Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/334

 310 The European Sky -god.

along with the altar, they say that it must not be lighted from any other fire, but that they must make it fresh and new by rekindling a pure and unpolluted flame from the sun. They usually do this by means of concave mirrors, whose shape is determined by the revolution of an isosceles rect- angular triangle, so that all the lines from the circumference meet at a centre. When therefore the mirror is held over against the sun, it collects all the reflected rays and con- centrates them at this one point : the air here becomes rarefied, and light dry matter on being subjected to it is soon kindled, since the ray acquires the substance and active force of fire." A perpetual fire of the sort here described was, as Dr. Frazer has shown, ■^^'^ simply a survival of the king's hearth, and as such it was regularly main • tained in the prytaneum or residence of the king. It is therefore permissible to suppose that the Pelasgian king, who kept a fire constantly burning on his hearth, was the earthly counterpart of the sky-god who kept the sun alight ; nay more, that the two stood to each other in the well- known relations of mimetic magic, and that the king, as often as he put fuel on his fire, was virtually making sun- shine for the community. If this be so, we can understand why the hearth was so intimately connected with the king on the one hand and with Zeus on the other. Aristotle '^^^ speaks of "offices which derive their honour from the public hearth : some," he says, " call them archons, others kings, others again prytanes.^' So essential indeed was the link between the public hearth and the king, that at Priene a temporary king {/SaatXev'i) w^as appointed solely for the purpose of performing the sacrifice at the Panionian festival.^^- Zeus, too, was closely connected with the

^^^ Joiini. of Philology, xiv., 145 ff. "" Aristot., /o/. 7. 8. 1322 b. 28 f.

^'- Strab., 384. Elsewhere he is called a prylanis : see Class. Rev., xvii., 415-