Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/375

 cost. Why so? A kindred custom of Marseilles in ancient times supplies the answer. 'Whenever the inhabitants of Marseilles suffer from a pestilence, one of the poorer class offers himself to be kept at the public expense and fed on specially pure foods. After this has been done he is decorated with sacred boughs and clad in holy garments, and led about through the whole city to the accompaniment of curses, in order that upon him may fall all the ills of the whole city, and thus he is cast headlong down .' The pharmakos was therefore publicly maintained in order that he might be purified by diet. Again, we know, the pharmakos was provided before the sacrifice with cheese, barley-cake, and dried figs—pure food, it would seem, with which to sustain himself on his journey to the other world. Again, he was smitten seven times on the privy parts with squills and branches of wild fig and other wild plants. Why with squill and wild fig? Because plants of this kind were purgative, as Miss Harrison very clearly points out. Among other evidences of the existence of this idea, Lucian makes Menippus relate how before he was allowed to consult the oracle of the dead he was "purged and wiped clean and consecrated with squill and torches." And why on the privy parts? Because sexual purity was required. When Creon was bidden to sacrifice a son for the salvation of his city in a time of calamity such as commonly called for the sacrifice of a pharmakos, Haemon was refused because of his marriage, and Menoeceus was the only pure victim. And why beaten at all? Because again, as Miss Harrison shows, the act of beating was expulsive of evil and pollution. So then the chief part of the ritual was devoted to purifying the pharmakos himself.

But if the pharmakos was thus himself made pure, how could his expulsion purify the city? How could a man deliberately cleansed by every religious or magical device serve as the embodiment of that pollution of which the city sought to be rid? Miss Harrison seeks to explain this difficulty on the grounds of that combination of the notions 'sacred' and 'accursed,' 'pure' and 'impure,' which the savage describes in the word 'taboo.' But the notion of 'taboo,' though complex, is not illogical; anything