Magic and Religion

stival (in late times held in December, 16-23) so closely resembled our Christmas in jollity, that Pliny (like some of us) used to withdraw to the most retired room in his Laure

in of his fact. Livy says: 'The Saturnalia were instituted as a festal day.'[57] After the time of Caligula, the Saturnali

jolly old king of unreason.[59] The rich helped the poor, people made presents to each other, 'a Christmas carol philosophy,' as Dickens calls it, prevailed. The masters served the slaves at table; all was licence and riot. Wax candles were given as pre

? π?μπε

r, in Italy, Saturn. But, by a pun on the Greek Φ?τα, th

theory that cerea were commutations of sacrifice. If, now and then, under the Empire a survival or recrudescence of human sacrifice was heard of in a rural district, the antiquaries would catch at it greedily, as a proof

(who answered to our 'Twelfth Night' 'King' or 'Queen of the Bean') 'may have originally personated Saturn himself.'[62] In the following page we read that

declined the crown and was knocked on the head, on November 20, by a soldier, apparently a christened man, named John. The Saturnalia at Rome lasted (at least under the Empire) from December 16 to December 23. Dasius must have been executed for his refusal, announced before his month's reign (only a week is elsewhere known) should have begun-on November 23; if the regnal month ended on December 23. Thus the festive Saturnalian kings at Rome may be guesse

ot fall in December, is also a survival of a slain mock-king 'who personated Saturn,' so Mr

really corresponded to that of the soldiers who slew Dasius, began in November, and ended in December, lasting thirty days, or, teste Macrobio, originally lasting one day. If the slaying of Dasius really occurred, and was a survival of a custom once prevalent (as in ancient A

ch, at the time when March was the first month of the Roman year.'[65] Thus, in conservative rural districts, the Saturnalia would continue to be held in February, not, as at Rome, in December, though Roman writers do not tell us so, and though non-Roman pagan peoples held festiva

er and sterner practice' of mu

alia continued to be held in Feb

sterner practice' of remote districts where the Saturn

turnalia in February-March, that the feast continued i

y accepted the new date, November (not kept in Rome) and December; though in their remote rural homes the Saturnalia were in February-March. Doubtless their off

wrote execrable Greek, did not understand his subject, and was far from scrupulous. These sentiments of M. Cumont 'set in a new and lurid light'-as Mr. Frazer says of something else--the only evidence for the yearly military sacrifice of a mock-king of the Saturnalia. Our author was unscrupulous, for he makes Dasius profess the Nicene Creed before it was made. As to the thirty days' revel, M. Cumont supposes that to be a blunder of our author, who did not know that the Saturnalia only occupied a week.[69] M. Cumont held that the king of the feast had not to slay himself, but only to sacrifice to Saturn; in fact, Bassus, his commanding officer,

the way that similar noisy performances went on in his own Christian period, not in December, but on New Year's Day. The Saturnalia were thus pushed on a week from De

the author of his legend told the tale to illustrate the sin of revelry on New Year's Day. But what led to the revival of the cruelty? M. Parmentier quoted the story of our Babylonian festival, the Sac?a, in which a mock-king was scourged and slain. This or a similar rite the Roman legions finally confused with their own Saturnalia, both as to date

tial class) of the five days' feast of the Babylonian Sac?a. But thirty days, as in M?sia, are not five days. He also inclined to accept the recently proposed identification of the Sac?a with a really old Babylonian feast called Zagmuk, or Zakmuk, and with the Jewish Purim, an identification which we shall later criticise. As to the imperial edic

hanging, and his simulated resurrection (at which we shall find Mr. Frazer making a guess) are absent, while the date of the alleged transaction (November-December) does not tally with Purim, or Eastertide, or the date of the Sac?a. The duration of the Dasius feast, thirty days, is neither Roman nor Oriental. Thu

acter. The general reader can gather from the 'Golden Bough' no idea of the tenuity of the testimony, which, of course, is at once visible to readers of French and Greek. We address