[178] W. Ellis, History of Madagascar (London, N.D.), i. 359 sq.
[179] Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas: die geistige Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl (Berlin, 1896), p. 129.
[180] Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amérique-Centrale, i. 94. As to the ruins of Palenque, see H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iv. 288 sqq.; T. Maler, “Mémoire sur l’état de Chiapa (Mexique),” Revue d’Ethnographie, iii. (1885) pp. 327 sqq.
[181] Father Croonenberghs, “La Mission du Zambèze,” Missions Catholiques, xiv. (1882) p. 453.
[182] Herodotus, v. 75.
[183] Pausanias, iii. 1. 5.
[184] J. Rendel Harris, The Dioscuri in the Christian Legends (London, 1903); id., The Cult of the Heavenly Twins (Cambridge, 1906). See also below, pp. [262] sqq. With the Spartan custom we may compare the use which the Zulus made of twins in war. See Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood, a Study of Kafir Children (London, 1906), p. 47 sq.: “In war time a twin used to be hunted out and made to go right in front of the attacking army, some few paces in front of the others. He was supposed to be fearless and wild. His twin, if a sister, and if surviving, was compelled to tie a cord very tightly round her loins during the fight, and had to starve herself; she was also expected to place the twin brother’s sleeping-mat in that part of the hut which the itongo [ancestral spirits] loved to haunt. This brought success in war. But the great chief Tshaka stopped this practice, for he said that the wild twin did foolhardy things and brought the army into needless danger.”
[185] Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 101; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 43; Seneca, Natur. Quaest. i. 1. 13; Lucian, Dial. deorum, xxvi. 2; Ovid, Fasti, v. 720; Plutarch, De defect. oraculorum, 30; Lactantius Placidus, Comment. in Statii Theb. viii. 792; Th. Henri Martin, in Revue Archéologique, N.S. xiii. (1866) pp. 168–174; P. Sébillot, Légendes, Croyances et Superstitions de la Mer (Paris, 1886), ii. 87–109. Seafaring men in different parts of the world still see and draw omens from these weird lights on the masts. See Edward FitzGerald, quoted in County Folk-lore, Suffolk (London, 1893), pp. 121 sq.; W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic (London, 1900), p. 279.
[186] Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 101. Compare Seneca, Natur. Quaest. i. 1. 14.
[187] Potocki, Voyages dans les Steps d’Astrakhan et du Caucase, i. 143.