Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/415

Rh souls, which they thought they could send to the sky, they would have go there without delay bereft of the body. The custom is discussed by Trebatius in the ninth book of his Religiones. I omit what he says, for fear of being tedious. If anyone desires to read it, let him be content with this indication of the author and the reference." Unhappily the works of Trebatius, great jurist though he was and warm friend of Cicero to boot, have perished. We must be content with what Macrobius tells us, viz.: that the consecrated men whom the Greeks called Zanes, i.e., Zeuses, were put to death as a sacrifice to the gods. If in the light of this statement we reconsider the examples of kings called Zeus that I have already cited, it is interesting to observe how frequently they are said to have been slain or metamorphosed by Zeus. Salmoneus, king of Elis, who claimed to be Zeus, was killed by the thunderbolt of Zeus. Ceyx, whose wife called him Zeus, was changed by Zeus into the sea-bird ceyx. Polytechnus, who compared himself to Zeus, was transformed by Zeus into a wood-pecker. A similar fate overtook Periphas, the early king of Attica. His story, as told by Antoninus Liberalis, is worth quoting at length: "Periphas was an Attic autochthon before the days of Cecrops the son of Ge. He became king of the ancient population, and was just and rich and holy, a man who offered many sacrifices to Apollo and judged many disputes and was blamed by no one. All men willingly submitted to his rule and, in view of his surpassing deeds, transferred to him the honours due to Zeus and decided that they belonged to Periphas. They