ments, the which that day were called the Sisters of their god Vitzilipuztli, they came crowned with garlands of Mays rosted and parched, being like unto azahar or the flower of orange; and about their neckes they had great chaines of the same, which went bauldrickewise under their left arme. Their cheekes were died with vermillion, their armes from the elbow to the wrist were covered with red parrots' feathers." Young men, crowned like the virgins with maize, then carried the idol in its litter to the foot of the great pyramidshaped temple, up the steep and narrow steps of which it was drawn to the music of flutes, trumpets, cornets, and drums. "While they mounted up the idoll all the people stoode in the Court with much reverence and feare. Being mounted to the top, and that they had placed it in a little lodge of roses which they held readie, presently came the yong men, which strawed many flowers of sundrie kindes, wherewith they filled the temple both within and without. This done, all the virgins came out of their convent, bringing peeces of paste compounded of beetes and rosted Mays, which was of the same paste whereof their idol was made and compounded, and they were of the fashion of great bones. They delivered them to the yong men, who carried them up and laide them at the idoll's feete, wherewith they filled the whole place that it could receive no more. They called these morcells of paste the flesh and bones of Vitzilipuztli." Then the priests came in their robes of office, "and putting themselves in order about these morsells and peeces of paste, they used certaine ceremonies with singing and dauncing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idoll. . . . The ceremonies, dauncing, and sacrifice ended, they went

to unclothe themselves, and the priests and superiors of the temple tooke the idoll of paste, which they spoyled of all the ornaments it had, and made many peeces, as well of the idoll itselfe as of the tronchons which were consecrated, and then they gave them to the people in maner of a communion, beginning with the greater, and continuing unto the rest, both men, women, and little children, who received it with such teares, feare, and reverence as it was an admirable thing, saying that they did eate the flesh and bones of God, wherewith they were grieved. Such as had any sicke folkes demaunded thereof for them, and carried it with great reverence and veneration."1

Before the festival in December, which took place at the winter solstice, an image of the god Huitzilopochtli was made of seeds of various sorts kneaded into a dough with the blood of children. The bones of the god were represented by pieces of acacia wood, This image was placed on the chief altar of the temple, and on the day of the festival the king offered incense to it. Early next day it was taken down and set on its feet in a great hall. Then a priest took a flinttipped dart and hurled it into the breast of the doughimage, piercing it through and through. This was called "killing the god Huitzilopochtli so that his body might be eaten." One of the priests cut out the heart of the image and gave it to the king to eat. rest of the image was divided into minute pieces, of which every man great and small, down to the male children in the cradle, received one to eat. But no woman might taste a morsel. The ceremony was called teoqualo, that is, "god is eaten."'

1 Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, bk. v. c. 24, vol. ii. VOL. II

The

pp. 356-360 (Hakluyt Society, 1880).

2 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific G

At another festival the Mexicans made little images in human shape to represent the cloud-capped mountains. These images were made of paste of various seeds and were dressed in paper ornaments. Some people made five, others ten, others as many as fifteen of these paste images. They were placed in the oratory of each house and worshipped. Four times in the course of the night offerings of food were made to them in tiny vessels; and people sang and played the flute before them all right. At break of day the priests stabbed the images with a weaver's instrument, cut off their heads, and tore out their hearts, which they presented to the master of the house on a green saucer. The bodies of the images were then eaten by all the family, especially by the servants, "in order that by eating them they might be preserved from certain distempers, to which those persons who were negligent of worship to those deities conceived themselves to be subject.'

We are now able to suggest an explanation of the proverb "there are many Manii at Aricia."2 Certain loaves made in the shape of men were called by the Romans maniae, and it appears that this kind of loaf was especially made at Aricia.3 Now, Mania, the name of one of these loaves, was also the name of the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, to whom woollen

States, iii. 297-300 (after Torquemada); Clavigero, History of Mexico, trans. by Cullen, i. 309 sqq.; Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la NouvelleEspagne, traduite et annotée par Jourdanet et Siméon (Paris, 1880), p. 203 sq.; J. G. Müller, Geschichte der ameri kanischen Urreligionen, p. 605.

1 Clavigero, i. 311; Sahagun, pp. 74, 156 sq.; Müller, p. 606; Bancroft, iii. 316. This festival took place on the last day of the 16th month (which

extended from 23d December to 11th January). At another festival the Mexi cans made the semblance of a bone out of paste and ate it sacramentally as the bone of the god. Sahagun, p. 33.

2 See above, vol. i. p. 5 sq.

3 Festus, ed. Müller, pp. 128, 129, 145. The reading of the last passage is, however, uncertain ("et Ariciae genus panni fieri ; quod manici † appel· letur").

4 Varro, De ling. lat. ix. 61;

effigies of men and women were dedicated at the festival of the Compitalia. These effigies were hung at the doors of all the houses in Rome; one effigy was hung up for every free person in the house, and one effigy, of a different kind, for every slave. The reason was that on this day the ghosts of the dead were believed to be going about, and it was hoped that they would carry off the effigies at the door instead of the living people in the house. According to tradition, these woollen figures were substitutes for a former custom of sacrificing human beings.1 Upon data so fragmentary and uncertain, it is of course impossible to build with certainty; but it seems worth suggesting that the loaves in human form, which appear to have been baked at Aricia, were sacramental bread, and that in the old days, when the divine King of the Wood was annually slain, loayes were made in his image, like the paste figures of the gods in Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally by his worshippers.*

Arnobius, Adv. nationes, iii. 41; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 7, 35; Festus, p. 128, ed. Müller. Festus speaks of the mother or grandmother of the larvae; the other writers speak of the mother of the lares.

1 Macrobius, .c.; Festus, pp. 121, 239, ed. Müller. The effigies hung up for the slaves were called pilae, not maniae. Pilac was also the name given to the straw-men which were thrown to the bulls to gore in the arena. Martial, Epigr. ii. 43, 5 sq.; Asconius, In Cornel. p. 55, ed. Kiessling and Schoell.

The ancients were at least familiar with the practice of sacrificing images made of dough or other materials as substitutes for the animals themselves. It was a recognised principle that when an animal could not be easily obtained for sacrifice, it was lawful to offer an image of it made of bread or wax. Servius on Virgil, Aen. ii. 116.

(Similarly a North American Indian dreamed that a sacrifice of twenty elans was necessary for the recovery of a sick girl; but the clans could not be procured, and the girl's parents were allowed to sacrifice twenty loaves instead. Relations des Jesuites, 1636, p. 11, ed. 1858). Poor people who could not afford to sacrifice real animals offered dough images of them. Suidas, s.1. Boûs ëẞdoμos; cp. Hesychius, s. vv. βοῦς, ἕβδομος βοῦς. Hence bakers made a regular business of baking cakes in the likeness of all the animals which were sacrificed to the gods. Proculus, quoted and emended by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 1079. When Cyzicus was besieged by Mithridates and the people could not procure a black cow to sacrifice at the rites of Proserpine, they made a cow of dough and placed it at the altar. Plutarch, Lucullus, 10. In a Boeotian sacrifice to Hercules, in place of the ram which was the proper

The Mexican sacraments in honour of Huitzilopochtli were also accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims. The tradition that the founder of the sacred grove at Aricia was a man named Manius, from whom many Manii were descended, would thus be an etymological myth invented to explain the name maniae as applied to these sacramental loaves. A dim recollection of the original connection of these loaves with human sacrifices may perhaps be traced in the story that the effigies dedicated to Mania at the Compitalia were substitutes for human victims. The story itself, however, is probably devoid of foundation, since the practice of putting up dummies to divert the attention of demons from living people is not uncommon. For example, when an epidemic is raging, some of the Dyaks of Borneo set up wooden images at their doors in the hope that the demons of the plague will be deceived into carrying off the images instead of the people.' The Minahassa of Celebes will sometimes transport a-sick man to another house, leaving on his bed a dummy made up of a pillow and clothes. This dummy the demon is supposed to take by mistake for the sick man, who consequently recovers.' Similarly in Burma it is thought that a patient will recover if an effigy be buried in a small coffin.3

The custom of killing the god has now been traced

victim, an apple was regularly substituted, four chips being stuck in it to represent legs and two to represent horns. Pollux, i. 30 sq. The Athenians are said to have once offered to Hercules a similar substitute for an ox. Zenobius, Cent. v. 22. And the Locrians, being at a loss for an ox to sacrifice, made one out of figs and sticks, and offered it instead of the animal. Zenobius, Cent. v. 5. At the Athenian festival of the Diasia cakes shaped like animals

amongst peoples who have reached the agricultural stage of society. We have seen that the spirit of the corn, or of other cultivated plants, is commonly represented either in human or in animal form, and,that a custom has prevailed of killing annually either the human or the animal representative of the god. The reason for thus killing the corn-spirit in the person of his representative has been given implicitly in the earlier part of this chapter. But, further, we have found a widespread custom of eating the god sacramentally, either in the shape of the man or animal who represents the god, or in the shape of bread made in human or animal form. The reasons for thus partaking of the body of the god are, from the primitive standpoint, simple enough. The savage commonly believes that by eating the flesh of an animal or man he acquires not only the physical, but even the moral and intellectual qualities which were characteristic of that animal or man. To take examples. The Creeks, Cherokees, and kindred tribes of North American Indians "believe that nature is possessed of such a property, as to transfuse into men and animals the qualities, either of the food they use, or of those objects that are presented to their senses; he who feeds on venison is, according to their physical system, swifter and more sagacious than the man who lives on the flesh of the clumsy bear, or helpless dunghill fowls, the slow-footed tame cattle, or the heavy wallowing swine.. This is the reason that several of their old men recommend, and say, that formerly their greatest chieftains observed a constant rule in their diet, and seldom ate of any animal of a gross quality, or heavy motion of body, fancying it conveyed a dulness through the whole system, and disabled them from exerting themselves