Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/183

 BiLll-baiting, BiLll-racing, Bull-fights. 151

Such is their mode of sacrifice." ^'^ Again, " in the sanc- tuary [at Argos] is the throne of Danaus, and there is a statue of Biton, representing a man carrying a bull on his shoulders. According to the poet Lyceas, when the Argives were driving beasts to Nemea to sacrifice to Zeus, Biton, by reason of his vigour and strength, took up a bull and carried it." ^^ Strabo ^^ informs us that " a yearly festival is held at Acharaka. . . on which occasion about the hour of noon the young men from the gymnasium, stripped and anointed with oil, take up a bull and carry it with speed to the Cave ; it advances a little way, falls down and dies." This may be taken to suggest that the scene depicted on the Vaphio cup and on the gems may possibly be a piece of ritual.

Some form of bull-fight, again, accompanied local cults. Thus, at the Haloa festival at Athens, " the epheboi offered bulls at Eleusis, and, it would appear, engaged in some sort of ' bull-fight,' but this must have been in honour either of Dionysos or of Poseidon, who preceded him ; the vehicle of both these divinities was the bull." ^^ From the facts already adduced it may be suggested that the custom had a wider provenance. Strabo, ^^ too, tells us that in Egypt the shrine of the bull-god Apis stood beside the large and wealthy temple of Hephaistos [Ptah], in which stood a colossus made of a single block of stone. Here bulls, bred for the purpose, were pitted against each other, a prize being rewarded to the victorious bull — doubtless not a mere exhibition, but some ritual, religious or magical, connected with the local cultus.

We may return to India for some examples of cattle being scared or chased as a form of ritual.

-■'viii. 19, 2, Sir J. Frazer's trans, i. 397 ; Cook, op. cit. i. 503.

"^ Pausanias, ii. 19, 5 ; Sir J. Frazer's trans, i. 99 ; Cook, of. cit. 553, n. l.

"■' 650 ; Cook, op. cit. i. 504.

■■■"Miss J. E. Harrison, Frokgontena to the Study of Greek Religion, \i,T et seq.

"' 507 ; Cook, op. cit. i. 433.