, as they believe, in the world can give them sons.” “But the true character of the place is beginning to be recognized, so that many Moslems have forbidden their wives to visit it.”251

Customs like the foregoing may serve to explain the belief, which is not confined to Syria, that men and women may be in fact and not merely in metaphor the sons and [pg 079] daughters of a god; for these modern saints, whether Christian or Moslem, who father the children of Syrian mothers, are nothing but the old gods under a thin disguise. If in antiquity as at the present day Semitic women often repaired to shrines in order to have the reproach of barrenness removed from them—and the prayer of Hannah is a familiar example of the practice,252 we could easily understand not only the tradition of the sons of God who begat children on the daughters of men,253 but also the exceedingly common occurrence of the divine titles in Hebrew names of human beings.254 Multitudes of men and women, in fact, whose mothers had resorted to holy places in order to procure offspring, would be regarded as the actual children of the god and would be named accordingly. Hence Hannah called her infant Samuel, which means “name of God” or “his name is God”;255 and probably she sincerely believed that the child was actually begotten in her womb by the deity.256 The dedication of such children to the service of God at the sanctuary was merely giving back the divine son to the divine father. Similarly in West Africa, when a woman has got a child at the shrine of Agbasia, the god who alone bestows offspring on women, she dedicates him or her as a sacred slave to the deity.257

Thus in the Syrian beliefs and customs of to-day we probably have the clue to the religious prostitution practised in the very same regions in antiquity. Then as now women looked to the local god, the Baal or Adonis of old, the Abu Rabah or St. George of to-day, to satisfy the natural craving of a woman's heart; and then as now, apparently, the part [pg 080] of the local god was played by sacred men, who in personating him may often have sincerely believed that they were acting under divine inspiration, and that the functions which they discharged were necessary for the fertility of the land as well as for the propagation of the human species. The purifying influence of Christianity and Mohammedanism has restricted such customs within narrow limits; even under Turkish rule they are now only carried on in holes and corners. Yet if the practice has dwindled, the principle which it embodies appears to be fundamentally the same; it is a desire for the continuance of the species, and a belief that an object so natural and legitimate can be accomplished by divine power manifesting itself in the bodies of men and women.

The belief in the physical fatherhood of God has not been confined to Syria in ancient and modern times. Elsewhere many men have been counted the sons of God in the most literal sense of the word, being supposed to have been begotten by his holy spirit in the wombs of mortal women. Here I shall merely illustrate the creed by a few examples drawn from classical antiquity.258 Thus in order to obtain offspring women used to resort to the great sanctuary of Aesculapius, situated in a beautiful upland valley, to which a path, winding through a long wooded gorge, leads from the bay of Epidaurus. Here the women slept in the holy place and were visited in dreams by a serpent; and the children to whom they afterwards gave birth were believed to have been begotten by the reptile.259 That the serpent was supposed to be the god himself seems certain; for Aesculapius repeatedly appeared in the form of a serpent,260 and live serpents were kept and fed in his sanctuaries for the healing of the sick, being no doubt regarded as his incarnations.261 Hence the children born to women who had [pg 081] thus visited a sanctuary of Aesculapius were probably fathered on the serpent-god. Many celebrated men in classical antiquity were thus promoted to the heavenly hierarchy by similar legends of a miraculous birth. The famous Aratus of Sicyon was certainly believed by his countrymen to be a son of Aesculapius; his mother is said to have got him in intercourse with a serpent.262 Probably she slept either in the shrine of Aesculapius at Sicyon, where a figurine of her was shown seated on a serpent,263 or perhaps in the more secluded sanctuary of the god at Titane, not many miles off, where the sacred serpents crawled among ancient cypresses on the hill-top which overlooks the narrow green valley of the Asopus with the white turbid river rushing in its depths.264 There, under the shadow of the cypresses, with the murmur of the Asopus in her ears, the mother of Aratus may have conceived, or fancied she conceived, the future deliverer of his country. Again, the mother of Augustus is said to have got him by intercourse with a serpent in a temple of Apollo; hence the emperor was reputed to be the son of that god.265 Similar tales were told of the Messenian hero Aristomenes, Alexander the Great, and the elder Scipio: all of them were reported to have been begotten by snakes.266 In the time of Herod a serpent, according to Aelian, in like manner made love to a Judean maid.267 Can the story be a distorted rumour of the parentage of Christ?

In India even stone serpents are credited with a power of bestowing offspring on women. Thus the Komatis of Mysore “worship Nága or the serpent god. This worship is generally confined to women and is carried on on a large [pg 082] scale once a year on the fifth day of the bright fortnight of Srávana (July and August). The representations of serpents are cut in stone slabs and are set up round an Asvattha tree on a platform, on which is also generally planted a margosa tree. These snakes in stones are set up in performance of vows and are said to be specially efficacious in curing bad sores and other skin diseases and in giving children. The women go to such places for worship with milk, fruits, and flowers on the prescribed day which is observed as a feast day.” They wash the stones, smear them with turmeric, and offer them curds and fruits. Sometimes they search out the dens of serpents and pour milk into the holes for the live reptiles.268

The reason why snakes were so often supposed to be the fathers of human beings is probably to be found in the common belief that the dead come to life and revisit their old homes in the shape of serpents.

This notion is widely spread in Africa, especially among tribes of the Bantu stock. It is held, for example, by the Zulus, the Thonga, and other Caffre tribes of South Africa;269 by the Ngoni of British Central Africa;270 by the Wabondei,271 the Masai,272 the Suk,273 the Nandi,274 and the Akikuyu of German and British East Africa;275 and by the Dinkas of [pg 083] the Upper Nile.276 It prevails also among the Betsileo and other tribes of Madagascar.277 Among the Iban or Sea Dyaks of Borneo a man's guardian spirit (Tua) “has its external manifestation in a snake, a leopard or some other denizen of the forest. It is supposed to be the spirit of some ancestor renowned for bravery or some other virtue who at death has taken an animal form. It is a custom among the Iban when a person of note in the tribe dies, not to bury the body but to place it on a neighbouring hill or in some solitary spot above ground. A quantity of food is taken to the place every day, and if after a few days the body disappears, the deceased is said to have become a Tua or guardian spirit. People who have been suffering from some chronic complaint often go to such a tomb, taking with them an offering to the soul of the deceased to obtain his help. To such it is revealed in a dream what animal form the honoured dead has taken. The most frequent form is that of a snake. Thus when a snake is found in a Dyak house it is seldom killed or driven away; food is offered to it, for it is a guardian spirit who has come to inquire after the welfare of its clients and bring them good luck. Anything that may be found in the mouth of such a snake is taken and kept as a charm.”278 Similarly in [pg 084] Kiriwina, an island of the Trobriands Group, to the east of New Guinea, “the natives regarded the snake as one of their ancestral chiefs, or rather as the abode of his spirit, and when one was seen in a house it was believed that the chief was paying a visit to his old home. The natives considered this as an ill omen and so always tried to persuade the animal to depart as soon as possible. The honours of a chief were paid to the snake: the natives passed it in a crouching posture, and as they did so, saluted it as a chief of high rank. Native property was presented to it as an appeasing gift, accompanied by prayers that it would not do them any harm, but would go away quickly. They dared not kill the snake, for its death would bring disease and death upon those who did so.”279

Where serpents are thus viewed as ancestors come to life, the people naturally treat them with great respect and often feed them with milk, perhaps because milk is the food of human babes and the reptiles are treated as human beings in embryo, who can be born again from women. Thus “the Zulu-Caffres imagine that their ancestors generally visit them under the form of serpents. As soon, therefore, as one of these reptiles appears near their dwellings, they hasten to salute it by the name of father, place bowls of milk in its way, and turn it back gently, and with the greatest respect.”280 Among the Masai of East Africa, “when a medicine-man or a rich person dies and is buried, his soul turns into a snake as soon as his body rots; and the snake goes to his children's kraal to look after them. The Masai in consequence do not kill their sacred snakes, and if a woman sees one in her hut, she pours some milk on the ground for it to lick, after which it will go away.”281 Among [pg 085] the Nandi of British East Africa, “if a snake goes on to the woman's bed, it may not be killed, as it is believed that it personifies the spirit of a deceased ancestor or relation, and that it has been sent to intimate to the woman that her next child will be born safely. Milk is put on the ground for it to drink, and the man or his wife says: ‘... If thou wantest the call, come, thou art being called.’ It is then allowed to leave the house. If a snake enters the houses of old people they give it milk, and say: ‘If thou wantest the call, go to the huts of the children,’ and they drive it away.”282 This association of the serpent, regarded as an incarnation of the dead, both with the marriage bed and with the huts of young people, points to a belief that the deceased person who is incarnate in the snake may be born again as a human child into the world. Again, among the Suk of British East Africa “it seems to be generally believed that a man's spirit passes into a snake at death. If a snake enters a house, the spirit of the dead man is believed to be very hungry. Milk is poured on to its tracks, and a little meat and tobacco placed on the ground for it to eat. It is believed that if no food is given to the snake one or all of the members of the household will die. It, however, may none the less be killed if encountered outside the house, and if at the time of its death it is inhabited by the spirit of a dead man, ‘that spirit dies also.’ ”283 The Akikuyu of British East Africa, who similarly believe that snakes are ngoma or spirits of the departed, “do not kill a snake but pour out honey and milk for it to drink, which they say it licks up and then goes its way. If a man causes the death of a snake he must without delay summon the senior Elders in the village and slaughter a sheep, which they eat and cut a rukwaru from the skin of its right shoulder for the offender to wear on his right wrist; if this ceremony is neglected he, his wife and his children will die.”284 Among [pg 086] the Baganda the python god Selwanga had his temple on the shore of the lake Victoria Nyanza, where he dwelt in the form of a live python. The temple was a hut of the ordinary conical shape with a round hole in the wall, through which the sinuous deity crawled out and in at his pleasure. A woman lived in the temple, and it was her duty to feed the python daily with fresh milk from a wooden bowl, which she held out to the divine reptile while he drained it. The serpent was thought to be the giver of children; hence young couples living in the neighbourhood always came to the shrine to ensure the blessing of the god on their union, and childless women repaired from long distances to be relieved by him from the curse of barrenness.285 It is not said that this python god embodied the soul of a dead ancestor, but it may have been so; his power of bestowing offspring on women suggests it.

The Romans and Greeks appear to have also believed that the souls of the dead were incarnate in the bodies of serpents. Among the Romans the regular symbol of the genius or guardian spirit of every man was a serpent,286 and in Roman houses serpents were lodged and fed in such numbers that if their swarms had not been sometimes reduced by conflagrations there would have been no living for them.287 In Greek legend Cadmus and his wife Harmonia [pg 087] were turned at death into snakes.288 When the Spartan king Cleomenes was slain and crucified in Egypt, a great serpent coiled round his head on the cross and kept off the vultures from his face. The people regarded the prodigy as a proof that Cleomenes was a son of the gods.289 Again, when Plotinus lay dying, a snake crawled from under his bed and disappeared into a hole in the wall, and at the same moment the philosopher expired.290 Apparently superstition saw in these serpents the souls of the dead men. In Greek religion the serpent was indeed the regular symbol or attribute of the worshipful dead,291 and we can hardly doubt that the early Greeks, like the Zulus and other African tribes at the present day, really believed the soul of the departed to be lodged in the reptile. The sacred serpent which lived in the Erechtheum at Athens, and was fed with honey-cakes once a month, may have been supposed to house the soul of the dead king Erechtheus, who had reigned in his lifetime on the same spot.292 Perhaps the libations of milk which the Greeks poured upon graves293 were intended to be drunk by serpents as the embodiments of the deceased; on two tombstones found at Tegea a man and a woman are respectively represented holding out to a serpent a cup which may be supposed to contain milk.294 We have seen that various African tribes feed serpents with milk because they imagine the reptiles to be incarnations of their dead kinsfolk;295 and the Dinkas, who practise the custom, also pour milk on the graves of their friends for some time after the burial.296 It is possible that a common type in Greek art, which exhibits a woman feeding a serpent out of [pg 088] a saucer, may have been borrowed from a practice of thus ministering to the souls of the departed.297

Further, at the sowing festival of the Thesmophoria, held by Greek women in October, it was customary to throw cakes and pigs to serpents, which lived in caverns or vaults sacred to the corn-goddess Demeter.298 We may guess that the serpents thus propitiated were deemed to be incarnations of dead men and women, who might easily be incommoded in their earthy beds by the operations of husbandry. What indeed could be more disturbing than to have the roof of the narrow house shaken and rent over their heads by clumsy oxen dragging a plough up and down on the top of it? No wonder that at such times it was thought desirable to appease them with offerings. Sometimes, however, it is not the dead but the Earth Goddess herself who is disturbed by the husbandman. An Indian prophet at Priest Rapids, on the Middle Columbia River, dissuaded his many followers from tilling the ground because “it is a sin to wound or cut, tear up or scratch our common mother by agricultural pursuits.”299 “You ask me,” said this Indian sage, “to plough the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother's bosom? You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? You ask me to cut grass and hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But [pg 089] how dare I cut off my mother's hair?”300 The Baigas, a primitive Dravidian tribe of the Central Provinces in India, used to practise a fitful and migratory agriculture, burning down patches of jungle and sowing seed in the soil fertilized by the ashes after the breaking of the rains. “One explanation of their refusal to till the ground is that they consider it a sin to lacerate the breast of their mother earth with a ploughshare.”301 In China the disturbance caused to the earth-spirits by the operations of digging and ploughing was so very serious that Chinese philosophy appears to have contemplated a plan for allowing the perturbed spirits a close time by forbidding the farmer to put his spade or his plough into the ground except on certain days, when the earth-spirits were either not at home or kindly consented to put up with some temporary inconvenience for the good of man. This we may infer from a passage in a Chinese author who wrote in the first century of our era. “If it is true,” he says, “that the spirits who inhabit the soil object to it being disturbed and dug up, then it is proper for us to select special good days for digging ditches and ploughing our fields. (But this is never done); it therefore follows that the spirits of the soil, even though really annoyed when it is disturbed, pass over such an offence if man commits it without evil intent. As he commits it merely to ensure his rest and comfort, the act cannot possibly excite any anger against him in the perfect heart of those spirits; and this being the case, they will not visit him with misfortune even if he do not choose auspicious days for it. But if we believe that the earth-spirits cannot excuse man on account of the object he pursues, and detest him for annoying them by disturbing the ground, what advantage then can he derive from selecting proper days for doing so?”302 What advantage indeed? In that case the only logical conclusion is, with the Indian prophet, to forbid agriculture altogether, as an impious encroachment on the spiritual world. Few peoples, however, who have once contracted the habit of agriculture [pg 090] are willing to renounce it out of a regard for the higher powers; the utmost concession which they are willing to make to religion in the matter is to prohibit agricultural operations at certain times and seasons, when the exercise of them would be more than usually painful to the earth-spirits. Thus in Bengal the chief festival in honour of Mother Earth is held at the end of the hot season, when she is supposed to suffer from the impurity common to women, and during that time all ploughing, sowing, and other work cease.303 On a certain day of the year, when offerings are made to the Earth, the Ewe farmer of West Africa will not hoe the ground, and the Ewe weaver will not drive a sharp stake into it, “because the hoe and the stake would wound the Earth and cause her pain.”304 When Ratumaimbulu, the god who made fruit-trees to blossom and bear fruit, came once a year to Fiji, the people had to live very quietly for a month lest they should disturb him at his important work. During this time they might not plant nor build nor sail about nor go to war; indeed most kinds of work were forbidden. The priests announced the time of the god's arrival and departure.305 These periods of rest and quiet would seem to be the Indian and Fijian Lent.

Thus behind the Greek notion that women may conceive by a serpent-god306 seems to lie the belief that they can conceive by the dead in the form of serpents. If such a belief was ever held, it would be natural that barren women should resort to graves in order to have their wombs quickened, and this may explain why they visited the shrine of the serpent-god Aesculapius for that purpose; the shrine was perhaps at first a grave. It is significant that in Syria the shrines of St. George, to which childless women go to get offspring, always include a tomb or the likeness of one;307 and further, [pg 091] that in the opinion of Syrian peasants at the present day women may, without intercourse with a living man, bear children to a dead husband, a dead saint, or a jinnee.308 In the East Indies also it is still commonly believed that spirits can consort with women and beget children on them. The Olo Ngadjoe of Borneo imagine that albinoes are the offspring of the spirit of the moon by mortal women, the pallid hue of the human children naturally reflecting the pallor of their heavenly father.309

Such beliefs are closely akin to the idea, entertained by many peoples, that the souls of the dead may pass directly into the wombs of women and be born again as infants. Thus the Hurons used to bury little children beside the paths in the hope that their souls might enter the passing squaws and be born again;310 and similarly some negroes of West Africa throw the bodies of infants into the bush in order that their souls may choose a new mother from the women who pass by.311 Among the tribes of the Lower Congo “a baby is always buried near the house of its mother, never in the bush. They think that, if the child is not buried near its mother's house, she will be unlucky and never have any more children.” The notion probably is that the dead child, buried near its mother's house, will enter into her womb and be born again, for these people believe in the reincarnation of the dead. They think that “the only new thing about a child is its body. The spirit is old and formerly belonged to some deceased person, or it may have the spirit of some living person.” For example, if a child is like its mother, father, or uncle, they imagine that it must [pg 092] have the spirit of the relative whom it resembles, and that therefore the person whose soul has thus been abstracted by the infant will soon die.312 Among the Bangalas, a tribe of cannibals in Equatorial Africa, to the north of the Congo, a woman was one day seen digging a hole in the public road. Her husband entreated a Belgian officer to let her alone, promising to mend the road afterwards, and explaining that his wife wished to become a mother. The good-natured officer complied with his request and watched the woman. She continued to dig till she had uncovered a little skeleton, the remains of her first-born, which she tenderly embraced, humbly entreating the dead child to enter into her and give her again a mother's joy. The officer rightly did not smile.313 The Bagishu, a Bantu tribe of Mount Elgon, in the Uganda Protectorate, practise the custom of throwing out their dead “except in the case of the youngest child or the old grandfather or grandmother, for whom, like the child, a prolonged life on earth is desired.... When it is desired to perpetuate on the earth the life of some old man or woman, or that of some young baby, the corpse is buried inside the house or just under the eaves, until another child is born to the nearest relation of the corpse. This child, male or female, takes the name of the corpse, and the Bagishu firmly believe that the spirit of the dead has passed into this new child and lives again on earth. The remains are then dug up and thrown out into the open.”314

Again, just as measures are adopted to facilitate the rebirth of good ghosts, so on the other hand precautions are taken to prevent the rebirth of bad ones. Thus, with regard to the Baganda of Central Africa we read that, “while the present generation know the cause of pregnancy, the people in the earlier times were uncertain as to its real cause, and thought that it was possible to conceive without any intercourse with the male sex. Hence their precautions in passing places where [pg 093] either a suicide had been burnt, or a child born feet first had been buried. Women were careful to throw grass or sticks on such a spot, for by so doing they thought that they could prevent the ghost of the dead from entering into them, and being reborn.”315 The fear of being got with child by such ghosts was not confined to married women, it was shared by all women alike, whether young or old, whether married or single; and all of them sought to avert the danger in the same way.316 And Baganda women imagined that without the help of the other sex they could be impregnated not only by these unpleasant ghosts but also by the flower of the banana. If while a woman was busy in her garden under the shadow of the banana trees, a great purple bloom chanced to fall from one of the trees on her back or shoulders, it was quite enough, in the opinion of the Baganda, to get her with child; and were a wife accused of adultery because she gave birth to a child who could not possibly have been begotten by her husband, she had only to father the infant on a banana flower to be honourably acquitted of the charge. The reason why this remarkable property was ascribed to the bloom of the banana would seem to be that ghosts of ancestors were thought to haunt banana groves, and that the afterbirths of children, which the Baganda regarded as twins of the children, were commonly buried at the root of the trees.317 What more natural than that a ghost should lurk in each flower, and dropping adroitly in the likeness of a blossom on a woman's back effect a lodgment in her womb?

Again, when a child dies in Northern India it is usually buried under the threshold of the house, “in the belief that as [pg 094] the parents tread daily over its grave, its soul will be reborn in the family. Here, as Mr. Rose suggests, we reach an explanation of the rule that children of Hindus are buried, not cremated. Their souls do not pass into the ether with the smoke of the pyre, but remain on earth to be reincarnated in the household.”318 In the Punjaub this belief in the reincarnation of dead infants gives rise to some quaint or pathetic customs. Thus, “in the Hissar District, Bishnois bury dead infants at the threshold, in the belief that it would facilitate the return of the soul to the mother. The practice is also in vogue in the Kangra District, where the body is buried in front of the back door. In some places it is believed that, if the child dies in infancy and the mother drops her milk for two or three days on the ground, the soul of the child comes back to be born again. For this purpose milk diluted with water is placed in a small earthen pot and offered to the dead child's spirit for three consecutive evenings. There is also a belief in the Ambala and Gujrat Districts that if jackals and dogs dig out the dead body of the child and bring it towards the town or village, it means that the child will return to its mother, but if they take it to some other side, the soul will reincarnate in some other family. For this purpose, the second day after the infant's death, the mother goes out early in the morning to see whether the dogs have brought the body towards the village. When the child is being taken away for burial the mother cuts off and preserves a piece of its garment with a view to persuade the soul to return to her. Barren women or those who have lost children in infancy tear a piece off the clothing of a dead child and stitch it to their wearing apparel, believing that the soul of the child will return to them instead of its own mother. On this account, people take great care not to lose the clothes of dead children, and some bury them in the house.”319 In Bilaspore “a still-born child, or one who has passed away before the Chhatti (the sixth day, the day of purification) is not taken out of the [pg 095] house for burial, but is placed in an earthen vessel and is buried in the doorway or in the yard of the house. Some say that this is done in order that the mother may bear another child.”320 Here in Bilaspore the people have devised a very simple way of identifying a dead person when he or she is born again as an infant. When anybody dies, they mark the body with soot or oil, and the next baby born in the family with a similar mark is hailed as the departed come to life again.321 Among the Kois of the Godavari district, in Southern India, the dead are usually burnt, but the bodies of children and of young men and women are buried. If a child dies within a month of its birth, it is generally buried close to the house “so that the rain, dripping from the eaves, may fall upon the grave, and thereby cause the parents to be blessed with another child.”322 Apparently it is supposed that the soul of the dead child, refreshed and revived by the rain, will pass again into the mother's womb. Indian criminal records contain many cases in which “the ceremonial killing of a male child has been performed as a cure for barrenness, the theory being that the soul of the murdered boy becomes reincarnated in the woman, who performs the rite with a desire to secure offspring. Usually she effects union with the spirit of the child by bathing over its body or in the water in which the corpse has been washed. Cases have recently occurred in which the woman actually bathed in the blood of the child.”323

On the fifth day after a death the Gonds perform the ceremony of bringing back the soul. They go to the bank of a river, call aloud the name of the deceased, and entering the water catch a fish or an insect. This creature they then take home and place among the sainted dead of the family, supposing that in this manner the spirit of the departed has been brought back to the house. Sometimes the fish or [pg 096] insect is eaten in the belief that it will be thus reborn as a child.324 This last custom explains the widely diffused story of virgins who have conceived by eating of a plant or an animal or merely by taking it to their bosom.325 In all such cases we may surmise that the plant or animal was thought to contain the soul of a dead person, which thus passed into the virgin's womb and was born again as an infant. Among the South Slavs childless women often resort to a grave in which a pregnant woman is buried. There they bite some grass from the grave, invoke the deceased by name, and beg her to give them the fruit of her womb. After that they take a little of the mould from the grave and carry it about with them thenceforth under their girdle.326 Apparently they imagine that the soul of the unborn infant is in the grass or the mould and will pass from it into their body.

Among the Kai of German New Guinea, “impossible as it may be thought, it is yet a fact that women here and there deny in all seriousness the connexion between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. Of course most people are clear as to the process. The ignorance of some individuals is perhaps based on the consideration that not uncommonly married women remain childless for years or for life. Finally, the animistic faith contributes its share to support the [pg 097] ignorance.”327 In some islands of Southern Melanesia the natives appear similarly to believe that sexual intercourse is not necessary to impregnation, and that a woman can conceive through the simple passage into her womb of a spirit-animal or a spirit-fruit without the help of a man. In the island of Mota, one of the Banks' group, “the course of events is usually as follows: a woman sitting down in her garden or in the bush or on the shore finds an animal or fruit in her loincloth. She takes it up and carries it to the village, where she asks the meaning of the appearance. The people say that she will give birth to a child who will have the characters of this animal or even, it appeared, would be himself or herself the animal. The woman then takes the creature back to the place where she had found it and places it in its proper home; if it is a land animal on the land; if a water animal in the pool or stream from which it had probably come. She builds up a wall round it and goes to feed and visit it every day. After a time the animal will disappear, and it is believed that that is because the animal has at the time of its disappearance entered into the woman. It seemed quite clear that there was no belief in physical impregnation on the part of the animal, nor of the entry of a material object in the form of the animal into her womb, but so far as I could gather, an animal found in this way was regarded as more or less supernatural, a spirit animal and not one material, from the beginning. It has happened in the memory of an old man now living in Mota that a woman who has found an animal in her loincloth has carried it carefully in her closed hands to the village, but that when she opened her hands to show it to the people, the animal has gone, and in this case it was believed that the entry had taken place while the woman was on her way from the bush to the village.... When the child is born it is regarded as being in some sense the animal or fruit which had been found and tended by the mother. The child may not eat the animal during the whole of its life, and if it does so, will suffer serious illness, if not death. If it is a fruit which has been found, the child may not eat this fruit or touch the tree [pg 098] on which it grows, the latter restriction remaining in those cases in which the fruit is inedible.... I inquired into the idea at the bottom of the prohibition of the animal as food, and it appeared to be that the person would be eating himself. It seemed that the act would be regarded as a kind of cannibalism. It was evident that there is a belief in the most intimate relation between the person and all individuals of the species with which he is identified.

“A further aspect of the belief in the animal nature of a child is that it partakes of the physical and mental characters of the animal with which it is identified. Thus, if the animal found has been a sea-snake, and this is a frequent occurrence, the child would be weak, indolent and slow; if an eel, there will be a similar disposition; if a hermit crab, the child will be hot-tempered; if a flying fox, it will also be hot-tempered and the body will be dark; if a brush turkey, the disposition will be good; if a lizard, the child will be soft and gentle; if a rat, thoughtless, hasty and intemperate. If the object found has been a fruit, here also the child will partake of its nature. In the case of a wild Malay apple (malmalagaviga) the child will have a big belly, and a person with this condition will be asked, ‘Do you come from the malmalagaviga?’ Again, if the fruit is one called womarakaraqat, the child will have a good disposition.

“In the island of Motlav not far from Mota they have the same belief that if a mother has found an animal in her dress, the child will be identified with that animal and will not be allowed to eat it. Here again the child is believed to have the characters of the animal, and two instances given were that a child identified with a yellow crab will have a good disposition and be of a light colour, while if a hermit crab has been found, the child will be angry and disagreeable. In this island a woman who desires her child to have certain characters will frequent a place where she will be likely to encounter the animal which causes the appearance of these characters. Thus, if she wants to have a light coloured child, she will go to a place where there are light coloured crabs.”328

Throughout a large part of Australia, particularly in the Centre, the North, and the West, the aborigines hold that the commerce of the human sexes is not necessary to the production of children; indeed many of them go further and deny that sexual intercourse is the real cause of the propagation of the species. Among the Arunta, Kaitish, Luritcha, Ilpirra and other tribes, who roam the barren steppes of Central Australia, it appears to be a universal article of belief that every person is the reincarnation of a deceased ancestor, and that the souls of the dead pass directly into the wombs of women, who give them birth without the need of commerce with the other sex. They think that the spirits of the departed gather and dwell at particular spots, marked by a natural feature such as a rock or a tree, and that from these lurking-places they dart out and enter the bodies of passing women or girls. When a woman feels her womb quickened, she knows that a spirit has made its way into her from the nearest abode of the dead. This is their regular explanation of conception and childbirth. “The natives, one and all in these tribes, believe that the child is the direct result of the entrance into the mother of an ancestral spirit individual. They have no idea of procreation as being associated with sexual intercourse, and firmly believe that children can be born without this taking place.”329 The spots where the souls thus congregate waiting [pg 100] to be born again are usually the places where the remote ancestors of the dream-time are said to have passed into the ground; that is, they are the places where the forefathers of the tribe are supposed to have died or to have been buried. For example, in the Warramunga tribe the ancestor of the Black-snake clan is said to have left many spirits of Black-snake children in the rocks and trees which border a certain creek. Hence no woman at the present day dares to strike one of these trees with an axe, being quite convinced that the blow would release one of the spirit-children, who would at once enter her body. They imagine that the spirit is no larger than a grain of sand, and that it enters the woman through her navel and grows into a child in her womb.330 Again, at several places in the wide territory of the Arunta tribe there are certain stones which are in like manner thought to be the abode of souls awaiting rebirth. Hence the stones are called “child-stones.” In one of them there is a hole through which the spirit-children look out for passing women, and it is firmly believed that a visit to the stone would result in conception. If a young woman is obliged to pass near the stone and does not wish to have a child, she will carefully disguise her youth, pulling a wry face and hobbling along on a stick. She will bend herself double like a very old woman, and imitating the cracked voice of age she will say, “Don't come to me, I am an old woman.” Nay, it is thought that women may conceive by the stone without visiting it. If a man and his wife both wish for a child, the husband will tie his hair-girdle round the stone, rub it, and mutter a direction to the spirits to give heed to his wife. And it is believed that by performing a similar ceremony a malicious man can cause women and even children at a distance to be pregnant.331

Such beliefs are not confined to the tribes of Central Australia but prevail among all the tribes from Lake Eyre northwards to the sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria.332 Thus [pg 101] the Mungarai say that in the far past time their old ancestors walked about the country, making all the natural features of the landscape and leaving spirit-children behind them where they stopped. These children emanated from the bodies of the ancestors, and they still wait at various spots looking out for women into whom they may go and be born. For example, near McMinn's bar on the Roper River there is a large gum tree full of spirit-children, who all belong to one particular totem and are always agog to enter into women of that totem. Again, at Crescent Lagoon an ancestor, who belonged to the thunder totem, deposited numbers of spirit-children; and if a woman of the Gnaritjbellan subclass so much as dips her foot in the water, one of the spirit-children passes up her leg and into her body and in due time is born as a child, who has thunder for its totem. Or if the woman stoops and drinks water, one of the sprites will enter her through the mouth. Again, there are lagoons along the Roper River where red lilies grow; and the water is full of spirit-children which were deposited there by a kangaroo man. So when women of the Gnaritjbellan subclass wade into the water to gather lilies, little sprites swarm up their legs and are born as kangaroo children. Again, in the territory of the Nullakun tribe there is a certain spring where a man once deposited spirit-children of the rainbow totem; and to this day when a woman of the right totem comes to drink at the spring, the spirit of a rainbow child will dart into her and be born. Once more, in the territory of the Yungman tribe the trees and stones near Elsey Creek are full of spirit-children who belong to the sugar-bag (honeycomb) totem; and these sugar-bag children are constantly entering into the right women and being born into the world.333

The natives of the Tully River in Queensland do not recognize sexual intercourse as a cause of conception in women, though curiously enough they do recognize it as the cause of conception in all animals, and pride themselves on their superiority to the brutes in that they are not indebted for the continuance of their species to such low and vulgar means. The true causes of conception in a woman, according to them, are four in number. First, she may have received a particular species of black bream from a man whom the European in his ignorance would call the father; this she may have roasted and sat over the fire inhaling the savoury smell of the roast fish. That is quite sufficient to get her with child. Or, secondly, she may have gone out on purpose to catch a certain kind of bull-frog, and if she succeeds in capturing it, that again is a full and satisfactory explanation of her pregnancy. Thirdly, some man may have told her to conceive a child, and the mere command produces the desired effect. Or, fourth and lastly, she may have simply dreamed that the child was put into her, and the dream necessarily works its own fulfilment. Whatever white men may think about the matter, these are the real causes why babies are born among the blacks on the Tully River.334 About Cape Bedford in Queensland the natives believe that babies are sent by certain long-haired spirits, with two sets of eyes in the front and back of their heads, who live in the dense scrub and underwood. The children are made in the far west where the sun goes down, and they are made not in the form of infants but full grown; but on their passage from the sunset land to the wombs they are changed into the shape of spur-winged plovers, if they are girls, or of pretty snakes, if they are boys. So when the cry of a plover is heard by night, the blacks prick up their ears and say, “Hallo! there is a baby somewhere about.” And if a woman is out in the bush searching for food and sees one of the pretty snakes, which are really baby boys on the look out for mothers, she will call out to her mates, and [pg 103] they will come running and turn over stones, and leaves, and logs in the search for the snake; and if they cannot find it they know that it has gone into the woman and that she will soon give birth to a baby boy.335 On the Pennefather River in Queensland the being who puts babies into women is called Anje-a. He takes a lump of mud out of one of the mangrove swamps, moulds it into the shape of an infant, and insinuates it into a woman's womb. You can never see him, for he lives in the depths of the woods, among the rocks, and along the mangrove swamps; but sometimes you can hear him laughing there to himself, and when you hear him you may know that he has got a baby ready for somebody.336 Among the tribes of the Cairns district in North Queensland “the acceptance of food from a man by a woman was not merely regarded as a marriage ceremony, but as the actual cause of conception.”337

Similarly among the Australian tribes of the Northern Territory, about Port Darwin and the Daly River, especially among the Larrekiya and Wogait, “conception is not regarded as a direct result of cohabitation.” The old men of the Wogait say that there is an evil spirit who takes babies from a big fire and puts them in the wombs of women, who must give birth to them. In the ordinary course of events, when a man is out hunting and kills game or collects other food, he gives it to his wife and she eats it, believing that the game or other food will cause her to conceive and bring forth a child. When the child is born, it may on no account partake of the food [pg 104] which caused conception in the mother until it has got its first teeth.338 A similar belief that conception is caused by the food which a woman eats is held by some tribes of Western Australia. On this subject Mr. A. R. Brown reports as follows: “In the Ingarda tribe at the mouth of the Gascoyne River, I found a belief that a child is the product of some food of which the mother has partaken just before her first sickness in pregnancy. My principal informant on this subject told me that his father had speared a small animal called bandaru, probably a bandicoot, but now extinct in this neighbourhood. His mother ate the animal, with the result that she gave birth to my informant. He showed me the mark in his side where, as he said, he had been speared by his father before being eaten by his mother. A little girl was pointed out to me as being the result of her mother eating a domestic cat, and her brother was said to have been produced from a bustard.... The bustard was one of the totems of the father of these two children and, therefore, of the children themselves. This, however, seems to have been purely accidental. In most cases the animal to which conception is due is not one of the father's totems. The species that is thus connected with an individual by birth is not in any way sacred to him. He may kill or eat it; he may marry a woman whose conceptional animal is of the same species, and he is not by the accident of his birth entitled to take part in the totemic ceremonies connected with it.

“I found traces of this same belief in a number of tribes north of the Ingarda, but everywhere the belief seemed to be sporadic; that is to say, some persons believed in it and others did not. Some individuals could tell the animal or plant from which they or others were descended, while others did not know or in some cases denied that conception was so caused. There were to be met with, however, some beliefs of the same character. A woman of the Buduna tribe said that native women nowadays bear half-caste children because they eat bread made of white flour. Many [pg 105] of the men believed that conception is due to sexual intercourse, but as these natives have been for many years in contact with the whites this cannot be regarded as satisfactory evidence of the nature of their original beliefs.

“In some tribes further to the north I found a more interesting and better organised system of beliefs. In the Kariera, Ñamal, and Injibandi tribes the conception of a child is believed to be due to the agency of a particular man, who is not the father. This man is the wororu of the child when it is born. There were three different accounts of how the wororu produces conception, each of them given to me on several different occasions. According to the first, the man gives some food, either animal or vegetable, to the woman, and she eats this and becomes pregnant. According to the second, the man when he is out hunting kills an animal, preferably a kangaroo or an emu, and as it is dying he tells its spirit or ghost to go to a particular woman. The spirit of the dead animal goes into the woman and is born as a child. The third account is very similar to the last. A hunter, when he has killed a kangaroo or an emu, takes a portion of the fat of the dead animal which he places on one side. This fat turns into what we may speak of as a spirit-baby, and follows the man to his camp. When the man is asleep at night the spirit-baby comes to him and he directs it to enter a certain woman who thus becomes pregnant. When the child is born the man acknowledges that he sent it, and becomes its wororu. In practically every case that I examined, some forty in all, the wororu of a man or woman was a person standing to him or her in the relation of father's brother own or tribal. In one case a man had a wororu who was his father's sister. The duties of a man to his wororu are very vaguely defined. I was told that a man ‘looks after’ his wororu, that is, performs small services for him, and, perhaps, gives him food. The conceptional animal or plant is not the totem of either the child or the wororu. The child has no particular magical connection with the animal from which he is derived. In a very large number of cases that animal is either the kangaroo or the emu.”339

Thus it appears that a childlike ignorance as to the physical process of procreation still prevails to some extent among certain rude races of mankind, who are accordingly driven to account for it in various fanciful ways such as might content the curiosity of children. We may safely assume that formerly a like ignorance was far more widely spread than it is now; indeed in the long ages which elapsed before any portion of mankind emerged from savagery, it is probable that the true cause of childbirth was universally unknown, and that people made shift to explain the mystery by some such theories as are still current among the savage or barbarous races of Central Africa, Melanesia, and Australia. A little reflection on the conditions of savage life may satisfy us that the ignorance is by no means so surprising as it may seem at first sight to a civilized observer, or, to put it otherwise, that the true cause of the birth of children is not nearly so obvious as we are apt to think. Among low savages, such as all men were originally, it is customary for boys and girls to cohabit freely with each other under the age of puberty, so that they are familiar with a commerce of the sexes which is not and cannot be attended with the birth of children. It is, therefore, not very wonderful that they should confidently deny the connexion of sexual intercourse with the production of offspring. Again, the long interval of time which divides the act of conception from the first manifest symptoms of pregnancy might easily disguise from the heedless savage the vital relation between the two. These considerations may remove or lessen the hesitation which civilized man naturally feels at admitting that a considerable part or even the whole of his species should ever have doubted or denied what seems to him one of the most obvious and elementary truths of nature.340

In the light of the foregoing evidence, stories of the [pg 107] miraculous birth of gods and heroes from virgin mothers lose much of the glamour that encircled them in days of old, and we view them simply as relics of superstition surviving like fossils to tell us of a bygone age of childlike ignorance and credulity.

Traces of beliefs and customs like the foregoing may perhaps be detected among the ancient Semites. When the prophet Jeremiah speaks of the Israelites who said to a stock or to a tree (for in Hebrew the words are the same), “Thou art my father,” and to a stone, “Thou hast brought me forth,”341 it is probable that he was not using vague rhetorical language, but denouncing real beliefs current among his contemporaries. Now we know that at all the old Canaanite sanctuaries, including the sanctuaries of Jehovah down to the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah, the two regular objects of worship were a sacred stock and a sacred stone,342 and that these sanctuaries were the seats of profligate rites performed by sacred men (ḳedeshim) and sacred women (ḳedeshoth). Is it not natural to suppose that the stock and stone which the superstitious Israelites regarded as their father and mother were the sacred stock (asherah) and the sacred stone (massebah) of the sanctuary, and that the children born of the loose intercourse of the sexes at these places were believed to be the offspring or emanations of these uncouth but worshipful idols in which, as in the sacred trees and stones of Central Australia, the souls of the dead may have been supposed to await rebirth? On this view the sacred men and women who actually begot [pg 108] or bore the children were deemed the human embodiments of the two divinities, the men perhaps personating the sacred stock, which appears to have been a tree stripped of its branches, and the women personating the sacred stone, which seems to have been in the shape of a cone, an obelisk, or a pillar.343

These conclusions are confirmed by the result of recent researches at Gezer, an ancient Canaanitish city, which occupied a high, isolated point on the southern border of Ephraim, between Jerusalem and the sea. Here the English excavations have laid bare the remains of a sanctuary with the sacred stone pillars or obelisks (masseboth) still standing in a row, while between two of them is set a large socketed stone, beautifully squared, which perhaps contained the sacred stock or pole (asherah). In the soil which had accumulated over the floor of the temple were found vast numbers of male emblems rudely carved out of soft limestone; and tablets of terra-cotta, representing in low relief the mother-goddess, were discovered throughout the strata. These objects were no doubt votive-offerings presented by the worshippers to the male and female deities who were represented by the sacred stock and the sacred stones; and their occurrence in large quantities raises a strong presumption that the divinities of the sanctuary were a god and goddess regarded as above all sources of fertility. The supposition is further strengthened by a very remarkable discovery. Under the floor of the temple were found the bones of many new-born children, none more than a week old, buried in large jars. None of these little bodies showed any trace of mutilation or violence; and in the light of the customs practised in many other lands344 we seem to be justified in [pg 109] conjecturing that the infants were still-born or died soon after birth, and that they were buried by their parents in the sanctuary in the hope that, quickened by the divine power, they might enter again into the mother's womb and again be born into the world.345 If the souls of these buried babes were supposed to pass into the sacred stocks and stones and to dart from them into the bodies of would-be mothers who resorted to the sanctuary, the analogy with Central Australia would be complete. That the analogy is real and not fanciful is strongly suggested by the modern practice of Syrian women who still repair to the shrines of saints to procure offspring, and who still look on “holy men” as human embodiments of divinity. In this, as in many other dark places of superstition, the present is the best guide to the interpretation of the past; for while the higher forms of religious faith pass away like clouds, the lower stand firm and indestructible like rocks. The “sacred men” of one age are the dervishes of the next, the Adonis of yesterday is the St. George of to-day.

In Cyprus the Tyrian Melcarth was worshipped side by side with Adonis at Amathus,377 and Phoenician inscriptions prove that he was revered also at Idalium and Larnax Lapethus. At the last of these places he seems to have been regarded by the Greeks as a marine deity and identified with Poseidon.378 A remarkable statue found at Amathus may represent Melcarth in the character of the lion-slayer, a character which the Greeks bestowed on Hercules. The statue in question is of colossal size, and exhibits a thick-set, muscular, hirsute deity of almost bestial aspect, with goggle eyes, huge ears, and a pair of stumpy horns on the top of his head. His beard is square and curly: his hair falls in three pigtails on his shoulders: his brawny arms appear to be tattooed. A lion's skin, clasped by a buckle, is knotted round his loins; and he holds the skin of a lioness in front of him, grasping a hind paw with each hand, while the head of the beast, which is missing, hung down between his legs. A fountain must have issued from the jaws of the lioness, for a rectangular hole, where the beast's head should be, communicates by a channel with another hole in the back of the statue. Greek artists working on this or a similar barbarous model produced the refined type of the Grecian Hercules with the lion's scalp thrown like a cowl over [pg 118] his head. Statues of him have been found in Cyprus, which represent intermediate stages in this artistic evolution.379 But there is no proof that in Cyprus the Tyrian Melcarth was burned either in effigy or in the person of a human representative.380

On the other hand, there is clear evidence of the observance of such a custom in Cilicia, the country which lies across the sea from Cyprus, and from which the worship of Adonis, according to tradition, was derived.381 Whether the Phoenicians ever colonized Cilicia or not is doubtful,382 but at all events the natives of the country, down to late times, worshipped a male deity who, in spite of a superficial assimilation to a fashionable Greek god, appears to have been an Oriental by birth and character. He had his principal seat at Tarsus, in a plain of luxuriant fertility and almost tropical climate, tempered by breezes from the snowy range of Tarsus on the north and from the sea on the south.383 Though Tarsus boasted of a school of Greek philosophy which at the beginning of our era surpassed those of Athens and Alexandria,384 the city apparently remained in manners and spirit essentially Oriental. The women went about the streets muffled up to the eyes in Eastern fashion, and Dio Chrysostom reproaches the natives with resembling the most dissolute of the Phoenicians rather than the Greeks [pg 119] whose civilization they aped.385 On the coins of the city they assimilated their native deity to Zeus by representing him seated on a throne, the upper part of his body bare, the lower limbs draped in a flowing robe, while in one hand he holds a sceptre, which is topped sometimes with an eagle but often with a lotus flower. Yet his foreign nature is indicated both by his name and his attributes; for in Aramaic inscriptions on the coins he bears the name of the Baal of Tarsus, and in one hand he grasps an ear of corn and a bunch of grapes.386 These attributes clearly mark him out as a god of fertility in general, who conferred on his worshippers the two things which they prized above all other gifts of nature, the corn and the wine. He was probably therefore a Semitic, or at all events an Oriental, rather than a Greek deity. For while the Semite cast all his gods more or less in the same mould, and expected them all to render him nearly the same services, the Greek, with his keener intelligence and more pictorial imagination, invested his deities with individual characteristics, allotting to each of them his or her separate function in the divine economy of the world. Thus he assigned the production of the corn to Demeter, and that of the grapes to Dionysus; he was not so unreasonable as to demand both from the same hard-worked deity.

Now the suspicion that the Baal of Tarsus, for all his posing in the attitude of Zeus, was really an Oriental is confirmed by a remarkable rock-hewn monument which is to be seen at Ibreez in Southern Cappadocia. Though the [pg 120] place is distant little more than fifty miles from Tarsus as the crow flies, yet the journey on horseback occupies five days; for the great barrier of the Taurus mountains rises like a wall between. The road runs through the famous pass of the Cilician Gates, and the scenery throughout is of the grandest Alpine character. On all sides the mountains tower skyward, their peaks sheeted in a dazzling pall of snow, their lower slopes veiled in the almost inky blackness of dense pine-forests, torn here and there by impassable ravines, or broken into prodigious precipices of red and grey rock which border the narrow valley for miles. The magnificence of the landscape is enhanced by the exhilarating influence of the brisk mountain air, all the more by contrast with the sultry heat of the plain of Tarsus which the traveller has left behind. When he emerges from the defile on the wide open tableland of Anatolia he feels that in a sense he has passed out of Asia, and that the highroad to Europe lies straight before him. The great mountains on which he now looks back formed for centuries the boundary between the Christian West and the Mohammedan East; on the southern side lay the domain of the Caliphs, on the northern side the Byzantine Empire. The Taurus was the dam that long repelled the tide of Arab invasion; and though year by year the waves broke through the pass of the Cilician Gates and carried havoc and devastation through the tableland, the refluent waters always retired to the lower level of the Cilician plains. A line of beacon lights stretching from the Taurus to Constantinople flashed to the Byzantine capital tidings of the approach of the Moslem invaders.387

The village of Ibreez is charmingly situated at the northern foot of the Taurus, some six or seven miles south of the town of Eregli, the ancient Cybistra, From the town to the village the path goes through a richly cultivated district of wheat and vines along green lanes more lovely than those of Devonshire, lined by thick hedges and rows of willow, poplar, hazel, hawthorn, and huge old walnut-trees, where in early summer the nightingales warble on [pg 121] every side. Ibreez itself is embowered in the verdure of orchards, walnuts, and vines. It stands at the mouth of a deep ravine enclosed by great precipices of red rock. From the western of these precipices a river clear as crystal, but of a deep blue tint, bursts in a powerful jet, and being reinforced by a multitude of springs becomes at once a raging impassable torrent foaming and leaping with a roar of waters over the rocks in its bed. A little way from the source a branch of the main stream flows in a deep narrow channel along the foot of a reddish weather-stained rock which rises sheer from the water. On its face, which has been smoothed to receive them, are the sculptures. They consist of two colossal figures, representing a god adored by his worshipper. The deity, some fourteen feet high, is a bearded male figure, wearing on his head a high pointed cap adorned with several pairs of horns, and plainly clad in a short tunic, which does not reach his knees and is drawn in at the waist by a belt. His legs and arms are bare; the wrists are encircled by bangles or bracelets. His feet are shod in high boots with turned-up toes. In his right hand he holds a vine-branch laden with clusters of grapes, and in his raised left hand he grasps a bunch of bearded wheat, such as is still grown in Cappadocia; the ears of corn project above his fingers, while the long stalks hang down to his feet. In front of him stands the lesser figure, some eight feet high. He is clearly a priest or king, more probably perhaps both in one. His rich vestments contrast with the simple costume of the god. On his head he wears a round but not pointed cap, encircled by flat bands and ornamented in front with a rosette or bunch of jewels, such as is still worn by Eastern princes. He is draped from the neck to the ankles in a long robe heavily fringed at the bottom, over which is thrown a shawl or mantle secured at the breast by a clasp of precious stones. Both robe and shawl are elaborately carved with patterns in imitation of embroidery. A heavy necklace of rings or beads encircles the neck; a bracelet or bangle clasps the one wrist that is visible; the feet are shod in boots like those of the god. One or perhaps both hands are raised in the act of adoration. The large aquiline nose, like the beak of a hawk, is a conspicuous [pg 122] feature in the face both of the god and of his worshipper; the hair and beard of both are thick and curly.388

The situation of this remarkable monument resembles that of Aphaca on the Lebanon;389 for in both places we see a noble river issuing abruptly from the rock to spread fertility through the rich vale below. Nowhere, perhaps, could man more appropriately revere those great powers of nature to whose favour he ascribes the fruitfulness of the earth, and through it the life of animate creation. With its cool bracing air, its mass of verdure, its magnificent stream of pure ice-cold water—so grateful in the burning heat of summer—and its wide stretch of fertile land, the valley may well have been the residence of an ancient prince or high-priest, who desired to testify by this monument his devotion and gratitude to the god. The seat of this royal or priestly potentate may have been at Cybistra,390 the modern Eregli, now a decayed and miserable place straggling amid orchards and gardens full of luxuriant groves of walnut, poplar, willow, mulberry, and oak. The place is a paradise of birds. Here [pg 123] the thrush and the nightingale sing full-throated, the hoopoe waves his crested top-knot, the bright-hued woodpeckers flit from bough to bough, and the swifts dart screaming by hundreds through the air. Yet a little way off, beyond the beneficent influence of the springs and streams, all is desolation—in summer an arid waste broken by great marshes and wide patches of salt, in winter a broad sheet of stagnant water, which as it dries up with the growing heat of the sun exhales a poisonous malaria. To the west, as far as the eye can see, stretches the endless expanse of the dreary Lycaonian plain, barren, treeless, and solitary, till it fades into the blue distance, or is bounded afar off by abrupt ranges of jagged volcanic mountains, on which in sunshiny weather the shadows of the clouds rest, purple and soft as velvet.391 No wonder that the smiling luxuriance of the one landscape, sharply contrasting with the bleak sterility of the other, should have rendered it in the eyes of primitive man a veritable garden of God.

Among the attributes which mark out the deity of Ibreez as a power of fertility the horns on his high cap should not be overlooked. They are probably the horns of a bull; for to primitive cattle-breeders the bull is the most natural emblem of generative force. At Carchemish, the great Hittite capital on the Euphrates, a relief has been discovered which represents a god or a priest clad in a rich robe, and wearing on his head a tall horned cap surmounted by a disc.392 Sculptures found at the palace of Euyuk in North-Western Cappadocia prove that the Hittites worshipped the bull and sacrificed rams to it.393 Similarly the Greeks conceived the vine-god Dionysus in the form of a bull.394

That the god of Ibreez, with the grapes and corn in his hands, is identical with the Baal of Tarsus, who bears the same emblems, may be taken as certain.395 But what was his name? and who were his worshippers? The Greeks apparently called him Hercules; at least in Byzantine times the neighbouring town of Cybistra adopted the name of Heraclea, which seems to show that Hercules was deemed the principal deity of the place.396 Yet the style and costume of the figures at Ibreez prove unquestionably that the god was an Oriental. If any confirmation of this view were needed, it is furnished by the inscriptions carved on the rock beside the sculptures, for these inscriptions are composed in the peculiar system of hieroglyphics now known as Hittite. It follows, therefore, that the deity worshipped at Tarsus and Ibreez was a god of the Hittites, that ancient and little-known people who occupied the centre of Asia Minor, invented a system of writing, and extended their influence, if not their dominion, at one time from the Euphrates to the Aegean. From the lofty and arid tablelands of the interior, a prolongation of the great plateau of Central Asia, with a climate ranging from the most burning heat in summer to the most piercing cold in winter,397 these hardy highlanders seem to have swept down through the mountain-passes and established themselves at a very early date in the rich southern lowlands of Syria and Cilicia.398 [pg 125] Their language and race are still under discussion, but a great preponderance of opinion appears to declare that neither the one nor the other was Semitic.399

In the inscription attached to the colossal figure of the god at Ibreez two scholars have professed to read the name of Sandan or Sanda.400 Be that as it may, there are independent grounds for thinking that Sandan, Sandon, or Sandes may have been the name of the Cappadocian and Cilician god of fertility. For the god of Ibreez in Cappadocia appears, as we saw, to have been identified by the Greeks with Hercules, and we are told that a Cappadocian and Cilician name of Hercules was Sandan or Sandes.401 [pg 126] Now this Sandan or Hercules is said to have founded Tarsus, and the people of the city commemorated him at an annual or, at all events, periodical festival by erecting a fine pyre in his honour.402 Apparently at this festival, as at the festival of Melcarth, the god was burned in effigy on his own pyre. For coins of Tarsus often exhibit the pyre as a conical structure resting on a garlanded altar or basis, with the figure of Sandan himself in the midst of it, while an eagle with spread wings perches on the top of the pyre, as if about to bear the soul of the burning god in the pillar of smoke and fire to heaven.403 In like manner when a Roman emperor died leaving a son to succeed him on the [pg 127] throne, a waxen effigy was made in the likeness of the deceased and burned on a huge pyramidal pyre, which was reared upon a square basis of wood; and from the summit of the blazing pile an eagle was released for the purpose of carrying to heaven the soul of the dead and deified emperor.404 The Romans may have borrowed from the East a grandiose custom which savours of Oriental adulation rather than of Roman simplicity.405

The type of Sandan or Hercules, as he is portrayed on the coins of Tarsus, is that of an Asiatic deity standing on a lion. It is thus that he is represented on the pyre, and it is thus that he appears as a separate figure without the pyre. From these representations we can form a fairly accurate conception of the form and attributes of the god. They exhibit him as a bearded man standing on a horned and often winged lion. Upon his head he wears a high pointed cap or mitre, and he is clad sometimes in a long robe, sometimes in a short tunic. On at least one coin his feet are shod in high boots with flaps. At his side or over his shoulder are slung a sword, a bow-case, and a quiver, sometimes only one or two of them. His right hand is raised and sometimes holds a flower. His left hand grasps a double-headed axe, and sometimes a wreath either in addition to the axe or instead of it; but the double-headed axe is one of Sandan's most constant attributes.406

Now a deity of almost precisely the same type figures prominently in the celebrated group of Hittite sculptures which is carved on the rocks at Boghaz-Keui in North-Western Cappadocia. The village of Boghaz-Keui, that is, “the village of the defile,” stands at the mouth of a deep, narrow, and picturesque gorge in a wild upland valley, shut in by rugged mountains of grey limestone. The houses are built on the lower slopes of the hills, and a stream issuing from the gorge flows past them to join the Halys, which is distant about ten hours' journey to the west. Immediately above the modern village a great ancient city, enclosed by massive fortification walls, rose on the rough broken ground of the mountainside, culminating in two citadels perched on the tops of precipitous crags. The walls are still standing in many places to a height of twelve feet or more. They are about fourteen feet thick and consist of an outer and inner facing built of large blocks with a core of rubble between them. On the outer side they are strengthened at intervals of about a hundred feet by projecting towers or buttresses, which seem designed rather as architectural supports than as military defences. The masonry, composed of large stones laid in roughly parallel courses, resembles in style that of the walls of Mycenae, with which it may be contemporary; and the celebrated Lion-gate at Mycenae has its counterpart in the southern gate of Boghaz-Keui, which is flanked by a pair of colossal stone lions executed in the best style of Hittite art. The eastern gate is adorned on its inner side with the figure of a Hittite warrior or Amazon carved in high relief. A dense undergrowth of stunted oak coppice now covers much of the site. The ruins of a large palace or temple, built of enormous blocks of stone, occupy a terrace in a commanding situation within the circuit of the walls. This vast city, some four or five miles in circumference, appears to have been the ancient Pteria, which Croesus, king of Lydia, captured in his war with Cyrus. It was probably the capital of a powerful Hittite empire before the Phrygians made their way from [pg 129] Europe into the interior of Asia Minor and established a rival state to the west of the Halys.407

From the village of Boghaz-Keui a steep and rugged path leads up hill to a sanctuary, distant about a mile and a half to the east. Here among the grey limestone cliffs there is a spacious natural chamber or hall of roughly oblong shape, roofed only by the sky, and enclosed on three sides by high rocks. One of the short sides is open, and through it you look out on the broken slopes beyond and the more distant mountains, which make a graceful picture set in a massy frame. The length of the chamber is about a hundred feet; its breadth varies from twenty-five to fifty feet. A nearly level sward forms the floor. On the right-hand side, as you face inward, a narrow opening in the rock leads into another but much smaller chamber, or rather corridor, which would seem to have been the inner sanctuary or Holy of Holies. It is a romantic spot, where the deep shadows of the rocks are relieved by the bright foliage of walnut-trees and by the sight of the sky and clouds overhead. On the rock-walls of both chamber are carved the famous bas-reliefs. In the outer sanctuary these reliefs represent two great processions which defile along the two long sides of the chamber and meet face to face on the short wall at the inner end. The figures on the left-hand wall are for the most part men clad in the characteristic Hittite costume, which consists of a high pointed cap, shoes with turned-up toes, and a tunic drawn in at the waist and [pg 130] falling short of the knees.408 The figures on the right-hand wall are women wearing tall, square, flat-topped bonnets with ribbed sides; their long dresses fall in perpendicular folds to their feet, which are shod in shoes like those of the men. On the short wall, where the processions meet, the greater size of the central figures, as well as their postures and attributes, mark them out as divine. At the head of the male procession marches or is carried a bearded deity clad in the ordinary Hittite costume of tall pointed cap, short tunic, and turned-up shoes; but his feet rest on the bowed heads of two men, in his right hand he holds on his shoulder a mace or truncheon topped with a knob, while his extended left hand grasps a symbol, which apparently consists of a trident surmounted by an oval with a cross-bar. Behind him follows a similar, though somewhat smaller, figure of a man, or perhaps rather of a god, carrying a mace or truncheon over his shoulder in his right hand, while with his left he holds aloft a long sword with a flat hilt; his feet rest not on two men but on two flat-topped pinnacles, which perhaps represent mountains. At the head of the female procession and facing the great god who is borne on the two men, stands a goddess on a lioness or panther. Her costume does not differ from that of the women: her hair hangs down in a long plait behind: in her extended right hand she holds out an emblem to touch that of the god. The shape and meaning of her emblem are obscure. It consists of a stem with two pairs of protuberances, perhaps leaves or branches, one above the other, the whole being surmounted, like the emblem of the god, by an oval with a cross-bar. Under the outstretched arms of the two deities appear the front parts of two animals, which have been usually interpreted as bulls but are rather goats; each of them wears on its head the high conical Hittite cap, and its body is concealed by that of the deity. Immediately behind the goddess marches a smaller and apparently youthful male figure, standing like her upon a lioness or panther. He is beardless and wears the Hittite [pg 131] dress of high pointed cap, short tunic, and shoes with turned-up toes. A crescent-hilted sword is girt at his side; in his left hand he holds a double-headed axe, and in his right a staff topped by an armless doll with the symbol of the cross-barred oval instead of a head. Behind him follow two women, or rather perhaps goddesses, resembling the goddess at the head of the procession, but with different emblems and standing not on a lioness but on a single two-headed eagle with outspread wings.

The entrance to the smaller chamber is guarded on either side by the figure of a winged monster carved on the rock; the bodies of both figures are human, but one of them has the head of a dog, the other the head of a lion. In the inner sanctuary, to which this monster-guarded passage leads, the walls are also carved in relief. On one side we see a procession of twelve men in Hittite costume marching with curved swords in their right hands. On the opposite wall is a colossal erect figure of a deity with a human head and a body curiously composed of four lions, two above and two below, the latter standing on their heads. The god wears the high conical Hittite hat: his face is youthful and beardless like that of the male figure standing on the lioness in the large chamber; and the ear turned to the spectator is pierced with a ring. From the knees downwards the legs, curiously enough, are replaced by a device which has been interpreted as the tapering point of a great dagger or dirk with a midrib. To the right of this deity a square panel cut in the face of the rock exhibits a group of two figures in relief. The larger of the two figures closely resembles the youth on the lioness in the outer sanctuary. His chin is beardless; he wears the same high pointed cap, the same short tunic, the same turned-up shoes, the same crescent-hilted sword, and he carries a similar armless doll in his right hand. But his left arm encircles the neck of the smaller figure, whom he seems to clasp to his side in an attitude of protection. The smaller figure thus embraced by the god is clearly a priest or priestly king. His face is beardless; he wears a skull-cap and a long mantle reaching to his feet with a sort of chasuble thrown over it. The crescent-shaped hilt of a sword projects from under his [pg 132] mantle. The wrist of his right arm is clasped by the god's left hand; in his left hand the priest holds a crook or pastoral staff which ends below in a curl. Both the priest and his protector are facing towards the lion-god. In an upper corner of the panel behind them is a divine emblem composed of a winged disc resting on what look like two Ionic columns, while between them appear three symbols of doubtful significance. The figure of the priest or king in this costume, though not in this attitude, is a familiar one; for it occurs twice in the outer sanctuary and is repeated twice at the great Hittite palace of Euyuk, distant about four and a half hours' ride to the north-east of Boghaz-Keui. In the outer sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui we see the priest marching in the procession of the men, and holding in one hand his curled staff, or lituus, and in the other a symbol like that of the goddess on the lioness: above his head appears the winged disc without the other attributes. Moreover he occupies a conspicuous place by himself on the right-hand wall of the outer sanctuary, quite apart from the two processions, and carved on a larger scale than any of the other figures in them. Here he stands on two heaps, perhaps intended to represent mountains, and he carries in his right hand the emblem of the winged disc supported on two Ionic columns with the other symbols between them, except that the central symbol is replaced by a masculine figure wearing a pointed cap and a long robe decorated with a dog-tooth pattern. On one of the reliefs at the palace of Euyuk we see the priest with his characteristic dress and staff followed by a priestess, each of them with a hand raised as if in adoration: they are approaching the image of a bull which stands on a high pedestal with an altar before it. Behind them a priest leads a flock of rams to the sacrifice. On another relief at Euyuk the priest, similarly attired and followed by a priestess, is approaching a seated goddess and apparently pouring a libation at her feet. Both these scenes doubtless represent acts of worship paid in the one case to a goddess, in the other to a bull.409

We have still to inquire into the meaning of the rock-carvings at Boghaz-Keui. What are these processions which are meeting? Who are the personages represented? and what are they doing? Some have thought that the scene is historical and commemorates a great event, such as a treaty of peace between two peoples or the marriage of a king's son to a king's daughter.410 But to this view it has [pg 134] been rightly objected that the attributes of the principal figures prove them to be divine or priestly, and that the scene is therefore religious or mythical rather than historical. With regard to the two personages who head the processions and hold out their symbols to each other, the most probable opinion appears to be that they stand for the great Asiatic goddess of fertility and her consort, by whatever names these deities were known; for under diverse names a similar divine couple appears to have been worshipped with similar rites all over Western Asia.411 The bearded god who, grasping a trident in his extended left hand, heads the procession of male figures is probably the Father deity, the great Hittite god of the thundering sky, whose emblems were the thunderbolt and the bull; for the trident which he carries may reasonably be interpreted as a thunderbolt. The deity is represented in similar form on two stone monuments of Hittite art which were found at Zenjirli in Northern Syria and at Babylon respectively. On both we see a bearded male god wearing the usual Hittite costume of tall cap, short tunic, and shoes turned up at the toes: a crescent-hilted sword is girt at his side: his hands are raised: in the right he holds a single-headed axe or hammer, in the left a trident of wavy lines, which is thought to stand for forked lightning or a bundle of thunderbolts. On the Babylonian slab, which bears a long Hittite inscription, the god's cap is ornamented with a pair of horns.412 The horns on the cap are probably [pg 135] those of a bull; for on another Hittite monument, found at Malatia on the Euphrates, there is carved a deity in the usual Hittite costume standing on a bull and grasping a trident or thunderbolt in his left hand, while facing him stands a priest clad in a long robe, holding a crook or curled staff in one hand and pouring a libation with the other.413 The Hittite thunder-god is also known to us from a treaty of alliance which about the year 1290 b.c. was contracted between Hattusil, King of the Hittites, and Rameses II., King of Egypt. By a singular piece of good fortune we possess copies of this treaty both in the Hittite and in the [pg 136] Egyptian language. The Hittite copy was found some years ago inscribed in cuneiform characters on a clay tablet at Boghaz-Keui; two copies of the treaty in the Egyptian language are engraved on the walls of temples at Thebes. From the Egyptian copies, which have been read and translated, we gather that the thunder-god was the principal deity of the Hittites, and that the two Hittite seals which were appended to the treaty exhibited the King embraced by the thunder-god and the Queen embraced by the sun-goddess of Arenna.414 This Hittite divinity of the thundering sky appears to have long survived at Doliche in Commagene, for in later Roman art he reappears under the title of Jupiter Dolichenus, wearing a Phrygian cap, standing on a bull, and wielding a double axe in one hand and a thunderbolt in the other. In this form his worship was transported from his native Syrian home by soldiers and slaves, till it had spread over a large part of the Roman empire, especially on the frontiers, where it flourished in the camps of the legions.415 The combination of the bull with the thunderbolt as emblems of the deity suggests that the animal may have been chosen to represent the sky-god for the sake not merely of its virility but of its voice; for in the peal of thunder primitive man may well have heard the bellowing of a celestial bull.

The goddess who at the head of the procession of women confronts the great sky-god in the sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui is generally recognized as the divine Mother, the great Asiatic goddess of life and fertility. The tall flat-topped hat with perpendicular grooves which she wears, and the lioness or panther on which she stands, remind us of the turreted crown and lion-drawn car of Cybele, who was worshipped in the neighbouring land of Phrygia across the Halys.416 So Atargatis, the great Syrian goddess of Hierapolis-Bambyce, was portrayed sitting on lions and wearing a tower on her head.417 At Babylon an image of a goddess whom the Greeks called Rhea had the figures of two lions standing on her knees.418

But in the rock-hewn sculptures of Boghaz-Keui, who is the youth with the tall pointed cap and double axe who stands on a lioness or panther immediately behind the great goddess? His figure is all the more remarkable because he is the only male who interrupts the long procession of women. Probably he is at once the divine son and the divine lover of the goddess; for we shall find later on that in Phrygian mythology Attis united in himself both these characters.419 [pg 138] The lioness or panther on which he stands marks his affinity with the goddess, who is supported by a similar animal. It is natural that the lion-goddess should have a lion-son and a lion-lover. For we may take it as probable that the Oriental deities who are represented standing or sitting in human form on the backs of lions and other animals were originally indistinguishable from the beasts, and that the complete separation of the bestial from the human or divine shape was a consequence of that growth of knowledge and of power which led man in time to respect himself more and the brutes less. The hybrid gods of Egypt with their human [pg 139] bodies and animal heads form an intermediate stage in this evolution of anthropomorphic deities out of beasts.

We may now perhaps hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of that strange colossal figure in the inner shrine at Boghaz-Keui with its human head and its body composed of lions. For it is to be observed that the head of the figure is youthful and beardless, and that it wears a tall pointed cap, thus resembling in both respects the youth with the double-headed axe who stands on a lion in the outer sanctuary. We may suppose that the leonine figure in the inner shrine sets forth the true mystic, that is, the old savage nature of the god who in the outer shrine presented himself to his worshippers in the decent semblance of a man. To the chosen few who were allowed to pass the monster-guarded portal into the Holy of Holies, the awful secret may have been revealed that their god was a lion, or rather a lion-man, a being in whom the bestial and human natures mysteriously co-existed.420 The reader may remember that on the rock beside this leonine divinity is carved a group which represents a god with his arm twined round the neck of his priest in an attitude of protection, holding one of the priest's hands in his own. Both figures are looking and stepping towards the lion-monster, and the god is holding out his right hand as if pointing to it. The scene may represent the deity revealing the mystery to the priest, or preparing him to act his part in some solemn rite for which all his strength and courage will be needed. He seems to be leading his minister onward, comforting him with an assurance that no harm can come near him while the divine arm is around him and the divine hand clasps his. Whither is he leading him? Perhaps to death. The deep shadows of the rocks which fall on the [pg 140] two figures in the gloomy chasm may be an emblem of darker shadows soon to fall on the priest. Yet still he grasps his pastoral staff and goes forward, as though he said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

If there is any truth in these guesses—for they are little more—the three principal figures in the processional scene at Boghaz-Keui represent the divine Father, the divine Mother, and the divine Son. But we have still to ask, What are they doing? That they are engaged in the performance of some religious rite seems certain. But what is it? We may conjecture that it is the rite of the Sacred Marriage, and that the scene is copied from a ceremony which was periodically performed in this very place by human representatives of the deities.421 Indeed, the solemn meeting of the male and female figures at the head of their respective processions obviously suggests a marriage, and has been so interpreted by scholars, who, however, regarded it as the historical wedding of a prince and princess instead of the mystic union of a god and goddess, overlooking or explaining away the symbols of divinity which accompany the principal personages.422 We may suppose that at Boghaz-Keui, as at many other places in the interior of Asia Minor, the government was in the hands of a family who combined royal with priestly functions and personated the gods whose names they bore. Thus at Pessinus in Phrygia, as we shall see later on, the priests of Cybele bore the name of her consort Attis, and doubtless represented him in the ritual.423 [pg 141] If this was so at Boghaz-Keui, we may surmise that the chief pontiff and his family annually celebrated the marriage of the divine powers of fertility, the Father God and the Mother Goddess, for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of the earth and the multiplication of men and beasts. The principal parts in the ceremony would naturally be played by the pontiff himself and his wife, unless indeed they preferred for good reasons to delegate the onerous duty to others. That such a delegation took place is perhaps suggested by the appearance of the pontiff himself in a subordinate place in the procession, as well as by his separate representation in another place, as if he were in the act of surveying the ceremony from a distance.424 The part of the divine Son at the rite would fitly devolve upon one of the high-priest's own offspring, who may well have been numerous. For it is probable that here, as elsewhere in Asia Minor, the Mother Goddess was personated by a crowd of sacred harlots,425 with whom the spiritual ruler may have been required to consort in his character of incarnate deity. But if the personation of the Son of God at the rites laid a heavy burden of suffering on the shoulders of the actor, it is possible that the representative of the deity may have been drawn, perhaps by lot, from among the numerous progeny of the consecrated courtesans; for these women, as incarnations of the Mother Goddess, were probably supposed to transmit to their offspring some portion of their own divinity. Be that as it may, if the three principal personages in the processional scene at Boghaz-Keui are indeed the Father, the Mother, and the Son, the remarkable position assigned [pg 142] to the third of them in the procession, where he walks behind his Mother alone in the procession of women, appears to indicate that he was supposed to be more closely akin to her than to his Father. From this again we may conjecturally infer that mother-kin rather than father-kin was the rule which regulated descent among the Hittites. The conjecture derives some support from Hittite archives, for the names of the Great Queen and the Queen Mother are mentioned along with that of the King in state documents.426 The other personages who figure in the procession may represent human beings masquerading in the costumes and with the attributes of deities. Such, for example, are the two female figures who stand on a double-headed eagle; the two male figures stepping on what seem to be two mountains; and the two winged beings in the procession of men, one of whom may be the Moon-god, for he wears a crescent on his head.427

Whatever may be thought of these speculations, one thing seems fairly clear and certain. The figure which I have called the divine Son at Boghaz-Keui is identical with the god Sandan, who appears on the pyre at Tarsus. In both personages the costume, the attributes, the attitude are the same. Both represent a man clad in a short tunic with a tall pointed cap on his head, a sword at his side, a double-headed axe in his hand, and a lion or panther under his feet.428 Accordingly, if we are right in identifying him as the divine Son at Boghaz-Keui, [pg 143] we may conjecture that under the name of Sandan he bore the same character at Tarsus. The conjecture squares perfectly with the title of Hercules, which the Greeks bestowed on Sandan; for Hercules was the son of Zeus, the great father-god. Moreover, we have seen that the Baal of Tarsus, with the grapes and the corn in his hand, was assimilated to Zeus.429 Thus it would appear that at Tarsus as at Boghaz-Keui there was a pair of deities, a divine Father and a divine Son, whom the Greeks identified with Zeus and Hercules respectively. If the Baal of Tarsus was a god of fertility, as his attributes clearly imply, his identification with Zeus would be natural, since it was Zeus who, in the belief of the Greeks, sent the fertilizing rain from heaven.430 And the identification of Sandan with Hercules would be equally natural, since the lion and the death on the pyre were features common to both. Our conclusion then is that it was the divine Son, the lion-god, who was burned in effigy or in the person of a human representative at Tarsus, and perhaps at Boghaz-Keui. Semitic parallels suggest that the victim who played the part of the Son of God in the fiery furnace ought in strictness to be the king's son.431 But no doubt in later times an effigy would be substituted for the man.

Unfortunately we know next to nothing of the kings and priests of Tarsus. In Greek times we hear of an Epicurean philosopher of the city, Lysias by name, who was elected by his fellow-citizens to the office of Crown-wearer, that is, to the priesthood of Hercules. Once raised to that dignity, he would not lay it down again, but played the part of tyrant, wearing a white robe edged with purple, a costly cloak, white shoes, and a golden wreath of laurel. He truckled to the mob by distributing among them the property of the wealthy, while he put to death such as refused to open their money-bags to him.432 Though we cannot distinguish in this account [pg 144] between the legal and the illegal exercise of authority, yet we may safely infer that the priesthood of Hercules, that is of Sandan, at Tarsus continued down to late times to be an office of great dignity and power, not unworthy to be held in earlier times by the kings themselves. Scanty as is our information as to the kings of Cilicia, we hear of two whose names appear to indicate that they stood in some special relation to the divine Sandan. One of them was Sandu'arri, lord of Kundi and Sizu, which have been identified with Anchiale and Sis in Cilicia.433 The other was Sanda-sarme, who gave his daughter in marriage to Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria.434 It would be in accordance with analogy if the kings of Tarsus formerly held the priesthood of Sandan and claimed to represent him in their own person.

We know that the whole of Western or Mountainous Cilicia was ruled by kings who combined the regal office with the priesthood of Zeus, or rather of a native deity whom, like the Baal of Tarsus, the Greeks assimilated to their own Zeus. These priestly potentates had their seat at Olba, and most of them bore the name either of Teucer or of Ajax,435 but we may suspect that these appellations are merely Greek distortions of native Cilician names. Teucer (Teukros) may be a corruption of Tark, Trok, Tarku, or Troko, all of which occur in the names of Cilician priests and kings. At all events, it is worthy of notice that one, [pg 145] if not two, of these priestly Teucers had a father called Tarkuaris,436 and that in a long list of priests who served Zeus at the Corycian cave, not many miles from Olba, the names Tarkuaris, Tarkumbios, Tarkimos, Trokoarbasis, and Trokombigremis, besides many other obviously native names, occur side by side with Teucer and other purely Greek appellations.437 In like manner the Teucrids, who traced their descent from Zeus and reigned at Salamis in Cyprus,438 may well have been a native dynasty, who concocted a Greek pedigree for themselves in the days when Greek civilization was fashionable. The legend which attributed the foundation of the Cyprian Salamis to Teucer, son of Telamon, appears to be late and unknown to Homer.439 Moreover, a cruel form of human sacrifice which was practised in the city down to historical times savours rather of Oriental barbarity than of Greek humanity. Led or driven by the youths, a man ran thrice round the altar; then the priest stabbed him in the throat with a spear and burned his body whole on a heaped-up pyre. The sacrifice was offered in the month of Aphrodite to Diomede, who along with Agraulus, daughter of Cecrops, had a temple at Salamis. A temple of Athena stood within the same [pg 146] sacred enclosure. It is said that in olden times the sacrifice was offered to Agraulus, and not to Diomede. According to another account it was instituted by Teucer in honour of Zeus. However that may have been, the barbarous custom lasted down to the reign of Hadrian, when Diphilus, king of Cyprus, abolished or rather mitigated it by substituting the sacrifice of an ox for that of a man.440 On the hypothesis here suggested we must suppose that these Greek names of divine or heroic figures at the Cyprian Salamis covered more or less similar figures of the Asiatic pantheon. And in the Salaminian burnt-sacrifice of a man we may perhaps detect the original form of the ceremony which in historical times appears to have been performed upon an image of Sandan or Hercules at Tarsus. When an ox was sacrificed instead of a man, the old sacrificial rites would naturally continue to be observed in all other respects exactly as before: the animal would be led thrice round the altar, stabbed with a spear, and burned on a pyre. Now at the Syrian Hierapolis the greatest festival of the year bore the name of the Pyre or the Torch. It was held at the beginning of spring. Great trees were then cut down and planted in the court of the temple: sheep, goats, birds, and other creatures were hung upon them: sacrificial victims were led round: then fire was set to the whole, and everything was consumed in the flames.441 Perhaps here also the burning of animals was a substitute for the burning of men. When the practice of human sacrifice becomes too revolting to humanity to be tolerated, its abolition is commonly effected by substituting [pg 147] either animals or images for living men or women. At Salamis certainly, and perhaps at Hierapolis, the substitutes were animals: at Tarsus, if I am right, they were images. In this connexion the statement of a Greek writer as to the worship of Adonis in Cyprus deserves attention. He says that as Adonis had been honoured by Aphrodite, the Cyprians after his death cast live doves on a pyre to him, and that the birds, flying away from the flames, fell into another pyre and were consumed.442 The statement seems to be a description of an actual custom of burning doves in sacrifice to Adonis. Such a mode of honouring him would be very remarkable, since doves were commonly sacred to his divine mistress Aphrodite or Astarte. For example, at the Syrian Hierapolis, one of the chief seats of her worship, these birds were so holy that they might not even be touched. If a man inadvertently touched a dove, he was unclean or tabooed for the rest of the day. Hence the birds, never being molested, were so tame that they lived with the people in their houses, and commonly picked up their food fearlessly on the ground.443 Can the burning of the sacred bird of Aphrodite in the Cyprian worship of Adonis have been a substitute for the burning of a sacred man who personated the lover of the goddess?

If, as many scholars think, Tark or Tarku was the name, or part of the name, of a great Hittite deity, sometimes identified as the god of the sky and the lightning,444 we may [pg 148] conjecture that Tark or Tarku was the native name of the god of Olba, whom the Greeks called Zeus, and that the priestly kings who bore the name of Teucer represented the god Tark or Tarku in their own persons. This conjecture is confirmed by the observation that Olba, the ancient name of the city, is itself merely a Grecized form of Oura, the name which the place retains to this day.445 The situation of the town, moreover, speaks strongly in favour of the view that it was from the beginning an aboriginal settlement, though in after days, like so many other Asiatic cities, it took on a varnish of Greek culture. For it stood remote from the sea on a lofty and barren tableland, with a rigorous winter climate, in the highlands of Cilicia.

Great indeed is the contrast between the bleak windy uplands of Western or Rugged Cilicia, as the ancients called it, and the soft luxuriant lowlands of Eastern Cilicia, where winter is almost unknown and summer annually drives the population to seek in the cool air of the mountains a refuge from the intolerable heat and deadly fevers of the plains. In Western Cilicia, on the other hand, a lofty tableland, ending in a high sharp edge on the coast, rises steadily inland till it passes gradually into the chain of heights which divide it from the interior. Looked at from the sea it resembles a great blue wave swelling in one uniform sweep till its crest breaks into foam in the distant snows of the Taurus. The surface of the tableland is almost everywhere rocky and overgrown, in the intervals of the rocks, with dense, thorny, almost impenetrable scrub. Only here and there in a hollow or glen the niggardly soil allows of a patch of cultivation; and here and there fine oaks and [pg 149] planes, towering over the brushwood, clothe with a richer foliage the depth of the valleys. None but wandering herdsmen with their flocks now maintain a precarious existence in this rocky wilderness. Yet the ruined towns which stud the country prove that a dense population lived and throve here in antiquity, while numerous remains of wine-presses and wine-vats bear witness to the successful cultivation of the grape. The chief cause of the present desolation is lack of water; for wells are few and brackish, perennial streams hardly exist, and the ancient aqueducts, which once brought life and fertility to the land, have long been suffered to fall into disrepair.

But for ages together the ancient inhabitants of these uplands earned their bread by less reputable means than the toil of the husbandman and the vinedresser. They were buccaneers and slavers, scouring the high seas with their galleys and retiring with their booty to the inaccessible fastnesses of their mountains. In the decline of Greek power all over the East the pirate communities of Cilicia grew into a formidable state, recruited by gangs of desperadoes and broken men who flocked to it from all sides. The holds of these robbers may still be seen perched on the brink of the profound ravines which cleave the tableland at frequent intervals. With their walls of massive masonry, their towers and battlements, overhanging dizzy depths, they are admirably adapted to bid defiance to the pursuit of justice. In antiquity the dark forests of cedar, which clothed much of the country and supplied the pirates with timber for their ships, must have rendered access to these fastnesses still more difficult. The great gorge of the Lamas River, which eats its way like a sheet of forked lightning into the heart of the mountains, is dotted every few miles with fortified towns, some of them still magnificent in their ruins, dominating sheer cliffs high above the stream. They are now the haunt only of the ibex and the bear. Each of these communities had its own crest or badge, which may still be seen carved on the corners of the mouldering towers. No doubt, too, it blazoned the same crest on the hull, the sails, or the streamers of the galley which, manned with a crew of ruffians, it sent out to prey [pg 150] upon the rich merchantmen in the Golden Sea, as the corsairs called the highway of commerce between Crete and Africa.

A staircase cut in the rock connects one of these ruined castles with the river in the glen, a thousand feet below. But the steps are worn and dangerous, indeed impassable. You may go for miles along the edge of these stupendous cliffs before you find a way down. The paths keep on the heights, for in many of its reaches the gully affords no foothold even to the agile nomads who alone roam these solitudes. At evening the winding course of the river may be traced for a long distance by a mist which, as the heat of the day declines, rises like steam from the deep gorge and hangs suspended in a wavy line of fleecy cloud above it. But even more imposing than the ravine of the Lamas is the terrific gorge known as the Sheitan dere or Devil's Glen near the Corycian cave. Prodigious walls of rock, glowing in the intense sunlight, black in the shadow, and spanned by a summer sky of the deepest blue, hem in the dry bed of a winter torrent, choked with rocks and tangled with thickets of evergreens, among which the oleanders with their slim stalks, delicate taper leaves, and bunches of crimson blossom stand out conspicuous.446

The ruins of Olba, among the most extensive and remarkable in Asia Minor, were discovered in 1890 by Mr. J. Theodore Bent. But three years before another English traveller had caught a distant view of its battlements and towers outlined against the sky like a city of enchantment or dreams.447 Standing at a height of nearly six thousand feet above the sea, the upper town commands a free, though somewhat uniform, prospect for immense distances in all directions. The sea is just visible far away to the south. On these heights the winter is long and severe. Snow lies on the ground for months. No Greek would have chosen such a site for a city, so bleak and chill, so far from blue water; but it served well for a fastness of brigands. Deep gorges, one of them filled for miles with tombs, surround it on all sides, rendering fortification walls superfluous. But a great square tower, four stories high, rises conspicuous on the hill, forming a landmark and earning for this upper town the native name of Jebel Hissar, or the Mountain of the Castle. A Greek inscription cut on the tower proves that it was built by Teucer, son of Tarkuaris, one of the priestly potentates of Olba. Among other remains of public buildings the most notable are forty tall Corinthian columns of the great temple of Olbian Zeus. Though coarse in style and corroded by long exposure to frost and snow, these massive pillars, towering above the ruins, produce an imposing effect. That the temple of which they formed part belonged indeed to Olbian Zeus is shown by a Greek inscription found within the sacred area, which records that the pent-houses on the inner side of the boundary wall were built by King Seleucus Nicator and repaired for Olbian Zeus by “the great high-priest Teucer, son of Zenophanes.” About two hundred yards from this great temple are standing five elegant granite columns of a small temple dedicated to the goddess Fortune. Further, the remains of two theatres and many other public buildings attest the former splendour of this mountain city. An arched colonnade, of which some Corinthian columns are standing with their architraves, ran through the town; [pg 152] and an ancient paved road, lined with tombs and ruins, leads down hill to a lower and smaller city two or three miles distant. It is this lower town which retains the ancient name of Oura. Here the principal ruins occupy an isolated fir-clad height bounded by two narrow ravines full of rock-cut tombs. Below the town the ravines unite and form a fine gorge, down which the old road passed seaward.448

Nothing yet found at Olba throws light on the nature of the god who was worshipped there under the Greek name of Zeus. But at two places near the coast, distant only some fourteen or fifteen miles from Olba, a deity also called Zeus by the Greeks was revered in natural surroundings of a remarkable kind, which must have stood in close relation with the worship, and are therefore fitted to illustrate it. In both places the features of the landscape are of the same general cast, and at one of them the god was definitely identified with the Zeus of Olba. The country here consists of a tableland of calcareous rock rent at intervals by those great chasms which are characteristic of a limestone formation. Similar fissures, with the accompaniment of streams or rivers which pour into them and vanish under ground, are frequent in Greece, and may be observed in our own country near Ingleborough in Yorkshire. Fossil bones of extinct animals are often found embedded in [pg 153] the stalagmite or breccia of limestone caves. For example, the famous Kent's Hole near Torquay contained bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, lion, hyaena, and bear; and red osseous breccias, charged with the bones of quadrupeds which have long disappeared from Europe, are common in almost all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.449 Western Cilicia is richer in Miocene deposits than any other part of Anatolia, and the limestone gorges of the coast near Olba are crowded with fossil oysters, corals, and other shells.450 Here, too, within the space of five miles the limestone plateau is rent by three great chasms, which Greek religion associated with Zeus and Typhon. One of these fissures is the celebrated Corycian cave.

To visit this spot, invested with the double charm of natural beauty and legendary renown, you start from the dead Cilician city of Corycus on the sea, with its ruined walls, towers, and churches, its rock-hewn houses and cisterns, its shattered mole, its island-fortress, still imposing in decay. Viewed from the sea, this part of the Cilician coast, with its long succession of white ruins, relieved by the dark wooded hills behind, presents an appearance of populousness and splendour. But a nearer approach reveals the nakedness and desolation of the once prosperous land.451 Following the shore westward from Corycus for about an hour you come to a pretty cove enclosed by wooded heights, where a spring of pure cold water bubbles up close to the sea, giving to the spot its name of Tatlu-su, or the Sweet Water. From this bay a steep ascent of about a mile along an ancient paved road leads inland to a plateau. Here, threading your way through a labyrinth or petrified sea of jagged calcareous rocks, you suddenly find yourself on the brink of a vast chasm which yawns at your feet. This is the Corycian cave. In reality it is not a cave but an immense hollow or trough in the plateau, of oval shape and perhaps half a mile in circumference. The cliffs which [pg 154] enclose it vary from one hundred to over two hundred feet in depth. Its uneven bottom slopes throughout its whole length from north to south, and is covered by a thick jungle of trees and shrubs—myrtles, pomegranates, carobs, and many more, kept always fresh and green by rivulets, underground water, and the shadow of the great cliffs. A single narrow path leads down into its depths. The way is long and rough, but the deeper you descend the denser grows the vegetation, and it is under the dappled shade of whispering leaves and with the purling of brooks in your ears that you at last reach the bottom. The saffron which of old grew here among the bushes is no longer to be found, though it still flourishes in the surrounding district. This luxuriant bottom, with its rich verdure, its refreshing moisture, its grateful shade, is called Paradise by the wandering herdsmen. They tether their camels and pasture their goats in it and come hither in the late summer to gather the ripe pomegranates. At the southern and deepest end of this great cliff-encircled hollow you come to the cavern proper. The ruins of a Byzantine church, which replaced a heathen temple, partly block the entrance. Inwards the cave descends with a gentle slope into the bowels of the earth. The old path paved with polygonal masonry still runs through it, but soon disappears under sand. At about two hundred feet from its mouth the cave comes to an end, and a tremendous roar of subterranean water is heard. By crawling on all fours you may reach a small pool arched by a dripping stalactite-hung roof, but the stream which makes the deafening din is invisible. It was otherwise in antiquity. A river of clear water burst from the rock, but only to vanish again into a chasm. Such changes in the course of streams are common in countries subject to earthquakes and to the disruption caused by volcanic agency. The ancients believed that this mysterious cavern was haunted ground. In the rumble and roar of the waters they seemed to hear the clash of cymbals touched by hands divine.452

If now, quitting the cavern, we return by the same path to the summit of the cliffs, we shall find on the plateau the ruins of a town and of a temple at the western edge of the great Corycian chasm. The wall of the holy precinct was built within a few feet of the precipices, and the sanctuary must have stood right over the actual cave and its subterranean waters. In later times the temple was converted into a Christian church. By pulling down a portion of the sacred edifice Mr. Bent had the good fortune to discover a Greek inscription containing a long list of names, probably those of the priests who superintended the worship. One name which meets us frequently in the list is Zas, and it is tempting to regard this as merely a dialectical form of Zeus. If that were so, the priests who bore the name might be supposed to personate the god.453 But many strange and barbarous-looking names, evidently foreign, occur in the list, and Zas may be one of them. However, it is certain that Zeus was worshipped at the Corycian cave; for about half a mile from it, on the summit of a hill, are the ruins of a larger temple, which an inscription proves to have been dedicated to Corycian Zeus.454

But Zeus, or whatever native deity masqueraded under his name, did not reign alone in the deep dell. A more dreadful being haunted a still more awful abyss which opens in the ground only a hundred yards to the east of the great Corycian chasm. It is a circular cauldron, about a quarter [pg 156] of a mile in circumference, resembling the Corycian chasm in its general character, but smaller, deeper, and far more terrific in appearance. Its sides overhang and stalactites droop from them. There is no way down into it. The only mode of reaching the bottom, which is covered with vegetation, would be to be lowered at the end of a long rope. The nomads call this chasm Purgatory, to distinguish it from the other which they name Paradise. They say that there is a subterranean passage between the two, and that the smoke of a fire kindled in the Corycian cave may be seen curling out of the other. The one ancient writer who expressly mentions this second and more grisly cavern is Mela, who says that it was the lair of the giant Typhon, and that no animal let down into it could live.455 Aeschylus puts into the mouth of Prometheus an account of “the earth-born Typhon, dweller in Cilician caves, dread monster, hundred-headed,” who in his pride rose up against the gods, hissing destruction from his dreadful jaws, while from his Gorgon eyes the lightning flashed. But him a flaming levin bolt, crashing from heaven, smote to the very heart, and now he lies, shrivelled and scorched, under the weight of Etna by the narrow sea. Yet one day he will belch a fiery hail, a boiling angry flood, rivers of flame, to devastate the fat Sicilian fields.456 This poetical description of the monster, confirmed by a similar passage of Pindar,457 clearly proves that Typhon was conceived as a personification of those active volcanoes which spout fire and smoke to heaven as if they would assail the celestial gods. The Corycian caverns are not volcanic, but the ancients apparently regarded them as such, else they would hardly have made them the den of Typhon.

According to one legend Typhon was a monster, half man and half brute, begotten in Cilicia by Tartarus upon the goddess Earth. The upper part of him was human, but from the loins downward he was an enormous snake. In the battle of the gods and giants, which was fought out in Egypt, Typhon hugged Zeus in his snaky coils, wrested [pg 157] from him his crooked sword, and with the blade cut the sinews of the god's hands and feet. Then taking him on his back he conveyed the mutilated deity across the sea to Cilicia, and deposited him in the Corycian cave. Here, too, he hid the severed sinews, wrapt in a bear's skin. But Hermes and Aegipan contrived to steal the missing thews and restore them to their divine owner. Thus made whole and strong again, Zeus pelted his beaten adversary with thunderbolts, drove him from place to place, and at last overwhelmed him under Mount Etna. And the spots where the hissing bolts fell are still marked by jets of flame.458

It is possible that the discovery of fossil bones of large extinct animals may have helped to localize the story of the giant at the Corycian cave. Such bones, as we have seen, are often found in limestone caverns, and the limestone gorges of Cilicia are in fact rich in fossils. The Arcadians laid the scene of the battle of the gods and the giants in the plain of Megalopolis, where many bones of mammoths have come to light, and where, moreover, flames have been seen to burst from the earth and even to burn for years.459 These natural conditions would easily suggest a fable of giants who had fought the gods and had been slain by thunderbolts; the smouldering earth or jets of flame would be regarded as the spots where the divine lightnings had struck the ground. Hence the Arcadians sacrificed to thunder and lightning.460 In Sicily, too, great quantities of bones of mammoths, elephants, hippopotamuses, and other animals long extinct in the island have been found, and have been appealed to with confidence by patriotic Sicilians as conclusive evidence of the gigantic stature of their ancestors or predecessors.461 These remains of huge unwieldy creatures which once trampled through the jungle or splashed in the rivers of Sicily may have contributed with the fires of Etna to build up the story of giants imprisoned under the volcano and vomiting smoke and flame from its crater. “Tales of [pg 158] giants and monsters, which stand in direct connexion with the finding of great fossil bones, are scattered broadcast over the mythology of the world. Huge bones, found at Punto Santa Elena, in the north of Guayaquil, have served as a foundation for the story of a colony of giants who dwelt there. The whole area of the Pampas is a great sepulchre of enormous extinct animals; no wonder that one great plain should be called the ‘Field of the giants,’ and that such names as ‘the hill of the giant,’ ‘the stream of the animal,’ should be guides to the geologist in his search for fossil bones.”462

About five miles to the north-east of the Corycian caverns, but divided from them by many deep gorges and impassable rocks, is another and very similar chasm. It may be reached in about an hour and a quarter from the sea by an ancient paved road, which ascends at first very steeply and then gently through bush-clad and wooded hills. Thus you come to a stretch of level ground covered with the well-preserved ruins of an ancient town. Remains of fortresses constructed of polygonal masonry, stately churches, and many houses, together with numerous tombs and reliefs, finely chiselled in the calcareous limestone of the neighbourhood, bear witness to the extent and importance of the place. Yet it is mentioned by no ancient writer. Inscriptions prove that its name was Kanyteldeis or Kanytelideis, which still survives in the modern form of Kanidiwan. The great chasm opens in the very heart of the city. So crowded are the ruins that you do not perceive the abyss till you are within a few yards of it. It is almost a complete circle, about a quarter of a mile wide, three-quarters of a mile in circumference, and uniformly two hundred feet or more in depth. The cliffs go sheer down and remind the traveller of the great quarries at Syracuse. But like the Corycian caves, the larger of which it closely resembles, the huge fissure is natural; and its bottom, like theirs, is overgrown with trees and vegetation. Two ways led down into it in antiquity, both cut through the rock. One of them was a tunnel, which is now obstructed; the other is still open. [pg 159] Remains of columns and hewn stones in the bottom of the chasm seem to show that a temple once stood there. But there is no cave at the foot of the cliffs, and no stream flows in the deep hollow or can be heard to rumble underground. A ruined tower of polygonal masonry, which stands on the southern edge of the chasm, bears a Greek inscription stating that it was dedicated to Olbian Zeus by the priest Teucer, son of Tarkuaris. The letters are beautifully cut in the style of the third century before Christ. We may infer that at the time of the dedication the town belonged to the priestly kings of Olba, and that the great chasm was sacred to Olbian Zeus.463

What, then, was the character of the god who was worshipped under the name of Zeus at these two great natural chasms? The depth of the fissures, opening suddenly and as it were without warning in the midst of a plateau, was well fitted to impress and awe the spectator; and the sight of the rank evergreen vegetation at their bottom, fed by rivulets or underground water, must have presented a striking contrast to the grey, barren, rocky wilderness of the surrounding tableland. Such a spot must have seemed to simple folk a paradise, a garden of God, the abode of higher powers who caused the wilderness to blossom, if not with roses, at least with myrtles and pomegranates for man, and with grass and underwood for his flocks. So to the Semite, as we saw, the Baal of the land is he who fertilizes it by subterranean water rather than by rain from the sky, and who therefore dwells in the depths of earth rather than in the height of heaven.464 In rainless countries the sky-god is deprived of one of the principal functions which he discharges in cool cloudy climates like that of Europe. He has, in fact, little or nothing to do with the water-supply, and has therefore small excuse for levying a water-rate on his worshippers. Not, indeed, that Cilicia is rainless; but in countries bordering [pg 160] on the Mediterranean the drought is almost unbroken through the long months of summer. Vegetation then withers: the face of nature is scorched and brown: most of the rivers dry up; and only their white stony beds, hot to the foot and dazzling to the eye, remain to tell where they flowed. It is at such seasons that a green hollow, a shady rock, a murmuring stream, are welcomed by the wanderer in the South with a joy and wonder which the untravelled Northerner can hardly imagine. Never do the broad slow rivers of England, with their winding reaches, their grassy banks, their grey willows mirrored with the soft English sky in the placid stream, appear so beautiful as when the traveller views them for the first time after leaving behind him the aridity, the heat, the blinding glare of the white southern landscape, set in seas and skies of caerulean blue.

We may take it, then, as probable that the god of the Corycian and Olbian caverns was worshipped as a source of fertility. In antiquity, when the river, which now roars underground, still burst from the rock in the Corycian cave, the scene must have resembled Ibreez, where the god of the corn and the vine was adored at the source of the stream; and we may compare the vale of Adonis in the Lebanon, where the divinity who gave his name to the river was revered at its foaming cascades. The three landscapes had in common the elements of luxuriant vegetation and copious streams leaping full-born from the rock. We shall hardly err in supposing that these features shaped the conception of the deities who were supposed to haunt the favoured spots. At the Corycian cave the existence of a second chasm, of a frowning and awful aspect, might well suggest the presence of an evil being who lurked in it and sought to undo the beneficent work of the good god. Thus we should have a fable of a conflict between the two, a battle of Zeus and Typhon.

On the whole we conclude that the Olbian Zeus, worshipped at one of these great limestone chasms, and clearly identical in nature with the Corycian Zeus, was also identical with the Baal of Tarsus, the god of the corn and the vine, who in his turn can hardly be separated from [pg 161] the god of Ibreez. If my conjecture is right the native name of the Olbian Zeus was Tark or Trok, and the priestly Teucers of Olba represented him in their own persons. On that hypothesis the Olbian priests who bore the name of Ajax embodied another native deity of unknown name, perhaps the father or the son of Tark. A comparison of the coin-types of Tarsus with the Hittite monuments of Ibreez and Boghaz-Keui led us to the conclusion that the people of Tarsus worshipped at least two distinct gods, a father and a son, the father-god being known to the Semites as Baal and to the Greeks as Zeus, while the son was called Sandan by the natives, but Hercules by the Greeks. We may surmise that at Olba the names of Teucer and Ajax designated two gods who corresponded in type to the two gods of Tarsus; and if the lesser figure at Ibreez, who appears in an attitude of adoration before the deity of the corn and the vine, could be interpreted as the divine Son in presence of the divine Father, we should have in all three places the same pair of deities, represented probably in the flesh by successive generations of priestly kings. But the evidence is far too slender to justify us in advancing this hypothesis as anything more than a bare conjecture.

So far, the Cilician deities discussed have been males; we have as yet found no trace of the great Mother Goddess who plays so important a part in the religion of Cappadocia and Phrygia, beyond the great dividing range of the Taurus. Yet we may suspect that she was not unknown in Cilicia, though her worship certainly seems to have been far less prominent there than in the centre of Asia Minor. The difference may perhaps be interpreted as evidence that mother-kin and hence the predominance of Mother Goddesses survived, in the bleak highlands of the interior, long after a genial climate and teeming soil had fostered the growth of a higher civilization, and with it the advance from female to male kinship, in the rich lowlands of Cilicia. Be that as it may, Cilician goddesses with or without a male partner are known to have been revered in various parts of the country.

Thus at Tarsus itself the goddess 'Atheh was worshipped along with Baal; their effigies are engraved on the same coins of the city. She is represented wearing a veil and seated upon a lion, with her name in Aramaic letters engraved beside her.465 Hence it would seem that at Tarsus, as at Boghaz-Keui, the Father God mated with a lion-goddess like the Phrygian Cybele or the Syrian Atargatis. Now the name Atargatis is a Greek rendering of the Aramaic 'Athar-'atheh, a compound word which includes the name of the goddess of Tarsus.466 Thus in name as well as in attributes the female partner of the Baal of Tarsus appears to correspond to Atargatis, the Syrian Mother Goddess whose image, seated on a lion or lions, was worshipped with great pomp and splendour at Hierapolis-Bambyce near the Euphrates.467 [pg 163] May we go a step farther and find a correspondence between the Baal of Tarsus and the husband-god of Atargatis at Hierapolis-Bambyce? That husband-god, like the Baal of Tarsus, was identified by the Greeks with Zeus, and Lucian tells us that the resemblance of his image to the images of Zeus was in all respects unmistakable. But his image, unlike those of Zeus, was seated upon bulls.468 In point of fact he was probably Hadad, the chief male god of the Syrians, who appears to have been a god of thunder and fertility; for at Baalbec in the Lebanon, where the ruined temple of the Sun is the most imposing monument bequeathed to the modern world by Greek art in its decline, his image grasped in his left hand a thunderbolt and ears of corn,469 and a colossal statue of the deity, found near Zenjirli in Northern Syria, represents him with a bearded human head and horns, the emblem of strength and fertility.470 A similar god of thunder and lightning was worshipped from early times by the Babylonians and Assyrians; he bore the similar name of Adad and his emblems appear to have been a thunderbolt and a bull. On an Assyrian relief his image is represented as that of a bearded man clad in a short tunic, wearing a cap with two pairs of horns, and grasping an axe in his right hand and a thunderbolt in his left. His resemblance to the Hittite god of the thundering sky was therefore very close. An alternative name for this Babylonian and Assyrian deity was Ramman, an appropriate [pg 164] term, derived from a verb ramâmu to “scream” or “roar.”471 Now we have seen that the god of Ibreez, whose attributes tally with those of the Baal of Tarsus, wears a cap adorned with bull's horns;472 that the Father God at Boghaz-Keui, meeting the Mother Goddess on her lioness, is attended by an animal which according to the usual interpretation is a bull;473 and that the bull itself was worshipped, apparently as an emblem of fertility, at Euyuk near Boghaz-Keui.474 Thus at Tarsus and Boghaz-Keui, as at Hierapolis-Bambyce, the Father God and the Mother Goddess would seem to have had as their sacred animals or emblems the bull and the lion respectively. In later times, under Greek influence, the goddess was apparently exchanged for, or converted into, the Fortune of the City, who appears on coins of Tarsus as a seated woman with veiled and turreted head, grasping ears of corn and a poppy in her hand. Her lion is gone, but a trace of him perhaps remains on a coin which exhibits the throne of the goddess adorned with a lion's leg.475 In general it would seem that the goddess Fortune, who figures commonly as the guardian of cities in the Greek East, especially in Syria, was nothing but a disguised form of Gad, the Semitic god of fortune or luck, who, though the exigencies of grammar required him to be masculine, is supposed to have been often merely a special aspect of the great goddess Astarte or Atargatis conceived as the patroness and protector of towns.476 In Oriental religion such permutations or combinations need not surprise us. To the gods all things are [pg 165] possible. In Cyprus the goddess of love wore a beard,477 and Alexander the Great sometimes disported himself in the costume of Artemis, while at other times he ransacked the divine wardrobe to figure in the garb of Hercules, of Hermes, and of Ammon.478 The change of the goddess 'Atheh of Tarsus into Gad or Fortune would be easy if we suppose that she was known as Gad-'Atheh, “Luck of 'Atheh,” which occurs as a Semitic personal name.479 In like manner the goddess of Fortune at Olba, who had her small temple beside the great temple of Zeus,480 may have been originally the consort of the native god Tark or Tarku.

Another town in Cilicia where an Oriental god and goddess appear to have been worshipped together was Mallus. The city was built on a height in the great Cilician plain near the mouth of the river Pyramus.481 Its coins exhibit two winged deities, a male and a female, in a kneeling or running attitude. On some of the coins the male deity is represented, like Janus, with two heads facing opposite ways, and with two pairs of wings, while beneath him is the forepart of a bull with a human head. The obverse of the coins which bear the female deity displays a conical stone, sometimes flanked by two bunches of grapes.482 This conical stone, like those of other Asiatic cities,483 was probably the emblem of a Mother Goddess, and the bunches of grapes indicate her fertilizing powers. The god with the two heads [pg 166] and four wings can hardly be any other than the Phoenician El, whom the Greeks called Cronus; for El was characterized by four eyes, two in front and two behind, and by three pairs of wings.484 A discrepancy in the number of wings can scarcely be deemed fatal to the identification. The god may easily have moulted some superfluous feathers on the road from Phoenicia to Mallus. On later coins of Mallus these quaint Oriental deities disappear, and are replaced by corresponding Greek deities, particularly by a head of Cronus on one side and a figure of Demeter, grasping ears of corn, on the other.485 The change doubtless sprang from a wish to assimilate the ancient native divinities to the new and fashionable divinities of the Greek pantheon. If Cronus and Demeter, the harvest god and goddess, were chosen to supplant El and his female consort, the ground of the choice must certainly have been a supposed resemblance between the two pairs of deities. We may assume, therefore, that the discarded couple, El and his wife, had also been worshipped by the husbandman as sources of fertility, the givers of corn and wine. One of these later coins of Mallus exhibits Dionysus sitting on a vine laden with ripe clusters, while on the obverse is seen a male figure guiding a yoke of oxen as if in the act of ploughing.486 These types of the vine-god and the ploughman probably represent another attempt to adapt the native religion to changed conditions, to pour the old Asiatic wine into new Greek bottles. The barbarous monster with the multiplicity of heads and wings has been reduced to a perfectly human Dionysus. The sacred but deplorable old conical stone no longer flaunts proudly on the coins; it has retired to a decent obscurity in favour of a natural and graceful vine. It is thus that a truly progressive theology keeps pace with the march of intellect. But if these things were done by the apostles of culture at Mallus, we cannot suppose that the clergy of Tarsus, the capital, lagged behind their provincial [pg 167] brethren in their efforts to place the ancient faith upon a sound modern basis. The fruit of their labours seems to have been the more or less nominal substitution of Zeus, Fortune, and Hercules for Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan.487

We may suspect that in like manner the Sarpedonian Artemis, who had a sanctuary in South-Eastern Cilicia, near the Syrian border, was really a native goddess parading in borrowed plumes. She gave oracular responses by the mouth of inspired men, or more probably of women, who in their moments of divine ecstasy may have been deemed incarnations of her divinity.488 Another even more transparently Asiatic goddess was Perasia, or Artemis Perasia, who was worshipped at Hieropolis-Castabala in Eastern Cilicia. The extensive ruins of the ancient city, now known as Bodroum, cover the slope of a hill about three-quarters of a mile to the north of the river Pyramus. Above them towers the acropolis, built on the summit of dark grey precipices, and divided from the neighbouring mountain by a deep cutting in the rock. A mediaeval castle, built of hewn blocks of reddish-yellow limestone, has replaced the ancient citadel. The city possessed a large theatre, and was traversed by two handsome colonnades, of which some columns are still standing among the ruins. A thick growth of brushwood and grass now covers most of the site, and the place is wild and solitary. Only the wandering herdsmen encamp near the deserted city in winter and spring. The neighbourhood is treeless; yet in May magnificent fields of wheat and barley gladden the eye, and in the valleys the [pg 168] clover grows as high as the horses' knees.489 The ambiguous nature of the goddess who presided over this City of the Sanctuary (Hieropolis)490 was confessed by a puzzled worshipper, a physician named Lucius Minius Claudianus, who confided his doubts to the deity herself in some very indifferent Greek verses. He wisely left it to the goddess to say whether she was Artemis, or the Moon, or Hecate, or Aphrodite, or Demeter.491 All that we know about her is that her true name was Perasia, and that she was in the enjoyment of certain revenues.492 Further, we may reasonably conjecture that at the Cilician Castabala she was worshipped with rites like those which were held in honour of her namesake Artemis Perasia at another city of the same name, Castabala in Cappadocia. There, as we saw, the priestesses of the goddess walked over fire with bare feet unscathed.493 Probably the [pg 169] same impressive ceremony was performed before a crowd of worshippers in the Cilician Castabala also. Whatever the exact meaning of the rite may have been, the goddess was in all probability one of those Asiatic Mother Goddesses to whom the Greeks often applied the name of Artemis.494 The immunity enjoyed by the priestess in the furnace was attributed to her inspiration by the deity. In discussing the nature of inspiration or possession by a deity, the Syrian philosopher Jamblichus notes as one of its symptoms a total insensibility to pain. Many inspired persons, he tells us, “are not burned by fire, the fire not taking hold of them by reason of the divine inspiration; and many, though they are burned, perceive it not, because at the time they do not live an animal life. They pierce themselves with skewers and feel nothing. They gash their backs with hatchets, they slash their arms with daggers, and know not what they do, because their acts are not those of mere men. For impassable places become passable to those who are filled with the spirit. They rush into fire, they pass through fire, they cross rivers, like the priestess at Castabala. These things prove that under the influence of inspiration men are beside themselves, that their senses, their will, their life are those neither of man nor of beast, but that they lead another and a diviner life instead, whereby they are inspired and wholly possessed.”495 Thus in traversing the fiery furnace the priestesses of Perasia were believed to be beside themselves, to be filled with the goddess, to be in a real sense incarnations of her divinity.496

A similar touchstone of inspiration is still applied by some villagers in the Himalayan districts of North-Western [pg 170] India. Once a year they worship Airi, a local deity, who is represented by a trident and has his temples on lonely hills and desolate tracts. At his festival the people seat themselves in a circle about a bonfire. A kettle-drum is beaten, and one by one his worshippers become possessed by the god and leap with shouts round the flames. Some brand themselves with heated iron spoons and sit down in the fire. Such as escape unhurt are believed to be truly inspired, while those who burn themselves are despised as mere pretenders to the divine frenzy. Persons thus possessed by the spirit are called Airi's horses or his slaves. During the revels, which commonly last about ten days, they wear red scarves round their heads and receive alms from the faithful. These men deem themselves so holy that they will let nobody touch them, and they alone may touch the sacred trident, the emblem of their god.497 In Western Asia itself modern fanatics still practise the same austerities which were practised by their brethren in the days of Jamblichus. “Asia Minor abounds in dervishes of different orders, who lap red-hot iron, calling it their ‘rose,’ chew coals of living fire, strike their heads against solid walls, stab themselves in the cheek, the scalp, the temple, with sharp spikes set in heavy weights, shouting ‘Allah, Allah,’ and always consistently avowing that during such frenzy they are entirely insensible to pain.”498

On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in concluding that under a thin veneer of Greek humanity the barbarous native gods of Cilicia continued long to survive, and that among them the great Asiatic goddess retained a place, though not the prominent place which she held in the highlands of the interior down at least to the beginning of our era. The principle that the inspired priest or priestess represents the deity in person appears, if I am right, to [pg 171] have been recognized at Castabala and at Olba, as well as at the sanctuary of Sarpedonian Artemis. There can be no intrinsic improbability, therefore, in the view that at Tarsus also the divine triad of Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan may also have been personated by priests and priestesses, who, on the analogy of Olba and of the great sanctuaries in the interior of Asia Minor, would originally be at the same time kings and queens, princes and princesses. Further, the burning of Sandan in effigy at Tarsus would, on this hypothesis, answer to the walk of the priestess of Perasia through the furnace at Castabala. Both were perhaps mitigations of a custom of putting the priestly king or queen, or another member of the royal family, to death by fire.

The theory that kings or princes were formerly burned to death at Tarsus in the character of gods is singularly confirmed by another and wholly independent line of argument. For, according to one account, the city of Tarsus was founded not by Sandan but by Sardanapalus, the famous Assyrian monarch whose death on a great pyre was one of the most famous incidents in Oriental legend. Near the sea, within a day's march of Tarsus, might be seen in antiquity the ruins of a great ancient city named Anchiale, and outside its walls stood a monument called the monument of Sardanapalus, on which was carved in stone the figure of the monarch. He was represented snapping the fingers of his right hand, and the gesture was explained by an accompanying inscription, engraved in Assyrian characters, to the following effect:—“Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day. Eat, drink, and play, for everything else is not worth that,” by which was implied that all other human affairs were not worth a snap of the fingers.499 The gesture may have been misinterpreted [pg 173] and the inscription mistranslated,500 but there is no reason to doubt the existence of such a monument, though we may conjecture that it was of Hittite rather than Assyrian origin; for, not to speak of the traces of Hittite art and religion which we have found at Tarsus, a group of Hittite monuments has been discovered at Marash, in the upper valley of the Pyramus.501 The Assyrians may have ruled over Cilicia for a time, but Hittite influence was probably much deeper and more lasting.502 The story that Tarsus was founded by Sardanapalus may well be apocryphal,503 but there must have been some reason for his association with the city. On the present hypothesis that reason is to be found in the traditional manner of his death. To avoid falling into the hands of the rebels, who laid siege to Nineveh, he built a huge pyre in his palace, heaped it up with gold and silver and purple raiment, and then burnt himself, his wife, his concubines, and his eunuchs in the fire.504 The story is false of the historical Sardanapalus, that is, of the great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, but it is true of his brother Shamashshumukin. Being appointed king of Babylon by Ashurbanipal, he revolted against his suzerain and benefactor, and was besieged by him in his capital. The siege was long and the resistance desperate, for the Babylonians knew that they had no mercy to expect from the ruthless Assyrians. But they were decimated by famine and pestilence, and when the city could hold out no more, King Shamashshumukin, determined not to fall alive into the hands of his offended brother, shut himself up in his [pg 174] palace, and there burned himself to death, along with his wives, his children, his slaves, and his treasures, at the very moment when the conquerors were breaking in the gates.505 Not many years afterwards the same tragedy was repeated at Nineveh itself by Saracus or Sinsharishkun, the last king of Assyria. Besieged by the rebel Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, and by Cyaxares, king of the Medes, he burned himself in his palace. That was the end of Nineveh and of the Assyrian empire.506 Thus Greek history preserved the memory of the catastrophe, but transferred it from the real victims to the far more famous Ashurbanipal, whose figure in after ages loomed vast and dim against the setting sun of Assyrian glory.

Another Oriental monarch who prepared at least to die in the flames was Croesus, king of Lydia. Herodotus tells how the Persians under Cyrus captured Sardes, the Lydian capital, and took Croesus alive, and how Cyrus caused a great pyre to be erected, on which he placed the captive monarch in fetters, and with him twice seven Lydian youths. Fire was then applied to the pile, but at the last moment Cyrus relented, a sudden shower extinguished the flames, and Croesus was spared.507 But it is most improbable that the Persians, with their profound reverence for the sanctity of fire, should have thought of defiling the sacred element with the worst of all pollutions, the contact of dead bodies.508 Such an act would have seemed to them sacrilege of the deepest dye. For to them fire was the earthly form of the [pg 175] heavenly light, the eternal, the infinite, the divine; death, on the other hand, was in their opinion the main source of corruption and uncleanness. Hence they took the most stringent precautions to guard the purity of fire from the defilement of death.509 If a man or a dog died in a house where the holy fire burned, the fire had to be removed from the house and kept away for nine nights in winter or a month in summer before it might be brought back; and if any man broke the rule by bringing back the fire within the appointed time, he might be punished with two hundred stripes.510 As for burning a corpse in the fire, it was the most heinous of all sins, an invention of Ahriman, the devil; there was no atonement for it, and it was punished with death.511 Nor did the law remain a dead letter. Down to the beginning of our era the death penalty was inflicted on all who threw a corpse or cow-dung on the fire, nay, even on such as blew on the fire with their breath.512 It is hard, therefore, to believe that a Persian king should have commanded his subjects to perpetrate a deed which he and they viewed with horror as the most flagitious sacrilege conceivable.

Another and in some respects truer version of the story of Croesus and Cyrus has been preserved by two older witnesses—namely, by the Greek poet Bacchylides, who was born some forty years after the event,513 and by a Greek artist who painted the scene on a red-figured vase about, or soon after, the time of the poet's birth. Bacchylides tells us that when the Persians captured Sardes, Croesus, unable to brook the thought of slavery, caused a pyre to be erected in front of his courtyard, mounted it with his wife and daughters, and bade a page apply a light to the wood. A bright blaze shot up, but Zeus extinguished it with rain from heaven, and [pg 176] Apollo of the Golden Sword wafted the pious king and his daughters to the happy land beyond the North Wind.514 In like manner the vase-painter clearly represents the burning of Croesus as a voluntary act, not as a punishment inflicted on him by the conqueror. He lets us see the king enthroned upon the pyre with a wreath of laurel on his head and a sceptre in one hand, while with the other he is pouring a libation. An attendant is in the act of applying to the pile two objects which have been variously interpreted as torches to kindle the wood or whisks to sprinkle holy water. The demeanour of the king is solemn and composed: he seems to be performing a religious rite, not suffering an ignominious death.515

Thus we may fairly conclude with some eminent modern scholars516 that in the extremity of his fortunes Croesus prepared to meet death like a king or a god in the flames. It was thus that Hercules, from whom the old kings of Lydia claimed to be sprung,517 ascended from earth to heaven: it was thus that Zimri, king of Israel, passed beyond the reach of his enemies: it was thus that Shamashshumukin, king of Babylon, escaped a brother's vengeance: it was thus that the last king of Assyria expired in the ruins of his capital; and it was thus that, sixty-six years after the capture of Sardes, the Carthaginian king Hamilcar sought to retrieve a lost battle by a hero's death.518

Semiramis herself, the legendary queen of Assyria, is said to have burnt herself on a pyre out of grief at the death of a favourite horse.519 Since there are strong grounds for regarding [pg 177] the queen in her mythical aspect as a form of Ishtar or Astarte,520 the legend that Semiramis died for love in the flames furnishes a remarkable parallel to the traditionary death of the love-lorn Dido, who herself appears to be simply an Avatar of the same great Asiatic goddess.521 When we compare these stories of the burning of Semiramis and Dido with each other and with the historical cases of the burning of Oriental monarchs, we may perhaps conclude that there was a time when queens as well as kings were expected under certain circumstances, perhaps on the death of their consort, to perish in the fire. The conclusion can hardly be deemed extravagant when we remember that the practice of burning widows to death survived in India under English rule down to a time within living memory.522

At Jerusalem itself a reminiscence of the practice of burning kings, alive or dead, appears to have lingered as late as the time of Isaiah, who says: “For Tophet is prepared of old; yea, for the king it is made ready; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.”523 We know that “great burnings” were [pg 178] regularly made for dead kings of Judah,524 and it can hardly be accidental that the place assigned by Isaiah to the king's pyre is the very spot in the Valley of Hinnom where the first-born children were actually burned by their parents in honour of Moloch “the King.” The exact site of the Valley of Hinnom is disputed, but all are agreed in identifying it with one of the ravines which encircle or intersect Jerusalem; and according to some eminent authorities it was the one called by Josephus the Tyropoeon.525 If this last identification is correct, the valley where the children were burned on a pyre lay immediately beneath the royal palace and the temple. Perhaps the young victims died for God and the king.526

With the “great burnings” for dead Jewish kings it seems worth while to compare the great burnings still annually made for dead Jewish Rabbis at the lofty village of Meiron in Galilee, the most famous and venerated place of pilgrimage for Jews in modern Palestine. Here the tombs of the Rabbis are hewn out of the rock, and here on the thirtieth of April, the eve of May Day, multitudes of pilgrims, both men and women, assemble and burn their offerings, which consist of shawls, scarfs, handkerchiefs, books, and the like. These are placed in two stone basins on the top of two low pillars, and being drenched with oil and ignited they are consumed to ashes amid the loud applause, shouts, and cries of the spectators. A man has been known to pay as much as [pg 179] two thousand piastres for the privilege of being allowed to open the ceremony by burning a costly shawl. On such occasions the solemn unmoved serenity of the Turkish officials, who keep order, presents a striking contrast to the intense excitement of the Jews.527 This curious ceremony may be explained by the widespread practice of burning property for the use and benefit of the dead. So, to take a single instance, the tyrant Periander collected the finest raiment of all the women in Corinth and burned it in a pit for his dead wife, who had sent him word by necromancy that she was cold and naked in the other world, because the clothes he buried with her had not been burnt.528 In like manner, perhaps, garments and other valuables may have been consumed on the pyre for the use of the dead kings of Judah. In Siam, the corpse of a king or queen is burned in a huge structure resembling a permanent palace, which with its many-gabled and high-pitched roofs and multitudinous tinselled spires, soaring to a height of over two hundred feet, sometimes occupies an area of about an acre.529 The blaze of such an enormous catafalque may resemble, even if it far surpasses, the “great burnings” for the Jewish kings.

These events and these traditions seem to prove that under certain circumstances Oriental monarchs deliberately chose to burn themselves to death. What were these circumstances? and what were the consequences of the act? If the intention had merely been to escape from the hands of a conqueror, an easier mode of death would naturally have been chosen. There must have been a special reason for electing to die by fire. The legendary death of Hercules, the historical death of Hamilcar, and the picture of Croesus enthroned in state on the pyre and pouring a libation, all combine to indicate that to be burnt alive was regarded as a solemn sacrifice, nay, more than that, as an apotheosis which [pg 180] raised the victim to the rank of a god.530 For it is to be remembered that Hamilcar as well as Hercules was worshipped after death. Fire, moreover, was regarded by the ancients as a purgative so powerful that properly applied it could burn away all that was mortal of a man, leaving only the divine and immortal spirit behind. Hence we read of goddesses who essayed to confer immortality on the infant sons of kings by burning them in the fire by night; but their beneficent purpose was always frustrated by the ignorant interposition of the mother or father, who peeping into the room saw the child in the flames and raised a cry of horror, thus disconcerting the goddess at her magic rites. This story is told of Isis in the house of the king of Byblus, of Demeter in the house of the king of Eleusis, and of Thetis in the house of her mortal husband Peleus.531 In a slightly [pg 181] different way the witch Medea professed to give back to the old their lost youth by boiling them with a hell-broth in her magic cauldron;532 and when Pelops had been butchered and served up at a banquet of the gods by his cruel father Tantalus, the divine beings, touched with pity, plunged his mangled remains in a kettle, from which after decoction he emerged alive and young.533 “Fire,” says Jamblichus, “destroys the material part of sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it, releasing them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of the purity of its nature, making them meet for communion with the gods. So, too, it releases us from the bondage of corruption, it likens us to the gods, it makes us meet for their friendship, and it converts our material nature into an immaterial.”534 Thus we can understand why kings and commoners who claimed or aspired to divinity should choose death by fire. It opened to them the gates of heaven. The quack Peregrinus, who ended his disreputable career in the flames at Olympia, gave out that after death he would be turned into a spirit who would guard men from the perils of the night; and, as Lucian remarked, no doubt there were plenty of fools to believe him.535 According to one account, the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles, who set up for being a god in his lifetime, leaped into the crater of Etna in order to establish his claim to godhead.536 There is nothing incredible in the tradition. The crack-brained philosopher, with his itch for notoriety, may well have done what Indian fakirs537 and the brazen-faced mountebank Peregrinus did in antiquity, and what Russian peasants and Chinese Buddhists have done in modern times.538 There is no extremity to which fanaticism or vanity, or a mixture of the two, will not impel its victims.

But apart from any general notions of the purificatory virtues of fire, the kings of Lydia seem to have had a special reason for regarding death in the flames as their appropriate end. For the ancient dynasty of the Heraclids which preceded the house of Croesus on the throne traced their descent from a god or hero whom the Greeks called Hercules;539 and this Lydian Hercules appears to have been identical in name and in substance with the Cilician Hercules, whose effigy was regularly burned on a great pyre at Tarsus. The Lydian Hercules bore the name of Sandon;540 the Cilician Hercules bore the name of Sandan, or perhaps rather of Sandon, since Sandon is known from inscriptions and other evidence to have been a Cilician name.541 The characteristic emblems of the Cilician Hercules were the lion and the double-headed axe; and both these emblems meet us at Sardes in connexion with the dynasty of the Heraclids. For the double-headed axe was carried as part of the sacred regalia by Lydian kings from the time of the legendary queen Omphale down to the reign of Candaules, the last of the Heraclid kings. It is said to have been given to Omphale by Hercules himself, and it was apparently regarded as a palladium of the Heraclid sovereignty; for after the dotard Candaules ceased to carry the axe himself, and had handed it over to the keeping of a courtier, a rebellion broke out, and the ancient dynasty of the Heraclids came to an end. The new king Gyges did not attempt to carry the old emblem of sovereignty; he dedicated it with other spoils to Zeus in Caria. Hence the image of the Carian Zeus bore an axe in his hand and received the epithet of Labrandeus, from labrys, the Lydian word for “axe.”542 Such is Plutarch's account; but we may [pg 183] suspect that Zeus, or rather the native god whom the Greeks identified with Zeus, carried the axe long before the time of Candaules. If, as is commonly supposed, the axe was the symbol of the Asiatic thunder-god,543 it would be an appropriate emblem in the hand of kings, who are so often expected to make rain, thunder, and lightning for the good of their people. Whether the kings of Lydia were bound to make thunder and rain we do not know; but at all events, like many early monarchs, they seem to have been held responsible for the weather and the crops. In the reign of Meles the country suffered severely from dearth, so the people consulted an oracle, and the deity laid the blame on the kings, one of whom had in former years incurred the guilt of murder. The soothsayers accordingly declared that King Meles, though his own hands were clean, must be banished for three years in order that the taint of bloodshed should be purged away. The king obeyed and retired to Babylon, where he lived three years. In his absence the kingdom was administered by a deputy, a certain Sadyattes, son of Cadys, who traced his descent from Tylon.544 As to this Tylon we shall hear more presently. Again, we read that the Lydians rejoiced greatly at the assassination of Spermus, another of their kings, “for he was very wicked, and the land suffered from drought in his reign.”545 Apparently, like the ancient Irish and many modern Africans, they laid the drought at the king's door, and thought that he only got what he deserved under the knife of the assassin.

With regard to the lion, the other emblem of the Cilician Hercules, we are told that the same king Meles, who was banished because of a dearth, sought to make the acropolis of Sardes impregnable by carrying round it a lion which a concubine had borne to him. Unfortunately at a single point, where the precipices were such that it seemed as if no human foot could scale them, he omitted to carry the beast, and sure enough at that very point the Persians afterwards clambered up into the citadel.546 Now Meles was one of the old Heraclid dynasty547 who boasted their descent from the lion-hero Hercules; hence the carrying of a lion round the acropolis was probably a form of consecration intended to place the stronghold under the guardianship of the lion-god, the hereditary deity of the royal family. And the story that the king's concubine gave birth to a lion's whelp suggests that the Lydian kings not only claimed kinship with the beast, but posed as lions in their own persons and passed off their sons as lion-cubs. Croesus dedicated at Delphi a lion of pure gold, perhaps as a badge of Lydia,548 and Hercules with his lion's skin is a common type on coins of Sardes.549

Thus the death, or the attempted death, of Croesus on the pyre completes the analogy between the Cilician and the Lydian Hercules. At Tarsus and at Sardes we find the worship of a god whose symbols were the lion and the double-headed axe, and who was burned on a great pyre, either in effigy or in the person of a human representative. The Greeks called him Hercules, but his native name was Sandan or Sandon. At Sardes he seems to have been personated by the kings, who carried the double-axe and perhaps wore, like their ancestor Hercules, the lion's skin. We may conjecture that at Tarsus also the royal family aped the lion-god. At all events we know that Sandan, the name of the god, entered into the names of Cilician [pg 185] kings, and that in later times the priests of Sandan at Tarsus wore the royal purple.550

Now we have traced the religion of Tarsus back by a double thread to the Hittite religion of Cappadocia. One thread joins the Baal of Tarsus, with his grapes and his corn, to the god of Ibreez. The other thread unites the Sandan of Tarsus, with his lion and his double axe, to the similar figure at Boghaz-Keui. Without being unduly fanciful, therefore, we may surmise that the Sandon-Hercules of Lydia was also a Hittite god, and that the Heraclid dynasty of Lydia were of Hittite blood. Certainly the influence, if not the rule, of the Hittites extended to Lydia; for at least two rock-carvings accompanied by Hittite inscriptions are still to be seen in the country. Both of them attracted the attention of the ancient Greeks. One of them represents a god or warrior in Hittite costume armed with a spear and bow. It is carved on the face of a grey rock, which stands out conspicuous on a bushy hillside, where an old road runs through a glen from the valley of the Hermus to the valley of the Cayster. The place is now called Kara-Bel. Herodotus thought that the figure represented the Egyptian king and conqueror Sesostris.551 The other monument is a colossal seated figure of the Mother of the Gods, locally known in antiquity as Mother Plastene. It is hewn out of the solid rock and occupies a large niche in the face of a cliff at the steep northern foot of Mount Sipylus.552 Thus it would seem that at some time or other the Hittites carried their arms to the shores of the Aegean. There is no improbability, therefore, in the view that a Hittite dynasty may have reigned at Sardes.553

The burning of Sandan, like that of Melcarth,554 was probably followed by a ceremony of his resurrection or awakening, to indicate that the divine life was not extinct, but had only assumed a fresher and purer form. Of that resurrection we have, so far as I am aware, no direct evidence. In default of it, however, there is a tale of a local Lydian hero called Tylon or Tylus, who was killed and brought to life again. The story runs thus. Tylon or Tylus was a son of Earth.555 One day as he was walking on the banks of the Hermus a serpent stung and killed him. His distressed sister Moire had recourse to a giant named Damasen, who attacked and slew the serpent. But the serpent's mate culled a herb, “the flower of Zeus” in the woods, and bringing it in her mouth put it to the lips of the dead serpent, which immediately revived. In her turn Moire took the hint and restored her brother Tylon to life by touching him with the same plant.556 A similar incident occurs in many folk-tales. Serpents are often credited with a knowledge of life-giving plants.557 But Tylon seems to have been more than a mere hero of fairy-tales. He was closely associated with Sardes, for he figures on the coins of the city along with his champion Damasen or Masnes, the dead serpent, and the life-giving branch.558 And [pg 187] he was related in various ways to the royal family of Lydia; for his daughter married Cotys, one of the earliest kings of the country,559 and a descendant of his acted as regent during the banishment of King Meles.560 It has been suggested that the story of his death and resurrection was acted as a pageant to symbolize the revival of plant life in spring.561 At all events, a festival called the Feast of the Golden Flower was celebrated in honour of Persephone at Sardes,562 probably in one of the vernal months, and the revival of the hero and of the goddess may well have been represented together. The Golden Flower of the Festival would then be the “flower of Zeus” of the legend, perhaps the yellow crocus of nature or rather her more gorgeous sister, the Oriental saffron. For saffron grew in great abundance at the Corycian cave of Zeus;563 and it is an elegant conjecture, if it is nothing more, that the very name of the place meant “the Crocus Cave.”564 However, on the coins of Sardes the magical plant seems to be a branch rather than a blossom, a Golden Bough rather than a Golden Flower.

Thus it appears that a custom of burning a god in effigy or in the person of a human representative was practised by at least two peoples of Western Asia, the Phoenicians and the Hittites. Whether they both developed the custom independently, or whether one of them adopted it from the other, we cannot say. And their reasons for celebrating a rite which to us seems strange and monstrous are also obscure. In the preceding inquiry some grounds have been adduced for thinking that the practice was based on a conception of the purifying virtue of fire, which, by destroying the corruptible and perishable elements of man, was supposed to fit him for union with the imperishable and the divine. Now to people who created their gods in their own likeness, and imagined them subject to the same law of decadence and death, the idea would naturally occur that fire might do for the gods what it was believed to do for men, that it could purge them of the taint of corruption and decay, could sift the mortal from the immortal in their composition, and so endow them with eternal youth. Hence a custom might arise of subjecting the deities themselves, or the more important of them, to an ordeal of fire for the purpose of refreshing and renovating those creative energies on the maintenance of which so much depended. To the coarse apprehension of the uninstructed and unsympathetic observer the solemn rite might easily wear a very different aspect. According as he was of a pious or of a sceptical turn of mind, he might [pg 189] denounce it as a sacrilege or deride it as an absurdity. “To burn the god whom you worship,” he might say, “is the height of impiety and of folly. If you succeed in the attempt, you kill him and deprive yourselves of his valuable services. If you fail, you have mortally offended him, and sooner or later he will visit you with his severe displeasure.” To this the worshipper, if he was patient and polite, might listen with a smile of indulgent pity for the ignorance and obtuseness of the critic. “You are much mistaken,” he might observe, “in imagining that we expect or attempt to kill the god whom we adore. The idea of such a thing is as repugnant to us as to you. Our intention is precisely the opposite of that which you attribute to us. Far from wishing to destroy the deity, we desire to make him live for ever, to place him beyond the reach of that process of degeneration and final dissolution to which all things here below appear by their nature to be subject. He does not die in the fire. Oh no! Only the corruptible and mortal part of him perishes in the flames: all that is incorruptible and immortal of him will survive the purer and stronger for being freed from the contagion of baser elements. That little heap of ashes which you see there is not our god. It is only the skin which he has sloughed, the husk which he has cast. He himself is far away, in the clouds of heaven, in the depths of earth, in the running waters, in the tree and the flower, in the corn and the vine. We do not see him face to face, but every year he manifests his divine life afresh in the blossoms of spring and the fruits of autumn. We eat of his broken body in bread. We drink of his shed blood in the juice of the grape.”

Some such train of reasoning may suffice to explain, though naturally not to justify, the custom which we bluntly call the burning of a god. Yet it is worth while to ask whether in the development of the practice these general considerations may not have been reinforced or modified by special circumstances; for example, by the natural features of the country where the custom grew up. For the history [pg 190] of religion, like that of all other human institutions, has been profoundly affected by local conditions, and cannot be fully understood apart from them. Now Asia Minor, the region where the practice in question appears to have been widely diffused, has from time immemorial been subjected to the action of volcanic forces on a great scale. It is true that, so far as the memory of man goes back, the craters of its volcanoes have been extinct, but the vestiges of their dead or slumbering fires are to be seen in many places, and the country has been shaken and rent at intervals by tremendous earthquakes. These phenomena cannot fail to have impressed the imagination of the inhabitants, and thereby to have left some mark on their religion.

Among the extinct volcanoes of Anatolia the greatest is Mount Argaeus, in the centre of Cappadocia, the heart of the old Hittite country. It is indeed the highest point of Asia Minor, and one of the loftiest mountains known to the ancients; for in height it falls not very far short of Mount Blanc. Towering abruptly in a huge pyramid from the plain, it is a conspicuous object for miles on miles. Its top is white with eternal snow, and in antiquity its lower slopes were clothed with dense forests, from which the inhabitants of the treeless Cappadocian plains drew their supply of timber. In these woods, and in the low grounds at the foot of the mountain, the languishing fires of the volcano manifested themselves as late as the beginning of our era. The ground was treacherous. Under a grassy surface there lurked pits of fire, into which stray cattle and unwary travellers often fell. Experienced woodmen used great caution when they went to fell trees in the forest. Elsewhere the soil was marshy, and flames were seen to play over it at night.565 Superstitious fancies no doubt [pg 191] gathered thick around these perilous spots, but what shape they took we cannot say. Nor do we know whether sacrifices were offered on the top of the mountain, though a curious discovery may perhaps be thought to indicate that they were. Sharp and lofty pinnacles of red porphyry, inaccessible to the climber, rise in imposing grandeur from the eternal snow of the summit, and here Mr. Tozer found that the rock had been perforated in various places with human habitations. One such rock-hewn dwelling winds inward for a considerable distance; rude niches are hollowed in its sides, and on its roof and walls may be seen the marks of tools.566 The ancients certainly did not climb mountains for pleasure or health, and it is difficult to imagine that any motive but superstition should have led them to provide dwellings in such a place. These rock-cut chambers may have been shelters for priests charged with the performance of religious or magical rites on the summit.

Under the Persian rule Cappadocia became, and long continued to be, a great seat of the Zoroastrian fire-worship. In the time of Strabo, about the beginning of our era, the votaries of that faith and their temples were still numerous in the country. The perpetual fire burned on an altar, surrounded by a heap of ashes, in the middle of the temple; and the priests daily chanted their liturgy before it, holding in their hands a bundle of myrtle rods and wearing on their heads tall felt caps with cheek-pieces which covered their lips, lest they should defile the sacred flame with their breath.567 It is reasonable to suppose that the natural fires which burned perpetually on the outskirts of Mount Argaeus attracted the devotion of the disciples of Zoroaster, for elsewhere similar fires have been the object of religious [pg 192] reverence down to modern times. Thus at Jualamukhi, on the lower slopes of the Himalayas, jets of combustible gas issue from the earth; and a great Hindoo temple, the resort of many pilgrims, is built over them. The perpetual flame, which is of a reddish hue and emits an aromatic perfume, rises from a pit in the fore-court of the sanctuary. The worshippers deliver their gifts, consisting usually of flowers, to the attendant fakirs, who first hold them over the flame and then cast them into the body of the temple.568 Again, Hindoo pilgrims make their way with great difficulty to Baku on the Caspian, in order to worship the everlasting fires which there issue from the beds of petroleum. The sacred spot is about ten miles to the north-east of the city. An English traveller, who visited Baku in the middle of the eighteenth century, has thus described the place and the worship. “There are several ancient temples built with stone, supposed to have been all dedicated to fire; most of them are arched vaults, not above ten to fifteen feet high. Amongst others there is a little temple, in which the Indians now worship; near the altar, about three feet high, is a large hollow cane, from the end of which issues a blue flame, in colour and gentleness not unlike a lamp that burns with spirits, but seemingly more pure. These Indians affirm that this flame has continued ever since the flood, and they believe it will last to the end of the world; that if it was resisted or suppressed in that place, it would rise in some other. Here are generally forty or fifty of these poor devotees, who come on a pilgrimage from their own country, and subsist upon wild sallary, and a kind of Jerusalem artichoke, which are very good food, with other herbs and roots, found a little to the northward. Their business is to make expiation, not for their own sins only, but for those of others; and they continue the longer time, in proportion to the number of persons for whom they have engaged to pray. They mark their foreheads with saffron, and have a great veneration for a red cow.”569 Thus it [pg 193] would seem that a purifying virtue is attributed to the sacred flame, since pilgrims come to it from far to expiate sin.

Another volcanic region of Asia Minor is the district of Lydia, to which, on account of its remarkable appearance, the Greeks gave the name of the Burnt Land. It lies to the east of Sardes in the upper valley of the Hermus, and covers an area of about fifty miles by forty. As described by Strabo, the country was wholly treeless except for the vines, which produced a wine inferior to none of the most famous vintages of antiquity. The surface of the plains was like ashes; the hills were composed of black stone, as if they had been scorched by fire. Some people laid the scene of Typhon's battle with the gods in this Black Country, and supposed that it had been burnt by the thunderbolts hurled from heaven at the impious monster. The philosophic Strabo, however, held that the fires which had wrought this havoc were subterranean, not celestial, and he pointed to three craters, at intervals of about four miles, each in a hill of scoriae which he supposed to have been once molten matter ejected by the volcanoes.570 His observation and his theory have both been confirmed by modern science. The three extinct volcanoes to which he referred are still conspicuous features of the landscape. Each is a black cone of loose cinders, scoriae, and ashes, with steep sides and a deep crater. From each a flood of rugged black lava has flowed forth, bursting out at the foot of the cone, and then rushing down the dale to the bed of the Hermus. The dark streams follow all the sinuosities of the valleys, their sombre hue contrasting with the rich verdure of the surrounding landscape. Their surface, broken into a thousand fantastic forms, resembles a sea lashed into fury by a gale, and then suddenly hardened into [pg 194] stone. Regarded from the geological point of view, these black cones of cinders and these black rivers of lava are of comparatively recent formation. Exposure to the weather for thousands of years has not yet softened their asperities and decomposed them into vegetable mould; they are as hard and ungenial as if the volcanic stream had ceased to flow but yesterday. But in the same district there are upwards of thirty other volcanic cones, whose greater age is proved by their softened forms, their smoother sides, and their mantle of vegetation. Some of them are planted with vineyards to their summits.571 Thus the volcanic soil is still as favourable to the cultivation of the vine as it was in antiquity. The relation between the two was noted by the ancients. Strabo compares the vines of the Burnt Land with the vineyards of Catania fertilized by the ashes of Mount Etna; and he tells us that some ingenious persons explained the fire-born Dionysus as a myth of the grapes fostered by volcanic agency.572

But the inhabitants of these regions were reminded of the slumbering fires by other and less agreeable tokens than the generous juice of their grapes. For not the Burnt Land only but the country to the south, including the whole valley of the Maeander, was subject to frequent and violent shocks of earthquake. The soil was loose, friable, and full of salts, the ground hollow, undermined by fire and water. In particular the city of Philadelphia was a great centre of disturbance. The shocks there, we are told, were continuous. The houses rocked, the walls cracked and gaped; the few inhabitants were kept busy repairing the breaches or buttressing and propping the edifices which threatened to tumble [pg 195] about their ears. Most of the citizens, indeed, had the prudence to dwell dispersed on their farms. It was a marvel, says Strabo, that such a city should have any inhabitants at all, and a still greater marvel that it should ever have been built.573 However, by a wise dispensation of Providence, the earthquakes which shook the foundations of their houses only strengthened those of their faith. The people of Apameia, whose town was repeatedly devastated, paid their devotions with great fervour to Poseidon, the earthquake god.574 Again, the island of Santorin, in the Greek Archipelago, has been for thousands of years a great theatre of volcanic activity. On one occasion the waters of the bay boiled and flamed for four days, and an island composed of red-hot matter rose gradually, as if hoisted by machinery, above the waves. It happened that the sovereignty of the seas was then with the Rhodians, those merchant-princes whose prudent policy, strict but benevolent oligarchy, and beautiful island-city, rich with accumulated treasures of native art, rendered them in a sense the Venetians of the ancient world. So when the ebullition and heat of the eruption had subsided, their sea-captains landed in the new island, and founded a sanctuary of Poseidon the Establisher or Securer,575 a complimentary epithet often bestowed on him as a hint not to shake the earth more than he could conveniently help.576 In many [pg 196] places people sacrificed to Poseidon the Establisher, in the hope that he would be as good as his name and not bring down their houses on their heads.577

Another instance of a Greek attempt to quiet the perturbed spirit underground is instructive, because similar efforts are still made by savages in similar circumstances. Once when a Spartan army under King Agesipolis had taken the field, it chanced that the ground under their feet was shaken by an earthquake. It was evening, and the king was at mess with the officers of his staff. No sooner did they feel the shock than, with great presence of mind, they rose from their dinner and struck up a popular hymn in honour of Poseidon. The soldiers outside the tent took up the strain, and soon the whole army joined in the sacred melody.578 It is not said whether the flute-band, which always played the Spartan redcoats into action,579 accompanied the deep voices of the men with its shrill music. At all events, the intention of this service of praise, addressed to the earth-shaking god, can only have been to prevail on him to stop. I have spoken of the Spartan redcoats because the uniform of Spartan soldiers was red.580 As they fought in an extended, not a deep, formation, a Spartan line of battle must always have been, what the British used to be, a thin red line. It was in this order, and no doubt with the music [pg 197] playing and the sun flashing on their arms, that they advanced to meet the Persians at Thermopylae. Like Cromwell's Ironsides, these men could fight as well as sing psalms.581

If the Spartans imagined that they could stop an earthquake by a soldiers' chorus, their theory and practice resembled those of many other barbarians. Thus the people of Timor, in the East Indies, think that the earth rests on the shoulder of a mighty giant, and that when he is weary of bearing it on one shoulder he shifts it to the other, and so causes the ground to quake. At such times, accordingly, they all shout at the top of their voices to let him know that there are still people on the earth; for otherwise they fear lest, impatient of his burden, he might tip it into the sea.582 The Manichaeans held a precisely similar theory of earthquakes, except that according to them the weary giant transferred his burden from one shoulder to the other at the end of every thirty years,583 a view which, at all events, points to the observation of a cycle in the recurrence of earthquake shocks. But we are not told that these heretics reduced an absurd theory to an absurd practice by raising a shout in [pg 198] order to remind the earth-shaker of the inconvenience he was putting them to. However, both the theory and the practice are to be found in full force in various parts of the East Indies. When the Balinese and the Sundanese feel an earthquake they cry out, “Still alive,” or “We still live,” to acquaint the earth-shaking god or giant with their existence.584 The natives of Leti, Moa, and Lakor, islands of the Indian Archipelago, imagine that earthquakes are caused by Grandmother Earth in order to ascertain whether her descendants are still to the fore. So they make loud noises for the purpose of satisfying her grandmotherly solicitude.585 The Tami of German New Guinea ascribe earthquakes to a certain old Panku who sits under a great rock; when he stirs, the earth quakes. If the shock lasts a long time they beat on the ground with palm-branches, saying, “You down there! easy a little! We men are still here.”586 The Shans of Burma are taught by Buddhist monks that under the world there sleeps a great fish with his tail in his mouth, but sometimes he wakes, bites his tail, and quivering with pain causes the ground to quiver and shake likewise. That is the cause of great earthquakes. But the cause of little earthquakes is different. These are produced by little men who live underground and sometimes feeling lonely knock on the roof of the world over their heads; these knockings we perceive as slight shocks of earthquakes. When Shans feel such a shock, they run out of their houses, kneel down, and answer the little men saying, “We are here! We are here!”587 Earthquakes are common in the Pampa del Sacramento of Eastern Peru. The Conibos, a tribe of Indians on the left bank of the great Ucayali River, attribute these disturbances to the creator, who usually resides in heaven, but comes down from time to time to see whether the work of his hands still exists. The result of his descent is an earthquake. So when one happens, these Indians rush out [pg 199] of their huts with extravagant gestures shouting, as if in answer to a question, “A moment, a moment, here I am, father, here I am!” Their intention is, no doubt, to assure their heavenly father that they are still alive, and that he may return to his mansion on high with an easy mind. They never remember the creator nor pay him any heed except at an earthquake.588 In Africa the Atonga tribe of Lake Nyassa used to believe that an earthquake was the voice of God calling to inquire whether his people were all there. So when the rumble was heard underground they all shouted in answer, “Ye, ye,” and some of them went to the mortars used for pounding corn and beat on them with pestles. They thought that if any one of them did not thus answer to the divine call he would die.589 In Ourwira the people think that an earthquake is caused by a dead sultan marching past underground; so they stand up to do him honour, and some raise their hands to the salute. Were they to omit these marks of respect to the deceased, they would run the risk of being swallowed up alive.590 The Baganda of Central Africa used to attribute earthquakes to a certain god named Musisi, who lived underground and set the earth in a tremor when he moved about. At such times persons who had fetishes to hand patted them and begged the god to be still; women who were with child patted their bellies to keep the god from taking either their own life or that of their unborn babes; others raised a shrill cry to induce him to remain quiet.591

When the Bataks of Sumatra feel an earthquake they shout “The handle! The handle!” The meaning of the cry is variously explained. Some say that it contains a delicate allusion to the sword which is thrust up to the hilt into the body of the demon or serpent who shakes the earth. Thus explained the words are a jeer or taunt levelled at that mischievous being.592 Others say that when Batara-guru, the [pg 200] creator, was about to fashion the earth he began by building a raft, which he commanded a certain Naga-padoha to support. While he was hard at work his chisel broke, and at the same moment Naga-padoha budged under his burden. Therefore Batara-guru said, “Hold hard a moment! The handle of the chisel is broken off.” And that is why the Bataks call out “The handle of the chisel” during an earthquake. They believe that the deluded Naga-padoha will take the words for the voice of the creator, and that he will hold hard accordingly.593

When the earth quakes in some parts of Celebes, it is said that all the inhabitants of a village will rush out of their houses and grub up grass by handfuls in order to attract the attention of the earth-spirit, who, feeling his hair thus torn out by the roots, will be painfully conscious that there are still people above ground.594 So in Samoa, during shocks of earthquake, the natives sometimes ran and threw themselves on the ground, gnawed the earth, and shouted frantically to the earthquake god Mafuie to desist lest he should shake the earth to pieces.595 They consoled themselves with the thought that Mafuie has only one arm, saying, “If he had two, what a shake he would give!”596 The Bagobos of the Philippine Islands believe that the earth rests on a great post, which a large serpent is trying to remove. When the serpent shakes the post, the earth quakes. At such times the Bagobos beat their dogs to make them howl, for the howling of the animals frightens the serpent, and he stops shaking the post. Hence so long as an earthquake lasts the howls of dogs may be heard to proceed from every house in a Bagobo village.597 The Tongans think that the earth is supported on the prostrate [pg 201] form of the god Móooi. When he is tired of lying in one posture, he tries to turn himself about, and that causes an earthquake. Then the people shout and beat the ground with sticks to make him lie still.598 During an earthquake the Burmese make a great uproar, beating the walls of their houses and shouting, to frighten away the evil genius who is shaking the earth.599 On a like occasion and for a like purpose some natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain beat drums and blow on shells.600 The Dorasques, an Indian tribe of Panama, believed that the volcano of Chiriqui was inhabited by a powerful spirit, who, in his anger, caused an earthquake. At such times the Indians shot volleys of arrows in the direction of the volcano to terrify him and make him desist.601 Some of the Peruvian Indians regarded an earthquake as a sign that the gods were thirsty, so they poured water on the ground.602 In Ashantee several persons used to be put to death after an earthquake; they were slain as a sacrifice to Sasabonsun, the earthquake god, in the hope of satiating his cruelty for a time. Houses which had been thrown down or damaged by an earthquake were sprinkled with human blood before they were rebuilt. When part of the wall of the king's house at Coomassie was knocked down by an earthquake, fifty young girls were slaughtered, and the mud to be used in the repairs was kneaded with their blood.603

An English resident in Fiji attributed a sudden access of piety in Kantavu, one of the islands, to a tremendous earthquake which destroyed many of the natives. The Fijians think that their islands rest on a god, who causes earthquakes by turning over in his sleep. So they sacrifice to him things of great value in order that he may turn as gently as possible.604 In Nias a violent earthquake has a salutary [pg 202] effect on the morals of the natives. They suppose that it is brought about by a certain Batoo Bedano, who intends to destroy the earth because of the iniquity of mankind. So they assemble and fashion a great image out of the trunk of a tree. They make offerings, they confess their sins, they correct the fraudulent weights and measures, they vow to do better in the future, they implore mercy, and if the earth has gaped, they throw a little gold into the fissure. But when the danger is over, all their fine vows and promises are soon forgotten.605

We may surmise that in those Greek lands which have suffered severely from earthquakes, such as Achaia and the western coasts of Asia Minor, Poseidon was worshipped not less as an earthquake god than as a sea-god.606 It is to be remembered that an earthquake is often accompanied by a tremendous wave which comes rolling in like a mountain from the sea, swamping the country far and wide; indeed on the coasts of Chili and Peru, which have often been devastated by both, the wave is said to be even more dreaded than the earthquake.607 The Greeks often experienced this combination of catastrophes, this conspiracy, as it were, of earth and sea against the life and works of man.608 [pg 203] It was thus that Helice, on the coast of Achaia, perished with all its inhabitants on a winter night, overwhelmed by the billows; and its destruction was set down to the wrath of Poseidon.609 Nothing could be more natural than that to people familiar with the twofold calamity the dreadful god of the earthquake and of the sea should appear to be one and the same. The historian Diodorus Siculus observes that Peloponnese was deemed to have been in ancient days the abode of Poseidon, that the whole country was in a manner sacred to him, and that every city in it worshipped him above all the gods. The devotion to Poseidon he explains partly by the earthquakes and floods by which the land has been visited, partly by the remarkable chasms and subterranean rivers which are a conspicuous feature of its limestone mountains.610

But eruptions and earthquakes, though the most tremendous, are not the only phenomena of volcanic regions which have affected the religion of the inhabitants. Poisonous mephitic vapours and hot springs, which abound especially in volcanic regions,611 have also had their devotees, and both are, or were formerly, to be found in those western districts of Asia Minor with which we are here concerned. To begin with vapours, we may take as an illustration of their deadly effect the Guevo Upas, or Valley of Poison, near Batur in Java. It is the crater of an extinct volcano, about half a mile in circumference, and from thirty to thirty-five [pg 204] feet deep. Neither man nor beast can descend to the bottom and live. The ground is covered with the carcases of tigers, deer, birds, and even the bones of men, all killed by the abundant emanations of carbonic acid gas which exhale from the soil. Animals let down into it die in a few minutes. The whole range of hills is volcanic. Two neighbouring craters constantly emit smoke.612 In another crater of Java, near the volcano Talaga Bodas, the sulphureous exhalations have proved fatal to tigers, birds, and countless insects; and the soft parts of these creatures, such as fibres, muscles, hair, and skin, are well preserved, while the bones are corroded or destroyed.613

The ancients were acquainted with such noxious vapours in their own country, and they regarded the vents from which they were discharged as entrances to the infernal regions.614 The Greeks called them places of Pluto (Plutonia) or places of Charon (Charonia).615 In Italy the vapours were personified as a goddess, who bore the name of Mefitis and was worshipped in various parts of the peninsula.616 She had a temple in the famous valley of Amsanctus in the land of the Hirpini, where the exhalations, supposed to be the breath of Pluto himself, were of so deadly a character that all who set foot on the spot died.617 The place is a glen, partly wooded with chestnut trees, among limestone hills, distant about four miles from the town of Frigento. Here, under a steep shelving bank of decomposed limestone, there is a pool of dark ash-coloured water, which continually bubbles up with an explosion like distant thunder. A rapid stream of the same blackish water rushes into the pool from under the [pg 205] barren rocky hill, but the fall is not more than a few feet. A little higher up are apertures in the ground, through which warm blasts of sulphuretted hydrogen are constantly issuing with more or less noise, according to the size of the holes. These blasts are no doubt what the ancients deemed the breath of Pluto. The pool is now called Mefite and the holes Mefitinelle. On the other side of the pool is a smaller pond called the Coccaio, or Cauldron, because it appears to be perpetually boiling. Thick masses of mephitic vapour, visible a hundred yards off, float in rapid undulations on its surface. The exhalations given off by these waters are sometimes fatal, especially when they are borne on a high wind. But as the carbonic acid gas does not naturally rise more than two or three feet from the ground, it is possible in calm weather to walk round the pools, though to stoop is difficult and to fall would be dangerous. The ancient temple of Mefitis has been replaced by a shrine of the martyred Santa Felicita.618

Similar discharges of poisonous vapours took place at various points in the volcanic district of Caria, and were the object of superstitious veneration in antiquity. Thus at the village of Thymbria there was a sacred cave which gave out deadly emanations, and the place was deemed a sanctuary of Charon.619 A similar cave might be seen at the village of Acharaca near Nysa, in the valley of the Maeander. Here, below the cave, there was a fine grove with a temple dedicated to Pluto and Persephone. The place was sacred to Pluto, yet sick people resorted to it for the restoration of their health. They lived in the neighbouring village, and the priests prescribed for them according to the revelations which they received from the two deities in dreams. Often the priests would take the patients to the cave and leave them there for days without food. Sometimes the sufferers themselves were favoured with revelations in dreams, but [pg 206] they always acted under the spiritual direction of the priests. To all but the sick the place was unapproachable and fatal. Once a year a festival was held in the village, and then afflicted folk came in crowds to be rid of their ailments. About the hour of noon on that day a number of athletic young men, their naked bodies greased with oil, used to carry a bull up to the cave and there let it go. But the beast had not taken a few steps into the cavern before it fell to the ground and expired: so deadly was the vapour.620

Another Plutonian sanctuary of the same sort existed at Hierapolis, in the upper valley of the Maeander, on the borders of Lydia and Phrygia.621 Here under a brow of the hill there was a deep cave with a narrow mouth just large enough to admit the body of a man. A square space in front of the cave was railed off, and within the railing there hung so thick a cloudy vapour that it was hardly possible to see the ground. In calm weather people could step up to the railing with safety, but to pass within it was instant death. Bulls driven into the enclosure fell to the earth and were dragged out lifeless; and sparrows, which spectators by way of experiment allowed to fly into the mist, dropped dead at once. Yet the eunuch priests of the Great Mother Goddess could enter the railed-off area with impunity; nay more, they used to go up to the very mouth of the cave, stoop, and creep into it for a certain distance, holding their breath; but there was a look on their faces as if they were being choked. Some people ascribed the immunity of the priests to the divine protection, others to the use of antidotes.622

The mysterious chasm of Hierapolis, with its deadly mist, has not been discovered in modern times; indeed it [pg 207] would seem to have vanished even in antiquity.623 It may have been destroyed by an earthquake. But another marvel of the Sacred City remains to this day. The hot springs with their calcareous deposit, which, like a wizard's wand, turns all that it touches to stone, excited the wonder of the ancients, and the course of ages has only enhanced the fantastic splendour of the great transformation scene. The stately ruins of Hierapolis occupy a broad shelf or terrace on the mountain-side commanding distant views of extraordinary beauty and grandeur, from the dark precipices and dazzling snows of Mount Cadmus away to the burnt summits of Phrygia, fading in rosy tints into the blue of the sky. Hills, broken by wooded ravines, rise behind the city. In front the terrace falls away in cliffs three hundred feet high into the desolate treeless valley of the Lycus. Over the face of these cliffs the hot streams have poured or trickled for thousands of years, encrusting them with a pearly white substance like salt or driven snow. The appearance of the whole is as if a mighty river, some two miles broad, had been suddenly arrested in the act of falling over a great cliff and transformed into white marble. It is a petrified Niagara. The illusion is strongest in winter or in cool summer mornings when the mist from the hot springs hangs in the air, like a veil of spray resting on the foam of the waterfall. A closer inspection of the white cliff, which attracts the traveller's attention at a distance of twenty miles, only adds to its beauty and changes one illusion for another. For now it seems to be a glacier, its long pendent stalactites looking like icicles, and the snowy whiteness of its smooth expanse being tinged here and there with delicate hues of blue, rose and green, all the colours of the rainbow. These petrified cascades of Hierapolis are among the wonders of the world. Indeed they have probably been without a rival in their kind ever since the famous white and pink terraces or staircases of Rotomahana in New Zealand were destroyed by a volcanic eruption.

The hot springs which have wrought these miracles at [pg 208] Hierapolis rise in a large deep pool among the vast and imposing ruins of the ancient city. The water is of a greenish-blue tint, but clear and transparent. At the bottom may be seen the white marble columns of a beautiful Corinthian colonnade, which must formerly have encircled the sacred pool. Shimmering through the green-blue water they look like the ruins of a Naiad's palace. Clumps of oleanders and pomegranate-trees overhang the little lake and add to its charm. Yet the enchanted spot has its dangers. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas rise incessantly from the bottom and mount like flickering particles of silver to the surface. Birds and beasts which come to drink of the water are sometimes found dead on the bank, stifled by the noxious vapour; and the villagers tell of bathers who have been overpowered by it and drowned, or dragged down, as they say, to death by the water-spirit.

The streams of hot water, no longer regulated by the care of a religious population, have for centuries been allowed to overflow their channels and to spread unchecked over the tableland. By the deposit which they leave behind they have raised the surface of the ground many feet, their white ridges concealing the ruins and impeding the footstep, except where the old channels, filled up solidly to the brim, now form hard level footpaths, from which the traveller may survey the strange scene without quitting the saddle. In antiquity the husbandmen used purposely to lead the water in rills round their lands, and thus in a few years their fields and vineyards were enclosed with walls of solid stone. The water was also peculiarly adapted for the dyeing of woollen stuffs. Tinged with dyes extracted from certain roots, it imparted to cloths dipped in it the finest shades of purple and scarlet.624

We cannot doubt that Hierapolis owed its reputation as a holy city in great part to its hot springs and mephitic vapours. The curative virtue of mineral and thermal springs was well known to the ancients, and it would be interesting, if it were possible, to trace the causes which have gradually eliminated the superstitious element from the use of such waters, and so converted many old seats of volcanic religion into the medicinal baths of modern times. It was an article of Greek faith that all hot springs were sacred to Hercules.625 “Who ever heard of cold baths that were sacred to Hercules?” asks Injustice in Aristophanes; and Justice admits that the brawny hero's patronage of hot baths was the excuse alleged by young men for sprawling all day in the steaming water when they ought to have been sweating in the gymnasium.626 Hot springs were said to have been first produced for the refreshment of Hercules after his labours; some ascribed the kindly thought and deed to Athena, others to Hephaestus, and others to the nymphs.627 The warm water of these sources appears to have been used especially to heal diseases of the skin; for a Greek proverb, “the itch of Hercules,” was applied to persons in need of hot baths for the scab.628 On the strength of his connexion with medicinal springs Hercules set up as a patron of the healing art. In heaven, if we can trust Lucian, he even refused to give place to Aesculapius himself, and the difference between the two deities led to a very unseemly brawl. “Do you mean to say,” demanded Hercules of his father Zeus, in a burst of indignation, “that this apothecary is to sit down to table [pg 210] before me?” To this the apothecary replied with much acrimony, recalling certain painful episodes in the private life of the burly hero. Finally the dispute was settled by Zeus, who decided in favour of Aesculapius on the ground that he died before Hercules, and was therefore entitled to rank as senior god.629

Among the hot springs sacred to Hercules the most famous were those which rose in the pass of Thermopylae, and gave to the defile its name of the Hot Gates.630 The warm baths, called by the natives “the Pots,” were enlarged and improved for the use of invalids by the wealthy sophist Herodes Atticus in the second century of our era. An altar of Hercules stood beside them.631 According to one story, the hot springs were here produced for his refreshment by the goddess Athena.632 They exist to this day apparently unchanged, although the recession of the sea has converted what used to be a narrow pass into a wide, swampy flat, through which the broad but shallow, turbid stream of the Sperchius creeps sluggishly seaward. On the other side the rugged mountains descend in crags and precipices to the pass, their grey rocky sides tufted with low wood or bushes wherever vegetation can find a foothold, and their summits fringed along the sky-line with pines. They remind a Scotchman of the “crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurled” in which Ben Venue comes down to the Silver Strand of Loch Katrine. The principal spring bursts from the rocks just at the foot of the steepest and loftiest part of the range. After forming a small pool it flows in a rapid stream eastward, skirting the foot of the mountains. The water is so hot that it is almost painful to hold the hands in it, at least near the source, and steam rises thickly from its surface along the course of the brook. Indeed the clouds of white steam and the strong sulphurous smell acquaint the traveller with his approach to the famous spot before he comes in sight of the springs. The water is clear, but has the appearance of being of a deep sea-blue or sea-green [pg 211] colour. This appearance it takes from the thick, slimy deposits of blue-green sulphur which line the bed of the stream. From its source the blue, steaming, sulphur-reeking brook rushes eastward for a few hundred yards at the foot of the mountain, and is then joined by the water of another spring, which rises much more tranquilly in a sort of natural bath among the rocks. The sides of this bath are not so thickly coated with sulphur as the banks of the stream; hence its water, about two feet deep, is not so blue. Just beyond it there is a second and larger bath, which, from its square shape and smooth sides, would seem to be in part artificial. These two baths are probably the Pots mentioned by ancient writers. They are still used by bathers, and a few wooden dressing-rooms are provided for the accommodation of visitors. Some of the water is conducted in an artificial channel to turn a mill about half a mile off at the eastern end of the pass. The rest crosses the flat to find its way to the sea. In its passage it has coated the swampy ground with a white crust, which sounds hollow under the tread.633

We may conjecture that these remarkable springs furnished the principal reason for associating Hercules with this district, and for laying the scene of his fiery death on the top of the neighbouring Mount Oeta. The district is volcanic, and has often been shaken by earthquakes.634 Across the strait the island of Euboea has suffered from the same cause and at the same time; and on its southern shore sulphureous springs, like those of Thermopylae, but much hotter and more powerful, were in like manner dedicated to Hercules.635 The strong medicinal qualities of the [pg 212] waters, which are especially adapted for the cure of skin diseases and gout, have attracted patients in ancient and modern times. Sulla took the waters here for his gout;636 and in the days of Plutarch the neighbouring town of Aedepsus, situated in a green valley about two miles from the springs, was one of the most fashionable resorts of Greece. Elegant and commodious buildings, an agreeable country, and abundance of fish and game united with the health-giving properties of the baths to draw crowds of idlers to the place, especially in the prime of the glorious Greek spring, the height of the season at Aedepsus. While some watched the dancers dancing or listened to the strains of the harp, others passed the time in discourse, lounging in the shade of cloisters or pacing the shore of the beautiful strait with its prospect of mountains beyond mountains immortalized in story across the water.637 Of all this Greek elegance and luxury hardly a vestige remains. Yet the healing springs flow now as freely as of old. In the course of time the white and yellow calcareous deposit which the water leaves behind it, has formed a hillock at the foot of the mountains, and the stream now falls in a steaming cascade from the face of the rock into the sea.638 Once, after an earthquake, the springs ceased to flow for three days, and at the same time the hot springs of Thermopylae dried up.639 The incident proves the relation of these Baths of Hercules on both sides of the strait to each other and to volcanic agency. On another occasion a cold spring suddenly burst out beside the hot springs of Aedepsus, and as its water was supposed to be peculiarly beneficial to health, patients hastened from far and near to drink of it. But the generals of King Antigonus, anxious to raise a revenue, imposed a tax on the use of the water; and the spring, as if in disgust at being turned to so base a use, disappeared as suddenly as it had come.640

The association of Hercules with hot springs was not confined to Greece itself. Greek influence extended it to Sicily,641 Italy,642 and even to Dacia.643 Why the hero should have been chosen as the patron of thermal waters, it is hard to say. Yet it is worth while, perhaps, to remember that such springs combine in a manner the twofold and seemingly discordant principles of water and fire,644 of fertility and destruction, and that the death of Hercules in the flames seems to connect him with the fiery element. Further, the apparent conflict of the two principles is by no means as absolute as at first sight we might be tempted to suppose; for heat is as necessary as moisture to the support of animal and vegetable life. Even volcanic fires have their beneficent aspect, since their products lend a more generous flavour to the juice of the grape. The ancients themselves, as we have seen, perceived the connexion between good wine and volcanic soil, and proposed more or less seriously to interpret the vine-god Dionysus as a child of the fire.645 As a patron of hot springs Hercules combined the genial elements of heat and moisture, and may therefore have stood, in one of his many aspects, for the principle of fertility.

In Syria childless women still resort to hot springs in order to procure offspring from the saint or the jinnee of the waters.646 [pg 214] This, for example, they do at the famous hot springs in the land of Moab which flow through a wild gorge into the Dead Sea. In antiquity the springs went by the Greek name of Callirrhoe, the Fair-flowing. It was to them that the dying Herod, weighed down by a complication of disorders which the pious Jews traced to God's vengeance, repaired in the vain hope of arresting or mitigating the fatal progress of disease. The healing waters brought no alleviation of his sufferings, and he retired to Jericho to die.647 The hot springs burst in various places from the sides of a deep romantic ravine to form a large and rapid stream of lukewarm water, which rushes down the depths of the lynn, dashing and foaming over boulders, under the dense shade of tamarisk-trees and cane-brakes, the rocks on either bank draped with an emerald fringe of maidenhair fern. One of the springs falls from a high rocky shelf over the face of a cliff which is tinted bright yellow by the sulphurous water. The lofty crags which shut in the narrow chasm are bold and imposing in outline and varied in colour, for they range from red sandstone through white and yellow limestone to black basalt. The waters issue from the line where the sandstone and limestone meet. Their temperature is high, and from great clefts in the mountain-sides you may see clouds of steam rising and hear the rumbling of the running waters. The bottom of the glen is clothed and half choked with rank vegetation; for, situated far below the level of the sea, the hot ravine is almost African in climate and flora. Here grow dense thickets of canes with their feathery tufts that shake and nod in every passing breath of wind: here the oleander flourishes with its dark-green glossy foliage and its beautiful pink blossoms: here tall date-palms rear their stately heads wherever the hot springs flow. Gorgeous flowers, too, carpet the ground. Splendid orobanches, some pinkish purple, some bright yellow, grow in large tufts, each flower-stalk more than three feet high, and covered with blossoms from the ground upwards. An exquisite rose-coloured geranium abounds among the stones; and where the soil is a little richer than [pg 215] usual it is a mass of the night-scented stock, while the crannies of the rocks are gay with scarlet ranunculus and masses of sorrel and cyclamen. Over all this luxuriant vegetation flit great butterflies of brilliant hues. Looking down the far-stretching gorge to its mouth you see in the distance the purple hills of Judah framed between walls of black basaltic columns on the one side and of bright red sandstone on the other.648

Every year in the months of April and May the Arabs resort in crowds to the glen to benefit by the waters. They take up their quarters in huts made of the reeds which they cut in the thickets. They bathe in the steaming water, or allow it to splash on their bodies as it gushes in a powerful jet from a crevice in the rocks. But before they indulge in these ablutions, the visitors, both Moslem and Christian, propitiate the spirit or genius of the place by sacrificing a sheep or goat at the spring and allowing its red blood to tinge the water. Then they bathe in what they call the Baths of Solomon. Legend runs that Solomon the Wise made his bathing-place here, and in order to keep the water always warm he commanded the jinn never to let the fire die down. The jinn obey his orders to this day, but sometimes they slacken their efforts, and then the water runs low and cool. When the bathers perceive that, they say, “O Solomon, bring green wood, dry wood,” and no sooner have they said so than the water begins to gurgle and steam as before. Sick people tell the saint or sheikh, who lives invisible in the springs, all about their ailments; they point out to him the precise spot that is the seat of the malady, it may be the back, or the head, or the legs; and if the heat of the water diminishes, they call out, “Thy bath is cold, O sheikh, thy bath is cold!” whereupon the obliging sheikh stokes up the fire, and out comes the water boiling. But if in spite of their remonstrances the temperature of the spring [pg 216] continues low, they say that the sheikh has gone on pilgrimage, and they shout to him to hasten his return. Barren Moslem women also visit these hot springs to obtain children, and they do the same at the similar baths near Kerak. At the latter place a childless woman has been known to address the spirit of the waters saying, “O sheikh Solomon, I am not yet an old woman; give me children.”649 The respect thus paid by Arab men and women to the sheikh Solomon at his hot springs may help us to understand the worship which at similar spots Greek men and women used to render to the hero Hercules. As the ideal of manly strength he may have been deemed the father of many of his worshippers, and Greek wives may have gone on pilgrimage to his steaming waters in order to obtain the wish of their hearts.

How far these considerations may serve to explain the custom of burning Hercules, or gods identified with him, in effigy or in the person of a human being, is a question which deserves to be considered. It might be more easily answered if we were better acquainted with analogous customs in other parts of the world, but our information with regard to the worship of volcanic phenomena in general appears to be very scanty. However, a few facts may be noted.

The largest active crater in the world is Kirauea in Hawaii. It is a huge cauldron, several miles in circumference and hundreds of feet deep, the bottom of which is filled with boiling lava in a state of terrific ebullition; from the red surge rise many black cones or insulated craters belching columns of grey smoke or pyramids of brilliant flame from their roaring mouths, while torrents of blazing lava roll down their sides to flow into the molten, tossing sea of fire below. The scene is especially impressive by night, [pg 217] when flames of sulphurous blue or metallic red sweep across the heaving billows of the infernal lake, casting a broad glare on the jagged sides of the insulated craters, which shoot up eddying streams of fire with a continuous roar, varied at frequent intervals by loud detonations, as spherical masses of fusing lava or bright ignited stones are hurled into the air.650 It is no wonder that so appalling a spectacle should have impressed the imagination of the natives and filled it with ideas of the dreadful beings who inhabit the fiery abyss. They considered the great crater, we are told, as the primaeval abode of their volcanic deities: the black cones that rise like islands from the burning lake appeared to them the houses where the gods often amused themselves by playing at draughts: the roaring of the furnaces and the crackling of the flames were the music of their dance; and the red flaming surge was the surf wherein they played, sportively swimming on the rolling wave.651

For these fearful divinities they had appropriate names; one was the King of Steam or Vapour, another the Rain of Night, another the Husband of Thunder, another the Child of War with a Spear of Fire, another the Fiery-eyed Canoe-breaker, another the Red-hot Mountain holding or lifting Clouds, and so on. But above them all was the great goddess Pélé. All were dreaded: they never journeyed on errands of mercy but only to receive offerings or to execute vengeance; and their arrival in any place was announced by the convulsive trembling of the earth, by the lurid light of volcanic eruption, by the flash of lightning, and the clap of thunder. The whole island was bound to pay them tribute or support their temples and devotees; and whenever the chiefs or people failed to send the proper offerings, or incurred their displeasure by insulting them or their priests or breaking the taboos which should be observed round about the craters, they filled the huge cauldron on the top of Kirauea with molten lava, and spouted the fiery liquid on the surrounding country; or they would [pg 218] march to some of their other houses, which mortals call craters, in the neighbourhood of the sinners, and rushing forth in a river or column of fire overwhelm the guilty. If fishermen did not bring them enough fish from the sea, they would go down, kill all the fish, fill the shoals with lava, and so destroy the fishing-grounds. Hence, when the volcano was in active eruption or threatened to break out, the people used to cast vast numbers of hogs, alive or dead, into the craters or into the rolling torrent of lava in order to appease the gods and arrest the progress of the fiery stream.652 To pluck certain sacred berries, which grow on the mountain, to dig sand on its slopes, or to throw stones into the crater were acts particularly offensive to the deities, who would instantly rise in volumes of smoke, crush the offender under a shower of stones, or so involve him in thick darkness and rain that he could never find his way home. However, it was lawful to pluck and eat of the sacred berries, if only a portion of them were first offered to the goddess Pélé. The offerer would take a branch laden with clusters of the beautiful red and yellow berries, and standing on the edge of the abyss and looking towards the place where the smoke rose in densest volumes, he would say, “Pélé, here are your berries: I offer some to you, some I also eat.” With that he would throw some of the berries into the crater and eat the rest.653 A kind of brittle volcanic glass, of a dark-olive colour and semi-transparent, is found on the mountain in the shape of filaments as fine as human hair; the natives call it the hair of the goddess Pélé.654 Worshippers used to cast locks of their own hair into the crater of Kirauea as an offering to the dreadful goddess who dwelt in it. She had also a temple at the bottom of a valley, where stood a number of rude stone idols wrapt in white and yellow cloth. Once a year the priests and devotees of Pélé assembled there to perform certain rites and to feast on hogs, dogs, and fruit, which the [pg 219] pious inhabitants of Hamakua brought to the holy place in great abundance. This annual festival was intended to propitiate the volcanic goddess and thereby to secure the country from earthquakes and floods of molten lava.655 The goddess of the volcano was supposed to inspire people, though to the carnal eye the inspiration resembled intoxication. One of these inspired priestesses solemnly affirmed to an English missionary that she was the goddess Pélé herself and as such immortal. Assuming a haughty air, she said, “I am Pélé; I shall never die; and those who follow me, when they die, if part of their bones be taken to Kirauea (the name of the volcano), will live with me in the bright fires there.”656 For “the worshippers of Pélé threw a part of bones of their dead into the volcano, under the impression that the spirits of the deceased would then be admitted to the society of the volcanic deities, and that their influence would preserve the survivors from the ravages of volcanic fire.”657

This last belief may help to explain a custom, which some peoples have observed, of throwing human victims into volcanoes. The intention of such a practice need not be simply to appease the dreadful volcanic spirits by ministering to their fiendish lust of cruelty; it may be a notion that the souls of the men or women who have been burnt to death in the crater will join the host of demons in the fiery furnace, mitigate their fury, and induce them to spare the works and the life of man. But, however we may explain the custom, it has been usual in various parts of the world to throw human beings as well as less precious offerings into the craters of active volcanoes. Thus the Indians of Nicaragua used to sacrifice men, women, and children to the active volcano Massaya, flinging them into the craters: we are told that the victims went willingly to their fate.658 In the island of Siao, to the north of Celebes, a child was formerly sacrificed every year in order to keep the volcano Goowoong Awoo quiet. The poor wretch was tortured to death at a festival which lasted nine days. In later times the place of the child has [pg 220] been taken by a wooden puppet, which is hacked to pieces in the same way. The Galelareese of Halmahera say that the Sultan of Ternate used annually to require some human victims, who were cast into the crater of the volcano to save the island from its ravages.659 In Java the volcano Bromo or Bromok is annually worshipped by people who throw offerings of coco-nuts, plantains, mangoes, rice, chickens, cakes, cloth, money, and so forth into the crater.660 To the Tenggereese, an aboriginal heathen tribe inhabiting the mountains of which Bromo is the central crater, the festival of making offerings to the volcano is the greatest of the year. It is held at full moon in the twelfth month, the day being fixed by the high priest. Each household prepares its offerings the night before. Very early in the morning the people set out by moonlight for Mount Bromo, men, women, and children all arrayed in their best. Before they reach the mountain they must cross a wide sandy plain, where the spirits of the dead are supposed to dwell until by means of the Festival of the Dead they obtain admittance to the volcano. It is a remarkable sight to see thousands of people streaming across the level sands from three different directions. They have to descend into it from the neighbouring heights, and the horses break into a gallop when, after the steep descent, they reach the level. The gay and varied colours of the dresses, the fantastic costumes of the priests, the offerings borne along, the whole lit up by the warm beams of the rising sun, lend to the spectacle a peculiar charm. All assemble at the foot of the crater, where a market is held for offerings and refreshments. The scene is a lively one, for hundreds of people must now pay the vows which they made during the year. The priests sit in a long row on mats, and when the high priest appears the people pray, saying, “Bromo, we thank thee for all thy gifts and benefits with which thou ever blessest us, and for which we offer thee our thank-offerings to-day. Bless us, our children, and our children's children.” The prayers over, the high priest gives a signal, and the whole multitude arises and climbs the mountain. On reaching the edge of the [pg 221] crater, the pontiff again blesses the offerings of food, clothes, and money, which are then thrown into the crater. Yet few of them reach the spirits for whom they are intended; for a swarm of urchins now scrambles down into the crater, and at more or less risk to life and limb succeeds in appropriating the greater part of the offerings. The spirits, defrauded of their dues, must take the will for the deed.661 Tradition says that once in a time of dearth a chief vowed to sacrifice one of his children to the volcano, if the mountain would bless the people with plenty of food. His prayer was answered, and he paid his vow by casting his youngest son as a thank-offering into the crater.662

On the slope of Mount Smeroe, another active volcano in Java, there are two small idols, which the natives worship and pray to when they ascend the mountain. They lay food before the images to obtain the favour of the god of the volcano.663 In antiquity people cast into the craters of Etna vessels of gold and silver and all kinds of victims. If the fire swallowed up the offerings, the omen was good; but if it rejected them, some evil was sure to befall the offerer.664

These examples suggest that a custom of burning men or images may possibly be derived from a practice of throwing them into the craters of active volcanoes in order to appease the dreaded spirits or gods who dwell there. But unless we reckon the fires of Mount Argaeus in Cappadocia665 and of Mount Chimaera in Lycia,666 there is apparently no record of any mountain in Western Asia which has been in [pg 222] eruption within historical times. On the whole, then, we conclude that the Asiatic custom of burning kings or gods was probably in no way connected with volcanic phenomena. Yet it was perhaps worth while to raise the question of the connexion, even though it has received only a negative answer. The whole subject of the influence which physical environment has exercised on the history of religion deserves to be studied with more attention than it has yet received.667