James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

We are now in a position to hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of the tradition that Virbius, the first of the divine Kings of the Wood at Aricia, had been killed in the character of Hippolytus by horses. 145 145 See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings , i. 19 sqq. Having found, first, that spirits of the corn are not infrequently represented in the form of horses; 146 146 See above, vol. i. pp 292-294. and, second, that the animal which in later legends is said to have injured the god was sometimes originally the god himself, we may conjecture that the horses by which Virbius or Hippolytus was said to have been slain were really embodiments of him as a deity of vegetation. The myth that he had been killed by horses was probably invented to explain certain features in his worship, amongst others the custom of excluding horses from his sacred grove. For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice. In the case before us we may be sure that the myth is more modern than the custom and by no means represents the original reason for excluding horses from the grove. From their exclusion it might be inferred that horses could not be the sacred animals or embodiments of the god of the grove. But the inference would be rash. The goat was at one time a sacred animal or embodiment of Athena, as may be inferred from the practice of representing the goddess clad in a goat-skin ( aegis ). Yet the goat was [pg 041] neither sacrificed to her as a rule, nor allowed to enter her great sanctuary, the Acropolis at Athens. The reason alleged for this was that the goat injured the olive, the sacred tree of Athena. 147 147 Athenaeus, xiii. 51, p. 587 a; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 204. Compare W. Robertson Smith, in Encyclopaedia Britannica , Ninth Edition, article “Sacrifice,” vol. xxi. p. 135. So far, therefore, the relation of the goat of Athena is parallel to the relation of the horse to Virbius, both animals being excluded from the sanctuary on the ground of injury done by them to the god. But from Varro we learn that there was an exception to the rule which excluded the goat from the Acropolis. Once a year, he says, the goat was driven on to the Acropolis for a necessary sacrifice. 148 148 Varro, De agri cultura , i. 2. 19 sq. : “ hoc nomine etiam Athenis in arcem non inigi, praeterquam semel ad necessarium sacrificium. ” By semel Varro probably means once a year. Now, as has been remarked before, when an animal is sacrificed once and once only in the year, it is probably slain, not as a victim offered to the god, but as a representative of the god himself. Therefore we may infer that if a goat was sacrificed on the Acropolis once a year, it was sacrificed in the character of Athena herself; 149 149 The force of this inference is greatly weakened, if not destroyed, by a fact which I had overlooked when I wrote this book originally. A goat was sacrificed to Brauronian Artemis at her festival called the Brauronia (Hesychius, s. v. Βραυρωνίοις; compare Im. Bekker's Anecdota Graeca , p. 445, lines 6 sqq. ). As the Brauronian Artemis had a sanctuary on the Acropolis of Athens (Pausanias, i. 23. 7), it seems probable that the goat sacrificed once a year on the Acropolis was sacrificed to her and not to Athena. (Note to Second Edition of The Golden Bough .) and it may be conjectured that the skin of the sacrificed animal was placed on the statue of the goddess and formed the aegis , which would thus be renewed annually. Similarly at Thebes in Egypt rams were sacred and were not sacrificed. But on one day in the year a ram was killed, and its skin was placed on the statue of the god Ammon. 150 150 Herodotus, ii. 42. Now, if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove better, we might find that the rule of excluding horses from it, like the rule of excluding goats from the Acropolis at Athens, was subject to an annual exception, a horse being once a year taken into the grove and sacrificed as an embodiment of the god Virbius. 151 151 It is worth noting that Hippolytus, with whom Virbius was identified, is said to have dedicated horses to Aesculapius, who had raised him from the dead (Pausanias, ii. 27. 4). By the usual misunderstanding the horse [pg 042] thus killed would come in time to be regarded as an enemy offered up in sacrifice to the god whom he had injured, like the pig which was sacrificed to Demeter and Osiris or the goat which was sacrificed to Dionysus, and possibly to Athena. It is so easy for a writer to record a rule without noticing an exception that we need not wonder at finding the rule of the Arician grove recorded without any mention of an exception such as I suppose. If we had had only the statements of Athenaeus and Pliny, we should have known only the rule which forbade the sacrifice of goats to Athena and excluded them from the Acropolis, without being aware of the important exception which the fortunate preservation of Varro's work has revealed to us.

The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been sacrificed in the Arician grove as a representative of the deity of the grove derives some support from the similar sacrifice of a horse which took place once a year at Rome. On the fifteenth of October in each year a chariot-race was run on the Field of Mars. Stabbed with a spear, the right-hand horse of the victorious team was then sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of ensuring good crops, and its head was cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. Thereupon the inhabitants of two wards – the Sacred Way and the Subura – contended with each other who should get the head. If the people of the Sacred Way got it, they fastened it to a wall of the king's house; if the people of the Subura got it, they fastened it to the Mamilian tower. The horse's tail was cut off and carried to the king's house with such speed that the blood dripped on the hearth of the house. 152 152 Festus, ed. C. O. Müller, pp. 178, 179, 220; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 97; Polybius, xii. 4 b. The sacrifice is referred to by Julian, Orat. v. p. 176 d (p. 228 ed. F. C. Hertlein). It is the subject of a valuable essay by W. Mannhardt, whose conclusions I summarise in the text. See W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), pp. 156-201. Further, it appears that the blood of the horse was caught and preserved till the twenty-first of April, when the Vestal virgins mixed it with the blood of the unborn calves which had been sacrificed six days before. The mixture was then distributed to shepherds, and used by them for fumigating their flocks. 153 153 Ovid, Fasti , iv. 731 sqq. , compare 629 sqq. ; Propertius, v. 1. 19 sq. [pg 043]

In this ceremony the decoration of the horse's head 154 154 The Huzuls of the Carpathians attribute a special virtue to a horse's head. They think that fastened on a pole and set up in a garden it protects the cabbages from caterpillars. See R. F. Kaindl, Die Huzulen (Wienna, 1894), p. 102. At the close of the rice-harvest the Garos of Assam celebrate a festival in which the effigy of a horse plays an important part. When the festival is over, the body of the horse is thrown into a stream, but the head is preserved for another year. See Note at the end of the volume. with a string of loaves, and the alleged object of the sacrifice, namely, to procure a good harvest, seem to indicate that the horse was killed as one of those animal representatives of the corn-spirit of which we have found so many examples. The custom of cutting off the horse's tail is like the African custom of cutting off the tails of the oxen and sacrificing them to obtain a good crop. 155 155 Above, pp. 9 sq. In both the Roman and the African custom the animal apparently stands for the corn-spirit, and its fructifying power is supposed to reside especially in its tail. The latter idea occurs, as we have seen, in European folk-lore. 156 156 Above, vol. i. pp. 268, 272. Again, the practice of fumigating the cattle in spring with the blood of the horse may be compared with the practice of giving the Old Wife, the Maiden, or the clyack sheaf as fodder to the horses in spring or the cattle at Christmas, and giving the Yule Boar to the ploughing oxen or horses to eat in spring. 157 157 Above, vol. i. pp. 141, 155, 156, 158, 160 sq. , 301. All these usages aim at ensuring the blessing of the corn-spirit on the homestead and its inmates and storing it up for another year.