Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/175

 Bull-haiting, Bull-racing, Bull-fights. 145

regard the scenes depicted on the cup and on the fresco as merely incidents of sport and amusements. Thus, Sir James Frazer, writing of the Tiryns fresco, remarks that since the discovery of the Vaphio cup, " archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the wall-painting in question represents nothing more than a man catching a bull." ^ Schuchhardt writes regarding the same fresco, that up to now the man has been explained as an acrobat. such as Homer describes, leaping on the back of horses in full career.^

It has, however, been urged that the bull was a sacred animal in Minoan times, and that it is improbable that in the period when this feeling prevailed the holy beast should have been exposed to violence, unless it was for a ritual purpose, or that he should have been used merely for purposes of amusement. The bull, as the prime object of sacrifice, was offered to the Mother goddess, whose fostering care embraced all living creatures and followed them into the underworld. " He was," to use the words of two careful Cretan archaeologists, " royal and sacred, the most useful of animals, and chief object of the hunt. His horns, both the actual trophies and copies in clay, were set up on altars, shrines and palaces, and libations of his blood were poured through rhytons [or drinking horns] made of various materials in the shape of his head, just as in the early Chinese ritual the blood was offered in a bronze vessel made in the shape of the animal that was sacrificed. "^° The same writers tell us that in the west court at Knossos was found " the spirited life-size figure of a bull, a con- spicuous representation of the royal, sacred and heraldic beast, as significant to a Minoan populace as is the White Elephant to the Siamese." ^^

It is again urged that it is no answer to this view to

^ op. cit. iii. 228. '^ Jliad. xv. 679.

'''G. B. E. Williams, Gonruia, 52. Quoted b_\- Messrs. Ilawes, op. cit. 140!'.

11 /bid. 66 et j,y.