Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/424

 394 '^^^^ European Sky-god.

A yet milder method of ensuring the bodily competence of the priestly king was to limit the period of his reign. At Priene a young man was appointed as king {^aaCKev^) to offer the sacrifices at the Panionian festival : he pre- sumably held office during the festival only, or at most for the year.'-^^ At Chaeronea the man who kept the sceptre of Zeus, and was therefore priestly king, had it in his house " for the year."^^- At Athens the king (/Sao-tXeu?), who in early days was called Zeus,^^'^ gave judgment in the Royal Colonnade for a year.^^^ At Megara and in various other towns of Greece^-^^ the eponymous magistrate bearing the title /SaaiXev^ was probably a priestly king, whose reign lasted but a twelvemonth. Elsewhere the tenure of the office was longer, but still of limited duration. The Greeks, in their attempt to reconcile the lunar with the solar year, advanced progressively from a " great year" of twenty-four months (T/34eT77pi9), through one of forty-eight {TrevreTrjpLq), to one of ninety-six {evpe€T7)pL<;.). This last-mentioned period, as Censorinus^^^ remarks, figured largely in Greek

'3' Strab. 384. See C/ass. Rev., x%-ii., 415.

'3- Paus., 9. 40. 12.

'» Supra, p. 385, with «. 84.

'" Paus., I. 3. I.

'^ E.g., Aegosthena (^Michel Rec. oTinscrr. grecq., 172, 2), Chios {ib., 1383, 9), Calchedon (Dittenberger Syll. inscrr. Gr.,- 596, 14), Chersonesus (Jb., 326, 56), Megara (ib., 174, i), Miletus (ib., 627, 5), Samothrace (jb., 658, I; 659, i). See further the list in G. Gilbert Haiidbnch der griechischen Staatsalterthianer, ii., 324, n. i.

'» Censorin. de die natali, 18, cp. Plut. de plac. philos., 2. 32. ApoUod., 3. 4. 2 states that " Cadmus served Ares for a whole year; and a year in those days consisted of eight years " (j/v ci 6 iviavroc tots oktoj iTrf). Similarly Apollo served Admetus "for a year" (ib., 3. 10. 4, tviavTov, and so schol. Eur. Ale, i) or, according to another account, "for nine years" (Serv. /« Verg. Aen., 7. 761, novem annis probably by a confusion with the ivvte-ripiq); while Heracles served Eurystheus for eight years and one month (ApoUod. 2. 1;. II, iv ftTivi Kai treffiv oktw, an odd period explained by C. O. Miiller Hist. and Ant of the Doric Race, i.,/[^'i,as"ih&'E.x\x\tiiiXGns .... which was .... eight years and three intercalar>' months ").