[197] Jour. African Soc. no. xviii. January, 1906, p. 203.
[198] Turner, Samoa, p. 19. Idem, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 292 sq.
[199] Jarves, History of the Hawaiian Islands, p. 20.
[200] Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings, p. 339.
[201] Codrington, op. cit. p. 215.
[202] Percival, Account of the Island of Ceylon, p. 198.
[203] Trumbull, The Threshold Covenant, p. 166 sq. Hilprecht, quoted ibid. p. 167 sqq.
Now we can understand why gods so frequently take notice of offences against property. They are invoked in curses uttered against thieves; the invocation in a curse easily develops into a genuine prayer, and where this is the case the god is supposed to punish the offender of his own free will. Besides, he may be induced to do so by offerings. And when often appealed to in connection with theft, a supernatural being may finally come to be looked upon as a guardian of property. This, for instance, I take to be the explanation of the belief prevalent among the Berbers of Ḥaḥa, in Southern Morocco, that some of the local saints punish thieves who approach their sanctuaries, even though the theft was committed elsewhere; being constantly appealed to in oaths taken by persons suspected of theft, they have become the permanent enemies of thieves. We can, further, understand why in some cases certain offences against property have actually assumed the character of a sacrilege, even apart from such as are committed in the proximity of a supernatural being. Curses are sometimes personified and elevated to the rank of divine agents; this, as we have seen, is the origin of the Erinyes of parents, beggars, and strangers, and of the Roman divi parentum and dii hospitales; and this is also in all probability the origin of the god Terminus.[204] Or the curse may be transformed into an attribute of the chief god, not only because he is frequently appealed to in connection with offences of a certain kind, but also because such a god has a tendency to attract supernatural forces which are in harmony with his general nature. This explains the origin of conceptions such as Zeus ὅριος and Jupiter Terminalis, as well as the extreme severity with which Yahweh treated the removal of landmarks. In all these cases there are indications of a connection between the god and a curse. Apart from other evidence to be found in Semitic antiquities, there is the anathema of Deuteronomy, “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.”[205] That the boundary stones dedicated to Zeus ὅριος were originally charged with imprecations appears from a passage in Plato’s ‘Laws’ quoted above,[206] as also from inscriptions made on them.[207] The Etruscans cursed anyone who should touch or displace a boundary mark:—Such a person shall be condemned by the gods; his house shall disappear; his race shall be extinguished; his limbs shall be covered with ulcers and waste away; his land shall no longer produce fruits; hail, rust, and the fires of the dog-star shall destroy his harvests.[208] Considering the important part played by blood as a conductor of imprecations, it is not improbable that the Roman ceremony of letting the blood of a sacrificial animal flow into the hole where the landmark was to be placed[209] was intended to give efficacy to a curse. In some parts of England a custom of annually “beating the bounds” of a parish has survived up to the present time, and this ceremony was formerly accompanied by religious services, in which a clergyman invoked curses on him who should transgress the bounds of his neighbour, and blessings on him who should regard the landmarks.[210]
[204] Cf. Festus, op. cit. ‘Termino’:—“Numa Pompilius statuit eum, qui terminum exarasset, et ipsum, et boves sacros esse.”