Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/338

 314 The European Sky-god.

he beat her with his sandal and flung it in her face. She, being poor and helpless but not ignoble in character, went away and hanged herself with her own girdle. Hereupon the famine increased and was followed up by diverse diseases, till the Pythian priestess bade the king propitiate Charila, a virgin who had put herself to death. Having with some difficulty discovered that this was the name of the girl whom he had beaten, he paid her an expiatory sacrifice, which is kept up at intervals of eight years to the present day. The king sits on his throne distributing gifts of barley and vegetables to all, strangers and citizens alike. A childish figure of Charila is brought in ; and, when all have taken it in their hands, the king beats it with his sandal. The chief of the Thyiades next raises it and bears it to a rocky glen. Here they fasten a cord round the neck of the figure and bury it on the spot where Charila, who hanged herself, was buried." Without discussing the details of this curious rite, I would point out that it clearly involves the king's obligation to supply his people with food — an obligation probably based on the belief that the king w^as the embodiment of the god : Apollo at Delphi was 'ZiTd\Ka<;, " He who protects the crops." ^'^^ It was but natural that a man-god possessed of such chthonian power should, when life was ended, be regarded as a king over the dead. A magnificent Tarentine vase, found at Canosa and preserved in the Munich collection, shows among other denizens of the underworld Triptolemus of Eleusis enthroned between Aeacus and Rhadamanthys : from his head rise ears of wheat, an obvious symbol of his function as grain-giver to men.^-^^ More often we hear of Minos as judge of the dead.^'^^ But of these four royal

^'' Paus., 10. 15. 2. On the meaning of the epithet see \Yc\cker, Grtec/itsc/ie Gotterlehre, i., 484, and Steph., Thesaurus, s.v. '^.irakKaq. ^' A. Furtwangler u. K. Reichhold, Griechische Vasennialeret, p. 48, pi. 10. "^ Roscher, Lex., ii., 2996 f.