If we ask why a dying god should be selected to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrows of the people, it may be suggested that in the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat we have a combination of two customs which were at one time distinct and independent. On the one hand we have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age. On the other hand we have seen that it has been customary to have a general expulsion of evils and sins once a year. Now, if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god as a scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away sin, but to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but, since he had to be killed at any rate, people may have thought that they might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sins, in order that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.
The use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity which, as we saw, appeared to hang about the European folk-custom of “carrying out Death.”[562] Grounds have been shown for believing that in this ceremony the so-called Death was originally the spirit of vegetation, who was annually [pg 207] slain in spring, in order that he might come to life again with all the vigour of youth. But, as we saw, there are certain features in the ceremony which are not explicable on this hypothesis alone. Such are the marks of joy with which the effigy of Death is carried out to be buried or burnt, and the fear and abhorrence of it manifested by the bearers. But these features become at once intelligible if we suppose that the Death was not merely the dying god of vegetation, but also a public scapegoat, upon whom were laid all the evils that had afflicted the people during the past year. Joy on such an occasion is natural and appropriate; and if the dying god appears to be the object of that fear and abhorrence which are properly due not to himself, but to the sins and misfortunes with which he is laden, this arises merely from the difficulty of distinguishing or at least of marking the distinction between the bearer and the burden. When the burden is of a baleful character, the bearer of it will be feared and shunned just as much as if he were himself instinct with those dangerous properties of which, as it happens, he is only the vehicle. Similarly we have seen that disease-laden and sin-laden boats are dreaded and shunned by East Indian peoples.[563] Again, the view that in these popular customs the Death is a scapegoat as well as a representative of the divine spirit of vegetation derives some support from the circumstance that its expulsion is always celebrated in spring and chiefly by Slavonic peoples. For the Slavonic year began in spring;[564] and thus, in one of its aspects, the ceremony of “carrying out Death” would be an example of the widespread [pg 208] custom of expelling the accumulated evils of the past year before entering on a new one.
We are now prepared to notice the use of the scapegoat in classical antiquity. Every year on the 14th of March a man clad in skins was led in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods, and driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius,[565] that is, “the old Mars,”[566] and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon of the old Roman year (which began on 1st March), the skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war but of vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the prosperity of his corn and his vines, his fruit-trees and his copses;[567] it was to Mars that the priestly college of the Arval Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the crops,[568] addressed their petitions almost exclusively;[569] and it was to Mars, as we saw,[570] that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars, under his title of [pg 209] “Mars of the woods” (Mars Silvanus) that farmers offered sacrifice for the welfare of their cattle.[571] We have already seen that cattle are commonly supposed to be under the special patronage of tree-gods.[572] Once more, the fact that the vernal month of March was dedicated to Mars seems to point him out as the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the old Mars at the beginning of the New Year in spring is identical with the Slavonic custom of “carrying out Death,” if the view here taken of the latter custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of vegetation.[573] It is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in later times even by the people who practised them. But the personification of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive. However, in the Roman, as in the Slavonic, ceremony, the representative of the god appears to have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation but also as a scapegoat. His expulsion implies this; for there is no reason why the god of vegetation, as such, should be expelled the city. But it is otherwise if he is also a scapegoat; it then becomes necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries, that he may carry his sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Mamurius Veturius appears to have been [pg 210] driven away to the land of the Oscans, the enemies of Rome.[574]
The ancient Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat. At Plutarch's native town of Chaeronea in Boeotia, there was a ceremony of this kind performed by the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by each householder at his own home. It was called the “expulsion of hunger.” A slave was beaten with [pg 211] rods of the agnus castus, and turned out of doors with the words, “Out with hunger, and in with wealth and health.” When Plutarch held the office of chief magistrate of his native town he performed this ceremony at the Town Hall, and he has recorded the discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise.[575] The ceremony closely resembles the Japanese, Hindoo, and Highland customs already described.[576]
But in civilised Greece the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided. Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used to offer himself as a scapegoat. For a whole year he was maintained at the public expense, being fed on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the year he was dressed in sacred garments, decked with holy branches, and led through the whole city, while prayers were uttered that all the evils of the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the city.[577] The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcasts as scapegoats. One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The former wore round his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white figs. Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on behalf of the women was a woman. They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently by being stoned to death outside the city.[578] But such sacrifices were not confined to extraordinary occasions of public calamity; it appears that every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death.[579]
From the Lover's Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island, the Leucadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a scapegoat. But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and feathers to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey him beyond the boundary.[580] Doubtless these humane precautions were a mitigation of an earlier custom of flinging the scapegoat into the sea to drown. The custom of the scapegoat as practised by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the sixth century b.c. was as follows. When a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity, an ugly or deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils by which the city was afflicted. He was brought to a suitable place where dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese were put into his hand. These he ate. Then he was beaten seven times upon his genital organs with squills and branches of the wild fig and other wild trees. Afterwards he was burned on a pyre constructed of the wood of forest trees; and his ashes were cast into the sea.[581] A similar custom appears to have been annually celebrated by the Asiatic Greeks at the harvest festival of the Thargelia.[582]
In the ritual just described the beating of the victim with squills, branches of the wild fig, etc., cannot have been intended to aggravate his sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good enough to [pg 214] beat him with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has been explained by W. Mannhardt.[583] He points out that the ancients attributed to squills a magical power of averting evil influences, and accordingly hung them up at the doors of their houses and made use of them in purificatory rites.[584] Hence the Arcadian custom of beating the image of Pan with squills at a festival or whenever the hunters returned empty-handed,[585] must have been meant, not to punish the god, but to purify him from the harmful influences which were impeding him in the exercise of his divine functions as a god who should supply the hunter with game. Similarly the object of beating the human scapegoat on the genital organs with squills, etc., must have been to release his reproductive energies from any restraint or spell under which they might be laid by demoniacal or other malignant agency; and as the Thargelia at which he was annually sacrificed was an early harvest festival,[586] we must recognise in him a representative of the creative and fertilising god of vegetation. The representative of the god was annually slain for the purpose I have indicated, that of maintaining the divine life in perpetual vigour, untainted by the weakness of age; and before he was put to death it was not unnatural to stimulate his reproductive powers in order that these might be transmitted in full activity to his successor, the new god or new embodiment of the old god, who was doubtless supposed immediately to take the place of [pg 215] the one slain.[587] Similar reasoning would lead to a similar treatment of the scapegoat on special occasions, such as drought or famine. If the crops did not answer to the expectation of the husbandman, this would be attributed to some failure in the generative powers of the god whose function it was to produce the fruits of the earth. It might be thought he was under a spell or was growing old and feeble. Accordingly he was slain in the person of his representative, with all the ceremonies already described, in order that, born young again, he might infuse his own youthful vigour into the stagnant energies of nature. On the same principle we can understand why Mamurius Veturius was beaten with rods, why the slave at the Chaeronean ceremony was beaten with the agnus castus (a tree to which magical properties were ascribed),[588] why the effigy of Death in north Europe is assailed with sticks and stones, and why at Babylon the criminal who played the god was scourged before he was crucified. The purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the agony of the divine sufferer, but on the contrary to dispel any malignant influences by which at the supreme moment he might conceivably be beset.
The interpretation here given to the custom of beating the human scapegoat with certain plants is supported by many analogies. With the same intention some of the Brazilian Indians beat themselves on the genital organs with an aquatic plant, the white aninga, three days before or after the new [pg 216] moon.[589] We have already had examples of the custom of beating sick people with the leaves of certain plants or with branches in order to rid them of the noxious influences.[590] At the autumn festival in Peru people used to strike each other with torches saying, “Let all harm go away.”[591] Indians of the Quixos, in South America, before they set out on a long hunting expedition, cause their wives to whip them with nettles, believing that this renders them fleeter and helps them to overtake the peccaries. They resort to the same proceeding as a cure for sickness.[592] At Mowat in New Guinea small boys are beaten lightly with sticks during December “to make them grow strong and hardy.”[593] In Central Europe a similar custom is very commonly observed in spring. On the 1st of March the Albanians strike men and beasts with cornel branches, believing that this is very good for their health.[594] On Good Friday and the two previous days people in Croatia and Slavonia take rods with them to church, and when the service is over they beat each other “fresh and healthy.”[595] In some parts of Russia people returning from the church on Palm Sunday beat the children and servants who have stayed at home with palm branches, saying, “Sickness into the forest, health into the bones.”[596] In Germany the custom is widely known as Schmeckostern, being observed at Eastertide. People beat each other, [pg 217] especially with fresh green twigs of the birch. The beating is supposed to bring good luck; the person beaten will, it is believed, be free of vermin during the summer, or will have no pains in his back or his legs for a year.[597]
If the view here taken of the Greek scapegoat is correct, it obviates an objection which might otherwise be brought against the main argument of this chapter. To the theory that the priest of Nemi was slain as a representative of the spirit of the grove, it might have been objected that such a custom has no analogy in classical antiquity. But reasons have now been given for believing that the human being periodically and occasionally slain by the Asiatic Greeks was regularly treated as an embodiment of a divinity. Probably the persons whom the Athenians kept to be sacrificed were similarly treated as divine. That they were social outcasts did not matter. On the primitive view a man is not chosen to be the mouth-piece or embodiment of a god on account of his high moral qualities or social standing. The divine afflatus descends equally on the good and the bad, the lofty and the lowly. If then the civilised Greeks of Asia and Athens habitually sacrificed men whom they regarded as incarnate gods, there can be no inherent improbability in the supposition that at the dawn of history a similar custom was observed by the semi-barbarous Latins in the Arician Grove.