Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/422

 392 The European Sky-god.

anticipated in the eagles with outstretched wings attached by Alexander to the pyre of Hephaestion.^'-^o Also, if the younger Seneca ^"^ is to be believed, which is doubtful, the Greek chieftains who attacked Thebes had, like the Romans, eagles for standards. All these facts, unless I am mistaken, hang together with the belief that the soul of the monarch appeared as an eagle, and in this form watched over the fortunes of his empire. The regalia handed down from king to king represented the sacred foliage as a wreath or crown, the sacred tree as a sceptre, ^-^ and the sacred bird as an eagle perched upon it.

But, to return from our digression, we have seen that in Greece as elsewhere the divine king was probably doomed to die as soon as his physical strength gave way.

With increasing civilisation this barbaric rule was to some extent relaxed. Dr. Frazer, who first formulated it, has discussed various modifications of it, such as the sacri- fice of the king's son or of a criminal in place of the king himself.^'"'^ Greek examples of these mitigations are not wantino-. It will be remembered, for instance, that the Edoni put their king, the "man-god" {dvOpcoTroSacficop) Lycurgus, to death because their land remained barren.^-* Dr. Frazer^-^ points out that a modification of this rule is well attested in the case of King Athamas, the brother of Salmoneus. His story was told by Sophocles as follows.^-^ Athamas had two children, Phrixus and Helle, by the cloud- goddess Nephele. Afterwards he married a mortal woman, and Nephele out of jealousy sent a drought upon his land. Envoys despatched to the Pythian Apollo were bribed by

'^ Diod., 17. 115. See Creuzer SymboHk,^ iii., 757.

'2» Sen. Phccn., 28.

'" See Class. Rev., xviii., 418, supra, p. 371 f.

'23 Frazer, Golden Bough," ii., 55 f.

'2* Folk- Lore, xv., 313.

'- Frazer, Golden Bough,- ii., 34 ff.

'* Schol. Aristoph. tmh., 257, Apostol., 11. 58.