Chapter II: The Divine Scapegoat

In many cases, however, at expulsion of the devils, the part of devil is played by a man who is driven away, often he is beaten away. Now I have already said that, by Mr. Frazer's theory (as I understand it), the mock-king at the Sacæa was 'sacrificed' in a double _rôle_; namely both as the king's proxy (the king being a god) and also as Tammuz, not to speak of Marduk and Humman. To this, of course, I replied (1) that no case seemed to be given of killing a king yearly to benefit a god; (2) that I could find no case of a king being killed by proxy; (3) that when kings really were killed, it was not annually nor by the infamous death of a malefactor (hanging); (4) that there was no proof of a man being killed as Tammuz; (5) that Tammuz is nowhere said to have been hanged, or crucified, or scourged; (6) that in no case known to me is sacrifice performed by hanging, still less (if possible) by hanging after a whipping. These arguments convince me that Mr. Frazer's theory (if it _is_ his theory) is unconvincing.

But I am not quite sure that Mr. Frazer really holds his Sacæan victim to have played two parts, at two distinct times of year. Now, however, in connection with human scapegoats, our author does certainly make a victim 'double a part.' First, it was usual to kill a beast-god or man-god 'to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age.' Next, there were human scapegoats, driven away with all evil on their heads. But, suggests Mr. Frazer, 'if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god' (god-man, king, or his proxy) '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 sin in order that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.'[12]

Even so, when a Dublin mob was about to throw a man over from the gallery of the theatre, some economist cried, 'Don't waste him: kill a fiddler with him'!

As proof that people might reason in this thrifty way we learn that, on March 15, a scapegoat man, called 'Old Mars,' was beaten at Borne and expelled. Mars, of course, was a god of vegetation, and here the man-god, 'Old Mars,' is both god and scapegoat. But he is not sacrificed, nor even hanged.[13]

In Athens during plague, drought, or famine two human scapegoats were done to death, and Mr. Frazer infers, but doubtfully, were stoned to death. This also occurred yearly at the Thargelia; the stoning is a conjecture. In Greek cities of Asia Minor, in times of calamity, an ugly or deformed man was made to eat dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese. Then he was beaten seven times in a special manner, with squills and myrtle boughs, was burned, and the ashes were thrown into the sea. The beating at once expelled evil influences and was good for the crops. So in this ugly poor devil 'we must recognise a representative of the creating and fertilising god of vegetation.' I really must try to save him from this general doom! These stupid cruelties, if they had the usual agricultural motive, worked _magically_ not _religiously_, worked by sympathetic magic, not by divine interference. This creature, though supposed to be a god of vegetation, was confessedly in appearance no Adonis![14]

In rejecting the idea that this hideous wretch did duty as a god, Adonis, so fair that he won and so cold that he rejected the love of the golden Aphrodite, I may justify myself by Mr. Frazer's example. I argue that the deformed victim was, if anything, used in _magic_, not in _religion_--not as embodying a god. In the same way Mr. Frazer himself says of the rites of the dying god of vegetation, all over Western Asia, that the ritual was 'fundamentally a religious, or rather a magical, ceremony.'[15] So was the beating and death of the ugly deformed man (as to whom no evidence hints that he did duty for a god) a merely magical ceremony.

Now let us see where we are. Mr. Frazer's point was to prove that a man, whom he regarded as a proxy of a god-king, was put to death, at a period of chartered licence, to save the divine life. But people also had human scapegoats. So they perhaps argued (this is my own suggestion): 'As the proxy of the man-god (himself _ex officio_ a man-god) has to be killed at any rate, and as a scapegoat has to be thumped, why not thump the man-god who has to die at any rate? Let him double the part, nay, as we are economising, let him treble the part, let him be beaten as a scapegoat, be hanged as a proxy for the divine life of the king, and also be hanged as Tammuz.'

But to prove that all this was deliberately thought out, where have we a case of a scapegoat god-man who is put to death? We have none, unless we let Mr. Frazer persuade us that his ugly deformed person, I a degraded and useless being,' '_must_ be recognised as a representative of the creative and fertilising god of vegetation, whose reproductive powers are stimulated 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 the one slain.'[16] I must decline to obey Mr. Frazer's 'must,' and to recognise an Adonis in the ugly deformed person. Next, I demur to the idea that 'doubtless' the dying deformed one handed over his powers to a new god. Thirdly, if all this is meant to show that the Sacæan criminal was not only (1) a proxy, saving the royal divine life, and enjoying the royal harem; and (2) was a representative of Tammuz, enjoying a sacred harlot; but (3) was, moreover, a human scapegoat, scourged as such, and to stimulate his reproductive powers, and to expel evil influences, then I really cannot accept the portentous hypothesis. No attested examples of human scapegoats at Babylon are offered, but that is a trifle.

If Mr. Frazer really means to add the duties of a scapegoat, and the consequent beating,[17] to the duties of proxy king and Tammuz man in his chapter on the Saturnalia, he does not say so. It does not appear, then, that he wishes to explain the scourging of the mock-king at the Sacæa by his theory of a human scapegoat, and it does not appear that he ever explains the stripping of the royal robes from the unlucky man. Yet if the man really died as a mock-king, there must have been some reason for stripping him of his royal raiment. We never hear that the representative of King Saturnus was either stripped or whipped before being sacrificed. Nor do I remark that, in Anahuac, the human victim who personated a god was stripped of the god's robes and ornaments. Why then was the Sacæan victim, and he alone (as far as we know), reduced from his royalty by being stripped before execution, and also brought down to the estate of a slave by being scourged?