§ 3. Purification by Fire.
Death by fire regarded by the ancients as a kind of apotheosis. Fire was supposed to purge away the mortal parts of men, leaving the immortal.
These events and these traditions seem to prove that under certain circumstances Oriental monarchs deliberately chose to burn themselves to death. What were these circumstances? and what were the consequences of the act? If the intention had merely been to escape from the hands of a conqueror, an easier mode of death would naturally have been chosen. There must have been a special reason for electing to die by fire. The legendary death of Hercules, the historical death of Hamilcar, and the picture of Croesus enthroned in state on the pyre and pouring a libation, all combine to indicate that to be burnt alive was regarded as a solemn sacrifice, nay, more than that, as an apotheosis which [pg 180] raised the victim to the rank of a god.[530] For it is to be remembered that Hamilcar as well as Hercules was worshipped after death. Fire, moreover, was regarded by the ancients as a purgative so powerful that properly applied it could burn away all that was mortal of a man, leaving only the divine and immortal spirit behind. Hence we read of goddesses who essayed to confer immortality on the infant sons of kings by burning them in the fire by night; but their beneficent purpose was always frustrated by the ignorant interposition of the mother or father, who peeping into the room saw the child in the flames and raised a cry of horror, thus disconcerting the goddess at her magic rites. This story is told of Isis in the house of the king of Byblus, of Demeter in the house of the king of Eleusis, and of Thetis in the house of her mortal husband Peleus.[531] In a slightly [pg 181] different way the witch Medea professed to give back to the old their lost youth by boiling them with a hell-broth in her magic cauldron;[532] and when Pelops had been butchered and served up at a banquet of the gods by his cruel father Tantalus, the divine beings, touched with pity, plunged his mangled remains in a kettle, from which after decoction he emerged alive and young.[533] “Fire,” says Jamblichus, “destroys the material part of sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it, releasing them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of the purity of its nature, making them meet for communion with the gods. So, too, it releases us from the bondage of corruption, it likens us to the gods, it makes us meet for their friendship, and it converts our material nature into an immaterial.”[534] Thus we can understand why kings and commoners who claimed or aspired to divinity should choose death by fire. It opened to them the gates of heaven. The quack Peregrinus, who ended his disreputable career in the flames at Olympia, gave out that after death he would be turned into a spirit who would guard men from the perils of the night; and, as Lucian remarked, no doubt there were plenty of fools to believe him.[535] According to one account, the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles, who set up for being a god in his lifetime, leaped into the crater of Etna in order to establish his claim to godhead.[536] There is nothing incredible in the tradition. The crack-brained philosopher, with his itch for notoriety, may well have done what Indian fakirs[537] and the brazen-faced mountebank Peregrinus did in antiquity, and what Russian peasants and Chinese Buddhists have done in modern times.[538] There is no extremity to which fanaticism or vanity, or a mixture of the two, will not impel its victims.
§ 4. The Divinity of Lydian Kings.
The Lydian kings seem to have claimed divinity on the ground of their descent from Hercules, the god of the double-axe and of the lion; and this Lydian Hercules or Sandon appears to have been the same with the Cilician Sandan. Lydian kings held responsible for the weather and the crops.
But apart from any general notions of the purificatory virtues of fire, the kings of Lydia seem to have had a special reason for regarding death in the flames as their appropriate end. For the ancient dynasty of the Heraclids which preceded the house of Croesus on the throne traced their descent from a god or hero whom the Greeks called Hercules;[539] and this Lydian Hercules appears to have been identical in name and in substance with the Cilician Hercules, whose effigy was regularly burned on a great pyre at Tarsus. The Lydian Hercules bore the name of Sandon;[540] the Cilician Hercules bore the name of Sandan, or perhaps rather of Sandon, since Sandon is known from inscriptions and other evidence to have been a Cilician name.[541] The characteristic emblems of the Cilician Hercules were the lion and the double-headed axe; and both these emblems meet us at Sardes in connexion with the dynasty of the Heraclids. For the double-headed axe was carried as part of the sacred regalia by Lydian kings from the time of the legendary queen Omphale down to the reign of Candaules, the last of the Heraclid kings. It is said to have been given to Omphale by Hercules himself, and it was apparently regarded as a palladium of the Heraclid sovereignty; for after the dotard Candaules ceased to carry the axe himself, and had handed it over to the keeping of a courtier, a rebellion broke out, and the ancient dynasty of the Heraclids came to an end. The new king Gyges did not attempt to carry the old emblem of sovereignty; he dedicated it with other spoils to Zeus in Caria. Hence the image of the Carian Zeus bore an axe in his hand and received the epithet of Labrandeus, from labrys, the Lydian word for “axe.”[542] Such is Plutarch's account; but we may [pg 183] suspect that Zeus, or rather the native god whom the Greeks identified with Zeus, carried the axe long before the time of Candaules. If, as is commonly supposed, the axe was the symbol of the Asiatic thunder-god,[543] it would be an appropriate emblem in the hand of kings, who are so often expected to make rain, thunder, and lightning for the good of their people. Whether the kings of Lydia were bound to make thunder and rain we do not know; but at all events, like many early monarchs, they seem to have been held responsible for the weather and the crops. In the reign of Meles the country suffered severely from dearth, so the people consulted an oracle, and the deity laid the blame on the kings, one of whom had in former years incurred the guilt of murder. The soothsayers accordingly declared that King Meles, though his own hands were clean, must be banished for three years in order that the taint of bloodshed should be purged away. The king obeyed and retired to Babylon, where he lived three years. In his absence the kingdom was administered by a deputy, a certain Sadyattes, son of Cadys, who traced his descent from Tylon.[544] As to this Tylon we shall hear more presently. Again, we read that the Lydians rejoiced greatly at the assassination of Spermus, another of their kings, “for he was very wicked, and the land suffered from drought in his reign.”[545] Apparently, like the ancient Irish and many modern Africans, they laid the drought at the king's door, and thought that he only got what he deserved under the knife of the assassin.
The lion-god of Lydia.
With regard to the lion, the other emblem of the Cilician Hercules, we are told that the same king Meles, who was banished because of a dearth, sought to make the acropolis of Sardes impregnable by carrying round it a lion which a concubine had borne to him. Unfortunately at a single point, where the precipices were such that it seemed as if no human foot could scale them, he omitted to carry the beast, and sure enough at that very point the Persians afterwards clambered up into the citadel.[546] Now Meles was one of the old Heraclid dynasty[547] who boasted their descent from the lion-hero Hercules; hence the carrying of a lion round the acropolis was probably a form of consecration intended to place the stronghold under the guardianship of the lion-god, the hereditary deity of the royal family. And the story that the king's concubine gave birth to a lion's whelp suggests that the Lydian kings not only claimed kinship with the beast, but posed as lions in their own persons and passed off their sons as lion-cubs. Croesus dedicated at Delphi a lion of pure gold, perhaps as a badge of Lydia,[548] and Hercules with his lion's skin is a common type on coins of Sardes.[549]