Chapter XVIII: The Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium (2)

[Sidenote: Chiefs and kings in Africa elected from several families in rotation.] Sometimes the field of choice is extended still further by a rule that the chief may or must be chosen from one of several families in a certain order. Thus among the Bangalas of the Cassange Valley in Angola the chief is elected from three families in rotation.[954] And Diagara, a country bordering on Senegambia, is ruled by an absolute monarch who is chosen alternately from two families, one of which lives in Diapina and the other in Badumar.[955] In the Winamwanga tribe, to the south of Lake Tanganyika, “the first male child born to a chief after he succeeds to the chieftainship is the natural heir, but many years ago there were two claimants to the throne, whose supporters were about equal, and to avoid a civil war the following arrangement was made. One of them was allowed to reign, but the other claimant or his son was to succeed him. This was carried out, so that now there are continually alternate dynasties.”[956] So in the Matse tribe of Togoland in West Africa, there are two royal families descended from two women, which supply a king alternately. Hence the palm forest which belongs to the crown is divided into two parts; the reigning king has the right to one part, and the representative of the other royal house has a right to the other part.[957] Among the Yorubas in western Africa the sovereign chief is always taken from one or more families which have the hereditary right of furnishing the community with rulers. In many cases the succession passes regularly from one to a second family alternately; but in one instance, apparently unique, the right of succession to the sovereignty seems to be possessed by four princely families, from each of which the head chief is elected in rotation. The principle of primogeniture is not necessarily followed in the election, but the choice of the electors must always fall on one who is related to a former chief in the male line. For paternal descent alone is recognised in Yorubaland, where even the greatest chief may take to wife a woman of the lowest rank. Sometimes the choice of the ruling chief is made by divine authority, intimated to the people through the high priest of the principal god of the district.[958] Among the Igaras, on the lower Niger, the royal family is divided into four branches, each of which provides a king in turn. The capital and its district, both of which bear the name of Idah, are always occupied by the reigning branch of the royal family, while the three other branches, not being allowed to live there, retreat into the interior. Hence at the death of a king a double change takes place. On the one hand the late reigning family, with all their dependants, have to leave the homes in which many of them have been born and brought up, and to migrate to towns in the forest, which they know only by name. On the other hand, the new reigning family come into the capital, and their people settle in the houses occupied by their forefathers four reigns ago. The king is generally elected by the leading men of his branch of the royal family; they choose the richest and most powerful of their number.[959]

[Sidenote: Among the Khasis of Assam, also, the succession to the kingdom is partly hereditary and partly elective.] Again, among the Khasis of Assam we meet with the same combination of the hereditary with the elective principle in the succession to the kingdom. Indeed, in this people the kingship presents several features of resemblance to the old Latin kingship as it appears to have existed at the dawn of history. For a Khasi king is the religious as well as the secular head of the state; along with the sooth-sayers he consults the auspices for the public good, and sometimes he has priestly duties to perform. Succession to the kingship always runs in the female line, for the Khasis have a regular system of mother-kin as opposed to father-kin; hence it is not the king’s sons, but his uterine brothers and the sons of his uterine sisters who succeed him on the throne in order of birth. But this hereditary principle is controlled by a body of electors, who have the right of rejecting unsuitable claimants to the throne. Generally the electors are a small body composed of the heads of certain priestly clans; but in some Khasi states the number of the electors has been greatly increased by the inclusion of representative headmen of certain important lay clans, or even by the inclusion of village headmen or of the chief superintendents of the village markets. Nay, in the Langrim state all the adult males regularly vote at the election of a monarch; and here the royal family is divided into two branches, a Black and a White, from either of which, apparently, the electors are free to choose a king. Similarly, in the Nobosohpoh state there are two royal houses, a Black and a White, and the people may select the heir to the throne from either of them.[960]

[Sidenote: Thus the Roman monarchy may have combined the hereditary with the elective principle.] Thus the mere circumstance that all the Roman kings, with the exception of the two Tarquins, appear to have belonged to different families, is not of itself conclusive against the view that heredity was one of the elements which determined the succession. The number of families from whom the king might be elected may have been large. And even if, as is possible, the electors were free to chose a king without any regard to his birth, the hereditary principle would still be maintained if, as we have seen reason to conjecture, it was essential that the chosen candidate should marry a woman of the royal house, who would generally be either the daughter or the widow of his predecessor. In this way the apparently disparate principles of unfettered election and strict heredity would be combined; the marriage of the elected king with the hereditary princess would furnish the link between the two. Under such a system, to put it otherwise, the kings are elective and the queens hereditary. This is just the converse of what happens under a system of male kinship, where the kings are hereditary and the queens elective.

In the later times of Rome it was held that the custom had been for the people to elect the kings and for the senate to ratify the election.[961] But we may suspect, with Mommsen, that this was no more than an inference from the mode of electing the consuls. The magistrates who, under the republic, represented the kings most closely were the dictator and the King of the Sacred Rites, and neither of these was elected by the people. Both were nominated, the dictator by the consul, and the King of the Sacred Rites by the chief pontiff.[962] Accordingly it seems probable that under [Sidenote: The king was probably nominated either by his predecessor or by an interim king.] the monarchy the king was nominated either by his predecessor or, failing that, by an interim king (_interrex_) chosen from the senate.[963] Now if, as we have been led to think, an essential claim to the throne was constituted by marriage with a princess of the royal house, nothing could be more natural than that the king should choose his successor, who would commonly be also his son-in-law. If he had several sons-in-law and had omitted to designate the one who was to reign after him, the election would be made by his substitute, the interim king.

[Sidenote: Personal qualities which commended a man for marriage with a princess and succession to the throne.] The personal qualities which recommended a man for a royal alliance and succession to the throne would naturally vary according to the popular ideas of the time and the character of the king or his substitute, but it is reasonable to suppose that among them in early society physical strength and beauty would hold a prominent place.[964] We have seen that in Ashantee the husbands or paramours of the princesses must always be men of fine presence, because they are to be the fathers of future kings. Among the Ethiopians in antiquity, as among the Ashantees and many other African tribes to this day, the crown passed in the female line to the son of the king’s sister, but if there was no such heir they chose the handsomest and most valiant man to reign over them.[965] We are told that the Gordioi [Sidenote: Fat kings.] elected the fattest man to the kingship,[966] nor is this incredible when we remember that in Africa corpulence is still regarded as a great distinction and beauty, and that both the chiefs and their wives are sometimes so fat that they can hardly walk. Thus among the Caffres chiefs and rich men attain to an enormous bulk, and the queens fatten themselves on beef and porridge, of which they partake freely in the intervals of slumber. To be fat is with them a mark of riches, and therefore of high rank; common folk cannot afford to eat and drink and lounge as much as they would like to do.[967] The Syrakoi in antiquity are reported to have bestowed the crown on the tallest man or on the man with [Sidenote: Long-headed kings and chiefs.] the longest head in the literal, not the figurative, sense of the word.[968] They seem to have been a Sarmatian people to the north of the Caucasus,[969] and are probably the same with the long-headed people described by Hippocrates, who says that among them the men with the longest heads were esteemed the noblest, and that they applied bandages and other instruments to the heads of their children in infancy for the sake of moulding them into the shape which they admired.[970] Such reports are probably by no means fabulous, for among the Monbuttu or Mang-bettou of Central Africa down to this day “when the children of chiefs are young, string is wound round their heads, which are gradually compressed into a shape that will allow of the longest head-dress. The skull thus treated in childhood takes the appearance of an elongated egg.”[971] Similarly [Sidenote: Heads artificially moulded as a mark of high rank.] some of the Indian tribes on the north-west coast of America artificially mould the heads of their children into the shape of a wedge or a sugar-loaf by compressing them between boards; some of them regard such heads as a personal beauty, others as a mark of high birth.[972] For instance, “the practice among some of the Salish seems to have had a definite social, as well as aesthetic, significance. There appear to have been recognised degrees of contortion marking the social status of the individual. For example slaves, of which the Salish kept considerable numbers, were prohibited from deforming the heads of their children at all, consequently a normal, undeformed head was the sign and badge of servitude. And in the case of the base-born of the tribes the heads of their children were customarily but slightly deformed, while the heads of the children born of wealthy or noble persons, and particularly those of chiefs, were severely and excessively deformed.”[973]

[Sidenote: Among the Bororos the best singers are the chiefs.] Among the Bororos of Brazil at the present day the title to chieftaincy is neither corpulence nor an egg-shaped head, but the possession of a fine musical ear and a rich baritone, bass, or tenor voice. The best singer, in fact, becomes the chief. There is no other way to supreme power but this. Hence in the education of the Bororo youth the main thing is to train, not their minds, but their voices, for the best of the tuneful quire will certainly be chief. In this tribe, accordingly, there is no such thing as hereditary chieftainship; for if the son of a chief has an indifferent ear or a poor voice, he will be a commoner to the end of his days. When two rival songsters are found in the same village, they sing against each other, and he who is judged to have acquitted himself best in the musical contest mounts the throne. His defeated rival sometimes retires in a huff with his admirers and founds a new village. Once seated in the place of power, the melodious singer is not only highly honoured and respected, but can exact unconditional obedience from all, and he gives his orders, like an operatic king or hero, in a musical recitativo. It is especially at eventide, when the sun has set and the labours of the day are over, that he pours out his soul in harmony. At that witching hour he takes up his post in front of the men’s club-house, and while his subjects are hushed in attention he bursts into sacred song, passing from that to lighter themes, and concluding the oratorio by chanting his commands to each individual for the next day.[974] When Addison ridiculed the new fashion of the Italian opera, in which generals sang the word of command, ladies delivered their messages in music, and lovers chanted their billet-doux, he little suspected that among the backwoods of Brazil a tribe of savages in all seriousness observed a custom which he thought absurd even on the stage.[975]

[Sidenote: Succession to the throne determined by a race.] Sometimes apparently the right to the hand of the princess and to the throne has been determined by a race. The Alitemnian Libyans awarded the kingdom to the fleetest runner.[976] Amongst the old Prussians, candidates for nobility raced on horseback to the king, and the one who reached him first was ennobled.[977] According to tradition the earliest games at Olympia were held by Endymion, who set his sons to run a race for the kingdom. His tomb was said to be at the point of the racecourse from which the runners started.[978] The famous story of Pelops and Hippodamia [Sidenote: Greek traditions of princesses whose hands were won in a race.] is perhaps only another version of the legend that the first races at Olympia were run for no less a prize than a kingdom. For Oenomaus was king of Pisa, a town close to Olympia; and having been warned by an oracle that he would die by the hand of the man who married his daughter Hippodamia, he resolved to keep her a maid. So when any one came a-wooing her, the king made the suitor drive away in a chariot with Hippodamia, while he himself pursued the pair in another car drawn by fleet horses, and, overtaking the unlucky wight, slew him. In this way he killed twelve suitors and nailed their heads to his house, the ruins of which were shewn at Olympia down to the second century of our era. The bodies of the suitors were buried under a lofty mound, and it is said that in former days sacrifices were offered to them yearly. When Pelops came to win the hand of Hippodamia, he bribed the charioteer of Oenomaus not to put the pins into the wheels of the king’s chariot. So Oenomaus was thrown from the car and dragged by his horses to death. But some say he was despatched by Pelops according to the oracle. Anyhow, he died, and Pelops married Hippodamia and succeeded to the kingdom.[979] The grave of Oenomaus was shown at Olympia; it was a mound of earth enclosed with stones.[980] Here, too, precincts were dedicated to Pelops and Hippodamia, in which sacrifices were offered to them annually; the victim presented to Pelops was a black ram, whose blood was poured into a pit.[981] Other traditions were current in antiquity of princesses who were offered in marriage to the fleetest runner and won by the victor in the race. Thus Icarius at Sparta set the wooers of his daughter Penelope to run a race; Ulysses won and wedded her. His father-in-law is said to have tried to induce him to take up his abode in Sparta; which seems to shew that if Ulysses had accepted the invitation he would have inherited the kingdom through his wife.[982] So, too, the Libyan King Antaeus placed his beautiful daughter Barce or Alceis at the end of the racecourse; her many noble suitors, both Libyans and foreigners, ran to her as the goal, and Alcidamus, who touched her first, gained her in marriage.[983] Danaus, also, at Argos is said to have stationed his many daughters at the goal, and the runner who reached them first had first choice of the maidens.[984] Somewhat different from these traditions is the story of Atalante, for in it the wooers are said to have contended, not with each other, but with the coy maiden herself in a foot-race. She slew her vanquished suitors and hung up their heads in the racecourse, till Hippomenes gained the race and her hand by throwing down the golden apples which she stooped to pick up.[985]

[Sidenote: Custom of racing for a bride among the Kirghiz and Calmucks.] These traditions may very well reflect a real custom of racing for a bride, for such a custom appears to have prevailed among various peoples, though in practice it has degenerated into a mere form or pretence. Thus “there is one race, called the ‘Love Chase,’ which may be considered a part of the form of marriage among the Kirghiz. In this the bride, armed with a formidable whip, mounts a fleet horse, and is pursued by all the young men who make any pretensions to her hand. She will be given as a prize to the one who catches her, but she has the right, besides urging on her horse to the utmost, to use her whip, often with no mean force, to keep off those lovers who are unwelcome to her, and she will probably favour the one whom she has already chosen in her heart. As, however, by Kirghiz custom, a suitor to the hand of a maiden is obliged to give a certain _kalym_, or purchase-money, and an agreement must be made with the father for the amount of dowry which he gives his daughter, the ‘Love Chase’ is a mere matter of form.”[986] Similarly “the ceremony of marriage among the Calmucks is performed on horseback. A girl is first mounted, who rides off in full speed. Her lover pursues; and if he overtakes her, she becomes his wife, and the marriage is consummated on the spot, after which she returns with him to his tent. But it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish to marry the person by whom she is pursued, in which case she will not suffer him to overtake her; and we were assured that no instance occurs of a Calmuck girl being thus caught unless she has a partiality for her pursuer. If she dislikes him she rides, to use the language of English sportsmen, ‘neck or nothing,’ until she has completely escaped, or until the pursuer’s horse is tired out, leaving her at liberty to return, to be afterwards chased by some more favoured admirer.”[987] The race for the bride is found also among the Koryaks of north-eastern Asia. It takes place in a large tent, round which many separate compartments called _pologs_ are arranged in a continuous circle. The girl gets a start and is clear of the marriage if she can run through all the compartments without being caught by the bridegroom. The women of the encampment place every obstacle in the man’s way, tripping him up, belabouring him with switches, and so forth, so that he has little chance of succeeding unless the girl wishes it and waits for him.[988] Among some of the rude indigenous tribes of the Malay Peninsula “marriage is preceded by a singular ceremony. An old man presents the future couple to the assembled guests, and, followed by their families, he leads them to a great circle, round which the girl sets off to run as fast as she can. If the young man succeeds in overtaking her, she becomes his mate; otherwise he loses all rights, which happens especially when he is not so fortunate as to please his bride.”[989] Another writer tells us that among these savages, when there is a river at hand, the race takes place on the water, the bride paddling away in one canoe and pursued by the bridegroom in another.[990] Before the wedding procession starts for the [Sidenote: Caffre race for bride.] bridegroom’s hut, a Caffre bride is allowed to make one last bid for freedom, and a young man is told off to catch her. Should he fail to do so, she is theoretically allowed to return to her father, and the whole performance has to be repeated; but the flight of the bride is usually a pretence.[991]

[Sidenote: The bride-race among Teutonic peoples, and its traces in modern Europe.] Similar customs appear to have been practised by all the Teutonic peoples; for the German, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse languages possess in common a word for marriage which means simply bride-race.[992] Moreover, traces of the custom survived into modern times. Thus in the Mark of Brandenburg, down to the first half of the nineteenth century at least, it was the practice for bride and bridegroom to run a race on their wedding day in presence of all the guests. Two sturdy men took the bride between them and set off. The bridegroom gave them a start and then followed hot-foot. At the end of the course stood two or three young married women, who took from the bride her maiden’s crown and replaced it by the matron’s cap. If the bridegroom failed to overtake his bride, he was much ridiculed.[993] In other parts of Germany races are still held at marriage, but the competitors are no longer the bride and bridegroom. Thus in Hesse at the wedding of a well-to-do farmer his friends race on horseback to the house of the bride, and her friends similarly race on horseback to the house of the bridegroom. The prize hangs over the gate of the farmyard or the door of the house. It consists of a silken or woollen handkerchief, which the winner winds round his head or fastens to his breast. The victors have also the right to escort the marriage procession.[994] In Upper Bavaria, down at least to some fifty years ago, a regular feature of a rustic wedding used to be what was called the “bride-race” or the “key-race.” It generally took place when the bridal party was proceeding from the church to the alehouse. A course was marked out and two goals, consisting of heaps of straw, were set up at distances of three and four hundred yards respectively. The strongest and fleetest of the young fellows raced barefoot, clad only in shirt and trousers. He who first reached the further goal received the first prize; this was regularly a key of gilt wood, which the winner fastened to his hat. Often, as in some of the Greek legends, the bride herself was the goal of the race. The writers who record the custom suggest that the race was originally for the key of the bridechamber, and that the bridegroom ran with the rest.[995] In Scotland also the guests at a rustic wedding used to ride on horseback for a prize, which sometimes consisted of the bride’s cake set up on a pole in front of the bridegroom’s house. The race was known as the _broose_.[996] At Weitensfeld, in Carinthia, a festival called the Bride-race is still held every year. It is popularly supposed to commemorate a time when a plague had swept away the whole people except a girl and three young men. These three, it is said, raced with each other in order that the winner might get the maiden to wife, and so repeople the land. The race is now held on horseback. The winner receives as the prize a garland of flowers called the Bride-wreath, and the man who comes in last gets a wreath of ribbons and pig’s bristles.[997] It seems not impossible that this custom is a relic of a fair at which the marriageable maidens of the year were assigned in order of merit to the young men who distinguished themselves by their feats of strength and agility. A practice of this sort appears to have prevailed [Sidenote: Assignment of brides to picked young men among the Samnites.] among the ancient Samnites. Every year the youths and maidens were tested publicly, and the young man who was adjudged best had first choice of the girls; the second best had the next choice, and so on with the rest.[998] “They say,” writes Strabo, “that the Samnites have a beautiful custom which incites to virtue. For they may not give their daughters in marriage to whom they please, but every year the ten best maidens and the ten best youths are picked out, and the best of the ten maidens is given to the best of the ten youths, and the second to the second, and so on. But if the man who wins one of these prizes should afterwards turn out a knave, they disgrace him and take the girl from him.”[999] The nature of the test to which the young men and women were subjected is not mentioned, but we may conjecture that it was mainly athletic.

[Sidenote: Contests for a bride other than races.] The contests for a bride may be designed to try the skill, strength, and courage of the suitors as well as their horsemanship and speed of foot. Speaking of King’s County, Ireland, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Arthur Young says: “There is a very ancient custom here, for a number of country neighbours among the poor people, to fix upon some young woman that ought, as they think, to be married; they also agree upon a young fellow as a proper husband for her; this determined, they send to the fair one’s cabin to inform her that on the Sunday following ‘she is to be horsed,’ that is, carried on men’s backs. She must then provide whisky and cyder for a treat, as all will pay her a visit after mass for a hurling match. As soon as she is horsed, the hurling begins, in which the young fellow appointed for her husband has the eyes of all the company fixed on him: if he comes off conqueror, he is certainly married to the girl; but if another is victorious, he as certainly loses her, for she is the prize of the victor. These trials are not always finished in one Sunday, they take sometimes two or three, and the common expression when they are over is, that ‘such a girl was goal’d.’ Sometimes one barony hurls against another, but a marriageable girl is always the prize. Hurling is a sort of cricket, but instead of throwing the ball in order to knock down a wicket, the aim is to pass it through a bent stick, the ends stuck in the ground.”[1000] In the great Indian epic the _Mahabharata_ it is [Sidenote: The Indian _Svayamvara_.] related that the hand of the lovely Princess Draupadi or Krishna, daughter of the King of the Panchalas, was only to be won by him who could bend a certain mighty bow and shoot five arrows through a revolving wheel so as to hit the target beyond. After many noble wooers had essayed the task in vain, the disguised Arjun was successful, and carried off the princess to be the wife of himself and his four brothers.[1001] This was an instance of the ancient Indian practice of _Svayamvara_, in accordance with which a maiden of high rank either chose her husband from among her assembled suitors or was offered as the prize to the conqueror in a trial of skill. The custom was occasionally observed among the Rajputs down to a late time.[1002] The Tartar king Caidu, the cousin and opponent of Cublay Khan, is said to have had a beautiful daughter named Aijaruc, or “the Bright Moon,” who was so tall and brawny that she outdid all men in her father’s realm in feats of strength. She vowed she would never marry till she found a man who could vanquish her in wrestling. Many noble suitors came and tried a fall with her, but she threw them all; and from every one whom she had overcome she exacted a hundred horses. In this way she collected an immense stud.[1003] In the _Nibelungenlied_ the fair Brunhild, Queen of Iceland, was only to be won in marriage by him who could beat her in three trials of strength, and the unsuccessful wooers forfeited their heads. Many had thus perished, but at last Gunther, King of the Burgundians, vanquished and married her.[1004] It is said that Sithon, King of the Odomanti in Thrace, had a lovely daughter, Pallene, and that many [Sidenote: Hippoclides at Sicyon, and how he danced away his marriage.] men came a-wooing her not only from Thrace but from Illyria and the country of the Don. But her father said that he who would wed his daughter must first fight himself and pay with his life the penalty of defeat. Thus he slew many young men. But when he was grown old and his strength had failed, he set two of the wooers, by name Dryas and Clitus, to fight each other for the kingdom and the hand of the princess. The combat was to take place in chariots, but the princess, being in love with Clitus, bribed his rival’s charioteer to put no pins in the wheels of his chariot; so Dryas came to the ground, and Clitus slew him and married the king’s daughter.[1005] The tale agrees closely with that of Pelops and Hippodamia. Both stories probably contain, in a legendary form, reminiscences of a real custom. Within historical times Clisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, made public proclamation at the Olympian games that he would give his daughter Agariste in marriage to that suitor who, during a year’s trial, should prove himself the best. So many young men who prided themselves on their persons and on their lineage assembled at Sicyon from all parts of the Greek world. The tyrant had a racecourse and a wrestling school made on purpose for them, and there he put them through their paces. Of all the suitors none pleased him so much as Hippoclides, the handsomest and richest man of Athens, a scion of the old princely house of Cypselus. And when the year was up and the day had come on which the award was to be made, the tyrant sacrificed a hundred oxen and entertained the suitors and all the people of Sicyon at a splendid banquet. Dinner being over, the wine went round and the suitors fell to wrangling as to their accomplishments and their wit. In this feast of reason the gay Hippoclides outshone himself and them all until, flushed with triumph and liquor, he jumped on a table, danced to music, and then, as a finishing touch, stood on his head and sawed the air with his legs. This was too much. The tyrant in disgust told him he had danced away his marriage.[1006]

[Sidenote: The annual flight of the king (_regifugium_) at Rome may have been a relic of his contest for the kingdom and for the hand of the princess.] Thus it appears that the right to marry a girl, and especially a princess, has often been conferred as a prize in an athletic contest. There would be no reason, therefore, for surprise if the Roman kings, before bestowing their daughters in marriage, should have resorted to this ancient mode of testing the personal qualities of their future sons-in-law and successors. If my theory is correct, the Roman king and queen personated Jupiter and his divine consort, and in the character of these divinities went through the annual ceremony of a sacred marriage for the purpose of causing the crops to grow and men and cattle to be fruitful and multiply. Thus they did what in more northern lands we may suppose the King and Queen of May were believed to do in days of old. Now we have seen that the right to play the part of the King of May and to wed the Queen of May has sometimes been determined by an athletic contest, particularly by a race.[1007] This may have been a relic of an old marriage custom of the sort we have examined, a custom designed to test the fitness of a candidate for matrimony. Such a test might reasonably be applied with peculiar rigour to the king in order to ensure that no personal defect should incapacitate him for the performance of those sacred rites and ceremonies on which, even more than on the despatch of his civil and military duties, the safety and prosperity of the community were believed to depend. And it would be natural to require of him that from time to time he should submit himself afresh to the same ordeal for the sake of publicly demonstrating that he was still equal to the discharge of his high calling. A relic of that test perhaps survived in the ceremony known as the Flight of the King (_regifugium_), continued to be annually observed at Rome down to imperial times. On the twenty-fourth day of February a sacrifice used to be offered in the Comitium, and when it was over the King of the Sacred Rites fled from the Forum.[1008] We may conjecture that the Flight of the King was originally a race for an annual kingship, which may have been awarded as a prize to the fleetest runner. At the end of the year the king might run again for a second term of office; and so on, until he was defeated and deposed or perhaps slain. In this way what had once been a race would tend to assume the character of a flight and a pursuit. The king would be given a start; he ran and his competitors ran after him, and if he were overtaken he had to yield the crown and perhaps his life to the lightest of foot among them. In time a man of masterful character might succeed in seating himself permanently on the throne and reducing the annual race or flight to the empty form which it seems always to have been within historical times.[1009] The rite was sometimes interpreted as a commemoration of the expulsion of the kings from Rome; but this appears to have been a mere afterthought devised to explain a ceremony of which the old meaning was forgotten. It is far more likely that in acting thus the King of the Sacred Rites was merely keeping up an ancient custom which in the regal period had been annually observed by his predecessors the kings. What the original intention of the rite may have been must probably always remain more or less a matter of conjecture. The present explanation is suggested with a full sense of the difficulty and obscurity in which the subject is involved.

[Sidenote: The theory is confirmed by the evidence that at the Saturnalia a man used to personate the god Saturn and to be put to death in that character.] Thus, if my theory is correct, the yearly flight of the Roman king was a relic of a time when the kingship was an annual office awarded, along with the hand of a princess, to the victorious athlete or gladiator, who thereafter figured along with his bride as a god and goddess at a sacred marriage designed to ensure the fertility of the earth by homoeopathic magic. Now this theory is to a certain extent remarkably confirmed by an ancient account of the Saturnalia which was discovered and published some years ago by a learned Belgian scholar, Professor Franz Cumont of Ghent. From that account we learn that down to the beginning of the fourth century of our era, that is, down nearly to the establishment of Christianity by Constantine, the Roman soldiers stationed on the Danube were wont to celebrate the Saturnalia in a barbarous fashion which must certainly have dated from a very remote antiquity. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from among themselves a young and handsome man, who was dressed in royal robes to resemble the god Saturn. In that character he was allowed to indulge all his passions to the fullest extent; but when his brief reign of thirty days was over, and the festival of Saturn was come, he had to cut his own throat on the altar of the god he personated.[1010] We can hardly doubt that this tragic figure, whom a fatal lot doomed to masquerade for a short time as a deity and to die as such a violent death, was the true original of the merry monarch or King of the Saturnalia, as he was called, whom a happier lot invested with the playful dignity of Master of the Winter Revels.[1011] In all probability the grim predecessor of the frolicsome King of the Saturnalia belonged to that class of puppets who in some countries have been suffered to reign nominally for a few days each year merely for the sake of discharging a burdensome or fatal obligation which otherwise must have fallen on the real king.[1012] If that is so, we may infer that the part of the god Saturn, who was commonly spoken of as a king,[1013] was formerly played at the Saturnalia by the Roman king himself. And a trace of the Sacred Marriage may perhaps be detected in the licence accorded to the human representatives of Saturn, a licence which, if I am right, is strictly analogous to the old orgies of May Day and other similar festivals. It is to be observed that Saturn was [Sidenote: Saturn the god of seed, and the Saturnalia a festival of sowing.] the god of the seed, and the Saturnalia the festival of sowing held in December,[1014] when the autumn sowing was over and the husbandman gave himself up to a season of jollity after the long labours of summer and autumn.[1015] On the principles of homoeopathic magic nothing could be more natural than that, when the last seeds had been committed to the earth, the marriage of the powers of vegetation should be simulated by their human representatives for the purpose of sympathetically quickening the seed. In short, no time could be more suitable for the celebration of the Sacred Marriage. We have seen as a matter of fact that the sowing of the seed has often been accompanied by sexual orgies with the express intention of thereby promoting the growth of the crops. At all events the view that the King’s Flight at Rome was a mitigation of an old custom of putting him to death at the end of a year’s tenure of office, is confirmed by the practice of annually slaying a human representative of the divine king Saturn, which survived in some parts of the Roman empire, though not at Rome itself, down to Christian times.

[Sidenote: If the Latin kings were begotten at the licentious festival of the Saturnalia, we could understand why their paternity was sometimes uncertain, and why they might be of servile parentage.] This theory would throw light on some dark passages in the legends of the Roman kingship, such as the obscure and humble births of certain kings and their mysterious ends. For if the sacred marriage took place at a licentious festival like the Saturnalia, when slaves were temporarily granted the privileges of freemen,[1016] it might well be that the paternity of the children begotten at this time, including those of the royal family, was a matter of uncertainty; nay, it might be known that the king or queen had offspring by a slave. Such offspring of a royal father and a slave mother, or of a royal mother and a slave father, would rank as princes and princesses according as male or female kinship prevailed. Under a system of male kinship the union of the king with a slave woman would give birth to a Servius Tullius, and, according to one tradition, to a Romulus. If female kinship prevailed in the royal family, as we have seen reason to suppose, it is possible that the stories of the birth of Romulus and Servius from slave mothers is a later inversion of the facts, and that what really happened was that some of the old Latin kings were begotten by slave fathers on royal princesses at the festival of the Saturnalia. The disappearance of female kinship would suffice to account for the warping of the tradition. All that was distinctly remembered would be that some of the kings had had a slave for one of their parents; and people living under a system of paternal descent would naturally conclude that the slave parent of a king could only be the mother, since according to their ideas no son of a slave father could be of royal blood and sit on the throne.[1017]

[Sidenote: The violent ends of the Roman kings.] Again, if I am right in supposing that in very early times the old Latin kings personated a god and were regularly put to death in that character, we can better understand the mysterious or violent ends to which so many of them are said to have come. Too much stress should not, however, be laid on such legends, for in a turbulent state of society kings, like commoners, are apt to be knocked on the head for much sounder reasons than a claim to divinity. Still, it is worth while to note that Romulus is said to have vanished mysteriously like Aeneas, or to have been cut to pieces by the patricians whom he had offended,[1018] [Sidenote: Death of Romulus on the seventh of July, the _Nonae Caprotinae_, at a festival resembling the Saturnalia.] and that the seventh of July, the day on which he perished, was a festival which bore some resemblance to the Saturnalia. For on that day the female slaves were allowed to take certain remarkable liberties. They dressed up as free women in the attire of matrons and maids, and in this guise they went forth from the city, scoffed and jeered at all whom they met, and engaged among themselves in a fight, striking and throwing stones at each other. Moreover, they feasted under a wild fig-tree, made use of a rod cut from the tree for a certain purpose, perhaps to beat each other with, and offered the milky juice of the tree in sacrifice to Juno Caprotina, whose name appears to mean either the goddess of the goat (_caper_) or the goddess of the wild fig-tree, for [Sidenote: The _Nonae Caprotinae_ seems to have been the festival of the fertilisation of the fig.] the Romans called a wild fig-tree a goat-fig (_caprificus_). Hence the day was called the _Nonae Caprotinae_ after the animal or the tree. The festival was not peculiar to Rome, but was held by women throughout Latium.[1019] It can hardly be dissociated from a custom which was observed by ancient husbandmen at this season. They sought to fertilise the fig-trees or ripen the figs by hanging strings of fruit from a wild fig-tree among the boughs. The practice appears to be very old. It has been employed in Greece both in ancient and modern times, and Roman writers often refer to it. Palladius recommends the solstice in June, that is Midsummer Day, as the best time for the operation; Columella prefers July.[1020] In Sicily at the present day the operation is performed either on Midsummer Day (the festival of St. John the Baptist) or in the early days of July;[1021] in Morocco and North Africa generally it takes place on Midsummer Day.[1022] The wild fig-tree is a male and the cultivated fig-tree is a female, and the fertilisation is effected by insects, which are engendered in the fruit of the male tree and convey the pollen to the blossom of the female.[1023] Thus the placing of wild figs, laden with pollen and insects, among the boughs of the cultivated fig-tree is, like the artificial fertilisation of the date-palm,[1024] a real marriage of the trees, and it may well have been regarded as such by the peasants of antiquity long before the true theory of the process was discovered. Now the fig is an [Sidenote: Importance of the fig as an article of diet.] important article of diet in countries bordering on the Mediterranean. In Palestine, for example, the fruit is not, as with us, merely an agreeable luxury, but is eaten daily and forms indeed one of the staple productions of the country. “To sit every man under his vine, and under his fig tree” was the regular Jewish expression for the peaceable possession of the Holy Land; and in the fable of Jotham the fig-tree is invited by the other trees, next after the olive, to come and reign over them.[1025] When Sandanis the Lydian attempted to dissuade Croesus from marching against the Persians, he represented to him that there was nothing to be gained by conquering the inhabitants of a barren country who neither drank wine nor ate figs.[1026] An Arab commentator on the Koran observes that “God swears by these two trees, the fig and the olive, because among fruit-trees they surpass all the rest. They relate that a basket of figs was offered to the prophet Mohammed, and when he had eaten one he bade his comrades do the same, saying, ‘Truly, if I were to say that any fruit had come down from Paradise, I would say it of the fig.’”[1027] Hence it would be natural that a process supposed to be essential to the ripening of so favourite a fruit should be the occasion of a popular festival. We may suspect that the license allowed to slave women on this day formed part of an ancient Saturnalia, at which the loose behaviour of men and women was supposed to secure the fertilisation of the fig-trees by homoeopathetic magic.

[Sidenote: At the festival of the seventh of July women were probably thought to be fertilised by the fig as well as to fertilise it.] But it is possible and indeed probable that the fertilisation was believed to be mutual; in other words, it may have been imagined, that while the women caused the fig-tree to bear fruit, the tree in its turn caused them to bear children. This conjecture is confirmed by a remarkable African parallel. The Akikuyu of British East Africa attribute to the wild fig-tree [Sidenote: Supposed fertilisation of barren women by the wild fig-tree among the Akikuyu of British East Africa.] the power of fertilising barren women. For this purpose they apply the white sap or milk to various parts of the body of the would-be mother; then, having sacrificed a goat, they tie the woman to a wild fig-tree with long strips cut from the intestines of the sacrificial animal. “This seems,” writes Mr. C. W. Hobley, who reports the custom, “to be a case of the tree marriage of India. I fancy there is an idea of ceremonial marriage with the ancestral spirits which are said to inhabit certain of these fig-trees; in fact it supports the Kamba idea of the spiritual husbands.”[1028] The belief in spiritual husbands, [Sidenote: Belief of the Akamba that the spirits of the dead live in wild fig-trees.] to which Mr. Hobley here briefly refers, is as follows. The Akamba of British East Africa imagine that every married woman is at the same time the wife of a living man and also the wife of the spirit of some departed ancestor (_aimu_). They are firmly convinced that the fertility of a wife depends to a great extent on the attentions of her spiritual husband, and if she does not conceive within six months after marriage they take it as a sign that her spiritual husband is neglecting her; so they offer beer and kill a goat as a propitiatory sacrifice. If after that the woman still remains barren, they make a bigger feast and kill a bullock. On the other hand, if a wife is found to be with child soon after marriage, they are glad and consider it a proof that she has found favour in the eyes of her ghostly husband. Further, they believe that at death the human spirit quits the bodily frame and takes up its abode in a wild fig-tree (_mumbo_); hence they build miniature huts at the foot of those fig-trees which are thought to be haunted by the souls of the dead, and they periodically sacrifice to these spirits.[1029] Accordingly, we may conjecture, though we are not told, that amongst the Akamba, as among the Akikuyu, a barren woman sometimes resorts to a wild fig-tree in order to obtain a child, since she believes that her spiritual spouse has his abode in the tree. The Akikuyu clearly attribute a special power of fertilisation to the milky sap of the tree, since they apply it to various parts of the woman who desires to become a mother: perhaps they regard it as the seed of the fig. This may explain why the Roman slave-women offered the milky juice of the tree to Juno Caprotina; they may have intended thereby to add to the fecundity of the mother goddess. And we can scarcely doubt that the rods which they cut from the wild fig-tree, for the purpose apparently of beating each other, were supposed to communicate the generative virtue of the tree to the women who [Sidenote: Supposed fertilisation of women by the wild banana-tree among the Baganda.] were struck by them. The Baganda of Central Africa appear to ascribe to the wild banana-tree the same power of removing barrenness which the Akikuyu attribute to the wild fig-tree. For when a wife has no child, she and her husband will sometimes repair to a wild banana-tree and there, standing one on each side of the tree, partake of the male organs of a goat, the man eating the flesh and drinking the soup and the woman drinking the soup only. This is believed to ensure conception after the husband has gone in to his wife.[1030] Here again, as among the Akikuyu, we see that the fertilising virtue of the tree is reinforced by the fertilising virtue of the goat; and we can therefore better understand why the Romans called the male wild fig-tree “goat-fig,” and why the Messenians dubbed it simply “he-goat.”

[Sidenote: The Roman king may have celebrated a sacred marriage on the _Nonae Caprotinae_ as a charm to make the fig-trees bear fruit.] The association of the death of Romulus with the festival of the wild fig-tree can hardly be accidental, especially as he and his twin-brother Remus were said to have been suckled by the she-wolf under a fig-tree, the famous _ficus Ruminalis_, which was shewn in the forum as one of the sacred objects of Rome and received offerings of milk down to late times.[1031] Indeed, some have gone so far both in ancient and modern times as to derive the names of Romulus and Rome itself from this fig-tree (_ficus Ruminalis_); if they are right, Romulus was “the fig-man” and Rome “the fig-town.”[1032] Be that as it may, the clue to the association of Romulus with the fig is probably furnished by the old belief that the king is responsible for the fruits of the earth and the rain from heaven. We may conjecture that on this principle the Roman king was expected to make the fig-trees blossom and bear figs, and that in order to do so he masqueraded as the god of the fig-tree and went through a form of sacred marriage, either with his queen or with a slave-woman, on the July day when the husbandmen resorted to a more efficacious means of producing the same result. The ceremony of the sacred marriage need not have been restricted to a single day in the year. It may well have been repeated for many different crops and fruits. If the Queen of Athens was annually married to the god of the vine, why should not the King of Rome have annually wedded the goddess of the fig?

[Sidenote: The marriage of the divine king or human god often followed by his death.] But, as we have seen, Romulus, the first king of Rome, is said to have perished on the day of this festival of the fig, which, if our hypothesis is correct, was also the day of his ceremonial marriage to the tree. That the real date of his death should have been preserved by tradition is very improbable; rather we may suppose that the reason for dating his death and his marriage on the same day was drawn from some ancient ritual in which the two events were actually associated. But we have still to ask, Why should the king’s wedding-day be also the day of his death? The answer must be deferred for the present. All we need say now is that elsewhere the marriage of the divine king or human god has been regularly followed at a brief interval by his violent end. For him, as for others, death often treads on the heels of love.[1033]