Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/331

Rh recalls Pausanias' account of the bonfire on the top of Cithæron kindled once in sixty years at the Great Dædala, when the oak-brides of Zeus were burnt. "On the summit of the mountain an altar has been got ready. They make it in this fashion:—They put together quadrangular blocks of wood, fitting them into each other, just in the same way as if they were constructing an edifice of stone. Then, having raised it to a height, they pile brushwood on it. The cities and the magistrates sacrifice each a cow to Hera and a bull to Zeus, and burn the victims, which are filled with wine and incense, together with the images (i.e., the oak-brides) on the altar. Rich people sacrifice what they please: persons who are not so well off sacrifice the lesser cattle; but all the victims alike are burned. The fire seizes on the altar as well as the victims, and consumes them all together. I know of no blaze that rises so high, and is seen so far." It is highly probable that both these bonfires were intended not merely as a means of sending food, &c., aloft to the sky-god, but also as a sun-charm—the great conflagration replenishing the solar powers of the oak-Zeus. Coins of Amasia, which illustrate the Pontic rite show a large altar, sometimes of two stages and flaming: beside it are two trees with twisted trunks, and above it in some specimens hovers an eagle or the sun-god in his chariot or both. Appian's phrase "the kings themselves carry wood to the heap" tersely expresses the primitive duty of the sun-king.

But this duty was not confined to an occasional bonfire on a big scale. Fires were normally burning before the tree that marked the residence of the god. Thus Silius Italicus says of the oracular oak in the Libyan Ammonium: