Putting these two cardinal ideas together, we arrive at the compound conception of the scapegoat. A scapegoat is a human or animal victim, chosen to carry off, at first the misfortunes or diseases, later the sin and guilt of the community. The name by which we designate it in English, being taken from the derivative Hebrew usage, has animal implications; but, as in all analogous cases, I do not doubt that the human evil-bearer precedes the animal one.
A good example of this incipient stage in the evolution of the scapegoat occurs at Onitsha, on the Quorra River. Two human beings are there annually sacrificed, “to take away the sins of the land”—though I suspect it would be more true to native ideas to say, “the misfortunes.” The number two, as applied to the victims, crops up frequently in this special connexion. The victims here again are “bought with a price”—purchased by public subscription. All persons who during the previous year have committed gross offences against native ethics are expected to contribute to the cost of the victims. Two sickly people are bought with the money, “one for the land and one for the river.” The victims are dragged along the ground to the place of execution, face downward. The crowd who accompany them cry, “Wickedness! wickedness!” So in Siam it was customary to choose a broken-down woman of evil life, carry her on a litter through the streets (which is usually a symbol of kingship or godhead) and throw her on a dunghill or hedge of thorns outside the wall, forbidding her ever again to enter the city. In this eastern case, there is mere expulsion, not actual killing.
In other instances, however, the divine character attributed to the human scapegoat is quite unmistakable. Among the Gonds of India, at the festival of the god of the crops, the deity descends on the head of one of the worshippers, who is seized with a fit, and rushes off to the jungle. There, it is believed he would die of himself, if he were not brought back and tenderly treated: but the Gonds, more merciful here than in many other cases, take him back and restore him. The idea is that he is thus singled out to bear the sins of the rest of the village. At Halberstadt in Thuringia an exactly similar custom survived till late in the middle ages. A man was chosen, stained with deadly sin, as the public scapegoat. On the first day of Lent he was dressed in mourning, and expelled from church. For forty days, he wandered about, fed only by the priests, and no one would speak to him. He slept in the street. On the day before Good Friday, however, he was absolved of his sins, and being called Adam, was believed to be now in a state of innocence. This is a mitigated and Christianised form of the human sin-offering.
Again, the Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves in the temple of the moon, many of whom were inspired and prophesied. When one of these men exhibited unusual symptoms of inspiration, the high priest had him bound with a sacred chain, and maintained for a year in luxury, like the Mexican corn-god. This fact immediately brings the human scapegoat into line with the annual human gods we have already considered. At the end of a year, he was anointed with unguents (or, so to speak, christed), and led forth to be sacrificed. The sacrifice was accomplished as a purificatory ceremony.
Mr. Frazer, to whom I owe all these examples, connects with such rites the curious ceremony of the expulsion of the Old Mars, the Mamurius Veturius, at Rome. Every year on the 14th of March (near the spring equinox), a man, called by the name of a god, was clad in skins—the significance of which rite we now know—and after being beaten with long white rods, was expelled the city. From one point of view, this personage no doubt represented the god of vegetation of the previous year (for the Mars was originally an annual corn-god). But from another point of view, being now of no further use to the community, he was utilised with true old Roman parsimony as a scapegoat, and sent to carry away the offences of the people. Indeed, there seems to be some reason for believing that he was driven into the territory of the hostile Oscans. In this case we perceive that an annual god is made the sin-offering for the crimes of a nation.
In Greece, we get similar traces of the human scapegoat. At Chæronea in Boeotia, the chief magistrate at the town-hall, and every householder in his own house, as we learn from Plutarch (who was himself a magistrate there) had on a certain day to beat a slave with rods of agnus castus, and turn him out of doors, with the formula, “Out, hunger! in, health and wealth!” Elsewhere the custom retained more unpleasant features. At Marseilles, when the colony was ravaged by plague, a man of the poorer classes used voluntarily to offer himself as a sin-offering or scapegoat. Here we have once more the common episode of the willing victim. For a whole year, like other annual gods, he was fed at the public expense, and treated as a gentleman—that is to say, a kingly man-god. At the end of that time, he was dressed in sacred garments —another mark of godship—decked with holy branches, the common insignia of gods of vegetation, and led through the city, while prayers were offered up that the sins of the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the colony. The Athenians kept a number of outcasts as public victims at the expense of the town; and when plague, drought, or famine befell, sacrificed two of them (note the number) as human scapegoats. One was said to be a substitute for the men, and one for the women. They were led about the city (like Beating the Bounds again) and then apparently stoned to death without it. Moreover, periodically every year, at the festival of the Thargelia, two victims were stoned to death as scapegoats at Athens, one for the men, and one for the women. I would conjecturally venture to connect this sacred number, not merely with the African practice already noted, but also with the dual kings at Sparta, the two consuls at Rome, and the two suffetes at Carthage and in other Semitic cities. The duality of kings, indeed, is a frequent phenomenon.
I can only add here that the many other ceremonies connected with these human scapegoats have been well expounded and explained by Mannhardt, who shows that they were all of a purificatory character, and that the scourging of the god before putting him to death was a necessary point of divine procedure. Hence the significance of the agnus castus.
Briefly, then, the evidence collected by Mannhardt and Frazer suffices to suggest that the human scapegoat was the last term of a god, condemned to death, upon whose head the transgression or misfortunes of the community were laid as substitute. He was the vicarious offering who died for the people.
It is only here and there, however, that the scapegoat retains to historical times his first early form as a human victim. Much more often, in civilised lands at least, we get the usual successive mitigations of the custom. Sometimes, as we have seen already in these cases, the victim is not actually killed, but merely expelled, or even only playfully and ceremonially driven out of the city. In other instances, we get the familiar substitution of the condemned criminal, or the imbecile, as in the Attic Thargelia.’ The Greeks of Asia Minor used actually to burn their atonement-victim, and cast his ashes into the sea; but the Leucadians merely threw down a condemned prisoner from a cliff, and lightened his fall by fastening live birds to him, while they kept boats below to save him from drowning, and carry him well beyond the frontier. In the vast majority of cases, however, we have the still more common substitution of a sacred animal for a human victim; and this appears to be in large part the origin of that common religious feature, the piacular sacrifice.
Occasionally we get historical or half-historical evidence of the transition from a human victim to a divine or quasidivine animal. Thus, the people of Nias offer either a red horse or a buffalo to purify the land; but formerly, a man was bound to the same stake with the buffalo, and when the buffalo was killed, the man was driven away, no native daring to receive him or feed him. The sacrificial camel of the ancient Arabs, presumably piacular, is expressly stated to be a substitute for a human victim. The favourite victims of the Saracens were young and beautiful captives: but if such were not to be procured, they contented themselves with a white and faultless camel. The step hence to the habitual immolation or driving forth of a divine animal in place of a divine or quasi-divine man is a very small one. In Malabar, the cow is a sacred beast, and to kill or eat a cow is a crime like murder. Nevertheless, the Brahmans transfer the sins of the people to a cow or cows, which are then driven out wherever the Brahmans appoint. The ancient Egyptians used to sacrifice a bull, and lay upon its head all the evils which might otherwise happen to themselves and their country; then they sold the bull’s head to the Greeks, or flung it into the river. (Contrast this effort to get rid of the accursed head with the careful preservation and worship of the sacred one.) The best-known case of all, of course, is the Hebrew scapegoat, which was the sacred animal of a shepherd people, turned out to die of hunger or thirst in the desert, and bearing on its head the sins of the people. (Contrast the scapegoat with the paschal lamb, and compare with the goats and sheep of the last judgment.) When cholera rages among the aboriginal tribes of India, they take a goat or a buffalo—in either case a female, the most sacred sex in Indian sacrifice, and black all over, like Apis and Mnevis; they turn it out of the village, with magical ceremonies, and do not allow it to return within their precincts. In many other similar poojahs, the victim is a goat. Mr. Frazer has collected, here as elsewhere, a vast number of valuable and illustrative instances.