Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/423

 The European Sky-god. 393

Nephele to report that the drought could only be stayed if Athamas sacrificed Phrixus and Helle. This he was about to do/^^ when a ram speaking with human voice warned them of their danger and they fied along with the ram. Helle fell off its back into the sea and gave her name to the Hellespont ; but Phrixus got safely to Colchis and sacrificed the ram to Ares or Hermes. Meantime Athamas himself was garlanded like a victim and led out to be sacrificed. In the nick of time he was rescued by Heracles. Herod- otus^-^ further informs us that at Alus in Thessaly Athamas was said to have been saved by the arrival of Cytisorus, the son of Phrixus, from Colchis — an intervention which drew down the wrath of Zeus Aa^ycrrto? upon his descendants. The eldest son of the family had to refrain from entering the prytaneum. " Should he enter it, he must not leave it till he is about to be sacrificed. "^^^ Many of those who were thus condemned to die had fled the country in terror. It is tolerably certain that here we have an example of the king's death being commuted into the death of the king's son. In other places a stranger or a prisoner was substi- tuted. When the land of Egypt remamed barren for nine years, Phrasius, a Cyprian seer, told King Busiris that the famine could be stayed, if he would sacrifice a stranger to Zeus every year. Busiris promptly began by sacrificing Phrasius himself and afterwards other strangers who visited the country. Heracles, when he came thither, was gar- landed and led out to the altar of Zeus : but, turning on his captors, he slew them all, including Busiris and his son Iphidamas or Amphidamas.^^*^

'" Pherecydes ap. schol. Find. Fyth., 4. 288, stated that Phrixus offered himself as a voluntary victim when the crops were perishing.

•28 Hdt., 7. 197.

'-^ Cp. Plat. Minos, 315 c, schol. Ap. Rhod., 2. 653.

'^° Apollod., 2. 5. II., Hdt., 2. 45, Pherecyd. «/, schol. Ap. Rhod., 4. 1396. The scene is graphically depicted on a hydria from Caere, now at Vienna (Furtwtingler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei, pi. 51).