VOLUME 10: THE ANCIENT STATE by Hugh Nibley Table of Figures Key to Abbreviations v Foreword vii 1. The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State 1 2. Tenting, Toll, and Taxing 33 3. The Hierocentric State 99 4. Sparsiones 148 5. The Unsolved Loyalty Problem: Our Western Heritage 195 6. Victoriosa Loquacitas: The Rise of Rhetoric and the Decline of Everything Else 243 7. How to Have a Quiet Campus, Antique Style 287 8. New Light on Scaliger 303 9. Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic 311 10. Paths That Stray: Some Notes on Sophic and Mantic 380 Illustration Sources 479 Table of Figures 1. Marked arrows of the four quarters, Zu¤i Indians of New Mexico 6 2. Etruscan votive model of iron, coin of C. Norbanus, 1916 dime 11 3. From Han dynasty tombs at Ma Wang Tui, 174-145 b.c. 13 4. Furniture of Queen Hetepheres, columns from Festival Hall at Karnak 36 5. Portable shrines of Bedouin tribes 37 6. Wheeled vehicles in Egypt 38 6. Jewish silver coin of 450-300 b.c., Greek vase of 500-400 b.c. 39 Ark of covenant, Apse painting, procession for Islamic saint, Luxor 39 7. Darius, royal tombs, tomb of Germanic chieftain, lady unicyclists 40 8. Maritime Theatre at Tivoli, a.d. 117-138 44 9. Assyrian royal camp, Icelandic map, streets of Jerusalem 103 10. 1880 eyewitness sketch of ceremonies in Peking 105 11. Sassanian silver plate, ivory panel, coins 117 12. Traditional yurt 120 13. Trajan shown on congiaria, Constantius II 153 14. Ay and wife Tyi receiving gifts 156 14. Exuberant dancing and rejoicing by assembled court 157 15. Praefect of the Annonae, his wife and two children 159 16. Byzantine sailors squirt Greek fire from bronze syringes 207 17. Symbol of rhetoric--the upraised two fingers of right hand 262 18. Portrait of Joseph Scaliger 305 Key to Abbreviations HZ Historische Zeitschrift JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JEA Journal of Egyptian Archaeology JQR Jewish Quarterly Review PG J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus . . . Series Graeca (Paris: Migne, 1857-66), 161 vols. PL J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus . . . Series Latina/Rom (Paris: Migne, 1844-64), 221 vols. PO Fran‡ois Nau and Ren‚ Graffin, eds., Patrologia Orientalis (Paris: Librairie de Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1903-) PT Pyramid Text RE Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklop„die der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1894-1972) RHR Revue de l'histoire des religions Foreword The essays in this volume represent a very significant part of Hugh Nibley's scholarly corpus. Most of the papers were previously published in academic journals, including Classical Journal, Western Political Quarterly, and Western Speech, from the early forties until the midsixties. The only essays in this volume not previously published are "The Sophic and Mantic," originally a series of lectures delivered in 1963 at Yale University, and "Paths That Stray," drafted at about the same time. The topics of these essays range widely: the role of various objects--the arrow and the tent, for example--in archaic state formation; the political ideology and religious and educational values of ancient states; notes on Joseph Justus Scaliger, one of the outstanding scholars of the seventeenth--or any other--century. The theme--at root deeply religious in nature--that pervades most of these essays is the power and pretensions of the ancient state. If the phrase "The Greatest Show on Earth" had not already been preempted and registered as a trademark by Barnum and Bailey, it would have served as an appropriate subtitle to this volume, since it focuses on a central insight of these essays: however compelling and attractive the educational values, the royal ideology, and the symbols and artifacts of the state in antiquity (or in more recent times, for that matter), they represent, at root, a vast fraud--an endless and shameless effort at personal and national self-aggrandizement. Statecraft, as it has generally been practiced, is merely priestcraft in another guise. There is a legitimate "kingdom," Professor Nibley would remind us, but it is not one that seeks power in this world. As he notes in "The Hierocentric State," apostolic Christianity "was keenly conscious of all the imagery of hierocentric rule and ritual and, above all, of the contrast of the two kingdoms. The Apostles . . . tell us, it is true, that there is a universal throne--but it is not on this earth. The devil is the `Prince of this World,' which is no place for the children of the kingdom--they sojourn here as pilgrims and as strangers. . . . Our heritage and kingdom lie beyond: `here we have no abiding kingdom.' " At the center of this divinely sanctioned kingdom, reflecting in its features a heavenly model, is the temple. Like the hierocentric state, the temple (the subject of several of Nibley's essays elsewhere in the Collected Works) is "oriented about a point believed to be the exact center and pivot" of the cosmos. Further, in many ancient states the tent is inextricably connected with the temple. In a dozen other ways, features of the ancient state are like those of the temple. In one crucial respect, however, they differ: the former focuses on the kingdom of this world, while the latter, though constructed on earth, demands loyalty to a kingdom "not of this world." Nibley's breathtaking erudition--reminiscent of the polymathic tradition of scholarship represented by "the great Joseph Justus Scaliger," as he is fond of calling him--can be seen throughout this volume. By turns, he treats the sparsio, a subtle though important feature of Roman religion (reminding us that Dr. Nibley's early university training was in the Classics and Ancient History); the arrow, a cultural artifact found in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as among ancient Indo-European peoples and the Indians of North America; and the impact of the rise of rhetoric in the Greco-Roman world and in the ancient Near East. The essays in this volume reflect Nibley's deep and abiding interest in--may we even say passion for?--the origins of ideas and institutions. In his "Intellectual Autobiography" in Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless (1978), Nibley writes that, finding English to be derivative, he "took to Old English to find what was behind it; what was behind it was Latin, and what was behind that was Greek. In those days we thought that you had reached the beginning of everything with the Greeks" (p. xx). Soon, however, he came to understand that "if you really want to get back of reality, science is the thing; and, as Popper assures us, all science is cosmology: I became a passionate amateur astronomer." Then he discovered that, while "everybody wanted to be a scientist," few paid attention to "the records of the race." And so he abandoned the laboratory for the stacks. We can be glad for that decision, since this book--and the others in the Collected Works--are its fruit. Several of these essays reflect Nibley's quest for origins: he studies the arrow and the tent as two primary artifacts in ancient state formation; he examines the oldest ideologies of the state (which reflect conflicts that, as he states, "already exist[ed] in the premortal sphere"); and he investigates ancient values in learning and education and their subsequent corruption by the Sophists, who emphasized form over substance and denied the prophetic, providing a prologue to and explanation for the educational--and spiritual--crisis of our own age. Despite the book's title, these essays are in fact often highly pertinent to our own time. Astute readers will recognize in these essays many now-familiar themes of Nibley's trenchant social commentaries. The foibles of our age are nothing new, repeating what has been done in other eras. For example, "The Unsolved Loyalty Problem," which deals with loyalty and loyalty oaths in antiquity, was originally written at the time of the McCarthy hearings in the early 1950s but raises soul-wrenching questions just as relevant today as they ever were. "How to Have a Quiet Campus, Antique Style," was composed on the occasion of a visit of a former vice-president to the campus of Brigham Young University, whom Nibley calls "an authentic Rhetor--Greek, political, ostentatious, and not overly scrupulous." This essay, as well as "Victoriosa Loquacitas," "The Sophic and Mantic," and "Paths That Stray," speak to our own educational and spiritual malaise as much as to that in the ancient world. As I read "Sparsiones," where Nibley calls the sparsio "the authentic heritage of the Golden Age, the sublime economy of which remains throughout antiquity, and indeed in religious ideology down to the very present," I am reminded of themes developed in some of his essays on current social and religious issues in Approaching Zion (volume 9 of the Collected Works), such as "Work We Must, But the Lunch Is Free." The sparsio may be a manifestation, in a Greco-Roman context, of the "lunch" offered by God that is out of all proportion to man's own effort and contribution. All of this brings us back to the profound, implicit message of these essays: wealth, learning (and its imitations), technology, and assertions of divinely bestowed authority give a false sense of security that are no substitute for the Gospel. Some scholars write with the grace of an elephant. It is one of Nibley's virtues to have a prose style that is both strong and vigorous, while at the same time direct and without affectation--something we would expect, given his strong antipathy to the many seductions of rhetoric. Reading him is a constant pleasure, even where the argument is subtle or a page studded with details. To benefit most fully from reading Nibley, one must be like a cup, ready to be filled to the brim, and then some. Reading some of these essays may require some effort, but that effort is invariably well rewarded. We wish to express our thanks to those who have contributed to the production of this volume. Contributors include Glen Cooper, James Fleugel, John Gee, Fran Hafen, Andrew Hedges, Adam Lamoreaux, Brent McNeely, Tyler Moulton, Phyllis Nibley, Art Pollard, Shirley Ricks, Mark Simons, Morgan Tanner, James Tredway, John Welch, and the staff at Deseret Book, particularly Suzanne Brady, Shauna Gibby, and Patricia J. Parkinson. Special thanks are due to Michael Lyon, who provided the illustrations for this volume. Stephen D. Ricks Chapter 1 The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State In the study of ancient statecraft one is constantly running across references to a gadget that seems so minor and so mechanical that its great importance is easily overlooked as a key to the nature and origin of empire. It is the contention of this paper that the marked arrow supplies decisive evidence for describing the process by which hunters were able to impose a system of government on the world. The marked arrow not only supports the growing suspicion that the peasant societies of the great river valleys became conquering empires by virtue of a discipline forced on them from without, but goes on to show how such a transformation could take place. Whereas only farmers possess the industry and stability necessary to sustain a great state, the marked arrow indicates that it was nomad hunters of the steppe, with their expansive and aggressive ways, who first brought such a state into existence. Both elements, expansion and stability, must be combined if real empire--not a mere adding of fields to fields on the one hand, or the quick plunder of a continent on the other, but a program and technique of permanent, universal rule--is to be achieved. The present study undertakes to show how, by using marked arrows in a peculiar way, prehistoric hunters solved the problem of exercising dominion over vast and scattered areas and then applied the same solution to the more difficult problem of welding peasant and nomad cultures into some sort of union, resulting in the great centralized state of historic times. Three basic questions only will be treated: what the marked arrow was, how it worked in exercising its control over the closely knit and widely ranging tribes of the steppes, and how those tribes used it to coerce the unwilling tillers of the soil to cooperate in bringing forth the great state. I. Modern observers have described how the native hunters of the northwestern coasts of America secure their harpoons and arrows by putting marks of identification on them, thus guaranteeing both the return of the weapon to its owner and the right of the latter to possess the game it has slain. In this as in other things these people have preserved the ways of that Magdalenian hunting culture of which their own has long been held to be the last direct survival. From the same venerable source are descended the marked arrows formerly found all along the northern steppe of Asia and among those Scandinavian bear--and whale--hunters who in ancient as in modern times placed their legally registered marks on hunting arrows and harpoons (which they also called "arrows") to insure their return to their owners and lawful possession of the kill. This practice of marking arrows was once general among the American Indians and still survives among primitive hunters in various parts of the world. Indeed, nothing could be more natural than to put some mark of identification on a highly prized object designed to be risked in the gamble of the hunt. But the mark upon the hunter's arrow is more than a mere identification tag; it is a high and holy object, sharing the "immortal power" of the arrow itself. An arrow in flight is an awe-inspiring thing: once released (so many a proverb proclaims) the arrow is beyond human control and finds its mark only by the workings of imponderable fate. Throughout the world the arrow is a prime instrument of divination and enjoys first place in primitive games of chance; it is the spirit weapon that alone can prevail against the demons or pass through the absolute void between other worlds and our own. The incredible range and accuracy of the primitive arrow that so astound the civilized observer are proof to the savage himself of the operation of a supernatural power, as is evident in the prayers that the legendary heroes of the steppe--Finnish, Norse, Russian, Kazakh, Turkish, and Yakut--address to their three enchanted arrows before releasing them, and, for instance, in the arrow-prayers of the Indian and the Bedouin, all eloquently expressing the humility of men about to entrust their lives and their fate to a power beyond their control. The problem of the hunter is to enlist this strange power in his own interest. This requires recourse to the ingenious economy of the hunting-fetish, that go-between without whose aid a man can neither prevail against the game he chases nor enjoy lawful possession of it once taken. Among a variety of fetishes that achieves these ends, the mark placed upon a shaft is particularly useful, for not only does it establish legal claim to the kill, but it is "the soul of the arrow," directing the missile to its prey and endowing it with superhuman force. Both for identification and as hunting magic the sign on an arrow is a preeminently practical thing; it gets and it proves possession--a point on which hunters are extremely sensitive. Out of sight and beyond the hills, the smitten quarry is still the sacred property of him whose mark adorns the fatal arrow: why shouldn't such a useful claim to ownership apply to other things as well? By sticking his arrow in the ground beside any object, the Vedda claims that object as his own. A natural transition carries the authority of the marked arrow into a wider economy of human affairs. II. Throughout the ancient world a ruler was thought to command everything his arrow could touch. Thus, whenever a ruler of the North would summon all his subjects to his presence, he would order an arrow, usually called a "war-arrow" (her”r) to be "cut up" and sent out among them. Upon being touched by this arrow, every man had immediately to "follow the arrow" (fylgja ”rum) to the royal presence or suffer banishment from the kingdom. The arrow itself, in fact, was thought to pursue the wretch who failed to heed the king's behest. The "cutting" of the arrow was the placing of the royal mark upon it, giving it the force of the king's seal. As often as not the arrow took the form of a simple rod (stefni), bearing marks of authorization while the message was delivered by word of mouth, a technique recalling that of Australian and some American primitives in sending their message-sticks. The summons-arrow is common to the whole northern steppe, where exceedingly archaic forms of it are to be found and where it has survived until recent times. Both as war-arrow and invitation stick (depending on whether it is rejected or accepted) it appears among the American Indians, especially of the Northwest. But its most significant occurrence is found in altered but easily recognizable forms in the classical civilizations of the Old World. The herald of Zeus goes forth to summon his subjects, armed with a golden wand that subdues all creatures with its touch. Hermes got this staff originally from Apollo, who brought it with him as an arrow from the land of the Hyperboreans, somewhere in the northern steppe. Hermes' specialty is rushing through the air by means of his messenger-staff, the caduceus, which is winged at one end like an arrow and pointed at the other; holding to this the god is able to fly through space, to the upper and lower worlds if need be, exactly as Abaris, the Hyperborean shaman, flies over all the earth as Apollo's emissary when he grasps the arrow that the god has given him as a sign of his authority. It is not necessary to multiply parallels to show that in the earliest stratum of Greek legend we have a typical summons-arrow, wending its way from the far north to impose law and civilization on the world in the name of Zeus. The first message of Rome to Carthage was a symbolic caduceus and javelin (hastae simulacrum) inviting the Carthaginians to submit or be subdued by force. In Israel the Lord, calling upon a city to declare its allegiance to him, sends his rod to it, and a herald (a man of tushiah), seeing the name on the rod, calls out to the people: "Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it" (Micah 6:9). That this rod was an arrow will presently become apparent. An impressive demonstration of the authority of the summons-arrow is the early and widespread rite of the four world-arrows. The Olaf-Tryggvason Saga states a number of times that summons-arrows were sent "in the four directions." For the oldest and greatest festival of India, the Asvamedha, the king must send messengers in the four directions to order "all who have been conquered by his arrows" to appear before him. The common use of the summons-arrow in Aryan India makes the meaning of the rite clear. At the creation of the world, according to Zu¤i doctrine, four marked arrows, "the word-painted arrows of destiny," were carried "to the regions of men, four in number" ( cf. fig. 1), an event resembling a yearly ritual of the Kwakiutls of the Northwest. A variant of this is the shooting of arrows in the four directions, as in the Ghost-dance of the Sioux, where four sacred arrows were shot into the air towards the cardinal points to symbolize the conquest of the earth by the tribe. A like practice is attributed in Jewish legend to the Emperor Titus and to Nimrod who, from Jerusalem and Babel respectively, shot arrows in the four directions and claimed dominion over all that lay within their range. The rite appears also in Indo-Iranian creation myths and in the Sumerian story of Adad and the Zu-bird. In the Old World and the New it is also common to depict the swastika with its four arms formed of marked arrows--plainly the four world-arrows. Related to the world-arrows is the worldwide practice of making a sanctuary by marking off an area on the ground with the point of an arrow, dividing it into four sections by a cross with its arms to the cardinal points. The Germanic custom of claiming land by shooting a fiery arrow over it may be related to the oldest measurement in India, which was the range of a throwing-stick, or "measurement by arrow-casts," later supplanted by measurement in bow-lengths. The apportionment of land by the drawing of arrow-lots was common to the Assyrians and the ancient Norse (whence the expression "lot and scot") and recalls the common medieval custom of transferring the ownership of land baculi more, by the conveyance of a staff or arrow. A marked arrow passed among the guests at a royal banquet in the North announced the transmission of a man's estate to his heir. The ancient and universal concept that God governs the universe and keeps order in it by an arrow, the swift messenger of his wrath that searches out and blasts any who would challenge his authority, can only have had its rise in a real summons-arrow, for everywhere this heavenly arrow--the thunderbolt--is held to take the tangible actual form of a prehistoric stone-headed arrow. It is the arrow of the summus deus, held on loan by an earthly king as a gauge of divine support, that everywhere gives the latter his earthly power and authority, just as the marked arrow of the individual hunter, as a fetish or grant of supernatural power, gives him might and dominion far beyond his own puny capacity. The dread offices of the marked arrow were not reserved to kings alone. Throughout the northern steppe it was the custom to require all who came to the king's assembly to bring arrows with them and to present them personally to the king. From these arrows a census was taken, each man submitting but a single shaft, which represented him and bore his mark, for "both in the Old World and the New, the arrow came to stand as the token and symbol of a man." To arrows thus used may be applied, for want of a better term, the name "census-arrow." The census-arrow is found among the Scythians, Tartars, Persians, Georgians, Norsemen, and American Indians, and it survived in recognizable form in India, Egypt, and the Far East. But like the summons-arrow, it is most frequently met in altered but unmistakable form among nations that had long given up the hunter's way of life. One of the oldest Jewish-Christian legends tells how all the men of Israel were required to attend a great assembly, each bringing his staff, to be handed over to the high priest and used in a lottery for the distribution of brides. In the Qur'anic version of the same story, it is not simply a staff, however, but an arrow that every man must present, and this conforms not only with the primitive Bedouin usage, but also with the original Jewish custom. For in Israel it was necessary for every man at a national assembly to be represented by a "rod" with his name on it (Numbers 17:2); every tribe was a rod as well (Numbers 34:13-29), the tribal rods being "each one inscribed with the name of the tribe." Now the purpose of these rods, Gaster has pointed out, was to determine allotments of brides, and the allotment was performed by throwing rods into the air and reading their message by the manner of their fall; this, Gaster observes, is "tantamount" to the shooting of arrows. It is in fact the commonest form of arrow divination, and seems to hark back to an older dart, or throwing-stick, which is commonly identified and interchangeable with the arrow in archaic divination practices. Gaster's interpretation is substantiated when one turns to the northern steppe to find ancient Scythian, Turkish, Finnish, Mongol, and Ossete tribes regulating their land- and bride-lotteries by the actual shooting of arrows that were marked, like the rods of Israel, with the contestants' names. Related practices are found throughout the North. Thus the winning of Penelope has supplied Homer with a prize nugget, which Finsler has traced back to the northern steppe. The use of all these marked arrows in the making of legal decisions takes us right into the heliastic courts of the Greeks, where every juror had to present a specially colored wand (bakteria) for admission, exchanging it for a symbolon, which he would exchange in turn for his day's subsistence. Both the name and the use of the token identify it (as any lexicon will) with the classical tesserae, or feasting tickets, and the first symbolon, or tessera hospitalis, on record was the arrow that Apollo gave to Abaris: the scholiast calls this arrow a symbolon and says that it supplied Abaris with all the food and drink he needed. Another link between the original arrow-token and the classical tesserae is furnished by that common but enigmatic form of tessera described as a "section of reed." For from time immemorial the Arabs had employed reed arrow-shafts, devoid alike of feathers and heads, but bearing some marks of individual ownership, "to make division" at their tribal feasts. In the Pastor of Hermas, all who come to the assembly of the Lord present sections of willow-reed for admission, each receiving his proper place as designated by certain cuts (schismata) on his rod. Slips of wood were used also in the North to assign places at banquets, but these first appear as arrows, with the specification that "every man's arrows were marked." The red Indian who received an invitation-stick (usually arrow-formed) was required to keep it and bring it with him as a ticket to the feast. Why and how arrows, of all things, came to be used as feasting tickets may be best explained by an episode from the Orvar-Odds Saga. The text gives an authentic picture of a time when a great hunting culture flourished on the plains to the east of the Baltic. There is a tremendous hunt, after which everyone returns to the royal hirthstofa where each guest is assigned his proper seat. All the game is then brought in and thrown in a heap before the king (as in the Greek katabolia), who personally examines all the arrows and, as the marking of each is noted, has his herald give public recognition to its owner for his contribution to the banquet. The same pleasant rite enlivened the feasts of the heathen Bedouin: Jacob has pointed out the survival of the arrow-lottery from those tribal meals of the Arabs at which all the meat was first thrown in a heap and then distributed by portions to each man as his arrow was drawn and his name called out. Various hunting tribes of the Eastern and Western hemispheres have the same custom, whereas the Greek and Roman tesserae follow the pattern: the tesserae were regarded as lots and distributed by lot, each holder receiving the right to share in a feast to which he was supposed to have contributed some prize of the hunt. Marked arrows could, like the Hebrew rods, represent tribes as well as individuals at the feasts. Each of the fifty-two Tartar tribes in the time of Genghis Khan would bring an arrow marked with its name to the great assembly, where one man would be chosen king of the whole nation by a double lottery, first of tribal arrows and then of shafts bearing the names of individuals belonging to whichever tribe won the first drawing. Bundles of fifty-two rods, bearing individual and tribal markings, also represented the full membership of Indian tribes in assembly: Culin says these rods were once arrows. Bundles of seven divination arrows standing for the combined gentes of the Osage recall similar tribal bundles of the Scythians, Alans, Slavs, and ancient Germans (who also chose their leaders by drawing willow lots), and these have been compared in turn with the Persian baresma and the Roman fasces ( cf. fig. 2), a bundle of twelve rods (the rods of Israel were likewise tied in a symbolic bundle of twelve), standing originally for twelve Etruscan tribes. The cosmic numbers seven, twelve, and fifty-two have astral and divinatory significance and suggest the modern card deck, which Culin holds is derived from "a quiver made up of the different arrows of the individuals of a tribe." This communal aspect of the marked arrow was always fundamental to its nature, since arrow-marking was ever as much a bid for public recognition as for divine support. III. The rise of the great state depended, as Moret has recently pointed out, among other things on the development of writing, by which art alone a ruler can extend his word of command indefinitely in time and space. Such control at a distance was the very function of the marked arrow, and Hilprecht has given strong arguments for deriving the earliest written documents, archaic cylinder seals, from "the hollow shaft of an arrow, marked with symbols and figures." If Hilprecht's theory failed of general acceptance, it was because no one could see how the arrow fitted into the picture. In view of the uses of the marked arrow by hunters, however, that should be fairly clear, especially if one considers a few related facts that may be briefly listed. 1. The earliest gods of writing, Nebo, Cadmus, Hermes, etc., were arrow gods. 2. Some systems of writing of mysterious origin, such as Ogam, Runic, and Himyaritic, first appear as arrow-marking. 3. In the Far East, according to Culin, "the ancestry of the book may be traced to the bundle of engraved or painted arrow-derived slips used in divination" ( cf. fig. 3). 4. The cylinder-seal and the arrow are interchangeable not only as tokens but actually as weapons (an utterly incongruous equation in itself), the seal serving as an arrow-missile, and the marked arrow serving as a seal. 5. The first writing, the first seals, and the marked arrow all spring from the same basic need: if, as Herzfeld maintains, the idea of property that produced the seals and writing is as old as humanity itself, may we not look for a still older form of property-marking than the cylinder seal? And is not such a form the marked arrow, which everywhere precedes it and so strikingly resembles it? That the cylinder seal originated very probably somewhere in the north of Asia supports the suspicion. Whatever its origin, the writing of documents was conceived for the same end as the marking of arrows, and the two meet on common ground in the archaic cylinder seal; seal and arrow grew up together, having performed identical functions from the first as instruments of identification and authority. Equipped with such an effective tool, the men of the steppes enjoyed a powerful advantage over the settled agrarians who did not have, because they did not need, anything like it. Against them it was devastating and achieved a permanent conquest; it was an utterly cynical form of persuasion to which they had no answer. The peasants of the Old World tell a remarkably uniform tale of a mad hunter from the North and East who claimed to rule the world in the insane conviction that he had conquered God with his arrow. Such a one was the archaic and mysterious Nimrod, the mighty hunter of the steppes, who shot an arrow into the sky (standard shaman practice) and when a shower of blood ensued believed that he had conquered God and won for himself the universal kingship. The story is based on a genuine hunting ritual of great antiquity, but the literary records all chill with horror at the thought of the man who first turned his arrows from the hunting of beasts to become "a hunter of men," who founded the first great state, invented organized warfare, and "made all people rebellious against God." He it was who challenged God to a shooting-match with the blasphemous boast, "It is I who kill, and I who let live!" In reply to which his followers were turned to stone by God's arrows, while their leader was driven mad in the same peculiar manner (by a fly in the brain) as that Roman Emperor who would destroy God's temple and who shot his arrow in the four directions from Jerusalem, claiming dominion over the whole world. A hundred names might be substituted for that of Nimrod. Japheth, the common ancestor of the people of the northern steppe (Genesis 10:2-5), as Japetus, challenged the rule of Zeus and was smitten by the thunderbolt, even as was his son Prometheus, and for that matter all the other giants. It needs only little research to learn that the crime and the punishment of Nimrod was repeated in the case of Aesculapius, his father Apollo (the Admetus story), the Hyperborean Orion, Sisyphus, Salmoneus, the Emperor Julian (who was smitten by St. Mercurius, the arrow of God), Romulus Silvius, Otos and Ephialtes, Nebuchadnezzar (as legendary son of Nimrod), Lepreus, Bootes, the Cyclopes, Gog and Magog, Esau, Goliath and his brother, who had an archery contest with David, Eurotos, Philoctetes, Herakles, and even Odysseus. The Cannibal Hymn from pre-Dynastic Egypt describes the deceased Pharaoh as a Mad Hunter who seizes the government of the universe and throws all things into disorder, just as the equally ancient Vulture Stele describes the great god Ningirsu as "a beast of prey from the steppe," even while praising him as the author and ruler of all. Folklorists have long identified these terrible hunters of the East with the ubiquitous wild huntsman, a great lord or lady who will do nothing but hunt, who holds his agrarian hinds in utter contempt, and publicly announces that he prefers hunting to heaven. Invariably this monster is in the eyes of the peasantry under a terrible curse, and he usually ends up by being turned to stone when God's bolt overtakes him. Yet his is the rightful rule: "In the rural life of Europe," write Peake and Fleure, "the waste and hunting rights down to our time have typically belonged to the 'lords' in a very special and intimate way," and they argue that this equation of hunting and ruling is the result of prehistoric invasions of Europe by hunting nomads from the Russo-Turkestan steppe. Such a conquest is not a unique event in history, however, but a characteristic one, as when in the eleventh century Saxon farmers found themselves saddled with the outrageous hunting laws of an invading Norse aristocracy. It is the monotonous theme of Asiatic history right into the nineteenth century, when Khazakh, Kalmuk, and Jungar nomads moved in from the east to subject and "govern" the peasants exactly as they were oppressed and controlled by the Scythians in the days of Strabo. The tradition of the Mad Hunter presents the uniform picture of peasant societies enduring the overlordship of nomad intruders from the perennial reservoirs of central Asia, whose way of life was utterly abhorrent to them, and to whom their own was quite incomprehensible. IV. But may the human race be so neatly divided into men of the steppe and men tilling the soil? It may indeed, and it is the arrow that does the dividing. Since the bow can be used effectively only by experts, its general employment ceases whenever hunting is given up as a way of life, only to be resumed in periods of migration. Archery is thus either all-important or negligible in a culture, and the ancient world is divided sharply into two camps, those who use the bow and those who do not. The division is of course geographical: when encroaching forests drove the big game out of Europe at the end of the Paleolithic, the hunters followed their quarry, to preserve on the steppes of Asia a way of life largely forgotten in their former homelands. The resulting cultural dichotomy is a basic fact of history, since civilization as history knows it is the rather calamitous result of bringing these two forms together. Here the marked arrow seems to have played a major role. The civilized people of antiquity had a common tradition that the summus deus at the beginning of everything won dominion of the universe by smiting a dark adversary with an arrow. As has been seen, God rules the universe by an arrow, and the classic emblems of authority--scepter, wand, spear, trident, double axe, crozier, lotus-staff, fleur-de-lis, and so forth--may be traced back rather easily to a common identity with the prehistoric thunderbolt, taking the tangible form of a stone-headed arrow. Throughout the vast reaches of Asia, men were, to use Pliny's expression, "under subjection to the reed." From the Chinese war-lord in the East to Saladin in the West, the arrow--a real arrow and a marked one--is the ultimate symbol of authority, the banner itself being originally but a message-strip tied to an arrow. With that arrow go those techniques of empire which no farmers could have invented: even Rome borrowed her theory and practice of empire whole-cloth from the East, where, so far as we know, the first man to achieve actual rule of the civilized world was no Egyptian or Babylonian (though they all dreamed of being Cosmocrator) but Khian, a nomad Hyksos from the steppes. Symbols of rule and ownership at a lower level were those armorial bearings of the Middle Ages which, whether copied from the tribal insignia of the East or adapted from the earlier house-marks and landmarks of the West, were originally the arrow-marks of hunters. The aristocracy were hunters, whose arrogant and blasphemous mottoes (usually proclaiming the bearer's power to maim if offended) and whose weird and unearthly disguises were designed to inspire paralyzing dread in the simple rustics who by the mere suspicion of presuming to hunt on their own would incur penalties worse than death. Whenever the noble strain was threatened with extinction, it could always count on eager volunteers from the ranks of the bourgeoisie to replenish the blood and maintain the hunting tradition: add to Froissart's testimony the English glue-manufacturer in his vast, dark "lodge," or the Russian baron, or the German industrialist of the nineteenth century diligently cultivating the hunter's way of life in the midst of purely agrarian societies of great antiquity. The ways of the hunting nobility with all their social and political implications have been traced back to the great hunting parks of Asiatic monarchs. These "paradises" prove beyond any doubt that kings must be hunters. The ancients, East and West, visualized power, glory, and dominion as embodied in the person of the Cosmocrator, earthly counterpart of the creator, enthroned in the midst of a vast assembly of birds and animals as well as of men and jinns. The picture of the great king being acclaimed in a single mighty chorus by all living things assembled before his throne meets us full-blown in Sumerian creation hymns; it is reflected in accounts of Adam, Yima, Orpheus, Ninurta, and others as Lord of the Animals and King of the Golden Age; it is a favorite device of the Hellenistic orator and the darling theme of Jewish and Arabic commentators, whose Solomon sits in the midst of the demons and animals as ruler of the world; it produced the Physiologus and the Bestiaries and provides the setting of Reynard the Fox and many a scene in Kalila and Dimna, Babrius, and Aesop, and it begot the Medieval Parliament of Birds, which is not so far from Aristophanes. And wherever we are treated to this wonderful spectacle of the world-king and the assembly of the animals, whether in song, drama, fable, or sermon, it is made to serve as a commentary on government. But the grandiose concept of the universal ruler gathering all the birds and animals in his presence (the theme of the Reynard and hoopoe stories is that one creature alone fails to answer the summons) is no mere flight of fancy nor invention of allegory. Eyewitness accounts of the vast ordered animal parks of the Great Khan, the Mongol emperors at Peking, and the kings of Persia, Assyria, and Babylonia leave no doubt that the staggering project was actually carried out as an adjunct of universal rule. The thing was adopted by the Hellenistic rulers along with their claims to divine authority and copied from them (or taken over directly from Baghdad) by the Byzantine emperors, who transmitted it in turn to the kings of Europe--throne and court everywhere follow the same pattern, which is that of Solomon enthroned in the midst of men and animals. The royal parks of central Asia (the Chinese call the park the Paradise of the West, and the Babylonians placed it in the North, cf. Isaiah 14:13-14) were no invention of royal vanity, for the system of reserving certain areas in which animals are sacrosanct (called by the Arabs jiwar) is a perfectly practical one. The actual assembly of the animals recalls the great tribal hunts or animal-drives of the past: al-Biruni has described such a drive taking place in the immense royal park at Baghdad in the tenth century: it was ritual, of course, but when was the hunt not a ritual? It should be remembered that ritual animal-drives, like the great dances of the Indians of the Southwest, are aimed at increasing and protecting the game as well as exploiting it. But when game is thus protected, and when it is herds of ungulates that one is driving in the hunt, how close is hunting to herding! Jacob speaks of the tame gazelles that regularly turn up in the jiwar whenever animals and men meet on a peace footing. Nevertheless, hunting and not herding is the original motif, though the distinction between them is sometimes very fine. V. Though the arrow rules the world, its victory is not final. For over against its claims must be set the equally valid and venerable claims of the Black-Earth, the Mother of Gods and Men, inculcating the deep conviction that a man can possess only the earth he "quickens," all other ownership coming under the head of fraud. To those who work the soil, the holding of more land than one can exploit is wasteful and meaningless, an offense to God and an affront to Justice herself. The hunter's arrow, on the other hand, marked with his noble "crest," gives him, within the limits of a preserve necessarily much vaster than that of any farmer, the divine right to possess and dominate whatever it can reach. And so the issue is drawn: to those who held broad lands, baculi more, the arrow was the high and holy symbol of possession; to those who cultivated those lands it was "looked upon . . . as the appropriate missile of the robber, or of one who lurked in ambush." The antithesis is complete: there is no understanding between Abraham and Nimrod because each is sure the other is mad. At present a man's signature performs the offices formerly consigned to his seal and for which but a few generations back the actual possession of a staff or tally-stick was indispensable. Thus man has taken another step away from the arrow, but that is only incidental: even the most primitive alteration, the removal of head and feathering, changed the form of the thing almost beyond recognition. It is the function that remains intact. A mere mark or symbol still bestows proprietary right, operating through unlimited time and space, over anything on earth. This is no mere refinement of lawyer's wit, nor is it a universal human concept: it is rather, as its lineage shows, the hunter's peculiar idea of property and right. Since the marked arrow has long since become an antiquarian oddity, it would be wrong to claim that it still divides the world into two camps as of old. Nevertheless there is no other teacher that can show so well how our world came to be a perennially divided one. The marked arrow demonstrates what without it would be a mere surmise: that civilization is the issue of a forced union between two fundamentally hostile ways of life, a union which however productive of history has never been a happy one. This article was originally published in Western Political Quarterly 2/3 (1949): 328-44. Figure 1. The marked arrows of the four quarters, Zu¤i Indians of New Mexico, c. 1900. Usually the only color used was a somber black painted on the wooden shaft, but sometimes the color of the respective direction was used as well. In more finished arrows, the tail feathers were notched and tufted to correspond with the bands, serving as mnemonic reminders of the creation myths. Figure 2. The earliest surviving fasces, c. 600 b.c., is this Etruscan votive model of iron (A) showing Eastern influence in its use of the labrys, the double-axe of Crete. This venerable symbol was later adopted by the Romans, who modified it by using their own securis axe first as a sign of sacrifice and then later of war and capital punishment. On a coin of C. Norbanus (B), 83 b.c., the consular fasces is flanked by a wheat kernel and the snaked-headed caduceus. Our own dime of 1916 (C) was popular until the symbol was tarnished by the Fascist movement. Here the arrow shaft comes full circuit, fulfilling its destiny as the ultimate embodiment of power. Figure 3. From the famous Han dynasty tombs at Ma Wang Tui, 174-145 b.c., come these examples of a bamboo "book" (B) listing a tomb inventory as well as a bundle of notched peach wood sticks (A). An archaic custom even then, each stick represented the individual servant who accompanied his mistress into the next life. Today, patients wishing to divine the god of medicine's prescription consult the tsien tung (C) by shaking the quiver-shaped bamboo container until one of the inscribed sticks "jumps" out. Notes 1. Moritz Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte des Menschen, 2 vols. (Vienna: Hastlben, 1909), 2:392-96; Thorkild Jacobsen, "Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 2 (1943): 159-72; Carl H. Bishop, "The Beginnings of Civilization in Eastern Asia," Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1940): 431, 433-45. 2. Robert F. Heizer, "Aconite Poison Whaling in Asia and America: An Aleutian Transfer to the New World," Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 24 (1943): 421, 429-36, 440, 446; Ales Hrdlicka, The Aleutian and Commander Islands (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, 1945), 130, 132; Theodor W. Danzel, Die Anf„nge der Schrift (Leipzig: Vorgtl„nder, 1912), 38. 3. The history of the problem is given by Walter J. Hoffman, "The Graphic Art of the Eskimos," Annual Report of the U.S. National Museum (1895): 763-65, 934-38; see F. M. Bergounioux and Andr‚ Glory, Les premiers hommes (Paris: Didier, 1945), 232-39. 4. Hjalmar S. Falk, Altnordische Waffenkunde (Kristiania: Dybwad, 1914), 101. 5. Walter J. Hoffman, "The Menomini Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 14 (1892-1893): 278; J. Owen Dorsey, "Omaha Dwellings, Furniture, and Implements," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 13 (1891-1892): 287; William Bray, "Observations on the Indian Method of Picture-Writing," Archaeologia 6 (1782): 160; Hermann Meyer, "Bows and Arrows in Central Brazil," Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1896): 553, 561, 568, 571, 576-82; Fritz Krause, In den Wildnissen Brasiliens (Leipzig: Doigl„nder, 1911), 264, 268-70, 360, 392-94. 6. Danzel, Anf„nge der Schrift, 34-38; Stewart Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," Report of the U.S. National Museum under the Direction of the Smithsonian Institution (1896): 881. 7. Hanns B„chtold-St„ubli, Handw”rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 10 vols. (Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1927-42), 6:1597-98; Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), D1314.1.1-5; Stewart Culin, "Games of the North American Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 24 (1902-1903): 36-43. 8. On demon-arrows, see Ignaz Goldziher, Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1896), 1:29-33, 87-89, 116-17; B„chtold-St„ubli, Handw”rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 6:1597; Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ed. James E. Stallybrass, 3 vols. (London: Sonnenschein & Allen, 1880), 2:846. On the space-traveling arrow of the wizards, Herodotus, History IV, 36, cf. Erich Bethe, "Abaris," in RE 1:16-17; James Darmesteter, The Zend-Avesta, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1883), 2:153; V”lusp , 36-37. 9. John M. Crawford, tr., Kalevala, 2 vols. (New York: Columbian, 1891), 1:80-81; Paul B. Du Chaillu, The Viking Age, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1890), 2:93-94; A. S. Orlov, Kazakhskii Geroicheskii Epos (Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1945), 41, n. 2; 83; N. K. Dmitriev, Turyetskie Narodnye Skaski (Leningrad: Government Press, 1939), 98-102; Friedrich Giese, Trkische M„rchen (Jena: Diederich, 1925), 75-89. 10. Jeremiah Curtin and J. N. B. Hewitt, "Seneca Fiction, Legends, and Myths," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 32 (1910-1911): 317-18; Frank H. Cushing, "Zu¤i Fetiches," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 2 (1880-1881): 41-43; cf. Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," 881, n. 1; Matilda C. Stevenson, "The Zu¤i Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Societies, and Ceremonies," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 23 (1901-1902): 317-49. The Arab hunter must call on Allah with each bow-shot; Al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Jami c as-Sahih, ed. M. Krehl and T. W. Juynboll (Leiden: Brill, 1908), 4:7, and breathe on his arrows, exactly like the Zu¤i; Georg Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben (Berlin: Mayer & Mller, 1897), 125. For arrow-prayers in India, see Victor Henry, La magie dans l'Inde antique (Paris: Leroux, 1904), 151-52. 11. Cushing, "Zu¤i Fetiches," 39; John P. Gillin, The Barama River Caribs of British Guiana (Cambridge: Peabody Museum, 1936), 180, 183-84; Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte, 1:512. 12. Eduard Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur amerikanischen Sprach- und Altertumskunde, 5 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1902), 3:378; Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," 881; Edward W. Nelson, "The Eskimo about Bering Strait," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 18 (1896-1897): 157-61, cf. 154; Danzel, Anf„nge der Schrift, 34; Du Chaillu, Viking Age, 2:92-94. To give his arrows greater power and accuracy, Ishi changed the markings on them; Saxton Pope, Hunting with the Bow and Arrow (New York: Putnam, 1947), 26-27. 13. Saxo, Historia Danorum, ed. Hermann Jantzen (Berlin: Felber, 1900), 244; for the Norse expressions, see Richard Cleasby, Gudbrand Vigfusson, and William A. Craigie, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 2d ed. (Oxford: University Press, 1957), s.v. "her”r." 14. Karl Weinhold, "Beitr„ge zu den deutschen Kriegsaltertmern," Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Berlin. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 29 (1891): 548; the king's arrow pursues breakers of the King's Peace; B„chtold-St„ubli, Handw”rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 6:1598. 15. Weinhold, "Beitr„ge zu den deutschen Kriegsaltertmern," 548; Finnur J¢nsson, ed., Egils Saga Skalgr¡mssonar (Halle: Niemeyer, 1924), 9, n. 10. 16. Cleasby and Vigfusson, Icelandic-English Dictionary, 42. The message-staff (bothkefli) was readily "in einen Pfeil umgeschnitzt," Weinhold, "Beitr„ge zu den deutschen Kriegsaltertmern," 548. 17. Weinhold, "Beitr„ge zu den deutschen Kriegsaltertmern," 548-49. German Botenh”lzer survived into the late Middle Ages; Saxo, Historia Danorum, ed. Jantzen, 244, n. 1. Summons-arrows were used by the Seljuk Turks in the thirteenth century; these still survive in North India, Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte, 1:521; cf. the "alarm-staff" of the Lama gods; Charles A. S. Williams, Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1941), 213. 18. Walter E. Roth, "An Introductory Study of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 38 (1916-1917): 582; Walter E. Roth, "An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-lore of the Guiana Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 30 (1908-1909): 362; Garrick Mallery, "Pictographs of the North American Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 4 (1882-1883): 87-88; Walter J. Hoffman, "The Mide'wiwin or Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwa," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 7 (1885-1886): pl. xii facing p. 226. 19. Apollo gave the staff to Hermes as a symbolon (Homer, Hymn to Hermes, 527-30) exactly as he gave an arrow-symbolon to his friend Abaris, the Hyperborean, who used it as Hermes did his staff, to carry him through the air as a messenger of the god; O. Crusius, "Hyperboreer," in Wilhelm H. Roscher, ed., Ausfhrliches Lexikon der griechischen und r”mischen Mythologie, 7 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1965), 1:2819. On the Hyperborean origin of Apollo's arrow and Hermes' caduceus, see ibid., 1:2807-9. 20. Crusius, "Hyperboreer," in Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon, 1:2815. Origen, Contra Celsum (Against Celsus) III, 31, in PG 11:959-60, reports the belief that Abaris shot himself through the air like an arrow, a favorite trick of the Asiatic shaman. 21. Robert Eitrem, "Hermes," in RE 8:781-84, and Ernst Samter, "Caduceus," in RE 3:1170-71. It is the arrow which gives the title of Pantokrator, ibid., 8:791; Otto Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1906), 2:1072. 22. Gellius, Attic Nights X, 27. 23. Cf. Jeremiah 48:17; Ezekiel 19:10-14; Abraham S. Yahuda, The Accuracy of the Bible (London: Heinemann, 1934), 106-13. 24.Olaf-Tryggvason Saga, c. 102, 104, 222. 25. Paul ‚. Dumont, L'Asvamedha (Paris: Geuthner, 1927), 38, 356, 384, 386. See n. 17 above. 26. Culin, "Games of the North American Indians," 33, 46; cf. Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, 3:378-80, fig. 6, for recent Mexican Indian examples; Franz Boas, "The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians," Annual Report of the U.S. National Museum (1895): 508-9, 517, 521. 27. James Mooney, "The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 14 (1892-1893): 832, 915-17; the conquest motif, 788-89. 28. M. Gaster, "Divination (Jewish)," in James Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 13 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1928), 4:810, cf. Leonard W. King, "Divination (Assyro-Babylonian)," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 4:785; the Nimrod version is in the Book of Jasher 9:35. 29. Albert J. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, vol. 6 in Louis H. Gray, ed., Mythology of All Races, 13 vols. (Boston: Jones, 1917), 302-3, 308; Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, 2:94-96, 103; 1:18-21. The Zu-bird, contending for the government of the world, was smitten by the arrow of the god, who thereupon "founds his cities in the four regions," Peter Jensen, Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und Epen (Berlin: Reuther and Reichard, 1900), 49-53. 30. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, 302-3, 308; B„chtold-St„ubli, Handw”rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 6:1598; Francis La Flesche, "The Osage Tribe: Rite of Vigil," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 39 (1917-1918): 234; Cushing, "Zu¤i Fetiches," 42; Hoffman, "Menomini Indians," 196-99; Cicero, De Divinatione I, 17; Ludwig Weniger, "Feralis Exercitus," Archiv fr Religionswissenschaft 9 (1906): 246-48. 31. J. A. MacCulloch, Eddic Mythology, vol. 2 in Gray, Mythology of All Races, 201. 32. E. Washburn Hopkins, "Remarks on the Form of Numbers, the Method of Using Them, and Numerical Categories of the Mahabharata," JAOS 23 (1902): 144-47; the arrow cast "is confined to estimating time." The Osage arrows that measure the earth "in flight denote time" as well; La Flesche, "Osage Tribe," 207, 265-67, 369. 33. Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1925), 2:275; Benjamin Williams, "On the Land of Ditmarsh and the Mark Confederation," Archaeologia 37 (1856): 381-83. 34. Robert Riddell, "Some Accounts of a Symbol of Ancient Investitures in Scotland," Archaeologia 11 (1794): 47; Octavius Morgan, "On Episcopal and Other Rings of Investiture," Archaeologia 36 (1855): 393-97; Williams, "On the Land of Ditmarsh," 389. 35. Flateyjarb¢k I, 164. 36. See Aeschylus, Eumenides 727-30; Prometheus Bound 358-63, 374, 917; Vergil, Aeneid VI, 587; Hugo Winckler, Keilinschriftliches Textbuch zum Alten Testament (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903), 117, 123; Williams, Chinese Symbolism, 396-97; 2 Kings 13:17-19; Psalms 7:13; 18:13-18; 64:7, and so forth; Zechariah 9:14; Qur'an 18:44; Bernhard Schweitzer, Herakles (Tbingen: Mohr, 1922), 184-86; E. A. Wallis Budge, Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Ani, 3 vols. (New York: Putnam, 1913), 2:400-401. 37. Christian S. Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 87-101; Gerald A. Wainwright, "The Emblem of Min," JEA 17 (1931): 186-93; Gerald A. Wainwright, "Letopolis," JEA 18 (1932): 161-63; and Gerald A. Wainwright, "The Bull Standards of Egypt," JEA 19 (1933): 43; Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, 2:773, n. 3. 38. Hermann Kees, „gypten, in Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 3, pt. 1, 3a (Munich: Beck, 1933), 177; Psalms 45:6; Winckler, Keilinschriftliches Textbuch zum Alten Testament, 117, 123; Henry, Magie dans l'Inde antique, 151-63; R. C. Boer, ed., Orvar-Odds Saga (Halle: Niemeyer, 1892), vii-ix, xiv-xv, 14, 69; Crawford, tr., Kalevala, 1:167, 2:434, 530; when the hero twangs his bow, Zeus himself thunders in the heavens, Homer, Odyssey XXI, 410-14. 39. Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," 881; cf. Hoernes, Natur-und Urgeschichte, 1:562-64. 40. Herodotus, History IV, 81. 41. Jean Joinville, Histoire de St. Louis (Paris: Hachette, 1883), xciii, 475-78 (Tartars); Cl‚ment I. Huart and Louis Delaporte, L'Iran antique: ‚lam et Perse et la civilisation iranienne (Paris: Michel, 1952), 381; Friedrich von Spiegel, Erƒnische Altertumskunde, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1871-78), 2:86-87; Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, 302-3, 308; that these are census arrows appears from Havamal 120a, 130a; for the Indians, see Boas, "Kwakiutl Indians," 522; Garrick Mallery, "Picture Writing of the American Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 10 (1888-1889): 365; Culin, "Games of the North American Indians," 227-29 (fig. 307), 51, 233-34. 42. Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte, 1:521, n. 1 (India); C. R. Lepsius, "Der Bogen in der Hieroglyphik," Zeitschrift fr „gyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde 10 (1872): 86, cf. Wainwright, "The Emblem of Min," 190-91; James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 12 vols., 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 9:126 (Koryak); Ren‚ Grousset et al., L'Asie orientale des origines au XV e siŠcle (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1941), 442. 43. Proto-Evangelium of James 9:1; Clement, Epistola I ad Corinthios (First Epistle to the Corinthians) 43, in PG 1:295; Angelo S. Rappoport, Myth and Legend of Ancient Israel, 3 vols. (London: Gresham, 1928), 2:254-58. 44. Qur'an 3:39. 45. Clement, First Epistle to the Corinthians 43, in PG 1:295. 46. Gaster, "Divination (Jewish)," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia 4:809-10. 47. Julius Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927), 132; Culin, "Games of the North American Indians," 383, 33, 45; cf. W. J. McGee, "The Seri Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 17 (1895-1896): 198-200; Wainwright, "Letopolis," 162, and "Bull Standards of Egypt," 50-51; Egidio Forcellini, Lexicon Totius Latinatatis, s.v. "baculus," no. 9. 48. Dmitriev, Turyetskie Narodnye Skaski, 203-5; Giese, Trkische M„rchen, 115. 49. Georg A. Finsler, Homer, 2 vols., 2d ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913-18), 1:1:84. 50. Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution LXV, 1-4; Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 297. 51. Crusius, "Hyperboreer," in Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon, 1:2819. 52. See Hugh Nibley, "Sparsiones," Classical Journal 40 (June 1945): 538-39, nn. 152-54; reprinted in this volume, pages 189-90, nn. 152-54. 53. Qur'an 2:216; Ahlwardt, ed., al-Mu callaqat II, 104; IV, 73-74; VI, 63; Theodor N”ldeke, Delectus Veterum Carminum Arabicorum (Berlin: Keuther, 1890), 36, 77; Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, 131-33; George Sale, The Koran (Philadelphia: Moore, 1850), 89; cf. the story of cA'isha in the Sahih of Bukhari in Ernest Harder, Arabische Chrestomathie (Heidelberg: Groos, 1911), 21, and Al-Hariri, Maqamat, s.v. "wasm." 54. Pastor of Hermes, Similitudes VIII, 1-6. 55. Du Chaillu, Viking Age, 1:350-51; J¢nsson, Egils Saga Skalgr¡mssonar, 137 (XLVIII, 6-7); Boer, ed., Orvar-Odds Saga, 38, 9-10; "Hvers mannz skeyti var thar markat"; cf. Havamal 8a. 56. Mallery, "Picture Writing," 365-66; cf. Boas, "Kwakiutl Indians," 522-23. 57. Boer, ed., Orvar-Odds Saga, 39, 9-13. 58. As Boer, ibid., has shown in his edition of the saga. 59. Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 89-90, 110-12. 60. Danzel, Anf„nge der Schrift, 39; James G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1919), 1:415; Boas, "Kwakiutl Indians," 522-23; Cushing, "Zu¤i Fetiches," 32. 61. Nibley, "Sparsiones," 537-39, reprinted in this volume, pages 161-62. 62. Joinville, Histoire de St. Louis, 93, 475-78. 63. The Algonquins used fifty-two rods; Culin, "Games of the North American Indians," 49; the Hupa fifty-three, ibid., 235; the Sauk and Fox fifty-one, ibid., 233; cf. 228, fig. 307, 45. 64. Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 27 (1905- 1906): 242; Francis La Flesche, "Omaha Bow and Arrow Makers," Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1926): 494. 65. Herodotus, History IV, 67; Ammianus Marcellinus, XXXI, 2, 24. 66. The Persian king, sitting with the baresma of divination spread out before him as he gives away wealth at the New Year (Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, 299-300), recalls the host at the Indian feast, giving all his wealth to his guests, whose arrow-staves lie spread out before him, Boas, "Kwakiutl Indians," 508; Hoenir's lottery in the Golden Age (V”lusp , in Lawrence S. Thompson, ed., Norse Mythology: The Elder Edda in Prose Translation [Hamden, CT: Archon, 1974], 17) and the King of Babylon "shaking out arrows," Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2:275; Ezekiel 21:26. 67. Clement, First Epistle to the Corinthians 43, in PG 1:295. 68. Ernst Samter, "Fasces," in RE 6:2002-3. 69. Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," 881; cf. W. M. Flinders Petrie, Scarabs and Cylinders with Names (London: School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1917), 4. Theodore C. Foote, "The Ephod," Journal of Biblical Literature 21 (1902): 20-47. 70. Alexandre Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1941), 1:96-97. 71. Hermann V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, 11 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1896), 1:2:36; William H. Ward, The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1910), 3-4. If the cylinder seal was derived from a cylinder amulet, Ernst Herzfeld, "Stempelsiegel," Arch„ologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 5 (1932): 51-53, the marked arrow itself is such an amulet. 72. Alfred Jeremias, "Nebo," in Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon, 3:64-65; Gustavus H. Eisen, Ancient Oriental and Other Seals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 78-79; M. H. Ananikian, Armenian Mythology, vol. 7 in Gray, Mythology of All Races, 32-33 (Nabu); Alfred Jeremias, Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913), 82, 89-94, 114, 275, 277 (Nabu-Nebo as Hermes-Mercury), 11, 18, 132, 146 (Nisaba, equivalent of Egyptian Neith); Budge, Book of the Dead, 1:186; cf. Gerald A. Wainwright, "Some Celestial Associations of Min," JEA 21 (1935): 154. On Texctlipoca, the Mexican Apollo-Hermes, as arrow-god, see Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, 3:341. 73. John Rhys, Celtic Heathendom (London: Williams & Norgate, 1898), 268; G. Dottin, "Divination (Celtic)," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 4:788; Charles Vallency, "Observations of the Alphabet of the Pagan Irish, and of the Age in Which Finn and Oslin Lived," Archaeologia 7 (1785): 276-85; Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte, 2:304; John A. MacCulloch, "Die Kelten," in Alfred Bertholet and Edvard Lehmann, eds., Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols., 4th ed. (Tbingen: Mohr, 1925), 2:610. Taken together, these references make the case clear. Rune, arrow, and feasting-ticket are plainly identical in Havamal 8a, 120a, 130a. 74. J¢nsson, Egils Saga Skalgr¡mssonar, 240-41 (LXXII, 12-16); Du Chaillu, Viking Age, 2:92; Williams, "On the Land of Ditmarsh," 381-83; Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 110, n. 2. The oldest runes appear on arrowheads, Blinkenberg, Thunderweapon, 85; e.g., the Kovel spearhead. The strongest rune was an arrow, Williams, "On the Land of Ditmarsh," 388. 75. Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," 887. 76. Jensen, Assyrisch-babylonische Mythen und Epen, 45, 47; cf. E. D. Van Buren, "Seals of the Gods," Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 10 (1934): 170; Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947), 4:151; Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, 133. 77. Herzfeld, "Stempelsiegel," 53. 78. Jack Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 24-26. 79. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, F1066; Uno Holmberg, Finno-Ugric Siberian [Mythology] (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 1927), 404; Crawford, tr., Kalevala, 1:287; Herodotus, History V, 105; G. M. Bolling, "Divination (Vedic)," in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 4:829; Roth, "Animism and Folk-lore of Guiana Indians," 361. 80. Max Seligsohn, "Nimrod," in Isidore Singer, ed., Jewish Encylopedia, 12 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1905), 9:309-11; Book of Jasher 9:29. 81. Herodotus, History IV, 26; James G. Frazer, "The War of Earth on Heaven," in Apollodorus, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1921), 2:318-26; Crawford, tr., Kalevala, 1:287; Book of Jasher 9:20-26. 82. Karl Preisendanz, "Nimrod," in RE 17:624-28; Alfred Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 158-60; Book of Jasher 7:29-47; Clementine Recognitiones I, 30-31, in PG 1:1224-25. Josef Grivel, "Nemrod et les ‚critures cun‚iformes," Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 3 (1874): 141-43, gives a list of his sinister epithets. 83. Qur'an 2:258. 84. Sale, Koran, 269, note e; Otto Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Cramer, 1913), 2:447-51. The godless of Jurhum were destroyed in the same way, according to Al-Bakri, in Kitab Mu cjam ma Istacjam: Das geographische W”rterbuch des Abu cObeid cAbdallah ben cAbd el-cAzŒz el-BekrŒ, ed. Ferdinand Wstenfeld, 2 vols. (G”ttingen: Deuerlich, 1876-77), 1:25. 85. Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 95a. 86. Strabo, Geography VII, 4, 6. 87. Lucian, De Saltatione (On the Dance) 46, includes Odysseus among other mad giants. 88. Raymond O. Faulkner, "The `Cannibal Hymn' from the Pyramid Texts," JEA 10 (1925): 102, 97-103; Anton Deimel, Sumerische Grammatik (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1924), 142. 89. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 3:918-50; Ludwig Laistner, Das R„tsel der Sphinx, 2 vols. (Berlin: Hetz, 1889), 2:156, 225-28, 243-50. 90. Harold Peake and Herbert J. Fleure, The Steppe and the Sown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928), 59. 91. Phillip H. Leathes, "Exemption from the Forest Laws," Archaeologia 15 (1806): 209-24; Samuel Pegge, "On the Hunting of the Ancient Inhabitants of Our Island, Britons and Saxons," Archaeologia 10 (1792): 165-66; Dains Barrington, "Observations of the Practice of Archery in England," Archaeologia 7 (1785): 47, 50. 92. Grousset, L'Asie orientale, 304-5, 307; Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte, 2:122, 392-403. 93. On its sudden neglect, Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte, 2:487-88, 275-77; Sophus Mller, Nordische Altertumskunde, 2 vols. (Strassburg: Trbner, 1897): 1:253; Meyer, "Bows and Arrows in Central Brazil," 553, 560; Lucien M. Turner,"Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 11 (1888-1889): 312; La Flesche, "Omaha Bow and Arrow Makers," 487-88; Finsler, Homer, 1:2:69-71. On its readoption, Ernest Sprockhoff, "Pfeilspitze," in Max Ebert, Reallexicon der Vorgeschichte, 14 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1924), 10:106; Mller, Nordische Altertumskunde, 2:131; F. Lammert, "Pfeil," in RE 19:2:1427. 94. Pliny, Natural History XVI, 65. 95. Sprockhoff, "Pfeilspitze," 10:106, cf. 102-3; Peake and Fleure, Steppe and the Sown, 32; Carl Schuchhardt, Alteuropa (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1935), 135-37; Carleton S. Coon, The Races of Europe (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 166-68, 46-48, 71-74. 96. A few examples: Enuma Elish (Babylonian Creation Hymn) IV, 101-47; Heinrich Sch„fer, "Der Speer des Horus," Zeitschrift fr „gyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde 41 (1904): 68-70; Lepsius, "Der Bogen in der Hieroglyphik," 80, 85; Wainwright, "Letopolis," 162; Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, 2:297; Wernicke, "Apollon," in RE 2:23; Crawford, tr., Kalevala, 2:434 (Book 26); 1:284 (Book 19); M. Lauer, ed., Des Moses von Chorene Geschichte Gross-Armeniens (Regensburg: Manz, 1865), 22; Edward T. Werner, Myths and Legends of China (London: Harrap, 1922), 182; Culin, "Games of the North American Indians," 32-35. 97. For extensive comparisons, Blinkenberg, Thunderweapon, passim; Arthur B. Cook, Zeus, 3 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1914-40), 2:473, 574, 774, 777, 780, 786-89, 798-806, 1045-49; Edward D. Clarke, "On the Lituus of the Ancient Romans," Archaeologia 19 (1821): 386-400; H. B. Walters, "Poseidon's Trident," Journal of Hellenic Studies 13 (1892-93): 13-20; Benjamin W. Bacon, "Eagle and Basket on the Antioch Chalice," Annals of American Schools of Oriental Research 5 (1923-24): 6-8, 19; Yahuda, Accuracy of the Bible, 106-13. 98. For China, see Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," 882-83; on Ghenghis Khan and Prester John, see The Travels of Marco Polo, ed. Manuel Komroff (Garden City: Garden City, 1926), 87-88 (I, 49), the arrow nature of the staves being clear from William Crooke, Religion and Folklore of Northern India (Oxford: University Press, 1926), 309-10. On wands of office in the Near East, Clarke, "Lituus," 398; cf. the chart by T. Canaan, "Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine," Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 6 (1926): 129, pl. 4, who also shows how the weapon became a banner, 121, 123, 125-29; cf. Al-Waqidi, Futuh al-Sham (Calcutta: Thomas, 1854), 34; Joseph von Karabacek, "Zur orientalischen Altertumskunde I: Sarazenische Wappen," Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Philologisch-historische Klasse 157 (1908): 20-21. 99. Frederick J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1934), 1:13-15; the pedigree of the Imperial eagle is Asiatic; Bacon, "Eagle and Basket," 7. On Khian as first Cosmocrator, Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 1:475. 100. Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix (New York: Scribner, 1932), 204, n. 1; 379, 69; Danzel, Anf„nge der Schrift, 35. That the wasm of heraldry was originally an arrow-mark is clear from Al-Hariri, Maqamat, index, s.v. "wasm al-qidh." 101. Williams, "On the Land of Ditmarsh," 384-87; Danzel, Anf„nge der Schrift, 34-41; Edwin Freshfield, "Mason's Marks at Westminster Hall," Archaeologia 50 (1887): 2-4. "The Marks of Sundrye of Chief Mene of Virginia" (1590), as published in William W. Tooker, "The Swastika and Other Marks among the Eastern Algonkins," American Antiquarian 20 (1898): 339-40, are all arrows. 102. As in Scotland the arrow "crest" reproduces the mark of the owner's tartan, so the Arabs call the marked arrow and the striped garment of the nobility by the same name, sahm; Edward W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (London: William & Norgate, 1872), 1:4:1454-55, no. 8; Mal'uf, Al-Munjid (Beirut: Al-Tabca al-Kathaw-likiya, 1937), 30, s.v. "burd"; Ahlwardt, ed., Mu callaqat I, 79. For a like identity in the New World, see Meyer, "Bows and Arrows in Central Brazil," 553. 103. Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte, 1:550-57. 104. August Wnsche, Salomons Thron und Hippodrom, Abbilder des babylonischen Himmelsbildes (Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1906), passim; August von Gall, Basileia tou Theou (Heidelberg: Winter, 1926), 128-205; Morris Jastrow, "Adam and Eve in Babylonian Literature," American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 15 (1899): 193-214; Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, 1:11-12, 15-18; 2:98-101, 202; Albrecht G”tze, Kleinasien (Munich: Beck, 1933), 133-35; Michael Psellus, Xiphilin 442-44; Lucian, De Astrologio 987; Dio Chrysostom, Oratations XL, 32-41; XXXII, 63-66. Friedrich Dieterici, Thier und Mensch vor dem K”nig der Genien (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1879). Thaclabi, in Rudolf Brnnow, Chrestomathy of Arabic Prose-Pieces (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1895), 2. The literature on this theme is very voluminous. For early Christian versions, see Clement, First Epistle to the Corinthians 43, in PG 1:295; Apostolic Constitutions II, 56-57, in PG 1:722-38. 105. The Travels of Marco Polo, Komroff, ed., 104-8 (I, 60-61) (Great Khan); Grousset, L'Asie orientale, 341-43, 367, 364 (China and Indochina): Huart and Delaporte, L'Iran Antique, 283, 372; Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1925-44), 4:37, 39, 55, 56 (Persia); Jeremias, Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur, 177-80, 193; Daniel 4:21-37 (Babylonian-Assyrian). 106. William W. Tarn, "Ptolemey II," JEA 14 (1928): 247; Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Caeremoniis Aulae Byzantinae (On the Ritual of the Byzantine Court), Joseph J. Reiske, ed., in Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 2 vols. (Bonn: Weber, 1829), 1:404-6 (I, 89); Corippus, Justin II, 62; Byzantine Ceremonialbook (tenth century) in Gustav Soytes, Byzantinische Geschichtschreiber und Chronisten (Heidelberg: Winter, 1929), 33. On the Baghdad version, Adam Mez, The Renaissance of Islam (London: Luzac, 1937), 199. 107. Al-Biruni, Chronologie orientalischer V”lker, ed. Eduard C. Sachau (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1923), 226; cf., Mez, Renaissance of Islam, 419. The ancient feast of Artemis the huntress at Laphria was such an animal-drive, Pausanius, Description of Greece VII, 18, 8-13. On the jiwar, Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 83, 220-21; cf. Hermann Gollancz, The Book of Protection (London: Oxford University Press, 1912), xxxiv, xliii-xliv, esp. lxxxiv (no. 24); Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 4:142; B„chtold-St„ubli, Handw”rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 6:1400, 1404-6. See especially A. F. L. Beeston, "The Ritual Hunt: A Study in Old South Arabian Religious Practice," Le Mus‚on 61 (1948): 183-96. 108. W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites (London: Black, 1901), 95-96; Boaz Cohen, "An Essay on Jewish Law," Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 6 (1934-35): 124-25, 127, 136; Walter Ashburner, "The Farmer's Law," Journal of Hellenic Studies 30 (1910): 97; 32 (1912): 87. Cf. Plutarch, Solon XV, 5; Hesiod, Erga (Works and Days) 272-314; Varro, De Re Rustica I, 10, 2; Plutarch, Numa 16; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities III, 1, 3-5. 109. John Y. Akerman, "On Some of the Weapons of the Celtic and Teutonic Races," Archaeologia 34 (1852): 186. Yet in the Middle Ages only the rich used the bow; Thomas D. Kendrick, A History of the Vikings (New York: Scribner, 1930), 35; Mller, Nordische Altertumskunde, 1:253, 148; cf. La Flesche, "Osage Tribe," 364. 110. Hilary Jenkinson, "Exchequer Tallies," Archaeologia 62 (1911): 367-80; "Medieval Tallies, Public and Private," Archaeologia 74 (1924): 289-324. Tenting, Toll, and Taxing Even in the great classic treatises on the state, its image is never without a sinister side. The combination of unlimited power and limited wisdom can never be a reassuring one, but it is the actual behavior of sovereign states and princes that is most disturbing. The key to understanding the behavior of delinquents, we are often told, is an insight into early background and environment. It is the purpose of this paper to show how the state spent the most impressionable years of its childhood living as an orphan of the storm in tents of vagabonds where it acquired many of the habits and attitudes that still condition its activities. Scene I--An Open Place: Thunder and Lightning It was not until early in the present century that H. M. Chadwick pointed out what should have been obvious to everyone, namely, that epic literature, a large and important segment of the human record, is the product not of unrestrained poetic fancy but of real years of terror and gloom through which the entire race has been forced to pass from time to time. We now have good reason to believe, after many years of controversy and discussion, scientific and otherwise, that the violence of the elements that forms the somber backdrop of the "Epic Milieu" was more than a literary convention. Many ancient sources recall that after the waters of the Flood had subsided there came a great "Windflood" which converted large areas of the world to sandy deserts; A. Haldar considers the Sumerian version of the Windflood to be "an excellent example of a text describing historical events in terms of religious language." The historical reality is attested by windblown sand deposits from various and widely separated periods, which can be broadly correlated with some of the major migrations of peoples. According to S. N. Kramer, "The factors primarily responsible for the more characteristic features of the Greek, Indian, and Teutonic Heroic Ages" were at work "in the ancient Near East as a whole" in the earliest recorded times. These factors, i.e., a V”lkerwanderungszeit and a general disintegration of civilization, are always accompanied and aggravated if not caused by violent and prolonged atmospheric disturbances. Wherever we turn, the earliest records of the race offer the surprisingly uniform portrait of a wandering storm-driven hero--a Horus, Enlil, Marduk, Mazda, Zeus, Teshub, Celtic Mercury, or Norse Othinn, to name but a few--mounted on his thunder-wagon and leading his toiling hosts across the windy steppes while the earth trembles and the sky gives forth with appalling electrical displays. Biologists today are calling attention to the interesting theory that when man, ages before any recorded V”lkerwanderung, was forced out of whatever tropical paradise his body was and still is designed to inhabit, it was necessary for him to devise a system of air-conditioning in order to survive in a hostile alien environment. Within his clothes, as Sir Dudley Stamp observes, even the Eskimo "is living . . . in the steamy heat of the Amazon Forest." But the air he breathes must also be tempered, and this is possible only in the confines of a house which, since its owner must keep moving, is necessarily a portable house. During the crucial migrational phases of their existence, men have had to live in tents, superbly practical dwellings which, aside from making survival possible, have always satisfied the two deepest "felt needs" of the race, namely, the yearning for change and adventure and the equally strong craving for protection and security. The tent of the migratory chief is, as J. Morgenstern informs us, both the protective palladium of the tribe and its invitation to journey "through a totally unknown country." We have pointed out elsewhere in this volume that the earliest kings or leaders of the people lived in tents. Pharaoh, who ruled over the least migratory of people, performed every major function of his ritualized existence in a tent. Even the pillars of his palace suggest the poles of a tent that protects the wanderer by night in a strange land ( cf. fig. 4). Anu, the first and highest of Mesopotamian deities, is "the rider of the storms who occupies the dais nt] of sovereignty." The tent of Moses was a palladium for wandering Israel in "the desert of darkness." And when the oldest cities were overwhelmed by the great wind, the only refuge for the Lady Ishtar herself was in the tents of the nomads, which have ever been the asylum for the outcast and the last redoubt of afflicted humanity under siege by the elements. And if deity and sovereignty dwell in tents, such tents are understandably the proper place for oracular consultations, solemn counsel, and inspired leadership. The ancient tribal shrines of the Near East known variously as cutfa, markab, mahmal ( cf. fig. 5), qubba, bait, 'aron, tebet, and so forth, all had two characteristics in common: they were, according to Morgenstern, "all tents or tent-like structures," usually dome-shaped, and all were mounted on a box-like frame or understructure whose common name of merkab meant either wagon or ship, and shows that it was meant to provide mobility. In an important study A. Alf”ldi has recently made it possible for the student to enjoy the surprising spectacle of great royal tents moving all over the ancient world on their ceremonial wagons (cf. fig. 12, p. 120), while J. Smolian now describes the ritual itinerary of such vehicula sacra ( cf. fig. 6) in Europe and the East as common to both kings and gods. Both studies discuss the cosmic nature of the wheel-borne dome-shaped shrine or royal baldachin, for paradoxical as it may seem, such symbols of supreme stability as the throne, temple, holy city, and even sacred world-mountain are often depicted either as revolving wheels or as mounted and moving on wheels ( cf. figs. 7, p. 40, and 11, p. 117). Throughout the ancient world divinity and royalty, following the course and example of the heavenly bodies, moved through the spaces above and below in covered wagons or boats or in a combination of the two--the carrus navalis or ship-wagon of the carnival procession. Such vehicles were floats, moving through space in a state of suspension between heaven and earth. As the early migrants moved across the empty plains where, as Altheim has noted, the cleansing winds remove all tracks and landmarks, leaving only the stars as familiar guide-posts and companions, they felt themselves to be moving among the heavenly bodies, and actually that is what they were doing. In ritual and mythology the distinction between earth-travel and sky-travel often disappears, while the ceaseless play of lightning in the background is a constant reminder that the tremendous powers of the upper world are terribly real and not too far away. Holy Camp and Holy City For the nomads the qubba or domed red leather tent of the chief is the qibla by which the tribe when it camps takes its bearings in space (cf. fig. 5, p. 37), the qubba itself being oriented with reference to the heavenly bodies. For the Asiatics as well as the Romans the royal tent was a templum or tabernaculum, a sort of sacred observatory, being like the tabernacle of the camp of Israel and at the same time a kind of planetarium or "model of all the cosmos." The central pole of the tent is commonly identified with the pole of the heavens, and the tent itself with the Weltenmantel or expanse of the firmament; other tent-poles sometimes represent the four cardinal points or the two turning-points of the Sun at the summer and winter solstices. The tent-pole theme is carried over into the pillars of temples and palaces, and even into the columns of medieval churches and the stately fa‡ades of our own public buildings. The orientation of shrines, temples, cities, and countries to represent earthly counterparts of the cosmos has been the subject of intensive investigation of recent years. The first cities are now believed to have arisen around sacred shrines, of which the city itself, then the whole land, and finally the entire earth was thought to be an organic extension. It has also become apparent that the shrine or temple, which in time sought to draw all things into its orbit, always made its first appearance as a tent. The classic example is that portable tent that sheltered the Ark of the Covenant on its travels, for which Solomon's temple served only as a sort of temporary resting-place. The archaic ritual tents of the Pharaohs have their exact counterparts in the cult-huts of the Mandu, which in turn have been shown to be identical in form and function to the earliest reed-shrines of Mesopotamia as well as to the oldest Indo-European tent-shrines. And if the first temples were tents, the first cities, whether in Asia, Africa, or Europe, were camps. That fact is the key to the whole problem of the Holy City or hierocentric state, according to Korvin-Krasinski's observation: "The quartered pattern of the world and space with the cultic shrine in the center as representing a scale-model of the entire creation, is actually incomparably older than the world capital," having its origin "in the ceremonial camp," from which the pattern passed over to the city by way of the great Megalithic ritual complexes. We long ago called attention to the ceremonial camps that sprang up around the great hierocentric shrines during the year-rites, and to the manner in which they gave rise to certain enduring economic, political, artistic, and religious features of our civilization. The most wonderful thing about Jerusalem the Holy City is its mobility: at one time it is taken up to heaven and at another it descends to earth or even makes a rendezvous with the earthly Jerusalem at some point in space halfway between. In this respect both the city and the temple are best thought of in terms of a tent, according to Jerome, while the Church itself is also best represented as a tent, at least until the time comes when the saints "will no longer have to use a movable tent," according to the early Fathers, who get the idea from the New Testament. The Jewish sectaries of the desert referred to the law itself as "the royal tent," and thought of themselves quite literally as the camp of Israel sharing their tents with the heavenly hosts. The idea of the heavenly tent or Holy City as a place of safety suspended above the earth meets us also in the holy mountain and the shrine or city that stands upon it, the holy island of which the circular Atlantis is a type, such floating shrines as Noah's Ark and the moon-boat of the Syrian Goddess, and in such mysterious structures as the Hippodrome, Hadrian's Villa ( cf. fig. 8), and the Kacba, all of which were thought of as floating in their own space remote from contaminating earthly contacts. It is now fairly certain, moreover, that the great temples of the ancients were not designed to be dwelling-houses of deity but rather stations or landing-places, fitted with inclined ramps, stairways, passageways, waiting-rooms, elaborate systems of gates, and so forth, for the convenience of traveling divinities, whose sacred boats and wagons stood ever ready to take them on their endless junkets from shrine to shrine and from festival to festival through the cosmic spaces ( cf. fig. 6, pp. 38-39). The Great Pyramid itself, we are now assured, is the symbol not of immovable stability but of constant migration and movement between the worlds; and the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, far from being immovable, are reproduced in the seven-stepped throne of the thundering sky-wagon. Tent and City as Survival Outposts In the oldest records of the race, as Haldar has shown, the desert was a fearful reality, "the dead-world of the steppe, that began just outside the city wall." "The boldness of those early people who undertook to found permanent settlements in the shifting plains," wrote H. Frankfort, "had its obverse in anxiety." Mowinkel maintains that the very foundation of religious ritual is man's awareness that "the world of life and blessedness is completely surrounded by the world of death and damnation, the desert, the wasteland, das E-lend." The patch of green won from the desert by the waters of life or the circular clearing in the forest is a haven of refuge, a shelter and sacred vara in which men and animals seek refuge from the savage storms and equally savage monsters that range abroad in the vast outer world. At the beginning of the second book of his cosmology, al-Kazwini describes the first city as a sort of survival outpost, set up by determined cooperative effort on an all but uninhabitable planet. It is like a "space station," hermetically sealed off from the hostile surroundings, completely self-contained with gardens and pastures included within its protecting walls, and fully equipped with mosques, markets, baths, and those means of aesthetic and intellectual fulfillment which keep men from becoming a danger to each other through boredom and overcrowding. More familiar in Oriental literature is the image of the super-palace in its fortified oasis, whose inhabitants become overconfident in their safety and end their days in wicked debauchery as the great and spacious building goes down in ruins before the storm. The concept is still with us: "This desire to dwell on a safe little island," writes L. Vax, "is what we call humanism. It is nothing but the wish to build a city which will shut out both the sub-human and the super-human." Once safe within the walls we hear "the laugh of the libertines, . . . meant to give them a feeling of relative security," but in reality an expression of an inescapable fear of the terrors without. That it is indeed the externi timor that brings cities into existence and keeps them going is indicated by what is called "the paradox of the Moslem city," the paradox being that while in Moslem civilization the city is "the indispensable focal point of all material and spiritual culture," life within such a city is completely "anorganic and disorganized." What preserves the life of such imperishable communities as Mecca, Damascus, Jerusalem, and so forth, as Professor Godbey pointed out long ago, is the fact that they never lose their original significance as shrines and asylums, thanks to the unbroken persistence of the first conditions under which they were founded, namely the presence of a real and dangerous wilderness just outside the gates; the holy city is forever a place of refuge in a hostile world. The obsessive awareness of constant and lurking danger without, which brought the city into existence, is no less fundamental in the formation of the state; the transcendent importance of the king lies in the conviction that with him there is safety, he alone can cope with the powers of death and outer darkness, meeting them head-on in the yearly ritual-combat and spending the rest of the year making his rounds in his perennial task of imposing divine order on the benighted outer fringes of the universe. The Royal Progress In his divine mission of extending the dominion of light and order the king is constantly leading his embattled hosts into dark and unknown regions on an eternal Royal Progress. The student of the Royal Progress who confines his attention to the medieval and modern sources is puzzled to find the practice flourishing in such widely scattered places as Ireland, Central Africa, and the islands of the South Pacific, while it is absent on the steppes of Europe and Asia where one would normally expect to find migrating kings. Actually the Royal Progress is a world-wide institution of great antiquity, which turns up in a few backward corners of the world in later times precisely because it is only in such places that the primitive conditions necessary to its existence survive. If, for example, among the nineteenth-century Baganda there could be no capital because "for each king a new royal enclosure is built," the same system prevailed in the Old Kingdom of Egypt where, "paradoxically enough, the capital was less permanent than the towns in the provinces, for in principle it served for only a single reign. . . . Until the middle of the Second Millennium b.c. . . . there was no truly permanent capital in Egypt." If the Tartars and Mongols built no temples or cities because their gods traveled about on wheels, the same held true of the Hittites and Persians before them. In medieval Europe it was the rule for a king to have no capital but to move continually from place to place with his whole court in a set ceremonial Progress which never ceased. Such mobility, according to the latest and fullest study of the subject, was "the very essence of royal existence," prevailing in fact "in any situation characterized by a typically feudal structure of government," that is, in any Heroic Age or Epic Milieu. The Royal Progress ideally followed the course of the sun, setting out from the scene of the coronation at the winter solstice and ending up at the same spot exactly a year from the day of departure; it was so arranged that each of the major solar festivals would be celebrated at some important shrine along the way, each such celebration being a minor repetition of the coronation rite itself. The whole operation is astonishingly like that of Egypt, where the usages of the Royal Progress are well documented from the beginning. In Egypt as in the West the king's purpose in going from place to place is to be recognized and acclaimed as the bringer of good things, but it is also very apparent that along with the festive and sacral aspects of the royal parousia (and that word establishes significant ties between eastern and western, Christian and pagan practices), the King's Progress was meant to dramatize the original seizure and subduing of the land; it is always the triumphal procession of a victor, pacifying the land, receiving formal submission, suppressing rebellion, rewarding loyalty, imposing justice and order on the world. The Royal Progress goes back originally, according to Peyer, to the overrunning of "conquered farmers and herdsmen" by "cattle-owning nomadic tribes. Hence," he concludes, "the journeys and entertainment of the ruler (Herrscherreise und Gastung) appear as the result of the superimposing of the authority of nomadic warriors over sedentary agrarians." This, we have maintained, is exactly the situation attested by the evidence of the "marked arrow" in many parts of the world. The Royal Progress is a survival of the V”lkerwanderung, an annual repetition of the Landnahme, with the king receiving the ecstatic (often compulsory) acclamations of the inhabitants, while long lines of cattle and hostages--the children of local chiefs who might make trouble--were being brought to the "gisting" places as tribute. Wherever the king went the people were expected to "guest" him and his company for three nights, though it was common practice for them to move on after a night or two. Since the whole existence of royalty was a brilliant and impressive progress through the lands, kings were never able to stop the parade without forfeiting their principal glory; and so the splendid royal junkets, arrogant and benevolent, religious and military in nature, which both overawed their subjects and alarmed their neighbors, remained right down until World War I "not an optional policy but an organic need" for the rulers of Europe and Asia. In the Saga of Dietrich of Bern, a basic source for the understanding of the way of kings, ancient and medieval, Asiatic and European alike, we see the great Attila not as a destroyer but as a beneficent liberator moving ever from one stathr to the next, staying but one night in each and hunting in between. For the Royal Progress is also the Royal Hunt, and animals are expected to be as compliant as men to the rule of the Cosmocrator. In the West the king was before everything the Lord of the Forest, his sylvan sovereignty resting on his immemorial rights as a hunter. Hence the royal beneficium to obedient subjects was originally the king's permission to use his forest for woodcutting and grazing--not for hunting; and the gradual reduction of the common people to a state of total servility toward the end of the Middle Ages was effected largely through the manipulation of the forest laws, first by the barons and then by moneyed investors, whose legalistic legerdemain in dealing with forest laws resulted, according to Thimme, in the concept of "property and dominion as we understand them today." But originally there was only one king of the forest, and he was a hunter. On his progress along the King's Highway or Royal Road, the monarch spent his nights at castles which were not proper dwellings but rather guarded supply-dumps and fortified camping-places, where one ate, slept, and worked under canopies with rushes and straw beneath one. "Nearly all the great Seigneurs," writes Peyer, "from the earliest times had no fixed residence, but moved ceaselessly from castrum to castrum," where the necessary supplies had been gathered to provide for the guesting of the lord and the support of his military plans. The meaning of the well-known derivatives of castrum--camp (castra) and castle--needs no discussion. The stopping-places of the Merovingian and Carolingian rulers was a Pfalz (palatium, palace), from the old word for a domed tent, designating also "the celestial vault, the tent of heaven," that is, the age-old qubba of the nomad chief. The basic idea is never lost from sight as kings continue to feast, sleep, and sit in state beneath gorgeous tents called variously pavilions, canopies, baldachins, heavens, and "states"--for the king to sit in state means in the strict sense of the word to be in his statio or camping-place on the march (cf. fig. 11, p. 117). Trespassing Heroes Since the business of the royal and priestly qubba was "to lead the people upon a migration through a totally unknown country, to select for them the road which they must travel, and to indicate for them the place of their ultimate settlement," the problem of possible trespassing becomes a very serious one for the owner of the tent. "The laws of tenting," says the Talmud, "are the most difficult and complicated in all the written and oral law." Since the wanderers are seeking a favored land, they are bound to find the place inhabited if they ever get there; and in the eyes of the natives, the invaders can only appear as godless and evil men, the Wild Huntsmen, the feralis exercitus. "The steppe is the underworld," wrote A. Jeremias, "and in oriental tales the hunter is the Man of the Underworld." The attitude of the settled dwellers in the land toward their invaders is vividly set forth in a passage from the early Christian Psalms of Thomas: I looked into the Abyss and saw the Evil One With his Seven Companions and Twelve attendants; I saw them putting up his tent and lighting the fire in it. . . . I saw their traps and their tents spread out. . . . And I saw them lying about, drinking their stolen wine and eating their stolen meat. But there is something to be said for the other side. The red tent moved into lands only "in sheer desperation, when the very existence of the . . . tribe was at stake." Achilles makes it clear at the beginning of the Iliad that it was not his idea to leave his own domains to plunder other men's; the invader is not acting from choice. The nobility of the Epic Hero is that in his tragic predicament he does what he must, and even his innocent victims amid their cries of distress never accuse him of base or reprehensible behavior. The great folk-heroes such as Odysseus, Aeneas, Abraham, Siegfried, or Abu Zaid are all homeless wanderers, never sure of their status or reception in strange places and often reduced to dissembling and even to begging in situations of almost unbearable tension. Many ancient monarchs sought to relieve the unpleasant tensions raised by the trespassing issue by simply making a virtue of necessity, glorying in their irresistible and hence divinely sanctioned might and grabbing everything they could as if by right. Yet even the fiercest of these, such as the Assyrian monarchs or Genghis Khan, categorically deny that their dominion is held by force alone, and tirelessly insist that they conquer and rule by an express mandate from heaven--even the bloody-minded hero of the Egyptian Cannibal Hymn waves a written document for all to see, "a warrant of appointment as `Great Mighty One' . . .given him by Orion, Father of the Gods." Surprisingly enough, the apparently academic question of trespassing was of great concern to the rulers of old. A clear demonstration of that concern is to be found in the well-known ritual combat of the Year Rite, a showdown between two armed heroes, each claiming to be the legitimate heir to dominion and accusing his rival of usurpation and fraud in the long-winded legalistic stichomachia that should always precede a formal duel. It is the classic showdown between the invader and the invaded, each accusing the other of trespass: for if the defenders of a land have the sacred mission of preserving the established order from the onslaughts of monsters from the outer darkness, the invaders are led by a knight in shining armor who finds the land in possession of the Dragon, the Lord of Misrule, from whose primordial misgovernment it is his sacred duty to deliver it. The theme has recently been studied by J. Trumpf, who notes that the foundation of an ancient city can never proceed in peace and order until the local dragon, who has misruled and oppressed the land from time immemorial, is got out of the way. Trumpf duly observes (as we also have done) that the nomads of the steppes, that is, the normal invaders, refuse to acknowledge the humanity of an enemy but can conceive of any opposition to themselves only as some form of monstrous perversion, the annihilation of which is a holy calling. Thus they clear themselves of the charge of trespassing. But just who is the trespasser? By what right do the prior inhabitants of the land possess it? After all, the Trojans had sacked as many cities and stolen as many cattle as the Achaeans who invaded them. In the old bestiaries it is the animals who claim prior occupancy and accuse the human race of trespassing upon the earth; the notable treatise on the theme by the "Chaste Brethren of Basra" depicts all the animals assembled before the throne of Solomon to sue the human race for trespassing--they complain that men have driven them from their homelands and have continued to pursue them even into the deserts without any vestige of legal right, like Shakespeare's banished nobility who go to the woods to act like "mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse, to fright the animals, and to kill them up in their assign'd and native dwelling-places." Although practically any nomad chief who had both people and cattle at his back considered himself to be legitimate, all such people, as Tacitus observed, are liable to meet their nemesis in others of their kind with which occasional collisions are inevitable. The result is a showdown, a trial of arms in the chivalric or horse-rider's manner, which no true ruler can escape. The code of chivalry is not a settlement worked out between farmers and nomad warriors, between whom there is no real understanding or even communication, but rather a system of settling the touchy question of possession between parties neither of whose claims will stand too close an examination. The claims of brute force are denied in favor of the idea that combat itself, if attended by the proper formalities, is a form of divination which clearly proclaims the will of heaven in the assignment of property. Furthermore, what is won by combat must be maintained by combat, and the proud and truculent mottoes of heraldry were a standing invitation to trial at arms. A noble was required and expected to invite assault, according to the rules of chivalry, "because everyone seeks distinction, one mark of which is to offend fearlessly." "An insult," writes F. R. Bryson, commenting on this, "was regarded as causing one of the two parties to lose honor," thereby forcing him to fight to get it back. The prince who hesitated to take issue when another set foot on his lands vi et armis ("by force and by arms," still the official definition of trespassing) actually forfeited his right to their possession, as did the German rulers after the death of Charles the Bald who, by failing to expel poaching barons from their forest lands, forfeited the legal claim on those lands to the barons. The Battle for the Tent The combat between chiefs was no mere brawl but a splendid and formal affair, with time, place, and procedure stipulated ahead of time. Whether it was a set battle between Pharaoh and an invading desert chief, or a ritual chariot race between rival Vedic princes, or a set-to between Asiatic war lords, played like a game of chess, or the elaborately ordered duels of the sagas or jousts of the Middle Ages, it was understood that the winner was to take all, usually including the erstwhile loyal retainers of the loser. The correct and formal method of announcing one's intention of occupying a land was by the pitching of a red tent upon it, such a tent proclaiming the owner's "unique position as universal ruler--a superman and a cosmic being, according to the views of the ancients." To the many examples given by Morgenstern we might add that Adam in the beginning, according to an old and widespread tradition, took possession of the world as he journeyed through it by setting up his red leather tent wherever he went. How old the tradition may really be can be surmised from a prehistoric Egyptian festival in which the Besitzergreifung des Landes, according to W. Helck, was dramatized by the setting up of red and white tents representing the two worlds in conflict. Everywhere in the ancient world the chief's banner and tent served together and interchangeably as his flag of defiance wherever he went. The setting up of the tent of the Ark at Gilgal was a formal Landnahme, according to von Rad; and among the Arabs "to pitch one's tent on strange or disputed ground was a deed of honor." The sacred tent and the royal tent when they are not one and the same are always pitched side by side, as Morgenstern explains, pointing out that the tent of inspiration makes it possible for "an entire people [to] wander about in a strange and unknown country with reasonable assurance, and . . . at last find its proper place for resettlement." "The tent of the Lord will not be replaced by a permanent tent," wrote the first of the Christian Doctors, "until the final combat when the Lord has put all his enemies beneath his feet and bound the dragon." The early sectaries of the desert, as they raise the tent of defiance to the hosts of Evil, view their own tents as the camp of the hosts of heaven ready to dispute for the possession of the earth. When Alexander had seized the tent of Darius he had achieved his final military victory, for by that act, following an ageless tradition, all the Great King's holdings were formally transferred to him. And when Eumenes after the death of Alexander "found it useful to carry with him as a mascot Alexander's tent, which he could represent as still inhabited by his great master's spirit," he was really announcing to the world that the universal empire was now his. The Greeks need not have borrowed the chivalric pattern from the Orient, for already in the Iliad Poseidon, "the owner of the earth," as both his name and his epithet, Gaie-ochos, show him to be, rushes into the council of the gods in great alarm crying: O Father Zeus, what mortal upon the boundless earth will ever again credit the gods with intelligence or ability? Haven't you seen how these long-haired Greeks have actually built a wall around their ships and dug a ditch, without having paid for the privilege by appropriate offerings of submission to us? The fame and honor of that deed will spread as far as the sun shines, while all that Phoebus Apollo and I have won in fair combat from the hero Laomedon [i.e., the original holder of Ilium] will be forfeited. The whole concept of chivalry is embraced in those lines. Of course the royal tent is surrounded by a camp. At the primordial battle for the possession of the world the Titans camped on Mount Ortys while over against them on Mount Olympus stood the camp of the gods. In the days before Rome the kings of the Veii, Volsci, Aequi, and other tribes used to challenge each other by camping on each other's lands, the hosts being arranged aequo campo conlatisque signis (on a level plain with standards joined together), in the best Oriental manner, with the avowed intention of carrying off cattle and everything else unless stopped. When the Romans joined in the game their king would cast a spear into the enemy's land "to claim a place for their tents" (ut castris locum caperent), with a formal invitation to the owners to submit or fight. In northern and eastern Europe where "the lords of the land established their dominion by open combat," we have the stirring picture of two imperial tents, landtioldr, pitched in groves on either side of a fair field, each surrounded by the tents of its retainers um stathinn, as the mobile base from which the land was to be seized and governed. By herald and trumpet the two rulers challenge each other to a trial of arms and fight according to strict and formal rules. Almost a thousand years later we find the same sport in the great tournament of Calais. "Three vermillion-coloured pavilions were pitched near the appointed place for the lists," Froissart reports, "and before each were suspended two shields, one for peace and one for war. . . .Any who desired to perform a deed of arms was required to touch one or both of these shields." Hearing of the challenge on the disputed soil of Calais, the nobility of England "said they would be blameworthy if they did not cross the sea," which they did in large numbers--for not to accept a challenge is as ignoble as not to give one. "Sir John Holland was the first who sent his squire to touch the war-target of Sir Boucicault who instantly issued from his tent completely armed," and the tournament was on. The procedure was faithfully repeated for all the days of the affair; an English knight would touch the "war-shield" of a French lord sitting fully armed and out of sight in his tent, waiting to rush forth with great fury at the first hint of a challenge. Even more puerile than such antics was the ritual attack on the tent itself. Since set combat was forbidden after sundown, the wee small hours were reserved for the standard attack on the rival's tent, a vital maneuver, since once the tent had fallen the enemy's morale, and often his resistance, was broken. A particularly realistic version is the sequel to the brutal trespassing of the Adversary in the Psalm of Thomas mentioned above: the issue was settled when the true Lord burst on the scene, "pulled up their tent and threw it over on to the ground, kicked out their fire, tore open their nets and set free all the captive birds in them." The ultimate in heroic gestures for the Arab was a night-raid on the tent of a chief: "They suddenly knock down the principal tent-poles," Burckhardt reported 130 years ago, "and whilst the surprised people are striving to disengage themselves, . . . the cattle e] driven off by the assailants," though the main purpose is to get not cattle but honor. Among the nomads the overthrow of a man's tent signifies the dissolution of his fortunes, for his whole existence centers around the main pole of his tent. When Crum, the Great Khan of the Bulgars, made a night-raid on the tent of the Emperor Nicephorus, he made a drinking-cup of his rival's skull to commemorate the exploit. The tent-raid is by no means limited to the East. Froissart tells how Lord James Douglas rode into the English camp by night, "galloped to the King's tent, and cut two or three of its cords, crying at the same time, 'Douglas! Douglas forever!' " Fauquement did the same thing in the Duke of Normandy's camp, "cutting down tents and pavilions, and then, seeing that it was time, collecting his people and retreating most handsomely." Trumpf is puzzled by the peculiar rite with which the oldest Greek founding festival, the Septrion, commemorated Apollo's victory over the Python and the founding of the world-center at Delphi. What is peculiar is that there is no dragon in the rite, but that should not seem strange since Trumpf himself has the acumen to notice that Pytho the dragon simply represents the original inhabitants of the land. Instead of a dragon-fight there is a troupe of men bearing torches and led by a youth representing Apollo, who in the dead of night steal up in perfect silence on a tent or reed booth; suddenly they throw their torches into the tent, setting it afire, overturn a table that stands in it, and then run away like mad without looking back. An odd type of dragon-fight, to be sure, but one whose significance should be clear by now; it is particularly interesting because of its great antiquity. Alternatives to Fighting: Toll and Taxing Let us recall that what so alarmed Poseidon the landowner at the sight of a strange camp on his shores was the failure of the campers to make proper payment for the privilege of setting up on his land. They were digging in, and unless immediately called to account would cause the owners to lose both face and property with nothing but glory for themselves--trespassers are not trespassers if they can get away with it. Everywhere certain allowance is made for campers who are merely passing through a country; all that is demanded of them is good behavior and a three-day time limit. But those who frequented a land for long or regular periods were required to pay tolls and purchase safe-conduct to keep things from getting out of hand. The derivation of the word toll is very doubtful, but on one thing all the authorities are agreed, that it is derived from Late Latin tolonium, meaning a toll-booth or tent. Toll is defined as "payment exacted . . . by virtue of sovereignty or lordship . . . for permission to pass somewhere." Specifically it is "a charge for the privilege of bringing goods for sale to a market or fair, or setting up a stall. . . . It can only be claimed by a special grant from the Crown." It was collected at a toll-booth, "formerly, a temporary shed erected at a market, etc., for payment of tolls . . . a booth, stall, or office at which tolls are collected." Wherever the merchants pass, even on the sands of the Gobi desert, the tent of the toll-collector awaits them. The great fairs of Europe were tent-cities, temporary camps set up yearly on the king's land, where foreigners were allowed for a set period to camp and set up their booths. The two things to notice about toll are (1) that the word always goes back to a tent or booth of some kind--which makes one wonder whether it might not once have meant "tent-money" (Danish told "toll," teld "tent"), and (2) that it is a token payment only, given in recognition of sovereignty or lordship and never as a business arrangement between equals; it does not cover damages nor defray expenses but simply recognizes ownership by a prescribed ritual and solicits as a privilege permission to camp on another's land at a designated spot and for a limited and specified period of time. A tax, like a toll, is payment for temporary occupation of another's land, with the difference that the occupation in this case lasts for a whole year, at the end of which a new tax must be paid. The oldest taxes on record are those tributes of the produce of the land (a tithe or a fifth), which were brought to the designated collection centers, the local shrines of the god who owned the land, as "rent paid for the use of the land." In making the collection and spending it in pious works the king was the god's agent and the priests were his assistants. Thus the earliest temple "functioned actually as the manor-house on an estate." Since as countless hymns inform us, God owns the earth and all that is in it, any payments made by men to him are the purest token payments, given not because he needs them but as a gesture acknowledging his ownership. That is why failure to pay even a trivial tax calls forth quick and savage reprisals which are out of all proportion to the money involved but represent the correct official reaction to an act of open defiance. For refusal to pay implies willingness to fight and vice versa. From the earliest times a king might live in peace with another by paying him socage, that is, "money rent. . . not burdened with any military service," i.e., money paid to avoid fighting. When Sir Robert Knolles asked the Duke of Picardy, "How much will you pay us in ready money for all this country if we will not despoil it?" he was not cynically selling the Duke "protection," since the latter was expected to meet in joyful combat any who came to despoil his lands. As explained in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word tax in its many contexts always retains the basic idea of a charge brought against an intruder; to be taxed always implies an element of trespass, and the paying of a tax always has the flavor of appeasement. The only thing sure about the root meaning of the word according to Skeat is that it signifies "to touch" or tag, suggesting to the ingenuous mind a possible connection between being taxed and being tagged: once one's war-shield has been touched one must choose between settling with the challenger by meeting him in arms or by giving him a token of submission for the luxury of remaining in one's possessions without a fight. The paying of tolls and taxes was not a declaration of loyalty to the recipient and his way of life, but a bid to be free of both. The zeal with which the peasants of Europe clamored to have the "irksome personal services" including the picturesque performances of the droit de gite converted into a money tax or cash payment, the eagerness of "the wealthy franklin [to pay] money rather than be dubbed a knight," and the insistence even of the lesser nobility on paying socage to enjoy "freedom from scutage," i.e., the obligation of chivalry, all express the basic idea of the money-tax as a settlement defining the limits of obligation beyond which the payer is free. No such area of personal freedom was allowed by the mystique of feudalism, which was a sacred covenant of total commitment. Likewise toll is paid by strangers in a country not as an act of fealty, but for the express purpose of remaining strangers without being considered enemies or trespassers. The theory that one was taxed to support the strong arm of the nobility in return for its protection against attackers from without was a late and contrived one that effaced the original significance of the tax as an escape from feudal obligations. The Old Order Remaineth But feudalism has ever been tenacious of its holdings and with the assistance of the lawyer and the priest has managed to hold its own in the most adverse circumstances. Far from fading into the past, "absolute monarchies," as H. Kohn puts it, "were the pacemakers of modern nationalism." Far from presenting a gradual unfolding of human liberties, the passing of the Middle Ages brings only their progressive curtailment as the seizure of the common forest right by the "ungezgelte[n] Jagdlust der M„chtigen" (the unbridled passion of the mighty for hunting) is succeeded by the acquisition of those rights by wealthy commoners who finally exclude the public from the forest altogether. At the end of the Middle Ages Geoffrey Tˆte-Noire was considered something of a monster because "none dared ride over his lands"; but it took the modern free world to come up with the absolute dominion of the No Trespassing sign. The survival of the feudal or chivalric way of life into modern times can be illustrated by Froissart's Chronicle, that "complete body of the antiquities of the 14th century," in which the king commands respect and loyalty only to that degree to which he risks his person in single combat and expends the devoted energies of his people in tireless military campaigning, where the nobility live frankly by pillage, ever "seeking adventures . . . for by all means, allowed by the laws, of arms, every man ought to molest his enemy," where the great prelates of the church raided each other's domains in the perennial manner of the war lords of the steppes. A leading role is played by the terrible free companies, who played exactly the same game as the nobility and "made war on every man that was worth robbing." Even the common people when they arose in their might to shake off the oppressor operated in the accepted manner, organizing themselves into bannered companies and placing (by force if necessary) those of noble birth at their head, impatient of the lord who sat peacefully at home, but willing to follow to the death any noble who would lead them to deeds of glory and rapine on others' lands. In short, all classes aspire to the same glory and think of success in the same terms, because it never occurs to them that there might be any other standard of achievement. (Even our own society remains hypnotized by the same goals that drew Froissart's "perfect prince," Caston de Foix, who "loved earnestly the things he ought to love," namely gold, food, sports, shows, "arms and amours" and above all a successful business deal.) The cities were no exception, but "during the late Middle Ages . . . grew less democratic and took on more of the coloring of their aristocratic ambience." They achieved independence only to place themselves under the great war lords or exalt their own leading citizens to noble rank as they sent formal challenges to each other and raided each other's possessions in the best chivalric manner. The long-debated question of whether European cities were founded primarily for protection or for trade ended with a split decision, since the two advantages are inseparable and at any rate seem to yield priority to religion, for early markets and towns grew out of "seasonal meetings of hunters" devoted to ancient religious observances. But whether it began as a shrine, market, or fortified place of refuge, the city always starts out as a camp, to judge by the root meanings of the various words for it: civitas from *kei-, "camp," Stadt from Old German stedir, "Landungsplatz"; Statt (our state) from statio, a stopping-place on the march; burg from phyrkos, the hastily built fence surrounding a fortified camp (town refers to the same fence, as does the Slavic gorod). The Arabic mahalla is also a stopping-place on the march, and it has been shown that madina, long thought to come from din, a place of judgment, is to be related to maidan, a campground or jousting-field. The rising cities of the Middle Ages naturally resented the archaic claims and method of the lords in their castles, but they resented them out of envy as they aspired to the same rights and privileges. Gastrecht, Schutzzoll, and Stapelrecht were urban versions of tenting-rights, toll, and taxing respectively, and as such were administered with a severity that only the most tyrannical baron would have risked. The cities offered Pfahlbrgertum or shanty-town citizenship to those who deserted their lords to settle in tent-cities outside the city walls, where they continued to pay a tax for camping on the city's land. City merchants complained loudly against the onerous toll charger of the barons even while they levied a high Schutzzoll on goods passing through their own territories. And while the droit de gite was steadily whittled away for the king, the cities used their Gastrecht and Stapelrecht to forbid transients to acquire property or engage in any business while in the city. What the cities most resented was the baronial courts of law, yet whenever they gained power, the leading property-owners of the town held a tight monopoly on all judicial offices. Stadtluft macht frei (the city air makes one free) not only by offering shelter and anonymity to the refugee, but no less by opening the doors of aggrandizement and even nobility to the citizen. The Rights of Man But what of human rights, the rights of man? Do they not break away at last from the old ideology? They do not. They are a product of the Enlightenment, which put nature in the place of God and made man a child not of heaven but of earth. Naturalism and Humanism find man's origin in the earth and its elements: it is as a literal excrescence of the planet that mankind has an inalienable right to its substance and its living-space. Baconian science, the founding fathers, French revolutionaries, Physiocrats, English liberals, pragmatic philosophers and educationists, free-enterprising capitalists and Marxists all see eye to eye on one basic point and share with each other and the ancient lords of the steppes the fundamental gospel of One World: it is here below in "the things of this world" that a man must seek his fulfillment. Instead of putting an end to the wild dreams of Nimrod, the mad hunter of old who aspired to bring all creatures under his sway and in the best chivalric manner challenged God to a duel for possession of the world, modern scientific thinking tends to confirm man's forlorn hope of seizing the earth for himself. The monarchs of the past in their search for permanent tenure went to spectacular extremes to convince themselves and the public that it was their calling to reign here below as Lords of Eternity in the Garden of Delights: from prehistoric Egypt to modern England the Master of the King's Tents and Revels has exerted himself to present to the eyes of men majesty benignly reclining in a garden bower as he presides over a feast of abundance to which all the world is invited. This royal mummery was the greatest tent-show on earth, according to Alf”ldi, and it was staged all over the ancient world in rites which "represent[ed] a harmony between man and the divine which is beyond our boldest dreams." And yet the great garden party soon becomes a great bore, as king and caliph discover in countless popular tales and legends; this world can offer but a peep-show paradise after all. The whole thing, aside from being enormously expensive, is too strenuous and contrived for real delight--it is vanity fair, the tent-city from which the robber Pilgrim is only too glad to escape even with empty pockets, provided, of course, that he has some other world, some New Jerusalem, to escape to. The Other Nomads The yearning for such a world and the faith in its existence, or even the mere possibility of its existence, has always offered an alternative to the heavy-handed warrior's solution to the problem of survival in a hostile world. Pilgrims, like all nomads, have a deep distrust of anything that might tie them down or hamper their freedom of movement. The city especially, designed to make man forget the marginal and nomadic nature of life on earth and hence lose sight of the distant Celestial City, is to the pious pilgrim an object of loathing and suspicion. Not only do the early Jews and Christians think of themselves as das wandernde Gottesvolk (the wandering people of God), and not only does the dogmatic constitution of the church (1964) adopt for Roman Catholics the surprising title of "The Wayfaring Church," but obsession with the idea of life as a pilgrimage is no less conspicuous in Islam, the religions of the Far East, and classical antiquity--was there ever a more Passionate Pilgrim than Pindar? How do the pilgrim bands make out with the jealous, suspicious, and insecure lords of the earth? In rendering to Caesar what was Caesar's (cf. Matthew 22:21), the early Christian was not recognizing divine sovereignty but buying his way out; a sharp distinction was made between paying Caesar tax-money that was his (and there is no question of excessive taxation since what Caesar owns is nothing less than the orbis terrarum itself), and giving him the homage of a pinch of incense. The latter act was an acknowledgment of divinity, and a good Christian died sooner than make the concession, while the former was merely a recognition of ownership. The early Christians were urged to "make . . . friends of the mammon of unrighteousness" (Luke 16:9) as the best way to be rid of him, paying quickly and gladly whatever fees the masters of the earth imposed on them. Then they went their way, resolutely refusing to own lands or houses of their own which, they felt, would encumber them with worldly obligations and vitiate their status as strangers and pilgrims. It is understandable that the lords temporal and spiritual looked upon popular pilgrimages as dangerous and unnecessary. For the pilgrim is unattached, with a knowing and superior sort of aloofness inherited from the sectaries of the desert, that cool detachment that has ever brought down upon the heads of the Jews the baffled wrath and fury of the lords of the earth. For unless the feudal mystique with appurtenances is taken seriously, it becomes high comedy and its authority collapses. What more deadly threat to the whole system than refusal to enter into the spirit of the thing? And pilgrims do refuse; they are not to be bought off, and though they are sometimes skillful at procuring safe-conducts for themselves in spite of the determined efforts of the lords of the land to deny them all freedom of movement, such passports are, like the payment of tolls, a declaration not of allegiance but of independence. The Crusades were a grandiose attempt to combine the two types of nomadism. It was the great lords themselves who after bringing economic, political, and moral collapse on Europe by their violent and irresponsible ways offered to lead the people of the West back to the Holy City, and when they got there affected to establish the perfect model of feudalism in the Assizes of Jerusalem. In this document we have the supreme attempt of men of violence to put the stamp of holiness on their possessions, enlisting the awful sanctions of religion to secure for themselves the holdings which they had seized from each other in total disregard of any right, and imposing an eternal and inviolable stability upon an order established by wild and tumultuous brawling. In the Crusades the whole legal and ecclesiastical fiction of feudalism, laboriously contrived and stunningly staged, soon degenerated into a sordid free-for-all in which those who sought to possess this world and the other at once, wearing the armor of conquest beneath the sacrosanct robes of unworldly pilgrims, ended up possessing neither. The Return to Outer Space Philosophy today is much concerned with the feelings of loneliness and insecurity that beset modern man. He is depicted as a displaced person, allergic to his environment, adapted "by at least five hundred million years of vertebrate evolution" to one type of life, but forced to settle for an entirely different one. Man is so far from home, indeed, that biologists profess themselves at a loss to discover to just what type of environment he is really suited. In his present parlous state he behaves as harassed and insecure animals do, as many studies are now discovering. We find in both human and animal communities two fundamental types of social hierarchy, an "absolute hierarchy," represented by the now-classic pecking-orders, and a "territorial hierarchy," in which men and beasts alike possess and defend given territories according to strict and formal rules. A creature's territory is "not so much . . . a solid area as . . . a number of places," which the owner visits in regular rounds; if in his rounds he discovers that an alien has invaded any part of his territory the owner is under obligation to fight or submit as a vassal to the aggressor. At once the heroic feudal pattern springs to mind; and it is reinforced by the important rule that these highly formal hierarchies of status and possession come into existence only when the animals are all under pressure, that is, where optimum living conditions no longer prevail due to overcrowding or other factors, or in other words, where there has been a "Fall," the creature having been forced out of its original paradise. Strangely enough, the idea now being put forth by scientists of a long human preexistence in a world quite different from the one in which man now finds himself is basic in the early Jewish and Christian, as well as Oriental and Platonic thinking, all of which have a strongly nostalgic other-worldly orientation. Science and religion now join philosophy in asking, "Why does man feel himself a stranger in the world of nature?" It is not only the desperate hero of the epic who feels out of place; even the easy-living Victorian romantic resents his earthly environment and hints at his kinship with a higher world. If this is indeed our only home, as the prevailing philosophy teaches, if this is the only world we have ever known, and if conditions have been constant enough to allow "five hundred million years" of survival without a break, why are we perpetually ill at ease in our environment instead of being beautifully adapted to it? Why are we constantly beset by yearnings for paradise? And why do we look upon those who claim to be happily at home in the present setting as either sick souls, cretins, or hypocrites? It is a significant thing that those societies which have most emphatically renounced any belief in another world have been the most eager in the exploration of space. It would seem that as soon as men become convinced that their whole existence is to be limited to this planet they begin to feel an urge to get away from it, yearning like the Greeks with a strange pothos for the deliverance of great distances and spaces, no matter to what unknown doom it might lead them. The rediscovery of outer space in our time puts us in much the same position as our ancestors on the eve of the great V”lkerwanderung. Our first reaction has been the same as theirs: in his "monstrous deracinement," a Dutch philosopher comments, "man has surrounded himself with a protective cocoon against reality." The conquest of the earth by the closed car and its extension, the mobile home--a streamlined, hermetically sealed capsule, air-conditioned against the rude elements and totally insulated from any contaminating contact with mother earth--is the expression of an ideal which is most fully realized in jet transportation, combining the snug security of a private world with an exhilarating sense of enterprise and power, and offering in incongruous combination the supreme satisfaction of relaxing in embryonic coziness while moving with incredible and effortless speed through an almost perfect vacuum. The mobile tents of the ancients were no contemptible step toward the achievement of this ideal. Ancient and modern travelers do not know which to admire the more in the dwellings of felt and goat's-hair, the skill with which they are transported from place to place or the efficiency with which they meet every challenge of the elements. By their ingenious insulation and mobility these dwellings of the highest and lowest mortals have made it possible for their owners to survive in deadly outer spaces. Conclusion If it comes as a surprise to learn that the clothes we wear today were designed thousands of years ago for the comfort of riders on the windy steppes of Asia, one is no less bemused at the thought that our basic political philosophy comes from the same world. Our storm-driven ancestors met the challenge of their predicament with two solutions: the one sought to make the earth a permanent home and possess it wholly; the other to move on to some happier home, whatever and wherever that might be. The one philosophy is based on the firm belief that this is our only world, the other on the equally convincing and far more easily demonstrable proposition that we are transients who "here have no abiding kingdom." The paying of tolls and taxes has made it possible for the two ideologies to coexist in the world; it is an arrangement by which each side humors the other: the payer of taxes concedes to the recipient the right to imagine himself as the owner of the earth, while the other in return for this recognition allows his client the luxury of imagining himself the citizen of another world. The one while ceaselessly ranging abroad in the earth thinks of himself as lord of an immovable possession, while the other, tied to his patch of glebe or dingy workshop, thinks of himself as a courser through the endless expanses of heaven. The common symbol of both, the sign both of possession and of wandering, is the tent. Living in an atmosphere of emergency and uncertainty, the state has always been obliged to tax to preserve its identity. Taxes are viewed by those who are asked to pay the most as a personal insult and an affront to the sacredness of property. That is exactly what they are, and what they were originally meant to be. An ancient tax-notice, an imperious tap on the shield, was nothing less than an invitation to a sojourner in a land to justify his presence there either by satisfying the claims of the owner to recognition or by meeting him in open combat for possession. We may deplore taxes, but we may not resent them. Notes 1. Hector M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), and Hector M. Chadwick and Nora K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932). The situation was suggested by Hugo Winckler, "Geschichte und Geographie," in Eberhard Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 3d ed. (Berlin: Reuther and Reichard, 1903), 4. 2. Alfred O. Haldar, The Notion of the Desert in Sumero-Accadian and West-Semitic Religions (Uppsala: Lundequist, 1950), 29; in every case the land is turned into a desert, ibid., 22, 26-29. The great violence of the winds at the time of the Flood is indicated in fragments of the Gilgamesh Epic, Tab. V, 12-20; Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), 48-49; cf. W. G. Lambert, "New Light on the Babylonian Flood," Journal of Semitic Studies 5 (1960): 117-18, and "A New Look at the Babylonian Background of Genesis," Journal of Theological Studies 16 (1965): 296. Johannes B. Bauer, "Der priesterliche Sch”pfungshymnus in Gen. 1," Theologische Zeitschrift 20 (1964): 3, notes that the wind which blows over the waters in Genesis 8:1 is really a Gottessturm, gewaltiger Sturm (divine storm, a powerful storm). Cf. Pyramid Texts (PT) 298b-c, 326d, and Hesiod, Theogony 654-714. Many later sources are cited in Robert Eisler, Iesous Basileus ou Basileusas, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1929-30), 2:107-9, 113, 626-28. The great wind is mentioned in Jubilees 10:26, and E. A. Wallis Budge, tr., The Chronography of Gregory Ab–'l Faraj, the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew Physician, Commonly Known as Bar Hebraeus, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1:8; and there are interesting Arabic accounts in Rosa Klinke-Rosenberger, ed., Das G”tzenbuch: Kitƒb al-Asnƒm des Ibn al-KalbŒ (Leipzig: Winterthur, 1941), 58, and Ferdinand Wstenfeld, "Die „lteste „gyptische Geschichte nach den Z„uber- und Wundererz„hlungen der Araber," Orient und Occident 1 (1862): 331. For early Christian references, see Eusebius, Chronicon (Chronicle) I, 4, in PG 19:116; Epiphanius, Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) I, 1, 5, in PG 41:184; Pseudo-Melito, in J. C. T. Otto, Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum Saeculi Secundi, 9 vols. (Jena: Mauke, 1872), 9:510-11; cf. T. Francis Glasson, "Water, Wind and Fire (Luke III. 16) and Orphic Initiation," New Testament Studies 3 (1956): 69-71. 3. E. Demougeout, "Variations climatiques et invasion," Revue historique 233 (1965): 11. In the twelfth century b.c. the island of Cyprus was covered by wind-driven sand, ibid., 8, and what classical writers call the great flooding of the northlands in the second century a.d. was accompanied by heavy deposition of such sands, ibid., 17-18. Today it is maintained that the deserts of the Near East and the Sahara itself were produced largely through human agency within historic times; Henri Lhote, Vanished Civilizations, ed. Edward Bacon (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 12-32. 4. Samuel N. Kramer, "New Light on the Early History of the Ancient Near East," AJA 52 (1948): 159. 5. For Horus and his royal counterparts, see PT 393a-414c, 298a-299b, 308a-312a, 261, and so forth; J. Zandee, "Seth als Sturmgott," Zeitschrift fr „gyptische Sprache 90 (1962): 144-56; Pierre Montet, Le drame d'Avaris (Paris: Geuthner, 1941), 87-88; for the famous "Cannibal Hymn," see Raymond O. Faulkner, "The `Cannibal Hymn' from the Pyramid Texts," JEA 10 (1924): 97-103. The oldest shrine of Egypt was the "Thunderbolt-city" founded by the Stormgod, whose high priest was "the Warrior," Gerald A. Wainwright, "The Bull Standards of Egypt," JEA 19 (1933): 46-47. "This storm was the raging of Ra at the thunder-cloud," and so forth, E. A. Wallis Budge, The Papyrus of Ani, 3 vols. (New York: Putnam, 1913), 2:384-85. Enlil, Anu, and Ningirsu came into Mesopotamia as lords of the storm; Thorkild Jacobsen, "Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia," in Henri Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy (New York: Penguin, 1951), 147, 150, 153; see also Marduk, R. Labat, Le PoŠme babylonien de la Cr‚ation (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1935), 33-34. The earthly king is "the storm-wind of battles," Bruno Meissner, Die babylonisch-assyrische Literatur (Wildpark-Potsdam: Athenaion, 1927), 39, and aspires "to shine as Lord in the storm," M. Witzel, "Zu den Enmerkar-Dichtungen," Orientalia 18 (1949): 276. Jrgen Smolian, "Kultischer Hintergrund bei Wagenrennen," Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 17 (1965): 264-65. The Greek Zeus is nephelegeretes, lord of thunder-storms; Martin P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipzig: Teubner, 1906), 2-3; Arthur B. Cook, Zeus, 3 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1925), 2:851, 830-58. On Apollo, the migrating hero, Wernicke, "Apollon," in RE 2:20-21; as storm-god, J. Rendel Harris, "Apollo at the Back of the North Wind," Journal of Hellenic Studies 45 (1925): 229-42; on Hermes as such, Wilhelm H. Roscher, "Hermes als Wind- und Luftgott," in Wilhelm H. Roscher, ed., Ausfhrliches Lexikon der griechischen und r”mischen Mythologie, 7 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1965), 1:2:2360-62; and on Herakles, Bernhard Schweitzer, Herakles (Tbingen: Mohr, 1922), 47-48. For the Hittite Teshub, Oliver R. Gurney, The Hittites (New York: Penguin, 1952), 192-94. "Der Wettergott von Halab" dominates the entire Near East, see Horst Klengel, "Der Wettergott von Halab," Journal of Cuneiform Studies 19 (1965): 87-93. The insignia of the chief Celtic god were the wheel, thunderbolt, and hammer; Carl Clemen, Religionsgeschichte Europas, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1926) 1:319-23. Othinn as successor to Thor is both a wanderer and a storm-god; Cornelius P. Tiele, Tiele-S”derbloms Kompendium der Religionsgeschichte, 5th ed. (Berlin: Grabow, 1920), 480-82; Schweitzer, Herakles, 86. Even Alexander as a world-conquerer is Lord of the Storm, his birth being announced by supernatural thunder and lightning; Pseudo-Callisthenes, Life of Alexander I, 12, in Karl Mller, ed., The Fragments of the Lost Historians of Alexander the Great (Chicago: Ares, 1979). In Hebrew tradition "Geisteswind" and the "Heere des Himmels" appear on the scene together, recalling actual prehistoric upheavals; Klaus Koch, "Wort und Einheit des Sch”pfergottes in Memphis und Jerusalem," Zeitschrift fr Theologie und Kirche 62 (1965-66): 276. 6. Sir Dudley Stamp, "Man and His Environment," Scientific Journal 1 (May 1965): 76-78. 7. Julian Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " Hebrew Union College Annual 17 (1942-43): 263. Since the function of the tent is shelter, ibid., 183, it is the palladium or symbol of protection, 160, 184. While the root meaning of the Greek skene is to shadow or shelter, "to live in tents" had the popular sense of living adventurously: "Hypo skenais kai en allodapei diatemenoi" (dwelling in tents and in a foreign land), Heliodorus, Aethiopica 5 (2, 13). The tent in the backyard still holds for the young the double appeal of adventure and cozy security. 8. See Hugh Nibley, "Hierocentric State," Western Political Quarterly 4 (1951): 238-44; reprinted in this volume, pages 114-23. The distinction between the leader of a migrating band and a king in the conventional sense has been treated by Karl H. Bernhardt, Das Problem der altorientalischen K”nigsideologie im Alten Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1961), who finds the transition from the leader of a nomadic band (mkrb) to the sacral "Grossk”nigtum" (mlk) to follow normally on the establishment of a settled capital, ibid., 169, 178-79. "The holy tent itself was a visible and potent title to his [David's] position as king," i.e., there was no conflict between the two conceptions of dominion; Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 242. 9. Bernhard Grdseloff, "Nouvelles donn‚es concernant la tente de purification," Annales du service des antiquit‚s de l'‚gypte 51 (1951): 130-31, 134, 138-39: Even the great ceremonial buildings retain the name of sh-ntr, "tent of the god," and ¡bw, "reed house." The royal tent appears on predynastic ivory tablets, ‚mile Massoulard, Pr‚histoire et protohistoire d'‚gypte (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1949), 446, and is often mentioned in the PT 319, 345, 349, 363, 690; "O King, Horus has woven his tent before thee; Seth has stretched out thy canopy; the father is sheltered by the divine tent . . . in thy favorite [camping] places." 10. Adriaan de Buck, ed., The Egyptian Coffin Texts, 7 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935-61), 1:253-54, Spell 60, is quite vivid. The lighting of fires in the shrine (represented by the ideogram of a tent) is to drive away the evil things that lurk about at night; Alexandre Moret, Le rituel du culte divin journalier en ‚gypte (Paris: Leroux, 1902), 12-13. 11. Jacobsen, "Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia," 153. 12. Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), 2:454-55; W. H. Irwin, "Le sanctuaire central isra‚lite," Revue biblique 72 (1965): 164; see above, n. 7. 13. Haldar, Notion of the Desert, 19. "Men of all conditions and nations . . . look to the Arab camp as a safe retreat and refuge," Philip J. Baldensperger, "The Immovable East," Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (1922): 170-71. 14. In the Tent of Tryst the leader communes with God and transmits the divine instructions to the people; Menahem Haran, "The Nature of the 'Ohel Mocedh in Pentateuchal Sources," Journal of Semitic Studies 5 (1960): 52-54, 57-58; Alois Musil, Arabia Petraea, 3 vols. (Vienna: H”lder, 1907-8), 3:130, 353-55. All the great patriarchs dwelt and communed with God in tents; Immanuel Benzinger, Hebr„ische Arch„ologie (Leipzig: Mohr, 1894), 11. The veil of the temple would seem to be a survival of a nomad tent representing heaven; Andr‚ Pelletier, "Le grand rideau du vestibule du temple de J‚rusalem," Syria 35 (1958): 218, 223-26; the antiquity of the idea goes back to the prehistoric "reed wall" through which Ut-Napishtim (the Babylonian Noah) conversed with deity; Lambert, "New Light on the Babylonian Flood," 118-19. We seem to detect an Egyptian parallel in de Buck, Egyptian Coffin Texts, 1:157, Spell 38. 15. Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 248; cf. 191-92, 194, 198, 201-2, 204, 206, 228, 254-55. The author favors an original camel-mounting, yet the oldest authentic example, from Dura Europos, shows the Ark of the Covenant as "plainly a small tent" mounted on a wagon drawn by oxen, ibid., 250. 16. Andr s Alf”ldi, "Die Geschichte des Throntabernakels," Nouvelle Clio 1-2 (1950): 537-66. Alf”ldi emphasizes the idea of the sheltering baldachin as the worldwide symbol of royal authority, an aspect also treated by Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 171-72, 174-76, 178, 180-81, 196-97, 208, 212, 228. 17. Jrgen Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa: Wagen in Mythos, Ritus, Kultus und Mysterium," Numen 10 (1963): 202-27. 18. So paradoxical do these combinations appear that scholars still have difficulty envisaging the biblical picture of Solomon's throne or bed beneath a sheltering pavilion supported by cedar poles and mounted on a wagon; Jacques Winandy, "La LitiŠre de Solomon," Vetus Testamentum 15 (1965): 103-10. On the flying throne, August Wnsche, Salomons Thron und Hippodrom, Abbilder des babylonischen Himmelsbildes (Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1906). The Persian world-capital is Hvaniratha, the cosmic hub of the "loud-moving chariot," the real city being built on the plan of the wheel; Jrgen Trumpf, "Stadtgrndung und Drachenkampf," Hermes 86 (1958): 139. See especially Werner Mller, Die heilige Stadt: Roma quadrata, himmlisches Jerusalem und die Mythe vom Weltnabel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961), 101, 127-34. Throne, temple, and holy city have often been identified; H. P. l'Orange, Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient World (New York: Caratas, 1982), 9-17, 51-62, and so forth. 19. As early as 2400 b.c., Shamash is depicted as traveling in his wagon by day and his boat by night; Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa," 203, 220; J. van Dijk, "La fˆte du nouvel an dans un texte de Sulgi," Bibliotheca Orientalis 11 (1954): 83-88. In Egypt such ceremonial boats and wagons are attested in the Old Kingdom; Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa," 214. The great gods of the Indo-Aryans are all wagon-riders of the skies, ibid., 204. Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ed. James S. Stallybrass, 3 vols. (London: Bell, 1883), 1:252. Ancient shamans regularly commuted between earth and heaven in their wagons; Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 548-49; Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa," 208-11. 20. This is the sense of the "cloud [that] presumably rested upon the tent containing the Ark" at its "various camping stations," Haran, "Nature of the 'Ohel Mocedh," 50. While Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa," 226, scouts the theory of some that it was the contemplation of the stars of the Big Dipper (Charlie's Wain) that first gave men the idea of constructing a wagon, he does suggest the ingenious theory that wagon-springs were invented to hold the wagon-box and its sacred contents in a state of suspension above the earth, ibid., 215. Alexander's funeral car that moved from Babylon to Alexandria was a huge cutfa, or suspended shrine containing a throne; Diodorus, Bibliotheca Historica XVIII, 26. 21. Franz Altheim, Weltgeschichte Asiens im griechischen Zeitalter, 2 vols. (Halle: Niemeyer, 1947), 1:166. On the cleansing offices of the wind, Eisler, Iesous Basileus ou Basileusas 2:104-6. "As a swift-rushing mighty wind cleanses the plain," Zend-Avesta, frag. VIII, v, 30, in James Darmesteter, The Zend-Avesta, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1880-87), 1:101. 22. The Egyptians felt the heavens to be all around them: "The King's horror is to march in the darkness without being able to see those [stars] which are above him and those which are below him," PT 260:323; see R. T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (New York: Grove, 1960), 130-32. Benjamin Schwartz, "A Hittite Ritual Text," Orientalia 16 (1947): 31, gives a Hittite incantation expressing the common belief that one can approach the stars by climbing a very high mountain. According to the cosmology of Theon, "the sun and the planets around it form a party of travelers, a `caravan'--this being the exact meaning of the Greek word synodia." Erik V. Erhardt-Siebold, The Astronomy of John Scot Erigena (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1940), 16. The Arabic names of the constellations show that the nomads thought of themselves as moving and living among the stars on their hunting migrations, Georg Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben (Berlin: Mayer and Mller, 1897), 159-60. 23. The kings' ceremonial wagons are taken over directly from the sky-cars of their divine ancestors; Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa," 212, 214, 217, 219, 221-22. Some ancient societies simply lived by lightning; Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales II, 34; cf. Jacobsen, "Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia," 138-40, 153-57. 24. Cf. Gustave E. von Grunebaum, Muhammadan Festivals (New York: Schumann, 1958), 19; Knut Tallquist, "Himmelsgegenden und Winde," Studia Orientalia 2 (1928): 147-50. Qibla and qubba are cognate with Babylonian-Assyrian kibrat, "die 4 Weltquadraten des Alls," and with the Sumerian kippat, "die 4 Weltecken," Friedrich Jeremias, "Semitische V”lker in Vorderasien," in Alfred Bertholet and Edvard Lehmann, eds., Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols. (Tbingen: Mohr, 1925), 1:513. Without the qibla, the wandering nomad would be lost in space, Thaclabi, Qisas al-Anbiya' (Cairo, 1922), 70. 25."Templum tribus modis dicitur . . . ab natura in caelo, ab auspiciis in terra, a similitudine sub terra," Varro, De Lingua Latina VII, 6-9; the claim that this idea is of Greek origin does not detract from its significance, Stefan Weinstock, "Templum," in RE 2:5:481; and Stefan Weinstock, "Templum," Mitteilungen des Deutschen Arch„ologischen Instituts. R”mische Abteilung 47 (1932): 100-101, 104, 107, 109. On the universality of the concept, W. Kroll, "Mundus," in RE 16:563. It was as leader of a migrating band that Romulus would take his bearings on the heavens from the door of his sacred tent; Samuel Pitiscus, Lexicon Antiquitatum Romanarum, 3 vols. (Venice: Balleoniana, 1719), 2:908. The tent-temples of the Mongols were such observatories; Henning Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia (New York: Dutton, 1935), 282. 26. The cosmic nature of various tents as the "Himmelsgew”lbe des Weltherrschers" is discussed by Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 560-61. In Israel the tent was a representation of heaven; Pelletier, "Grand rideau du vestibule du temple de J‚rusalem," 223-26; Albert Vanhoye, "Par la tente plus grande et plus parfaite (He 9, 11)," Biblica 46 (1965): 5. Our quotation is from Comas of Prague, Topographia Christiana (Christian Topography) 5, in PG 88:201. 27. The prehistoric Ben-stone at Heliopolis seems to have been such a cosmic tent-pole; Hermann Kees, Aegypten (Tbingen: Mohr, 1928), 1, 4, 6. Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, 59, quotes a Coffin Text: "The Great God lives fixed in the middle of the sky upon his support; the guide-ropes are adjusted for that great hidden one, the dweller in the city." In PT 254 (280), the king is "the star of those who stand in the presence of the pillar [pole] of the stars." The concept is basic in shamanism: "The pole in the middle of the shaman's tent or house is the symbol of the world-pillar. . . . The posjo thus pictures that part of the universe where heaven and earth meet, and where there is an opening . . . through which one can pass to the outer world," Nils Lid, "The Mythical Realm of the Far North," Laos: Comparative Studies of Folklore and Regional Ethnology 1 (1951): 62. The Arabs call the World Mountain "the Central Pole of the Tent," Trumpf, "Stadtgrndung und Drachenkampf," 133, n. 1, citing Eliade. 28. As the tent is a scale-model of the heaven, so the royal Schirmdach is a "Miniaturbild des Himmelszeltes," Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 538. For a general treatment, Robert Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1910). The festival wagon of the Panathenaeon was covered with a tent woven of the same stuff as the cosmic mantle of Athenia, see Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa," 225; and PT 587 (1596-97); cf. PT 690 (2094), the Lady Nut receives such a garment when the King builds his holy city. The Tabernacle is the likeness of the heavenly Temple, 2 Baruch 4:3-4. 29. See n. 24 above. The four corner-poles of the cutfa, the Ark, and so forth, as well as the central pole were decorated with astral symbols; Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 179, 183, 194, 201. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are called "the three tent-poles of the world," Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt, 2:286, just as Peter, James, and John are "the three styloi (wooden poles) of the church," Galatians 2:9. 30. The round capitol dome with its supporting columns goes back to the Imperial Rundsaal derived from the domed mobile pavilion of the Asiatic monarch; Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 563-64. Four tall wooden poles stood in front of every Egyptian temple, suggesting the "4 pure poles" of the tent of Osiris; PT 303; cf. 264. The pillars of the Torah shrine represent the four tent-poles of the Ark; Joseph Sloane, "The Torah Shrine in the Ashburnham Pentateuch," JQR 25 (1934-35): 4-5. 31. Sources in n. 18 above. The idea of organic extension is treated by L. Voelkl, " `Orientierung' in Weltbild der ersten christlichen Jahrhunderte," Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 25 (1949): 155, and Hugh W. Nibley, "Christian Envy of the Temple," JQR 50 (1959): 101-3; reprinted in CWHN 4:394-95. For a bibliography, Hans Herter, "Die Rundform in Platons Atlantis und ihre Nachwirkung in der Villa Hadriani," Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie 96 (1953): 5, n. 9. "The first clear-cut trend [towards urbanization] to appear in the archaeological record is the rise of the temple." Robert M. Adams, "The Origin of Cities," Scientific American 203 (September 1960): 159. 32. The oldest known stone temples are modeled after tents, C. M. Firth, "Excavations of the Service des Antiquit‚s at Saqqara (November 1926-April 1927)," Annales du service des antiquit‚s de l'‚gypte 27 (1927): 109, as is also apparent from prehistoric Mesopotamian seals. The cutfa or qubba, according to Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " may be of leather, 207-9, of "thin wooden boards," 157, or of wooden lattice-work, 160. The same is true of the Roman templum and tabernaculum, and even of the golden domes of the great Khans; Ibn Batuta, Rihla (Cairo: 1938), 1:213. In studying archaic Mesopotamian shrines, E. S. Stevens, "The Cult-hut or Mandi of the Mandaeans," Ancient Egypt and the East (1934): 44, notes that "if a nomad tribe settles it at once uses reed mat instead of the woven wool tent-cloth," the former being cheap and easily replaceable. Thus the material of the tent does not change its essential form or nature. 33. H. G. May, "The Ark--A Miniature Temple," American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 52 (1936): 215-34; Haran, "Nature of the 'Ohel Mocedh," 50. "Solomon did not dare infringe the primary significance of the Ark. It might `rest' in a house of cedar . . . but it must never cease to be the mobile vehicle of His presence, ready at any moment to resume its activity," W. J. Phythian-Adams, The People and the Presence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942), 16; cf. 23, 47. 34. Cf. Stevens, "Cult-hut or Mandi of the Mandaeans," 39-41. The common Indo-European root mand- signifies a structure of woven stuff; Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches W”rterbuch, 2 vols. (Bern: Francke, 1959), 1:699. 35. Memphis, the first Egyptian city, takes its name from "the King's campground," Kurt H. Sethe, Beitr„ge zur „ltesten Geschichte „gyptens (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905), 124-25. Jerusalem was laid out on the pattern of the camp of Israel; Haran, "Nature of the 'Ohel Mocedh," 61, 64-65. All great Moslem conquerors "established cities, or more precisely fortified camps, which later became cities," Claude Cahen, "Zur Geschichte der st„dtischen Gesellschaft in islamischen Orient," Saeculum 9 (1958): 62. So also the great Asiatic conquerors, Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Gentium ad Romanos 58, in PG 113:724 (Attila). The Mongol capitol was the urga or ”rg”, "meaning `princely camp, palace,' " George N. R”rich, Trails to Inmost Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), 135. For the same system in Africa, Hans C. Peyer, "Das Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," Vierteljahrschrift fr Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 51 (1964): 17-18; Paul Radin, Social Anthropology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1932), 79. For Europe see below, nn. 162-65. Archaeology bears this out: the oldest Egyptian towns were camps of mat huts or windscreens, Massoulard, Pr‚histoire et protohistoire d'‚gypte, 33-34; so also in Palestine, John Waechter, "The Beginning of Civilization in the Middle East," Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement 85 (1953): 130-31. "Polybius VI, 31, 10, compares the Hellenistic city to the camp of a Roman legion," William W. Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization, 3d ed. (New York: Meridian, 1951), 310, such camps following the same pattern as those of the Hittites, Hurrians, and Assyrians, Alexandre Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1941), 1:462-63. 36. Cyrill von Korvin-Krasinski, "Die heilige Stadt," Review of Werner Mller, Die heilige Stadt, in Zeitschrift fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 16 (1964): 268, 270. 37. See Nibley, "The Hierocentric State, 241-42; reprinted in this volume, pages 118-21. The Greek expression for "hold a festival" is simply skenein, to put up a tent; Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1955), 1:779-80. 38. The fathers cannot decide whether Jerusalem is in heaven or earth as it moves between, Augustine, Contra Donatistas X, 26, in PL 43:409-10; Jerome, Epistolae (Epistle) 46, in PL 22:485, 489; Paul Baudrus Notae in Librum de Mortibus Persecutorum, in PL 7:621; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarius in Isaiam Prophetam (Commentary on Isaiah) 18:18, in PG 70:468; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) III, 16-17, in PL 95:256-58. 39. Jerome, Commentarius in Isaiam Prophetam (Commentary on Isaiah) 10:33, in PL 24:369. The Jews call the heavenly Jerusalem "the true tent," since it "descends from heaven as a tent," H. Rusche, "Himmlisches Jerusalem," in Michael Buchberger, ed., Lexikon fr Theologie und Kirche, 10 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1930-38), 5:367-68. The Fathers believe that the veil of the Temple represents the original tent of communion with God; e.g., Epiphanius, Against Heresies II, 1, in PG 41:1049; Cyril of Jerusalem, De Adoratione in Spiritu et Veritate 9, in PG 68:589; Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannis Evangelium IV, 4, in PG 73:617; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History IV, 16, in PG 82:1161; Jerome, Epistle 20, in PL 22:992; Raban Maurus, Expositio super Jeremiam (Exposition on Jeremiah) XIII, 33, in PL 111:1065; Thomas Aquinas, Summa III, 457-58. 40. Origen, Commentaria in Evangelium Joannis (Commentary on John) 10:23, in PG 14:381. The Church is a tent because it represents God's coming to earth for temporary sojourns with men; Richard of St. Victor, In Apocalypsim Joannis (On the Revelation of John) VII, 2, in PL 196:860. The pitching of the tent outside the camp represents God's remoteness from this impure world, Maximus Confessor, Capita Theologiae et Oeconomiae, I, 83-84 in PG 90:1117; Wolber, Commentaria in Canticum Canticorum (Commentary on the Song of Solomon) III, 5, in PL 195:1203. In a very early Christian source "the Father comes down from above with his tent of light," Evangelium Bartholomei, in PO 2:190. The Holy of Holies "is everywhere called a tent because God tents there," Theophylactus, Expositio in Epistolam ad Hebraeos 9, in PG 125:297. 41. Cf. Vanhoye, "Par la tente plus grande," 1-3. Cf. also Cyril of Alexandria, De Adoratione in Spiritu et Veritate 14, in PG 68:901. John 1:14 reads literally, "the logos was made flesh and pitched his tent [eskenosen] among us"; and after the Resurrection the Lord "camps" with the disciples, Acts 1:4. At the Transfiguration Peter prematurely proposed setting up three tents for taking possession, Matthew 17:4; Mark 9:5; Luke 9:33; see Hilary, Tractatus in Psalmos 14, in PL 9:300. 42. Eduard Meyer, Ursprung und Anf„nge des Christentums, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1921-23), 2:48. 43. Yigael Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, tr. Batya and Chaim Rabin (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 4-5: the two camps represent "the cosmic powers of light and darkness," 5; the camp is a holy place set apart from all earthly contamination, ibid., 70-75. 44. Heinrich Zimmern, "Religion und Sprache," in Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament, 352-53, notes that the "Kingdom of God" seems to be localized at the North Pole, where it corresponds to the divine mountain. In Egypt the Urhgel (primeval mound) is preeminently the point of contact between heaven and earth; Hans Bonnet, "Benben," in Reallexikon der „gyptischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1952), 100. 45. Herter, "Rundform in Platons Atlantis," 1-20. In Pharaoh's garden all creatures enjoy a safe asylum "suspended in the sky," Edouard Naville, "La destruction des hommes par les dieux," Biblical Archaeological Society Transactions 4 (1875): 12-13. Such an island shrine in Egypt was the island of Bigge, which was identical with the hidden World-Mountain; Hermann Junker, Das G”tterdekret ber das Abaton, in Denkschriften der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien 56 (1913): 35-37. Such a combined world-mountain and island was Mt. Kardu, from which the Ark sailed and to which it returned; Hippolytus, De Consummatine Mundi (spuria) (On the Consummation of the World), Fragmenta Dubia 5, in PG 10:709. All holy places are abstracted from the world; Iamblichus, Protrepticus 21. 46. One must swim to the shrine of the goddess, which is in a moon-boat; Lucian, De Syria Dea (On the Syrian Goddess) 12-13, 32. Smolian, "Vehicula Religiosa," 203, notes that the moon itself "swims" in the clouds. The Midrash to Genesis 6:16 speaks of the Ark as a floating temple. Hippolytus, Fragment 3, On the Consummation of the World, in PG 10:707, tells how Noah took the body of Adam to the top of a holy mountain "which was the Paradise of God, the dwelling of religion and purity," to keep it from the flood, and there "placed it in the midst of a ship mounted on a wooden framework." From the wood of this structure Noah made a thunder-drum which summoned his sons to the Ark and brought the storm. At the great Jubilee festival the Egyptians beat on such a shaman's drum, which represented the cosmos; Ludwig Borchardt, "Die Rahmentrommel im Museum zu Kairo," Memoires de l'Institut Fran‡ais d'arch‚ologie orientale 66 (1935-38): 1-6. 47. Wnsche, Salomons Thron und Hippodrom; also n. 45 above. The Kacba orbited the earth during the Flood, returning as the Black Stone--a meteorite; Ad-Diyarbakri, Tarikh al-Khamis (Cairo, 1284 AH), II, 88. 48. Andr‚ Parrot, Ziggurats et la Tour de Babel (Paris: Michel, 1949), 208-9; and Andr‚ Parrot, "La Tour de Babel et les Ziggurats," Nouvelle Clio 2 (1950): 159. Pierre Amiet, "Ziggurats et `Culte en hauteur' des origines … l'‚poque d'Akkad," Revue d'assyriologie et d'arch‚ologie orientale 47 (1953): 30; Georges Contenau, Le d‚luge babylonien (Paris: Payot, 1952), 246-47. In Egypt "la pyramide et le mastaba sont des terrains de transition entre la terre et l'au-del…" (the pyramid and the mastaba are the places of transition between the earth and the netherworld), Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 1:235. 49. Alexander Scharff and Anton Moortgat, „gypten und Vorderasien im Altertum (Munich: Bruckmann, 1950), 56. 50. Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 544-56. Towers were actually put on wheels, e.g., by the Scythians; Xenophon, Cyropaedia VI, 29. 51. Haldar, Notion of the Desert, 68. Mildred Cable, The Gobi Desert (New York: Macmillan, 1944), 16, describes "the acute terror with which the Chinese regard the Gobi regions," which begin at the very gates of some cities. For the earliest city-dwellers "the dead-world of the steppe . . . began just outside the city wall," Knut Tallquist, "Sumerish-akkadische Namen der Totenwelt," Studia Orientalia 5/4 (1934): 21; and the city gates provided "the ritual of shutting up of a city so that sorcery might be excluded," E. Douglas van Buren, "The salm‚ in Mesopotamian Art and Religion," Orientalia 10 (1941): 86. 52. Henri Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), 54. 53. Sigmund Mowinkel, Religion und Kultus (G”ttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1953), 70; cf. 36, 75. The basic "ritual pattern" goes back to the "Urhaltung des Menschen gegenber seiner Umwelt" (the primeval attitude of man toward his environment), and proved "Sicherung seiner st„ndig bedrohten Existenz" (a defense for his constantly threatened existence), Bernhardt, Das Problem der altorientalischen K”nigsideologie, 54. 54. The Vara is both a city and a paradise; Zend-Avesta, frag. II, 25-38 (61-123), in Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta 1:16-19; Moses Khorenatsci, History of the Armenians, tr. Robert W. Thomson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 182-84 (II, 40-42); this is comparable to the rabbinic picture in Babylonian Talmud Ta canith 31a. Such a blessed oasis of refuge is the jiwar where men and animals escape the violence of the elements; Thaclabi, Qisas al-Anbiya', 24, 213; cf. Pierre Grimal, Les jardins romains … la fin de la R‚publique et aux deux premiers siŠcles de l'Empire (Paris: Boccard, 1943), 44, 86-90. The ancient ringed camp of the nomads gave protection from danger threatening equally from all sides, and gave rise to some cities; Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:713; Michael Prawdin, The Mongol Empire: Its Rise and Legacy, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Allen and Unwin, 1940), 82-86; William of Rubruck, Journal 21, in Manuel Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo (New York: Liveright, 1928), 98, compares such ring-camps to the camp of Israel. 55. Al-Kazwini, Kosmographie, ed. Ferdinand Wstenfeld, 2 vols. (G”ttingen: Dieterich, 1848-49), 2:4-5. 56. Vivid accounts may be found in Nabih A. Faris, The Antiquities of South Arabia: Being a Translation from the Arabic with Linguistic, Geographic, and Historic Notes of the Eighth Book of Al-Hamdani's Al-Iklil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938); and (of great antiquity) Wstenfeld, "„lteste „gyptische Geschichte," 331. 57. L. Vax, "Le sentiment du mystŠre dans le conte fantastique et dans le roman policier," Etudes philosophiques 6 (1951): 72, 74. 58. Cahen, "Zur Geschichte der st„dtischen Gesellschaft," 61, citing Xavier de Planhol, The World of Islam (New York: Cornell University, 1957), ch. 1; cf. 64-66 in Cahen. V. G. Kiernan, "State and Nation in Western Europe," Past and Present 31 (1965): 21, 25, maintains that there is no real government at all in such cities. 59. A. H. Godbey, "The Semitic City of Refuge," Monist 15 (1905): 624-25. That a man was completely free and secure only in the city, where alone he could realize his full potentialities, was a favorite Sophist theme, e.g., Dio Chrysostom, Discourse L, 1; Philo, Quod Omnis Probus Liber 1; cf. Al-Kazwini, Kosmographie, 2:4-5. As a city of refuge Babylon offered freedom (duraru) to all the world; Godbey, "Semitic City of Refuge," 615. 60. The King "is the pivot round which the life of the community revolves. Upon his physical vigour . . . depend the various aspects of the well-being of the community," Lord Fitz R. Raglan, The Origins of Religion (London: Watts, 1949), 74, citing Samuel H. Hooke; cf. Bernhardt, Problem der altorientalischen K”nigsideologie, 54, 67, 80. 61. Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 17-20. 62. Radin, Social Anthropology, 79. Tor Istram, cited by Bernhardt, Problem der altorientalischen K”nigsideologie, 58, compared the coronation rites of 62 African tribes and found that they regularly end with the new king starting off on his Royal Progress. 63. Frankfort, Birth of Civilization, 97-98. The Pyramid Texts describe the dead king's journey to heaven in terms of continuation of his Royal Progress on earth, e.g., PT 33 (24c-25b), 224 (218-20). 64. Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 542-43. Among the Mongols the traveling temple and tent-city accompany "the focus of the universe, the life-giving residence," Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 330; Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 213, 283; R”rich, Trails to Inmost Asia, 343. 65. Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 1, 21. 66. Cf. ibid., 1, 7-8, 12, 14. 67. Of the ritual drama of the Ramesseumpapyrus, Sethe writes that "das Spiel vielleicht auf einer Reise, in der der neue Herrscher nach der Thronbesteigung sein Reich durchzog, an verschiedenen . . . Orten widerholt werden sollte, in erster Linie in den drei grossen Hauptst„dten . . . vielleicht aber auch an anderen bedeutenden Orten" (perhaps the ritual drama should be repeated in different places on the Royal Progress in which the new ruler journeyed through the kingdom after his ascent to the throne, particularly in the three great capitals, but perhaps also in other important places), which explains why the king "berall in dem Spiele in einem Schiffe stehend auftritt" (appears everywhere in the drama standing in a ship), Kurt Sethe, Dramatische Texte zu alt„gyptischen Mysterienspielen (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1928), 96. On the Royal Progress of the new king and his mother, Junker, Das G”tterdekret ber das Abaton, 27-29; and Hermann Junker, Die Onurislegende (Vienna: H”lder, 1917), 129-31, 168; also Hermann Junker, Der Auszug der Hathor-Tefnut aus Nubien (Berlin: Reimer, 1911), 74-76; cf. Wilhelm Spiegelberg, Der „gyptische Mythus vom Sonnenauge (Strassburg: Schultz, 1917), 53. 68. G. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (New York: Doran, 1927), 368-73. 69. Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 1, 7-9, 12, 14. On Pharaoh's tour as a Besitznahme of the land, Siegfried Schott, Mythe und Mythenbildung im alten Aegypten (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1945), 17-19. There are vivid vignettes in PT 273 (the "Cannibal Hymn"), 274, 317, 508, 690, and in the Coffin Texts, de Buck, Egyptian Coffin Texts, 1:77, 221, 268-70, 289, 328, 330; 2:163, 231. 70. Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 12. 71. See Hugh Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State," Western Political Quarterly 2/3 (1949): 344; reprinted in this volume, page 20. 72. So in Ireland, Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 12; Scandinavia, ibid., 14; Spain, ibid., 7-9; and England, ibid., 1. 73. Kiernan, "State and Nation in Western Europe," 35-37. Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," passim, surveys the whole European scene and finds no country without the system. 74. Carl R. Unger, ed., Saga Didriks Konungs af Bern (Kristiania: Feilborg and Landmark, 1853), 220-23, 239-42. On the unique authority of this source, Heinrich Prell, "Wildrinder und Drachen in der Siegfriedsage," Archiv fr Kulturgeschichte 32 (1944): 53, 71. 75. See Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State, 343; reprinted in this volume, pages 18-19. The idea goes back to very early times, when the king as the "Man of the Steppes" is the protector of animal and even vegetable life; Witzel, "Zu den Enmerkar-Dichtungen," 279-80; Anton Moortgat, Tammuz: Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube in der altorientalischen Bildkunst (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1949), 9-18, 22-26, 27-35. All animals like all nations were expected to do homage to the Emperor on his throne, Wnsche, Salomons Thron und Hippodrom. 76. Heinrich Rubner, Untersuchungen zur Forstverfassung des mittelalterlichen Frankreichs (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1965), 6; Hermann Thimme, "Forestis: K”nigsgut und K”nigsrecht nach den Forsturkunden vom 6. bis 12. Jahrhundert," Archiv fr Urkundenforschung 2 (1909): 101-54. 77. Cf. G. Waitz, "Die Anf„nge des Lehnwesens," HZ 13 (1865): 90-91. Since the last thing the peasant did was to hunt, that was the last thing forbidden him, Thimme, "Forestis, K”nigsgut und K”nigsrecht," 127. 78. Down to the nineteenth century the basic idea was that forest rights were a matter of use rather than of abstract ownership. The shift from Nutzungsrechte to Wildbann or hunting rights began in Carolingian times, Thimme, "Forestis, K”nigsgut und K”nigsrecht," 127, though the transfer from hunting rights to absolute ownership came very late. 79. The idea of the ritual hunt as part of the coronation ceremony, A. F. L. Beeston, "The Ritual Hunt: A Study in Old South Arabian Religious Practice," Le Mus‚on 61 (1948): 148, seems to go back to the earliest times, when the king appears in glyptic art as a hunter who defends people and domestic cattle from dangerous beasts of prey; Moortgat, Tammuz, 9-18; Witzel, "Zu den Enmerkar-Dichtungen," 279-80. 80. On the background of the Royal Road or King's Highway, Hans J. Rieckenberg, "K”nigsstrasse und K”nigsgut in liudolfingischer und frhsalischer Zeit (919-1056)," Archiv fr Urkundenforschung 17 (1942): 32-154. 81. Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 6. The castles were the "main bases or strongholds" of perpetually mobile monarchs; Kiernan, "State and Nation in Western Europe," 32. The system can be traced back to the policy of the Severi in urbanizing and militarizing peasants, both land-owners and tenants, by gathering them in stathmoi, stationes, which were like forts, Michael Rostovzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2 vols., 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), 2:426-27. Stathmoi and stationes both mean "stopping place on the march." Caesar based his overall European strategy on castles, Gallic War II, 8, as did Alexander his Asiatic strategy, Quintus Curtis, Vita Alexandri VII, 9 and 11. In the ancient Near East, marauding tribes and the kings who resisted them both based their strategy on castles; Alan H. Gardiner, "New Literary Works from Ancient Egypt," JEA 1 (1914): 31-32, 23-24. The system gave birth to marketplaces and cities in Mesopotamia; Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1925), 1:340-41. 82. Castrum is traced ultimately to old Celtic words meaning "woven structure" and/or "covering, shelter." The plural means "fortified camp." Castrum can also signify a shepherd's hut or the distance between two camps; Alois Walde, Lateinisches etymologisches W”rterbuch, 3 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1965), 1:180. 83. Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 3; Alfred Ernout, Dictionnaire ‚tymologique de la langue latine, 2d ed. (Paris: Klinksieck, 1951), s.v. "palatium," deriving it from Etruscan. "Tamerlaine built palaces using them for the same purpose his ancestors used tents. He wandered from castle to castle, without spending more than a night or two in any," Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 478. 84. Cf. German Betthimmel and Himmelbett. For definitions, see Oxford English Dictionary, 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933). 85. Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 263. 86. Alfred Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 316. 87. Alfred Adam, Die Psalmen des Thomas und das Perlenlied als Zeugnisse vorchristlicher Gnosis (Berlin: T”pelmann, 1959), 3. 88. Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 190. 89.Iliad 1:152-57; 21:106-13. Cf. E. V. Gordon, An Introduction to Old Norse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1927), introduction. The Wild Host itself is driven by the storm, n. 5 above. 90."I marched victoriously like a mad dog, spreading terror, and I met no conqueror," Daniel D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927), 2:99, no. 176. The Babylonian king is "the founder of cities, the one who places troops under the yoke . . . who tramples their lands under foot . . . who expands boundary and border," and so forth; Carl Bezold, Historische Keilschriftexten aus Assur (Heidelberg: Winter, 1915), 11. On his Royal Progress the Canaanitish hero announces, "Nor king, nor commoner shall make the earth his dominion. . . . 'Tis I alone that shall reign," Theodor H. Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East (New York: Schuman, 1950), 183. The image of the invader is that of the "ever-conquering and unconquerable host," Herodotus, History II, 46. "No people could stand against them to whatsoever land they came," Unger, Saga Didriks, 145. 91. Faulkner, " `Cannibal Hymn' from the Pyramid Texts," 98. When it is a necessity, "raiding has always been regarded not only as a primordial right but as a noble tradition," Max A. S. Oppenheim, Die Beduinen, 4 vols. (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1939), 1:34. 92. Thus the bloody primordial contest between Horus and Seth has a strictly legal side from the beginning, Rudolf Anthes, "Note Concerning the Great Corporation of Heliopolis," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 13 (1954): 191-92, as is clearly brought out in the text of The Contending of Horus and Seth, in Alan H. Gardiner's The Library of A. Chester Beatty (London: Oxford University, 1931), 8-26. The same is true of the fight between Marduk and Kingu in the Enuma Elish. 93. Pharaoh is always the son of Horus or Re, warding off the attacks of Seth and his depraved followers; Montet, Drame d'Avaris, 54-58. Alexander posed as liberator of the people of Asia from the barbarian bandits; Quintus Curtis, Vita Alexandri VII, 6. 94. Trumpf, "Stadtgrndung und Drachenkampf," 129-30, 142-45. 95. Friedrich Dieterici, Thier und Mensch vor dem K”nig der Genien (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1879), 1-6, 9, 11; cf. Aesop, Fables, no. 25. For the great antiquity of the concept, Spiegelberg, Der „gyptische Mythus vom Sonnenauge, 47. The Persian king felt responsible for the animals and fined himself a piece of gold for every beast slain in the hunt; Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2 vols. (New York: Modern Library, 1932), 2:985. 96. This is clearly seen in the very early (c. 1960 b.c.) account of Sinuhe: While he was among the Asiatics, a neighboring chieftain came to his tent (B 109-10) and challenged Sinuhe as a trespasser (B 114-25); Sinuhe in formal combat "did to him what he would have done to me: I seized what was in his tent and stripped his camp, and thereby became enlarged in wealth and possessed of much cattle" (B 144-47). James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 20. 97. Tacitus, Germania 33. 98. Down to modern times "each ruler saw himself first and foremost . . . as a warlord. He figured in tournaments and might even lose his life in them," but he could not avoid them; Kiernan, "State and Nation in Western Europe," 22, 31. The wandering heroes of the Avesta view all other nomads as robbers and trespassers, to be challenged on the spot, Arthur E. Christensen, "Die Iranier," in Albrecht Alt et al., Kulturgeschichte des alten Orients (Munich: Beck, 1933), 211. Agathias, History V, 25, tells how the hordes of Asia consume themselves in perpetual and ever-shifting combat which they think of as noble. This culminates in the inevitable showdown between the two unconquerable hordes for the possession of the world, Unger, Saga Didriks, 145 (Attila vs. Ostanrix); Xenophon, Cyropaedia VII, 1 (Croesus vs. Cyrus). 99. The rule is that all who ride are equally noble, though not of equal rank, Unger, Saga Didriks, 144. Wandering knights may not trust each other; Christensen, in Alt, Kulturgeschichte des alten Orients, 211. 100. A. E. Crawley, "Ordeal: Introductory and Primitive," in James Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 13 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1951), 9:507, and the series of articles on the Ordeal that follows. 101. F. R. Bryson, The Point of Honor in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), 35, 45. 102. Unger, Saga Didriks, 233. If a noble "did not maintain his own honor he could hardly defend that of his prince or his country," Bryson, Point of Honor in Sixteenth-Century Italy, 45. 103. Rubner, Untersuchungen zur Forstverfassung, 7-8. 104. Alan H. Gardiner, "Piankhi's Instructions to His Army," JEA 21 (1935): 219-20, and Montet, Drame d'Avaris, 29, no. 3, both comment on the striking resemblance to medieval chivalry. 105. Smolian, "Kultischer Hintergrund bei Wagenrennen," 264-65. 106. M. E. Moghadam, "A Note on the Etymology of the Word Checkmate," JAOS 58 (1938): 662; cf. L. Thorndike, "All the World's a Chess-board," Speculum 6 (1931): 461. 107."Wheryn is al to wynne or al to lese," R. Dyboski and Z. M. Arend, eds., Knyghthode and Bataile (London: Early English Text Society, 1935), 11; an excellent source both for the mechanics and for the philosophy of chivalrous warfare. The rule, citing Black Khalil, is that "the conquered are the property of the conqueror, who is the lawful master of them, of their lands, of their goods, of their wives, and of their children," Edwin S. Creasy, History of Ottoman Turks: From the Beginning of Their Empire to the Present Time, 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1854-56), 1:21; cf. Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 173-74, 180-81, 187, 206, 209, and n. 123 below. 108. Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 207-23; the quotation is from Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 1. 109. Cf. von Grunebaum, Muhammadan Festivals, 19; Tha'labi, Qisas al-Anbiya', 24-25, 214. 110. W. Helck, "Rp ct auf dem Thron des Gb," Orientalia 19 (1950): 430. Cf. the "white towns" of the Creek Indians, "in which no violence could be done, and the `red towns' or `war towns,' " Godbey, "Semitic City of Refuge," 607. "Mohammed himself continued to employ the kubbe of red leather," even though he "had denounced red as the color of Satan," Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 217, 219. 111. On tent and banner as symbolic of each other, see Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 160, 171, 179, 184, 187, 199, 205, 209; Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 125; T. Canaan, "The Palestinian Arab House: Its Architecture and Folklore," Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 13 (1933): 54-55; Stevens, "Cult-hut or Mandi of the Mandaeans," 43. Tent and banner alike are a formal notice of defiance, Giovanni P. Carpini, History 26, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 44; Unger, Saga Didriks, 285. 112. Cited by Irwin, "Sanctuaire central isra‚lite," 172-73, 183. 113. Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 211. 114. Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " 261; cf. 180-82, 178, 197, 262; for a modern-day version, Carl R. Raswan, The Black Tents of Arabia (London: n.p., 1936), 86-97. 115. Origen, Commentary on John 10, in PG 14:380-81. 116. Yadin, Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light, 6-8, 70-75. 117. Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 556. A thousand years earlier the hero of a Ras Shamra ritual text drives his rival "out of the seat of his kingship, from the tent, from the throne of his Sovereignty," Cyrus H. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1949), 20, 26; later an Assyrian king boasts that his rival "left his royal tent [with its] couch of gold, the golden throne, golden footstool, golden sceptre, silver chariot, golden palanquin, and the chain about his neck, in the midst of his camp and fled alone." Luckenbill, Ancient Records, 2:34, no. 67. 118. H. Idris Bell, Egypt from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 33. 119.Gaie-ochos means not "earth-shaker" as usually translated, but "earth-holder" or possessor: "Posei-daon, oder Posei-das, was `Herr der Erde' heisst," Herman A. Hirt, Indogermanische Grammatik, 6 parts (Heidelberg: Winter, 1927-37), 1:196. 120.Iliad 7:442-63. The Greeks realized that the Great King had no choice but to destroy them once they had refused him tribute: "He cannot let us escape to laugh at him," Xenophon, Anabasis II, 4, 3-4. 121. Ludwig Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1872) 1:49-50. 122. Livy, II, 50-51. 123. Varro, in Servius, Commentarius in Aeneidem IX, 52. The challenge: "Do you give over your lands, your city, your implements, weapons, wives, children and property into the hands of me and the Roman people?" Livy, I, 38, 2. The custom survives in the Eastern Empire, as described in The 1001 Nights (Bulak edition), 1:157. 124. Unger, Saga Didriks, 52, 195-97, 202-4, 212. Quotation is from Georg von Below, "Die St„dtische Verwaltung des Mittelalters als Vorbild der sp„teren Territorialverwaltung," HZ 75 (1895): 410. 125. Froissart, Chronicle IV, 13. 126. Morgenstern, "The Ark, the Ephod, and the `Tent of Meeting,' " has much to say on this subject, e.g., 187, 209; see n. 117 above. 127. Adam, Psalmen des Thomas, 11-12, citing Psalm of Thomas 7:1, 4-7. 128. John L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wah bys, 2 vols. (London: Colburn & Bentley, 1831), 1:142. 129. To divorce a man his wife has only to overturn his tent; Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 212. The most solemn oaths were taken with the right hand on the main tent-pole: "If the tent trembles the oath is false," Gustaf Dalman, "Aus dem Rechtsleben und religi”sen Leben der Beduiner," Zeitschrift des Deutschen-Pal„stina Vereins 62 (1939): 60. "The tent-poles are torn up immediately after [a] man [without a male heir] has expired, and the tent demolished," Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wah bys, 1:101. The antiquity of the concept is attested in a Ras Shamra formula: "uptorn be the ropes of thy dwelling, overturned the throne of thy kingdom, broken the sceptre of thy rule!" H. Louis Ginzberg, "The Rebellion and Death of Ba'lu," Orientalia 5 (1936): 197. 130. John Zonaras, Annals XV, 15, in PG 134:1360-61. 131. Froissart, Chronicle I, 18 and 47 respectively. 132. Trumpf, "Stadtgrndung und Drachenkampf," 149-54. See n. 129 above for a still older version. 133. On the three-day rule, Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 5, 7; cf. Egilssaga 78:59. The Arabs allow "a certain liberty" of pasturage to those passing through the country, Antonin Jaussen, "Coutumes arabes," Revue biblique 12 (1903): 256-57. When an army is merely passing through Israel "the taking of wood is to be allowed them; and . . . they may also camp anywhere and may be buried where they fall," Babylonian Talmud Erubin 17a. 134. These definitions are substantially the same in the Oxford English Dictionary, Universal Dictionary, and Friedrich L. K. Weigand's Deutsches W”rterbuch, 2 vols. (Giessen: T”pelmann, 1909-10). 135. Cable, Gobi Desert, 86. 136. For a full description, Raymond W. Muncey, Our Old English Fairs (London: Sheldon, 1935); cf. P. H. Ditchfield, "Stourbridge Fair," Journal of the British Archaeological Association 19 (1913): 161, 163-64, 167, 171, 173. 137. This of course is merely a suggestion. Just how far one may go with this sort of thing can be learned from the Feugians, who, it is believed, "stabled ground sloths in caves on Last Hope Island" within historic times, and still live in "portable skin toldas [!] or tent-houses," Carlton Beals, Nomads and Empire Builders (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1961), 41. 138. W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites (London: Harper, 1901), 244-54; cf. 458-65. Samuel N. Kramer, "Sumerian Historiography," Israel Exploration Journal 3 (1953): 230; M. San Nicol•, "Materialien zur Viehwirtschaft in den neubabylonischen Tempeln," Orientalia 18 (1949): 289-300; Witzel, "Zu den Enmerkar-Dichtungen," 279-80; Kees, Aegypten, 42. The king shared the take with the temple; San Nicolo, "Materialien zur Viehwirtschaft," 306. 139. Frankfort, Birth of Civilization, 54. To the earliest Sumerian temples one paid "Feldrentenbrote," Anton Deimel, Sumerische Grammatik (Rome: Pontificical Biblical Institute, 1924), 210. 140. See n. 120 above. Some early examples in Luckenbill, Ancient Records, 1:177-78, 182; 2:4, no. 7; 7-8, nos. 17-19; 8; Cf. Thimme, "Forestis, K”nigsgut und K”nigsrecht," 146. 141. Witzel, "Zu den Enmerkar-Dichtungen," 276. The earliest Indo-European kings likewise paid to be left unmolested when challenged, Paul ‚. Dumont, L'Asvamedha (Paris: Geuthner, 1927), 356. The definition of socage is from Webster's Dictionary. 142. Froissart, Chronicle I, 285. "Although moral virtue made even a private citizen essentially `noble,' it could not give him rank," which had to be bought and maintained by prowess in arms, Bryson, Point of Honor in Sixteenth-Century Italy, 15. 143. A tax is basically "a compulsory contribution" and to tax is "to charge a person with some offence," Oxford English Dictionary; Walter W. Skeat's Etymological Dictionary traces the root to "tagsare; from tag-, the base of tangere, to touch." 144. R. H. Hilton, "Freedom and Villeinage in England," Past and Present 31 (1965): 15-18; Froissart, Chronicle II, 73. Everywhere peasants agitated for the right of paying guesting charges in money; Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 5, 10-11. 145. Hilton, "Freedom and Villeinage in England," 3. 146. The stock objection to new taxes is that they nullify the agreement expressed in the former taxes; Froissart, Chronicle I, 244; II, 83, 87, 158; III, 6. Anything beyond the original tax was considered punitive, II, 128-29. 147. This is made clear in the fifteenth-century preface to Dyboski and Arend, Knyghthode and Bataile. 148. The idea was not introduced into Germany until the late twelfth century; Von Below, "St„dtische Verwaltung des Mittelalters," 432. The nobility owe nothing to the common people and disdain to bargain with them; Hilton, "Freedom and Villeinage in England," 19. 149. Cited by Kiernan, "State and Nation in Western Europe," 21. With the establishment of the prehistoric sacral kingship, "history enters a groove from which it is never to deviate appreciably," E. A. Speiser, "The Ancient Near East and Modern Philosophies of History," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95 (1951): 585. 150. See nn. 75-77 above. The quotation is from Rubner, Untersuchungen zur Forstverfassung, 7. 151. Froissart, Chronicle II, 143; II, 157; cf. III, 6. 152. On the unique authority of Sir John Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the Adjoining Countries, tr. and ed. by Thomas Johnes, 2 vols. (London: 1857), 1:xli. Cf. Froissart, Chronicle I, 124; II, 103. Even a blind king must fight in the field, ibid., I, 129. 153. Froissart, Chronicle I, 207; III, 1. 154. Ibid., II, 131-35. Froissart, himself both a knight and a priest, closely identifies the interests of clergy and nobility, I, 176; III, 25. 155. Ibid., I, 78. Both temporal and spiritual lords, bidding for the services of these outlaws recognized their rights to plunder and even offered them titles of nobility, ibid., I, 254, 324; III, 10. They differed from the true nobility only in being, as they styled themselves, "the Late Comers," ibid., I, 214. 156. Wat Tyler and John Ball put themselves under Sir Robert Salle, ibid., II, 76, and the Smithfield mob marched under the king's banner, desiring the king to lead them. The same situation is found in France, I, 181-84. 157. Ibid., III, 1, 5, 7, 9-10. 158. Kiernan, "State and Nation in Western Europe," 26. 159. Froissart, Chronicle I, 115, 184; II, 41, 46-47; III, 36. The rich burghers adopted all the trappings of nobility as their city corporations bargained and made war with kings and dukes exactly as the latter did with each other, ibid., I, 43, 45, 98, 123. 160. Favoring an origin in trade are Fritz R”rig, Magdeburgs Entstehung und die „ltere Handelsgeschichte, in Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 49 (1952); Hermann Aubin, "Der Aufbau des Abendlands im Mittelalter," HZ 187 (1959): 497-520. Markets were first introduced into Germany in the ninth century, "the building program of a Roman provincial market is the same as that of the medieval German city," Friedrich Philippi, "Der Markt der mittelalterlichen deutschen Stadt," HZ 138 (1928): 235; cf. Ditchfield, "Stourbridge Fair," 161-74. Arnold's theory that cities grew up around forts is refuted by Von Below, "St„dtische Verwaltung des Mittelalters," 428, though Christopher Hawkes, "Hill-Forts," Antiquity 5 (1931): 93, maintains that "politically the hill-fort . . . was the Celtic version of the earlier Greek polis." Walther Gerlach, "Kritische Bemerkungen zu neuen Untersuchungen ber die Anf„nge der St„dte im Mittelalter," Historische Vierteljahrschrift 19 (1919): 331-45, notes that the great cities of Europe did not begin as markets, but became cities through Stadterhebung by royal favor, ibid., 345. Some ancient cities were founded all at once, while others grew up gradually, Camillo Praschniker, "Die griechische Stadt," Anzeiger der ”sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 84 (1947): 3. 161. Carleton S. Coon, The Story of Man (New York: Knopf, 1954), 122. 162. For civitas, Walde, Lateinisches etymologisches W”rterbuch, 1:224; for stadt, Friedrich Kluge, Etymologisches W”rterbuch der deutschen Sprache (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963), s.v. "stadt," and Sigmund Feist, Vergleichendes W”rterbuch der gotischen Sprache (Leiden: Brill, 1939), 450-51. For gorod, burg, and town, see Jan de Vries et al., Altnordisches etymologisches W”rterbuch (Leiden: Brill, 1961), 164. 163. For mahallah as a camp, Peyer, "Reisek”nigtum des Mittelalters," 18; for madinah, Meir Fraenkel, "Zur Deutung von Medina `Bezirk, Staat'," Zeitschrift fr die alttestestamentliche Wissenschaft 77 (1965): 215. 164. Von Below, "St„dtische Verwaltung des Mittelalters," 408. 165. Ibid., 401, 406-8, 432, 437-38. 166. Alfred Schultze, "ber G„sterecht und Gastgerichte in den deutschen St„dten des Mittelalters," HZ 101 (1908): 487, 498-502. 167. Ibid. 168. Jean Albert-Sorel, "Le passe et l'avenir des droits de l'homme," La Revue des deux Mondes (1 May 1965): 69-82, notes that the Rights of Man first come to their own in the French Revolution; but the basic concepts are set forth in the Baconian doctrine that "replaced the name `God' by the name `Nature' "; see Karl R. Popper, "Science: Problems, Aims, Responsibilities," Federation Proceedings of the American Societies for Experimental Biology 22 (1963): 961, who discusses the problem at length. As for the humanist, "if men realize that their careers are limited to this world, that this earthly existence is all they will ever have, then they are already more than half-way on the path toward becoming functioning Humanists," Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 68. 169. Nimrod is not only the archetype of the Wild Hunter, but he is also the founder of the first state, the builder of the first walled city, and the organizer of the first real army. In countless old legends Nimrod illustrates the idea that he who would own the world is insane. For general references, see Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State, 339; reprinted in this volume, pages 14-15. 170. Josef K”stler, "Wald und Forst in der deutschen Geschichtsforschung," HZ 155 (1937): 469. 171. Compare the Egyptian "Regulator of the Festival or the Tent," Massoulard, Pr‚histoire et Protohistoire d'‚gypte, 455, with "The King's Office of Revels and Tents," in William Bray, "Observations on the Christmas Diversions Formerly Given by the Lord of Misrule, and on the King's Office of Revels and Texts," Archaeologia 18 (1817): 313-32. The latter was also a "Christmas Prince or Revel-Master," and "dined . . . under a cloth of estate," ibid., 314. His main duty was "to keep the tents and pavilions belonging to the King," ibid., 317, which moved all over the country on carts, accompanying the king as he held festival in one place after another, ibid., 329-30. 172. Alf”ldi, "Geschichte des Throntabernakels," 554, 559-62, 564, tracing the institution from Persia through "the royal festival tents of the Greeks," 562, to the domus aurea of Nero and the garden pleasure-domes of the great Roman magnates, 563. A general survey of the institution in the East is given by Moortgat, Tammuz, 139-42; cf. Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 1:307-8, on the shrine and palace as gardens of Eden. Cf. Hugh W. Nibley, "Sparsiones," Classical Journal 40 (1945): 524-26; reprinted in this volume, pages 152-54. 173. Frankfort, Birth of Civilization, 24; see Nibley, "Sparsiones," 532, 540-43; reprinted in this volume, pages 158-59, 162-64. 174. The Greeks call any passing show or vanity a skene, or tent, for which many illustrative passages are given in Henri Estienne, Greek Thesaurus (Geneva: Henricus Stephanus, 1573), s.v. "skene." 175. In expressing their preference of tents to castles the lords of the steppes said, "Every one who is shut up is [already] captured," Budge, The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, 1:470. Until recent times in Mongolia it was "forbidden to all . . . to erect permanent masonry. The free steppe is not to be `bound' by heavy buildings," Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 284-85. Early Jewish and Christian sectaries of the desert deplored the Temple of Jerusalem as a depravation of the mobility of god's people on earth, H. J. Schoeps, "Die ebionitische Wahrheit des Christentums," in William E. Davies and David Daube, The Background of the New Testament and Its Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 121; Phythian-Adams, People and the Presence, 159-60; William Manson, The Epistle to the Hebrews (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951), 35. 176. The great sin of the human race was the attempt to pull up stakes and "from living in tents to go over to settling in a fortified metropolis," Ernst Sellin, in "Nachtrag" to O. E. Ravn, "Der Turm zu Babel," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl„ndischen Gesellschaft 91 (1937): 371. "The Ahl Hayt, or People of the Walls" must pay a tax to "the Ahl Bayl, or dwellers in the Black Tents," because they "have forfeited right to be held Bedawin," Richard F. Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, 2 vols. (London: Bell & Sons, 1906), 1:114. From the beginning "the city was a questionable institution, at variance, rather than in keeping, with the natural order," Frankfort, Birth of Civilization, 52-53. There is an eloquent commentary on the theme in Thomas E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Garden City: Doubleday, 1935), introduction. 177."This world is but a temporary tenement, our real dwelling is in the other world," Babylonian Talmud Mo ced-Qatan 9b. John Chrysostom, In Epistolam ad Hebraeos (On the Epistle to the Hebrews) II, 24, in PG 63:167, notes that while the ancient Patriarchs "lived in tents as strangers and pilgrims," being tried and tested by the rigors of a wandering earth-life, the Church has become obsessed with a shameful passion for earthly security--"what a difference!" He actually recommends that Christians learn to live like the nomad Scythians, despising security and rejecting the luxury and defilement of city life, cf. John Chrysostom, Homilia in Matthaeum (Homily on Matthew) LXIX, 3, in PG 58:652. This is no mere rhetoric, since John in a time of political and natural upheavals had been forced to flee his city and live as a refugee in the camps of Asiatic nomads, John Chrysostom, Epistolae 127-43, in PG 52:687-97. Another important book is Ernst K„semann, Das wandernde Gottesvolk (G”ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1939). 178."The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," chap. 7 in The Pope Speaks 10 (1965): 391-94. "Until the appearance of new heavens and a new earth . . . the wayfaring church . . . wears the ephemeral look of this world," 391; cf. 365, 382. 179. They were to pay taxes, e.g., Luke 20:22-25, to allow themselves to be exploited rather than to become involved in litigation, Matthew 5:25-26, to play the world's game just enough to allay suspicion, Luke 16:9, 11. They gladly conceded the rich man's right to his worldly possessions, since they claimed only heavenly ones; Luke 16:25. 180."Scit se peregrinam in terris agere, inter extraneos facile inimicos venire, ceterum genus, sedem, spem, gratiam, dignitatem in coelis habere" ([Truth] knows that she is a pilgrim in the earth, that she easily finds enemies among strangers, but that she has her race, home, hope, reward, and honor in heaven), Tertullian, Apology 1, in PL 1:307-8; cf. Epistle to Diognetus 1. On owning lands, and so forth, Hermae Pastor (Shepherd of Hermas), Similitudo (Similitudes) I, 1, in PG 2:951-53; Hugh W. Nibley, "The Passing of the Church: Forty Variations on an Unpopular Theme," Church History 30 (1961): 138; reprinted in CWHN 4:178. 181. On the purchase and sale of safe-conducts, Irving A. Agus, "Control of Roads by Jews in Pre-Crusade Europe," JQR 48 (1957-58): 96-98. The custom is ancient, Eugen I. Mittwoch, "Neue aram„ische Urkunden aus der Zeit der Ach„menidenherrschaft in „gypten," Monatsschrift fr Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 83 (1939): 95. On the importance of passports and the reluctance of the nobility to issue and respect them, Froissart, Chronicle I, 134, 189, 196, 225. 182. Urban's speech in 1095 lays strong emphasis on the total collapse of European society and the need for a general escape, Fulcher, Historia Hierosolymitana I, 2, in PL 155:825-41. Behind the Crusades was a universal "Sehnsucht nach Freiheit," Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1957), 1:258. 183. On the Assizes of Jerusalem, see J. B. Bury, Cambridge Medieval History, ed. H. M. Gwatkin and J. P. Whitney, 8 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1924-36), 5:303; Steven Runciman, "The Crown of Jerusalem," Palestine Exploration Quarterly 93 (1961): 15; Angelo S. Rappoport, History of Palestine (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931), 282-85. 184. Adolf Waas, "Der heilige Krieg," Welt als Geschichte 19 (1959): 215-16, describes the Crusades as the feudalization of Christianity by the ancient chivalric tradition. The rival claims of the nobility provided "a lawyer's paradise" with all the royalty of Europe at one time or another claiming the crown of Jerusalem, Runciman, "The Crown of Jerusalem," 8-9. See E. de Roziere, "Introduction to the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre," in PL 155:1106. 185. P. Leyhausen, "The Sane Community--a Density Problem?" Discovery 26 (September 1965): 33. 186."The optimum conditions for maximum physical and mental achievement remain unknown," Stamp, "Man and His Environment," 78. 187. Leyhausen, "The Sane Community," 31. For a general survey, E. S. Deevey, "The Hare and the Haruspex," Yale Review 49 (December 1959): 161-79. 188. Leyhausen, "The Sane Community," 28. On territorial mystique among primitives, see Adolphus P. Elkin, The Australian Aborigines (Garden City: Anchor, 1964), 27-39. 189. Leyhausen, "The Sane Community," 31-33. 190. Israel in the wilderness is cut off from the presence of God, Babylonian Talmud Mo ced-Qatan 19b; this world is not their real home, ibid., 9b. Man's true home and origin is far away, Zohar I, 245. 191. A very eloquent expression of this is the early hymn known as The Pearl, for which see Adam, Psalmen des Thomas, 1-28, esp. 24; see also 42-47. When men fell away "the whole order of life upon the earth was altered, with men in a state of rebellion against God," Clementine Recognitiones (Clementine Recognitions) I, 29, in PG 1:1223-24. The early logia of Jesus (especially the Arabic ones) harp on man's lost glory. 192. For this see the enlightening study of L. K kosy, "Ideas about the Fallen State of the World in Egyptian Religion: Decline of the Golden Age," Acta Orientalia 17 (1964): 208-10; P. Montet, "Le fruit defendu," Kemi 11 (1950): 85-116. 193. Plato, Phaedo 72E, 92D; Plato, Philebus 34C, 63E; Plato, Phaedrus 275A. The departure of the gods from unrighteous mankind is mentioned by Hesiod, Solon, and Pindar. 194. Othmar Spann, "Vom Gemeinleben des Menschen mit der Natur," Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung 4 (1949): 527. "Why does the question, `What is man?' today sound like a cry of distress?" asks Herman Dooyewerde, The Twilight of Western Thought (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1960), 174. Arland Essher, Journey through Dread (New York: Devin-Adair, 1955), discusses Pascal's "Shudder before the Universe," Kierkegaard's "Shudder before God," Heidegger's "Shudder before Death," and Sartre's "Shudder before the Other Person." 195. Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" is a classic example. Spann, "Vom Gemeinleben des Menschen," 536, quotes Eichendorff: "Sagt, wo meine Heimat liegt?/ Heut' im Traum sah ich sie wieder,/ Und von allen Bergen ging/ Solches Grssen zu mir nieder,/ Dass ich an zu weinen fing." 196. Mircea Eliade, "The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition," Diogenes 3 (1953): 18-30. 197. "Yet this `adjustment' to mass communities does the human species no more good than drug-addiction or alcoholism," Leyhausen, "The Sane Community," 32. 198. Deevey, "Hare and the Haruspex," 162, 165. 199. By the 1920s the idea of a hostile outer space was completely discredited: "The skies, as far as the utmost star, are clear of any malignant Intelligences, and even the untoward accidents of life are due to causes comfortably impersonal. . . . The possibility that the Unknown contains Powers deliberately hostile to him is one the ordinary man can hardly entertain even in imagination." Edwyn Bevan, Hellenism and Christianity (London: Allen and Unwin, 1921), 81. Today "outer space is the space of openness, of danger and abandonment," in which man is "the eternal hunted fugitive," O. F. Bollnow, "Lived-space," Philosophy Today 5 (1961): 31-39. 200. J. Pucelle, "Alienation et deracinement chez l'homme modern," Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte en Psychologie 50 (1957-58): 58. 201. William M. McGovern, The Early Empires of Central Asia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939), 47-49. 202. "Durch den donnernden Flutgang der Jahrtausende t”nt eine Stimme, tr”stend und warnend: des Menschen Reich is nicht von dieser Welt. Aber daneben erklingt eine brausende Gegenstimme; diese Erde . . . geh”rt Dir, dem Menschen; sie ist dein Werk und Du das ihrige: ihr kannst Du nicht entfliehen. . . . Du musst ihr die Treue halten. Diese unausgel”ste Dissonanz bildet das Thema der Weltgeschichte." Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte „gyptens und des alten Orients, 4th ed. (Munich: Beck, 1953), 3. Pere Lagrange dreamed in the desert of "les images de la vie nomade, si naturelle, si simple, si proportion‚e … la fragilit‚ de notre existence!" But he reprimands himself for thus slipping away from reality, M.-J. Lagrange, "Chronique," Revue biblique 12 (1915): 255-56. This article was originally published in Western Political Quarterly 19/4 (1966): 599-630. Figure 4. The gold-covered portable canopy and furniture of Queen Hetepheres (A) enable us to see the refined taste of Old Kingdom art, c. 2500 b.c. The same kind of elegant columns were used centuries later by Thutmose III in his Festival Hall (B) at Karnak, c. 1440 b.c., where he described it as a great ritual tent built to last millions of years. Figure 5. Long before Islam, each Bedouin tribe had its own portable shrine, the focus of its spiritual life. A dome-shaped shrine (A) rides atop a camel on this stone relief from the Temple of Bel, Palmyra, Syria, a.d. 32. Note the women's full-body veil, a practice still being debated in the Islamic world. The mahmal camel shrine (B) persisted into the later pilgrimages to Mecca, as shown in this festive manuscript illumination from Baghdad, a.d. 1237. This Egyptian version of the mahmal (C), destined for Mecca, is shown in an English engraving, c. 1880. The custom lasted until 1952, when it was abolished as being idolatrous. Figure 6. From the earliest example of the wheeled vehicle in Egypt (A) to its present-day descendant (H), the persistence of these sacred wheeled boats with their carrying poles demonstrates the critical importance of being able to move across all types of terrain, both in this life and the next. (A) Funeral sledge on wheels, c. 1700 b.c. (B) Model barge on wheels, c. 1554-1529 b.c. (C) Funeral wagon, c. 350-300 b.c. Discovered in Gaza, Israel, a Jewish silver coin (D) of 450-300 b.c. shows a seated figure on a winged, wheeled throne, a reminder that the throne of God is commonly called the merkabah, wagon or boat, in Jewish literature. Made under Greek influence, it resembles Dionysius on his winged, wheeled throne (E) from a Greek vase of 500-400 b.c. Thus the immovable throne of God moves forward on wheels, as also shown by the Ark of the Covenant on an oxcart (F), Dura Europos Synagogue, Iraq, c. a.d. 250, as well as the throne of Christ pulled by the beasts of the four quarters (G), apse painting, Bawit, Egypt, c. a.d. 500-600. (H) Ship-wagon procession in honor of an Islamic saint, Luxor, Egypt, 1960. Figure 7. With the winged symbol of Ahura Mazda protecting them from above, Darius sits enthroned with his heir Xerxes standing behind him under a large canopy of tasseled netting (A). Though appearing majestically immovable, the kings are being carried forward by twenty-eight representatives of the Empire supporting a large platform whose feet are carefully carved to show that it is lifted up off the ground. (A) Palace doorway, Persepolis, c. 500 b.c. This motif is also used on the five royal tombs nearby (B). In this recently discovered chariot tomb of a Germanic chieftain (C), 600-550 b.c., a unique bronze couch served him in death as it had in life. Thought to have been imported from the south, it is supported by eight lady unicyclists (D) lifting and carrying the king forward, as did their Persian counterparts. Figure 8. Along with the many replicas of famous places he had seen on his travels, Hadrian also built uniquely personal structures such as the so-called Maritime Theatre in his villa at Tivoli, a.d. 117-138. It was actually a private retreat for the Emperor, where he could seal himself off from the world by pulling in the two-part pivoted bridges after him. Of course, this flight to the center of a circular island was more symbolic than real, but it demonstrated his understandable desire to escape from his world. The Hierocentric State In his great history of Greek religion, Professor Nilsson comments on the neglect by scholars of an institution of first importance in the development of civilization and the state. That is the panegyris, the great assembly of the entire race to participate in solemn rites essential to the continuance of its corporate and individual well-being. The meeting was a tremendous affair (Pindar leaves us in no doubt about that), yet it was paralleled by equally great and imposing assemblies of other nations all over the ancient world. At hundreds of holy shrines, each believed to mark the exact center of the universe and represented as the point at which the four quarters of the earth converged-- "the navel of the earth"--one might have seen assembled at the New Year--the moment of creation, the beginning and ending of time--vast concourses of people, each thought to represent the entire human race in the presence of all its ancestors and gods. A visitor to any of these festivals would have found a market or fair in progress, the natural outcome of bringing people together from wide areas in large numbers, and the temple of the place functioning as an exchange or bank. He could have witnessed ritual contests: foot, horse, and wagon races, odd kinds of wrestling, choral competitions, the famous Troy game, beauty contests, and what not. He would note that all came to the celebration as pilgrims, often traversing immense distances over prehistoric sacred roads, and dwelt during the festival in booths of green boughs. What would most command a visitor's attention to the great assembly would be the main event, the now famous ritual year-drama for the glorification of the king. In most versions of the year-drama, the king wages combat with his dark adversary of the underworld, emerging victorious after a temporary defeat from his duel with death, to be acclaimed in a single mighty chorus as the worthy and recognized ruler of the new age. The New Year was the birthday of the human race, and its rites dramatized the creation of the world; all who would be found in "the Book of Life opened at the creation of the World" must necessarily attend this event. There were coronation and royal marriage rites, accompanied by a ritual representing the sowing or begetting of the human race; and the whole celebration wound up in a mighty feast in which the king as lord of abundance gave earnest of his capacity to supply his children with all the good things of the earth. The stuff for this feast was supplied by the feasters themselves, for no one came "to worship the King" without bringing his tithes and first fruits. Volumes would not suffice to trace the survival of present-day institutions throughout the world from the practices and rites of the ancient national assemblies. They were the general reservoir into which the myriad culture-streams of an earlier day eventually found their way, and from which are supplied in turn the mainstreams of our civilization. Space will not allow us to examine these magnificent gatherings one by one, nor is it necessary to draw the same identical picture a score of times; however, since no work on the subject has to our knowledge yet appeared (though the evidence is neither suspect nor difficult of access), it will be necessary to reinforce our claims by passing quickly from west to east over the ancient world, pointing out as we go some of the more important sources to which the student might turn for a description of a score of the more illustrious assemblies. Beginning in the far northwest, we may take the great Things of Iceland as typical of the primitive assemblies of the whole Germanic North. The meeting place was a mound (the holy logberg, mountain of the law) in the center of a stone circle where the four quarters of the island met; the president of the meeting was a ritual king (the Gothi); attendance was compulsory; booths, feasting, games, markets, and the rest were never lacking. Identical though more imposing were the rites at Uppsala and at various Teutonic shrines on the continent. Typical of all Celtic nations was the Beltene fair of the Irish at Usenech, held "at the turn of the year," at the hill where stood "the stone and umbilicus of Ireland . . . regarded as being in medio et meditullio terrae positus" (situated in the center and middle of the land). There the king of the new age was established and the creation of the world was rehearsed. An inscription from Ancyra recording just such a fair of the ancient Galatians reminds us that we are dealing with no medieval innovations in the Irish fairs or in those of Britain and Gaul, which follow the same pattern. In moving terms, Cicero has described the immemorial rites at Enna in Sicily: "It is the exact center of the island, and is called the navel of Sicily" where, at a sacred lake in the top of a mountain, there congregates once a year "a renowned assemblage of people not only from Sicily but from other nations and races." Rome itself was originally, and forever remained, a place of universal assembly. The old Roma quadrata was, or contained, a circular enclosure divided into four equal parts, at the center of which stood the lapis manalis, the seal of the underworld, marking the mundus--a term held by some to be identical with the Greek kosmos. At the end of the sacred roads stood the king's house on the holy mount. Hither repaired the whole human race for the ludi saeculares, the universal birthday party from which no human being was permitted to be absent. On this occasion, the king acted as host to all the world; and having won a ritual contest with the powers of darkness, the king was hailed as father and king of the race for a hundred years. The panegyris of the Greeks has already been mentioned. Delphi furnishes the best known, but by no means the only, example. There the god sat on his holy mound, "the middle omphalos, the navel of the earth," to bestow his blessing on the multitudes that came along the sacred roads to pay him homage on his birthday and to live in booths and hold their feasts, games, and markets. Jane Harrison and others have fully demonstrated the royal combat, victory, and coronation to be the original kernel of the rites. Scholars have long noted the remarkable parallel between the Greek rites at Eleusis and those at the great Slavic shrine of Svantevit: aside from the death-and-resurrection motif of the mysteries, the Slavic assemblies resemble those of other nations in every particular. The great Egyptian assemblies that astonished the Greeks by their size and splendor were from the beginning New Year's gatherings to celebrate the coronation of the king; the place was the mountain of creation at the center of the universe, and all the essential aspects of the panegyris were conspicuous. The Kacba at Mecca is still thought to mark the exact middle of the earth and hub of the universe; it is surrounded by special shrines marking the cardinal points, and the roads that lead to it are holy, the main one being called the Royal Road. There at a set time the whole human race must assemble in one tremendous concourse, as it shall assemble on the Day of Judgment before the throne of God. It was common in the Middle Ages to represent Jerusalem on maps as the exact center of the earth and to depict the city itself as a quartered circle ( fig. 9). Long before the days of the prophets, that place was the seat of a great assembly and of the royal year-drama, of which many echoes still survived in the Bible. The records from Ras Shamra describe the same type of rites in ancient Syria, and early Christian writers tell of other great assemblies in the desert. The most complete descriptions of the year-rites, as of the hierocentric doctrine, have been supplied by the Babylonian investigators, to one of whom (Father Burrows) we are beholden for the term hierocentric as that which best describes those cults, states, and philosophies that were oriented about a point believed to be the exact center and pivot of the universe. Dumont and Albright have collaborated to demonstrate the essential--prehistoric--identity of the earliest Babylonian rite with the greatest festival of India, the Asvamedha. But perhaps the most brilliant of all the great assemblies took place at the Persian Nauroz-- continuing the very ancient practices described in the Avesta and the Vedas--when all the world followed the Royal Road to the presence of the king to present their gifts and feast as his guests on his birthday, the New Year, the only day on which his glory was visible. The great annual assemblies at the courts of the Mongol khans and the Chinese emperors ( cf. fig. 10), to which we shall refer below, follow the identical pattern. It also occurs in the New World and among primitive tribes. The Kingly Calling But granted that these great assemblies did take place, and that the rites were far too peculiar and elaborate to have been independently invented in a hundred different places, what then? The dominant position of the king in the hierocentric rites suggests the kingly office as the natural point of departure for further examination of the origin and survival of the system. Within recent years a number of important studies have appeared treating the sacral kingship as a single uniform institution throughout the ancient East. The orthodox conceptions of kingship are not legion but only one. This conception is clearly restated by each monarch in his turn. From the beginning Pharaoh is "ruler of all that which is encircled by the sun," he is "the son of God, none can resist him; all people are subject to him, his bounds are set at the ends of the earth," to him the gods "have promised world dominion." In Babylonia where "the earthly was a counterpart of the heavenly monarchy, but distinct," Naramsin called himself "King of the Four Regions" and "King of the Universe." Goetze says that the Weltreich-Idee was first carried out in practice by those Semitic conquerors who made Akkad the Mittelpunkt der Welt (center of the world) at about 2600 b.c. Whether or not this actually was the first world empire, from that time on every state in the East "erstrebt fr sich theoretisch die Weltmacht" (theoretically aspires to world dominion). The Assyrian king duly called himself "King of the four quarters of the world, the sun of all peoples . . . conqueror of the faithless . . . whose hand conquered all who refused him submission . . . whose priesthood in the temple and rule over all peoples, Enlil made great from days of old"; and described his divine calling and mission as that of forcing all the world "from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same . . . to acknowledge one supremacy." The earliest kings of Elam and Susa also described themselves as "King of the four regions," and "exalted messenger and high-commissioner of heaven," even as the later Achaemenids, "lords of all people, from sunrise to sunset," felt obliged to conquer all the world for Ahura Mazda, to whose rule every enemy was invited to submit before being attacked. As late as 1739 a Persian shah could stamp upon his money: "O coin, announce to all the earth the reign of Nadir, the King who conquers the world." The Roman emperor is, from the first, "virtutum rector" (instructor in virtues) of the world, "salus orbis, Romae decus . . . magnus parens mundi" (the salvation of the world, the glory of Rome . . . the mighty father of the earth), and so forth, after the pattern of the old sacral kings. The basic doctrine of Hellenistic kings is that every true king is a universal king; the divine urge of kings cannot be satisfied with anything less than the world because Zeus the world-king is the only model for them. The Byzantine emperor, bearing the titles and insignia of the Persian kings in conscious imitation, was "by definition the master of the universe." "Il a pour devoir . . . de propager la foi orthodoxe … travers toute la terre habit‚e, dont Dieu . . . lui promet la domination" (he has as his duty . . . spreading the orthodox faith throughout the whole inhabited world, whose rule God promises him); and he tells his son that God has placed his throne "like the sun before Him. . . .He hath given to thee as worthy His own dominion over all men." "Abscondat solem, qui vult abscondere regem" (whoever wishes to hide the king may as well try to hide the sun)! cries a medieval panegyrist of the French king, who claimed to be the true successor of the emperor and nothing less than "king of kings and the greatest of princes under heaven." The great Attila called himself totius mundi principem (the lord of the whole earth) in the firm conviction that the miraculous finding of the sword of Mars that he bore was a sign from heaven that he should rule the world. He was greatly incensed when he learned that a Roman ambassador had declared him to be only a man, whereas Theodosius was a god. In the sixth century, the Khagan of the Turks declared that "all the earth from the rising to the setting of the sun is his inheritance, and all who have dared oppose the Turks have been duly enslaved." A thousand years before, when Darius demanded that a Scythian king bring him earth and water, the latter replied that as a descendant of God he was the only legitimate ruler. The ninth and tenth centuries of our era saw an epidemic of world-kings in higher India, Cambodia, and Java, all of whom "ambitionnaient d'ˆtre souverains universels" (sought to be lords of the earth), mystically identical with the universal God himself, for whom they sent out their missionaries to win the world. When the papal legate Ezzelino announced at the court of the Great Khan that his master was "placed high above all the kings and princes of the world, and . . . is honored by them as their Lord and Father," his Mongol hosts held their sides with laughter; the nonentity in the West was claiming to be exactly what their Khan obviously was in reality. "The Sky had ordered me to rule all nations," was the sincere pronouncement of Chingis Khan, Ssuto-Bogdo, the God-sent, "whose word was heaven's will." To his successor, he says: "Emirs, Khans, and all persons shall know that I have delivered over to you the whole face of the earth from sunrise to sunset. All who . . .oppose . . . shall be annihilated." At the same time the pontiffs of Rome were stating like claims in like words, and when the Pope's messenger told Kuyuk that all princes were subjected to his master, the latter answered: "The might of the Eternal Heaven had given the Khagan all lands from sunrise to sunset, and failure to obey his commands was a crime against God. . . . Any who made the slightest resistance would be annihilated and exterminated." His seal bore the inscription: "God in heaven, and Kuyuk Khan upon earth, the power of God: the seal of the emperor of all men." When the Khan's emissaries bore this doctrine to the court of the Caliph (as the pope's legates had to his), the latter countered with the identical doctrine: "You have become in your own eyes the Lord of the Universe, and think that your commands are the decisions of fate. . . . Do you not know that from East to West those who worship God, from kings to beggars, are all slaves of this court?" The corollary to this is the doctrine that "war against those who are not Moslems is a solemn obligation to God. . . . It is a duty to attack the infidels, even though they may have committed no act of aggression." All the world must be repeatedly invited to accept Islam, and whoever refuses must be wiped out by all possible means. By the end of the tenth century the Caliphs had under Turkish influence and with the aid of the court theologians preempted the tremendous title of the Persian kings and announced that "all the world must follow the guidance of the Commander of the Faithful." In China, the Ming emperors after the expulsion of the Mongols "took over the claim to world dominion" and "sent embassies to every country over which Kublai Khan had once held sway, demanding instant submission." At the other end of the Mongol world, Tamerlane sought to fulfill the prophecy that he "with the might of his sword, will conquer the whole world, converting all men to Islam." Even then the Grand Prince of Muscovy was preparing to assume the might and glory of the Golden Horde and to call himself God's chosen one and "the only orthodox sovereign in the world." All these sample claims, it will be noted, are one and the same. There is no variety among them, no nuances or fine distinctions and shadings such as one might expect. There are other royal claims, but this is the common doctrine of the great conquerors. It is clear and unequivocal in each case: (1) the monarch rules over all men; (2) it is God who has ordered him to do so and, significantly, none claims authority as originating with himself, but even the proudest claims to be but the humble instrument of heaven; (3) it is thus his sacred duty and mission in the world to extend his dominion over the whole earth, and all his wars are holy wars; and (4) to resist him is a crime and sacrilege deserving no other fate than extermination. The most obvious corollary of this doctrine is that there can be only one true ruler on earth. "The eternal command of God is this," wrote Mangu Khan to Louis IX, "in heaven there is but one eternal God; on earth, there is no other master than Chingis Khan, the Son of God." In the great "provincial" cultures of Egypt, India, China, and, as we shall see, of Europe also, this doctrine of kingship appears not as a local invention but clearly as an importation from the steppes of Asia. That is true even of Islam. When, in a.d. 979, the king of the Turks and Deilemites kissed the earth before the feet of a newly elected caliph, a Moslem general standing by cried out in horror: "O King, is that God?" But the new caliph was much pleased by this custom of the plains, and in time this Central Asiatic king-worship became a permanent fixture in Islam as in Byzantium. This peculiar but universal conception of kingship may be traced ultimately to Central Asia through, among other things, its close association in theory and practice with the hierocentric point. The universal type of hierocentric shrine bears many marks of its origin. Mountain and Palace At every hierocentric shrine stood a mountain or artificial mound and a lake or spring from which four streams flowed out to bring the life-giving waters to the four regions of the earth. The place was a green paradise, a carefully kept garden, a refuge from drought and heat. Elaborate waterworks figure conspicuously in the appointments and the rites of the holy place. The long ritualized wandering of the pilgrims through the desert, thirsting for the waters of life; the idea that the sacred place is a Vara outside of which all is a howling desert; the groves and the cultivated gardens where all creatures are at peace; the mighty central tree that gives shelter to all the creatures of heaven; the stories of a great snake (dragon) that haunts the place and frightens off those who come for the blessed water--all such things make it clear that our hierocentric shrines are supposed to represent an oasis, and forcibly bring to mind Pumpelly's theory that world civilization originated in the oases of Central Asia. It is the water-mountain combination, artificially produced at so many important shrines, that most strongly suggests Central Asia, where the cattle-dependent nomads have always escaped the deadly drought of summer by driving their beasts to ancestral campgrounds at the source of a sacred river high in the valleys of a holy mountain. It is there that they elect their khans, and it is from there that their world empires take their rise. Throughout the world, those who come to the great assembly are supposed to drive cattle with them. The rites at Olympia and Rome were founded when Heracles drove his cattle, dying of thirst, to those places. The Babylonian counterpart of this hero is himself a seeker for water and is shown on early seals watering his cattle from an overflowing vase. In the north the cow Authumla stands on the mountain at the source of the four world-rivers. The Koran specifically states that the rites of Mecca and all great assemblies are "over the cattle" which God has given men for sustenance; and, indeed, the common cult symbol of the archaic assembly is the bull's head. We are reminded of the wonderful prehistoric rock pictures which, all over the world, depict the driving of great herds of cattle to holy water holes. The seasonal aspect of the great assembly is but the beginning. The interval of a year between meetings was too much to assure firm government, and the sacred place was often too awkwardly located. So throughout the world we have a multiplication of "law-days" and "crown-days" which are but the duplication of the year rite, while new and more useful assembly places supplant the old. Thus the stone of Tara to which the ancient Irish would drive their cattle at the New Year was moved to Tailtiu when that became the capital, as the shrine of Delphi to which all men drove their hecatombs was later moved to Delos. William of Rubruck tells us that while the real holy center of the Mongols was the Ononkulitai (the ancestral burial and assembly place on the holy Altai beside the equally holy Onon River), for purposes of administration it had been supplanted by Karakorum, a centrally located roundup center to which the tribute animals could be most conveniently driven from all parts of the empire. Chingis Khan's great minister Yeliu-Ch'uts'ai had "insisted that such a fixed point was essential, so that the tribes might know to what place to send tribute, and come to regard it as a centre of administration." Chingis Khan himself "fully realized the necessity of finding himself a safe refuge, a definite, if movable, center, that might become a rallying point, a citadel, as it were, of his nascent empire," from which he might send out the "arrow messengers" with his orders to all the world. Baghdad, says Al-Fakhri, was founded in a holy place by the "Khalif of all men" to be "the blessed city," and "the house of salvation"; but it was chosen as the most central spot in the empire to be reached with equal ease from all directions, and the tribes of the four regions were admitted to it, each by the appropriate gate. Thousands of years before, the Babylonian and Assyrian kings had observed the identical practice: "I founded a city in the desert, in a waste, and from its foundation to its top I completed it. A temple I builded and placed a shrine of the great gods in it . . . and I opened a road to it." Here we have a hierocentric point where the king on his throne could "receive the heavy tribute of the four regions in the city of Assur, son of Shalmaneser, King of the Universe." "I opened a palace in the city of Tushhan; the tribute of the land of Nidrun . . . I received in the city of Tushhan." "I opened a palace in the city of Tiluli and received the tribute of the land of Kutmuhi." The names of the gates of such places--always facing "the four winds"--tell what they are for: when they are not proclaiming an abundance of water, they have such titles as "Bringing the Products of the Mountains," "The Gifts of the Sumu'anite and the Temite Enter through It," "Door of the Products of the Lands," and so forth. The oldest temple complexes in the world, at Ur and Mohenjo Daro, were such places of gathering, it is supposed. The Persians kept the system, covering the world with scale-models of the royal palace to serve as local collection centers. The oldest of such shrines and collection points would seem to go back to early hunters. Xenophon tells of visiting a shrine of the Asiatic hunting goddess, where hunters would come to sacrifice and the lady would feast all who brought their tithes with bread, wine, and meat as they camped in their booths in the sacred enclosure. This shrine, he says, was an exact replica of the great central temple of the goddess at Ephesus. The picture of the prehistoric Anahita (the same goddess to whom Xenophon refers) is a genuine piece of steppe-lore: clothed in magnificent furs and gold, the lady rides in her great wagon from one of her thousand castles to the next, each castle having a hundred windows and a throne for Anahita and standing in a cultivated oasis. Eyewitnesses have at wide intervals of time reported the activities of just such great ladies of the steppes, riding upon their wagons from castle to castle. In Asia, whoever will found an empire must first have a palace and a city. Xenophon himself was suspected of planning to have his soldiers settle down and found a city which would be named after him, from which he could spread abroad his dynamis in all directions. This was long before Alexander the Great did the same thing. It is the immemorial Asiatic pattern. We are told that patriarchs of the race did it in the beginning; and, as late as the 1920s, the holy man Dambin Jansang built a mighty fortress in the midst of the Gobi from which he actually dominated all of Central Asia. The "characteristic Central Asiatic city," according to a modern observer, is a cluster of buildings and tents about a super-palace, built to be the administrative center of all the vast empty spaces around. Archaeology has shown this to have been the normal order in prehistoric times, when the city was already but an appendage of the palace, and the palace was a combination fort, shrine, and trading center, like any real hierocentric point. All organized society was centered at that place which bore the name of "the god, the tribe, and the capitol, where the ancestral power was concentrated." When this fell, the empire fell too; and so we have the concept of Babylon, founded by Nimrod, the mad hunter, the plunderer and enslaver of all the earth, full of "beasts and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves and the souls of men," that perishes in a day. Kings as Hunters and Nomads We have remarked elsewhere that "Kings must be Hunters." The royal hunt of Asia is a great battue in which all the animals are driven by a converging ring of soldiers to that spot in the very center of the contracting circle where the king sits on his throne on a green mound. There the king slays the beasts he chooses and gives his "peace" to the rest, which thereby become sacrosanct under his protection. Human beings are treated in exactly the same way. A Persian king after viewing a tremendous animal drive significantly remarks to his officers: "And when people regard us as enemies and neither send up soldiers nor tribute, we hunt them with all our might!" Xenophon loves to dwell on the absolute identity of war and hunting in the Asiatic economy (a doctrine dear to the Mongols): the ruling nation is simply a moving army in the field; when it is not hunting men, it is hunting animals, and vice versa. Carpini tells how Chingis Khan "became a mighty hunter. He learned to steal men, and to take them for prey. He ranged into other countries taking as many captives as he could, and join[ed] them unto him," and so conquered the world. That is exactly how the kings of Babylonia and Assyria describe their own activities. There is no contradiction, incidentally, in a people being at the same time hunters and cattle raisers. Ammianus notes, for example, that though the Persians, Scythians, and Alans drove their huge herds before them wherever they went "like perpetual fugitives," they still lived by hunting animals and plundering humans. Certainly the oldest kings of the East described their wars as super cattle and slave raids, in which wild beasts, domestic cattle, and human beings are driven in common herds to the holy palace and shrine of the god. This is the old story of Nimrod, who revolted against God, "became a hunter of men," and founded that abominable state from which all the kings of the earth take their authority. Even Apollo was in the beginning a deadly hunter who came from the steppes of Asia (the land of the Hyperboreans) and slew the great serpent that guarded the holy spring of Delphi, so that he could gain control of the spot to which all the Greeks brought their tribute, and thereby became their ruler. So, too, Othinn is pictured in the beginning as a conquering nomad from the East, who rides into new lands to conquer them, hold games, and receive tribute; joining with the Asia-manna, "formerly called the Aesir" (the As or Alans), he built the castle, Sigtunir, and held his great assembly where those twelve judges officiated "who before had been at Troy and were of the Turkish race." All of which points again to the steppes. A nomad origin alone can account for the most paradoxical aspect of all the hierocentric shrines, namely their universal mobility. Every great shrine, while claiming to be the very point of origin of all things, had its founding legend telling how it was transferred through the air from some distant place. Furthermore, the doctrine that the seat of world dominion, ever since it was sent down in the beginning from heaven, has moved from place to place among the nations, now centered in one city and now in another, is stated in one of the earliest Sumerian texts; and, following Persian patterns, enjoys great popularity among Jewish and Christian apocryphal writers. Related to this concept is the universal custom requiring the king at his coronation to found a new palace and a new city to be the center of the earth. This, again, seems the direct antithesis of belief in an ageless holy shrine marking the one and only center of the universe; but, again, it is a doctrine that the nomads of the steppes must subscribe to. If palace-temple complexes must be built as the only way of "binding down" the conquered and organizing the empire, the necessary mobility of the nomad conquerors would force them to shift their main center from time to time, thus producing duplication. "Les tribus allaient de place en place, tandis que les dieux restaient dans les sanctuaires. Il fallait s'y rendre" (tribes went from place to place, while the gods remained in the sanctuaries); hence, of course, pilgrimage is still a general and natural institution and not merely a ritual in Central Asia. That all visitors to all hierocentric shrines must dress and act as pilgrims from afar is a clear enough indication of the nomadic nature of the institution. As is well known, the oldest temples were tents or huts of reed matting or some other light material. The nomads of Asia still employ these light tent-temples which, like the ark of Israel, move about with them on their wanderings. As soon as such a temple is set up, it promptly becomes a center of pilgrimage. Here we have a practical explanation for what, in the rest of the world, is purely ritual; namely, the setting up of a sacred booth to serve as the main shrine during the year-rites. Again, the fact that the Jewish writers describe the throne of God (certainly the most stable thing in the universe) as mounted on wheels is indeed perplexing, until one reads that the thrones of the Great Khans were likewise on wheels, so that they could be drawn along by horses or oxen when it came time to move the camp ( cf. fig. 11). The apocryphal picture of God entering paradise perfectly reproduces the scene of the khagan arriving at the summer kuriltai. The Almighty rides into the glorious meadows on a huge wagon which comes to a halt under the great central tree of life, while all the people sing joyful hymns of welcome. Paradoxically enough, the idea of a hierocentric point is far more often brought to the minds of nomads than of sedentary people. The royal court of the Mongols is "called in their language horda," says William of Rubruck, "which signifies, the middle; because the governor or chieftain among them dwells always in the middle of his people." Every schoolboy knows (or once knew) that the Northern king who went into battle surrounded by concentric rings of warriors--the "shield-wall"--was an object of sacred trust; also that such an order of battle is a tactical absurdity--except on the open plains, where it has always been standard with the kings of Asia. Many observers have described the meticulous care with which the Asiatic nomads orient their camps to the four cardinal points--the basic hierocentric idea. And what is more natural than that wanderers over the featureless plains should be ever concerned with taking their bearings in the universe? Herodotus tells us that when Asiatic colonists went out at the command of Delphi to found the kingdom of Libya, their leader pointed to the spot where the new capitol was to stand with the order: "Here we must stop for here is the axis of heaven!" The institution of the Royal Progress in which the monarch moves like the beneficent sun in a tireless round among his people is another Asiatic practice. The Persian kings were constantly on the move between their various summer and winter palaces, and medieval travelers have described how all of Central Asia migrated with the seasons. This is simply the necessary seasonal nomadism of the grass-seeking cattle people, and the Royal Progress is really royal nomadism. The proper business of all kings, when not sitting on the throne, is war and the hunt, both requiring the nomadic way of life. Tournaments and fairs are no less an occasion for camping out; and even when the king must live indoors, his palace walls, covered with tapestries and skins, are made to look as tentlike as possible. Indeed the royal throne, like the royal bed (which in Asia is identical with it), ordinarily stands under a canopy which is nothing but a "Turkish" tent. "A recent discovery," writes Gadd, "has revealed that the later Assyrians described their earliest princes as `kings living in tents,' and the same phrase, occurring at the end of Babylonian history . . . indicates that this means chieftains of desert tribes." This background the kings never lost. To the kings of Asia the royal tent is as much a part of the insignia as is the crown. Tamerlane in the West and the Chinese emperors in the East built their magnificent palaces to resemble their ancestral tents ( cf. fig. 10, p. 105). The tentlike character of the Achaemenid palaces was carried over into the mosques of the Near East and the cathedrals of Europe, so that the great domed structures that sprang up all over the world in the Middle Ages appear both in form and decoration to be reproductions of the great royal yurts of the plains ( cf. fig. 12). The arts and treasures that royalty has always coveted are the arts and treasures of the nomads--textiles, jewelry, arms, animals, and slaves--all highly portable and instantly redeemable. Louis XI, for all his absolutism, was despised by other monarchs as being "not royal," because as a European he saw where his true wealth lay. An Asiatic king, who must spend his whole life on the move, must carry the wealth of his kingdom on his back, so to speak, if he is to enjoy it; and this is the type of royal display that passed throughout the world as kingly. The highest expression of royal splendor is the court with its endless feasting and hunting and its display of gorgeous bric-a-brac looted by a nobility whose whole life is a military campaign. It might even be said that the Renaissance was the rediscovery of the sedentary arts--painting, sculpture, pottery, books, architecture--as against the nomadic arts of the Middle Ages, such as bardic poetry, weaving, jewelry, arms, pageantry, and so forth. It is in Central Asia alone that chivalry and feudalism, like court ritual, have survived to our day. And they are found there in the beginning. From the first, the conquerors of Asia brought the conquered under control by forcing them to farm and by building castles to watch them. The only free men are the lords, who alone may hunt or even mount a horse. They are allowed freedom of motion because they are bound to the monarch by solemn oaths--the code of chivalry is an arrangement by which a nomadic aristocracy is recruited (often from conquered enemies) and kept in leash while being allowed its freedom and enjoying the service and support of grounded serfs. Goetze has shown that chivalry and feudalism are the normal products of Central Asian economy, whence all the great empires of the second millennium b.c. adopted them. The system was taken over in the West, along with the chivalric and heraldic devices that still betray their origin by their Asiatic nomenclature, at the time when Europe, overrun by the wild hordes of Asia, was itself simply a western extension of the great Asiatic system. It never worked very well in Europe, however, as Tennyson wistfully observes, and whenever the Europeans came in contact with the real Asiatics, the latter were shocked and disgusted at the laxness, treachery, jangling, and hypocrisy that made European chivalry, even for intelligent Europeans, a most obvious farce. The typical royal court is Asiatic in its rites and appointments. In the Western world those hunting parks which may not be missing from the seats of royalty are but feeble imitations at best of the stupendous paradises of the East. Europeans, familiar with the courts of the West, were simply overawed in the presence of the Great Khans. Their courts were crude and barbaric, but they were the real thing. The khan himself sat utterly majestic and aloof on his high throne in the dim half-light of the great dome (and what else could have inspired the Byzantine emperors to have their thrones hoisted up by derricks to the ceiling?). "Upon the right hand of the great Khan sits his first-begotten son and heir . . . and under him sit all the nobles of blood royal. There are also four secretaries, which put all things in writing that the emperor speaks. In his presence likewise stand barons and others of his nobility, with great trains of followers after them, of whom none dare speak so much as one word . . . except his jesters and stage-players, who are appointed of purpose to solace their lord. . . . All his barons present themselves before him, with wreaths and crowns upon their heads . . . some of them are in green, namely the principal; the second are in red, and third in yellow, and they hold each man in his hand a little ivory tablet of elephant's tooth, and they are girt with golden girdles half a foot broad, and they stand upon their feet keeping silence." At a given signal, all fall upon their faces and touch their foreheads to the earth. Around the walls the nobility are arranged in tiers of thrones or benches, proximity to the emperor being proportionate to rank. A host of musicians hymn the monarch's praise with ceaseless and terrifying din. If the king on his throne is doing his best to imitate God on His, we must allow the khans of Asia first prize among earthly monarchs. Here is no sad and puerile Byzantine masquerading, but an expression of tangible power: the mechanical lions of Constantinople were real lions before the throne of the khan. There can be no doubt that it is the Asiatic model that is followed in the apocryphal descriptions of the heavenly court, and the Byzantine court that served as the model for all of Europe was itself consciously copied from the East. The livery, for example, which is little more than a pretty conceit in the courts of Europe, has a profound significance among the nomads, as do the chivalric banners that go with it. When the Easter chorus in Constantinople joyfully announces that the heads of the emperor's enemies are heaped up before his feet, it is not difficult to detect a wishful imitation of the Grand Khan, for the collection of heads and scalps for the king was immemorial routine on the steppes. As the king sits in state at the New Year (and every throne-day is but a repetition of the New Year's rites), all the world must bring its tribute and lay it at his feet. In return the king must pour out rich gifts without measure, for he is the lord of abundance and all things are his. The staggering turnover of property in the form of gifts received and bestowed has been the ruin of many a European court; but it is sound economic policy in a nation whose whole existence is an endless campaign of looting and where it is convenient to dispose of recent plunder to another in all possible haste. The normal economy of the "barbarians" runs down, says Jordanes, as soon as loot stops coming in; and Bar Hebraeus has given a vivid description of the ruin of a court when its noble members abandoned their customary raids and filibusters. The Two Kingdoms Highly characteristic of the hierocentric doctrine is an utter abhorrence of all that lies outside the system. The world inevitably falls into two parts, the heavenly kingdom and the outer darkness, a world of monsters and abortions. Whoever is not of the frithr is a nithung, without rights and without humanity. All who do not willingly submit to Alexander or Constantine are, according to Dio Chrysostom and Eusebius, mad beasts to be hunted down and exterminated. For the Roman, all the world is either ager pacatus or ager hosticus, says Varro, the only alternative to submission being outrageous rebellion. Anyone who resents the Roman yoke is a guilty slave, says Claudian, who should be consumed by remorse of conscience. For the Moslem, all the world is either Dar al-Islam or Dar al-Harb, the latter being any spot in the world that has refused to pay tribute and thereby made itself guilty of rebellion, because everything in the world without exception is the legitimate property of the Moslems. We have already noted the claim of the khans that whoever resisted them was guilty of crime against God. To Attila, those who resisted his yoke were runaway slaves, and the Assyrian kings constantly declare that whoever will not take and keep an oath to them must needs be exterminated as "wicked people" and "rebels." In a word, "the world without the `Kingdom' remains in its state of primordial rebellion," and all who do not recognize the divine king are truly "children of destruction." Here we have the root of that dualism so characteristic of Asian theology and commonly associated with Persia. The doctrine is no mere abstraction, however; it is a condition of survival among the nomads of the steppes. Farmers may and must live in pax, i.e., agreement, pact, compromise; and, when they occupy a region, they divide off the land--annually and by lot, as a rule--and each proceeds to cultiver son jardin (tend his garden) in a way that absorbs all his thought and energy. But when nomads clash on the open steppe, one or the other must be utterly subjected. A beaten enemy at large is free to recoup his strength, bide his time, and by a lucky chance or ruse overthrow his erstwhile conqueror--a thing that has happened a thousand times in the history of the tribes. An independent chief is therefore aut Caesar aut nihil; the alternative to conquering is to be a slave. "Instant submission or annihilation" is the formula, and every pastoral lord sends forth his challenge to all the world: "either fight me or submit to me." By absorbing the armies of the enemy, enslaving some and binding others to him by sacred oaths, the world conqueror builds up his world-host; "I counted them among my people," is the Assyrian expression. For there must be one people only: "With the Mongols," says Bar Hebraeus, "there is neither slave nor free; neither believer nor pagan; neither Christian nor Jew; but they regard all men as belonging to one and the same stock. . . . All they demand is strenuous service and submission which is beyond the power (of man to render)." The alternative to one rule on the steppes is not only chaos but sheer nonsense. Nomads cannot be held to boundaries, and where more than one ruler exists, they follow whom they will and life becomes the intolerable anarchy to which each great conqueror boasts that he has at last put an end--invariably describing himself as the liberator of the human race from depraved pretenders and the restorer of order in the world. A natural product of this necessary absolutism is the notorious cruelty of the Asiatic princes which, often found in men of magnanimous and even gentle nature, seems to the Western mind nothing short of pathological. But what is one to do when a foe is not beaten until he has lost his mobility? Where oaths can be trusted, they suffice; where adequate supervision is possible, it is enough. For the rest, the only sure ways of immobilizing a dangerous enemy are by beheading, maiming, blinding, or mass transportation. The remarkable thing is that the great conquerors rarely harm a hair of anyone of whose submission they are certain and always protest their preference for gentle and philanthropic methods. It is invariably the revolted cities and tribes, who have violated the trust and forfeited the faith of the king, that pay the terrible penalties. Moreover, the kings of Asia were sincere in believing that those who opposed them were less than human, and ages of experience justified their conviction that no creature on the loose is to be regarded as harmless while it is free to do harm if it will. The conquering nomad must of necessity either carry all his loot with him or deposit it at guarded stations, in either case involving a serious problem of transportation and manpower. Yet whatever is left behind and unguarded may, and almost surely will, be used against the conqueror by some rival or rebel; so there is nothing for it but to destroy the stuff. The Mohammedan law orders that prisoners and loot of war may not be left behind or mutilated, but if they cannot be carried home, they must be destroyed--killed or burned. The Huns "obliterated and smashed everything that lay in their route," but they did so reluctantly, for they almost lost a battle with the Goths rather than give up the vast burden of looted goods that was impeding their motions. Many have commented on the inconsistency of princes in combining a passion for collecting beautiful things with an absolute indifference to the destruction of beautiful things. It is clearly a heritage of the steppes, where the apparent paradox makes perfectly good sense. All observers have commented on the single-minded devotion of the Asiatic nomads to the accumulation of treasures (as nomads they are hungry for such things); but when their own survival is at stake, the stuff becomes dangerous impedimenta to be destroyed out of hand. At any period of history the two top hierocentric states may be seen damning each other as Antichrist and resembling each other like two peas. In the classic duel between Justinian and Chosroes, George of Pisidia describes the court ceremonial of Persia as a carbon copy of that of Constantinople, with the explanation that the Oriental version is but a hideous parody of the real thing. Chosroes replied in kind. This doctrine of the Two Kingdoms is already full-blown in the old Babylonian New Year's hymn, Enuma Elish, in which the evil court of Tiamat is described as a perfect reflection--in reverse--of the heavenly court of Anu. Emperors, caliphs, shahanshahs, grand khans, popes, and kings were all at one time or another paired off against each other as rival world rulers; while each, within his own sphere, "had to eliminate rival contenders" for his office. Always, the drama is described by their constituents as the cosmic combat between light and darkness, heaven and hell, between two opposing ideologies, antithetical ways of life while, in reality, they are identical. They are identical because they are hierocentric--and that is a concept which seems almost incapable of any variety: it is always the same. A Western Heritage With the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe became a battleground of the tribes: "propter Gallorum terras graviter inter se decertati sunt" (they fought bitterly among themselves for the lands of the Gauls). Gibbon has told best of all the story of how the "pastoral kings" of the steppes fought each other for the control of the newly opened lands of the West, exactly as they had fought for their Asiatic grazing lands; and how the native populations were either driven like cattle (a favorite term with contemporary writers) or allowed to live on as serfs, meekly submitting to one haughty lord after another. The most powerful of these tribes, the Huns--"expeditum indomi-tumque hominum genus" (an unencumbered and untamed race of men)--under the mighty Attila, "barbariam totam tenens" (master of the whole non-Roman world), treated Europe simply as a western province of their Asiatic empire. Attila's son Dinzio did, on European soil, exactly what every Asiatic aspirant had done before him in Asia; he rallied the remnants of the tribes about him, and tried to seize a city in Pannonia in an attempt to restore his father's Imperium. A later descendant of Attila, Mundo, is even more typical, for he went into the most desert part of Europe and there, like Tamerlane and Chingis Khan, gathered a band of outcasts about him, no doubt making the most of his descent. He had them proclaim him king and declared war on the world, choosing as his base of operations a tower on the Danube which was called Herta--obviously the later Mongol Horda, "the center" of dominion. These men, typical feudal barons, were transplanting the ways of the steppes into the West. The West had long been preparing to receive them, too. Generations of fighting against Alans, Gepids, Goths, and Huns, and of fighting with them shoulder to shoulder, in alliance now with one and now with the other, had transformed the Roman military state into the thing it had been fighting. Narses consciously and successfully employed not Roman but Hunnish tactics against the Franks, and the closing chapters of Jordanes show a Roman army indistinguishable from any barbarian horde. The last chapter of all makes the significant remark that the ultimate victor to emerge from the world shambles was "victor gentium diversarum Justinianus Imperator" (the Emperor Justinian, conqueror of diverse peoples). It was in this man Justinian that the Huns won a great and abiding victory over the West. The Emperor Justinian displayed at all times a single-minded devotion to the Huns that puzzles and dismays historians. Apparently there was nothing he would not do to please the Huns, even to the wrecking of his own foreign policy and the ruination of trade and agriculture throughout the empire. A passionate devotee of the factionists, he had worn their Persian beards, Hunnish hair-do, Hunnish cloaks, Hunnish shirts, and Hunnish shoes, the girdles and brooches of the steppes having already supplanted the more civilized styles of the West. "The greatest destroyer of established institutions that ever lived," Justinian was determined to make the Western world "completely change its clothes"; and he succeeded. All the absurdities and contradictions in his policies vanish if we consider that this Illyrian, who hated Greek things, was set upon becoming a grand khan. Justinian handed over the wealth of the state to the Huns "who were always turning up" at court (a significant note) in ever increasing numbers. He would claim for himself all the private property of the citizens, either charging the Romans with a crime or pretending that it was all being brought in to him as gifts, and then promptly give it all away again to the Hunnish lords before his throne: a thing that made perfectly good sense to his visitors from the steppes but appeared to his Roman subjects as "a thing that had never happened since the beginning of time." What he did not thus throw away to the barbarians, says Procopius, he wasted on absurd buildings, constructed simply to outshine all other emperors--a thing that any khan would have understood. This Hun-worship actually amounted to the enslaving of the empire, says Procopius and Agathias, but that was how Justinian wanted it. He insisted that all his subjects, from top to bottom, be called his slaves, and instituted the strictly Central Asiatic style of prostration and foot-kissing. He was not averse to giving the impression of being a sort of super-shaman and apparently even adopted the well-known Mongol custom of making those who entered his presence step clear of the threshold. In short, "instead of acting like a Roman Emperor, he was the complete barbarian in language, dress, and thought." What more could one ask? The welcome barbarians poured into court from all directions, to the immense delight of the emperor, who never failed to send them away loaded with gold, till presently "the barbarians in general became complete masters of the wealth of the Romans." In the end, all the offices and officials of the state were supplanted by one office--the royal court, and by two persons--the emperor and empress, for the new ascendancy of the empress, intensely resented by Procopius, was the crowning Asiatic touch. Justinian's weird innovations were no ephemeral thing. They were but the culmination of that process of Asianizing which had been deplored by the poets of the Republic. And they were there to stay. Diehls, and indeed the ancients themselves, see in Justinian the perfect type and model of the true Byzantine monarch, and his court became the model for every court of Europe. The sedentary populations of the empire, strictly forbidden to adopt the wandering ways of the conquerors, were permanently saddled with an adventurous hunting and campaigning nobility. How utterly unworkable the system was is vividly described by Fulcher, who shows how in time it led inevitably to the Crusades. In the Crusades we find the nobility of the West employing all the devices and insignia of the Asiatics with accustomed familiarity, so that Edward I can arrange for a coordinated invasion operation with his Mongol allies down to the smallest detail. The Europeans fully understood all the gadgets of the East and were as enthusiastic for a life of raiding and adventure as any Bedouin. But the good side of the Asiatic system completely escaped them. Christianity added nothing to the hierocentric doctrine as such. The early Christian theology was keenly conscious of all the imagery of hierocentric rule and ritual and, above all, of the contrast of the two kingdoms. The Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, Diognetus, Tertullian, and the Shepherd of Hermas tell us, it is true, that there is a universal throne--but it is not on this earth. The devil is the "Prince of this World," which is no place for the children of the kingdom--they sojourn here as pilgrims and as strangers. The conflict is not between contending parties here below, but between "this world" and the other. Our heritage and kingdom lie beyond: "here we have no abiding kingdom." Later Christian teaching adopted the old hierocentric doctrine with enthusiasm; but it did not, as Ferrero boasts, make it more spiritual and intellectual: the lofty ideal of the sacred universal empire is as abstract and intellectual in Horace and Vergil as it is in Dante. The vision of the universal ruler seated at the center of the cosmos had been fully appreciated and ecstatically proclaimed by the theoreticians of Alexandria in whose steps Roman emperors and Christian thinkers willingly followed. Gilson, commenting on Pope John VIII's concept of the church, says that it was identical with the Roman Empire, having the same capital and the same idea, only plus vaste. But what could be more vaste than the urbs aequaeva polo (city coeval with the heavens) of the pagan panegyrists, equal to the universe itself? Diehl sees in Christianity the addition of a profoundly religious element to the old concept of the Imperium: the prince is "transformed into the elect of God." But what Cosmocrator was ever anything but just that? In describing the new world church as an improvement on the old system, each of these three authorities admits the Church's indebtedness to that system. The absolute predominance of the emperor, "equal to the Apostles" (isapostolos), God on earth, the supreme head of the church as well as the state; the great imperial councils, a thing new in the church but, as Gelzer and Batiffol have shown, established usage in the empire; the investiture of churchmen by the emperor with insignia originally confined to the secular administration and borrowed from the East; the new ritual and liturgy so closely akin to old court ceremonies--the laudes echoing the old imperial acclamation and the liturgies praising God in the same set terms which the panegyrists declaimed before the emperor; the emergence of Christ, the ever-victorious crusher of his foes, as an object of terror and dread--such are a few of the well-documented indications that the world church of the fourth century was built upon the firm foundation of the old sacral kingship. The Armenian monk Vartan says the Christians prostrated themselves before God as the Mongols did before the Grand Khan. A trip to Constantinople would have shown him that this pious prostration was not reserved for the Invisible God but was really the old emperor-worship of Central Asia. To Conclude That it was the people of the steppes, engulfing the great "peripheral" civilizations in wave after wave, who imposed government upon the world, Oppenheimer long ago made clear. What he failed to observe is that hunters do not always "work best alone or in small groups," but on the boundless plains have been wont to operate in vast communal battues from the beginning. More recently Goetze has completed the picture in describing how the Hurrians and their kind came out of the regions of the North at the end of the third millennium and taught the old city-states to become world empires, supplying them with the equipment for the task: the horse, the chariot, the mounted archer, and a thoroughgoing feudalism. In China, India, Egypt, and Europe the successive waves of nomad invasion have been like recurrent attacks of a disease, each effecting a permanent change in the organism and leaving a permanent deposit behind it. The invaded civilizations, having absorbed institutions and traditions of the invaders, become increasingly susceptible to the romantic appeal of the same, and in some cases (e.g., Russia) contact between the two worlds is never broken completely. During the darkest period of its history, when all the works of established civilization were virtually destroyed, the West reverted to a state of primordial chaos indistinguishable from that which normally prevails on the steppes of Asia. At that fatal moment the liquefied resources of the West were poured, as they had often been before, into the Asian mold. The obvious solution to the Asiatic predicament was the classic Asiatic solution: with appalling meekness the officials of the empire literally kissed the earth before the feet of worthless and arrogant emperors, while pastoral conquerors settled down to establish their accustomed economy of theft and tribute on the newly won soil of Europe. This is the dangerous heritage of the hierocentric state. Removed from those boundless land-spaces which gave it rise and which alone offer boundless empire, the hierocentric ideal becomes in practice a pretentious ritual, pontificale et vide (pretentious and empty); but in theory a noble dogma, a pure idea of such compelling logic, simplicity, boldness, and universal appeal as to appear nothing short of a revelation from heaven. The great Greeks, like the prophets and apostles, saw through the imposing fraud: "God never meant that one man should rule all of cattle-raising Asia," says the ghost of Darius, addressing at once the Eastern and Western worlds from the stage of Athens. But the shallower minds of the schoolmen were lost in ecstatic contemplation of the universal king around whom all things revolve in perfect circles. No less so the schoolmen of the Middle Ages, "cabined in the Absolute," hypnotized by the overwhelming authority of the One. And so, too, the schoolmen of our own day. Toynbee is confident that "religion is likely to be the plane on which this coming centripetal [we would say, hierocentric] counter-movement will first declare itself," and recommends above all else the study of "the part which the west has played in the unification of mankind." In the last chapter of his Histoire des Croisades, Grousset has shown how Western Europe, at the peak of its intellectual splendor, utterly failed to comprehend the enlightened world views of the Mongol khans who, strongly favoring Christianity in their own lands, were all but begging for an alliance with the Christian West by which the two could crush Islam. Significantly enough, it was the vision of world-rule itself that frustrated action. The cardinals who cross-examined Rabban Sauma would not hear of an alliance that might seem to march against the Antichrist under any other banner--Nestorian or Mongol--than their own. In a.d. 297, the Emperor Galerius haughtily rejected a generous offer of the Persians to divide the rule of the world as equals, East and West, and thus preserve the peace; the Romans, says Petrus Patricius, simply could not conceive of such a proposition as anything but sarcasm or malice. When the Persian ambassadors pointed out the risk and folly of rejecting such a golden offer, the furious emperor shouted: "The custom of my ancestors has been to spare those who submit and make war on those who don't!" That was all. It would seem that nothing can so effectively block "the unification of mankind" as that very religious "centripetal counter movement" for which Toynbee yearns, and that the West has been less the author of such unification than its consistent wrecker. Men seem unable to leave the dream of a hierocentric state alone. To recapitulate the sections given above, we cannot blame people if they yearn for (1) the grandeur, color, and unity of the great assembly, (2) the lofty and uncompromising certainty of universal kingship, (3) the sense of refuge and well-being in the holy shrine, (4) the high and independent life of a chivalrous aristocracy, (5) the luxury of hating all opposition with a holy hatred, and (6) the sheer authority of the institutions established and maintained by force. These are the strengths of the hierocentric state. Its weakness is that it doesn't exist. That "son of the morning" who went up into the North, placed his throne upon the mountain of the assembly, and said, "I will be like the most High," only succeeded, we are told in "weaken[ing] the nations" (Isaiah 14:14, 12). Notes 1. Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1941), 1:778-79. 2. Samuel H. Hooke, ed., The Labyrinth (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1937); and Theodor H. Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East (New York: Schuman, 1950), are general treatments of the subject. See below for other references. 3. For a general treatment of the year-feast, see Hugh Nibley, "Sparsiones," Classical Journal 40 (1945): 515-38; reprinted in this volume, pages 148-62. 4. See Wolfgang Golther's note in his edition of Ari's Islendingab¢k (Halle: Niemeyer, 1923), 11-12; also Paul Herrmann, Island in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1907-10), 1:302-3; Felix Niedner, Islands Kultur zur Wikingerzeit (Jena: Diederichs, 1913), 45-47. 5. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremem) IV, 26-27; Paul Herrmann, Nordische Mythologie (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1903), 300, 501; and Paul B. Du Chaillu, The Viking Age, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1890), 1:296. 6. On the time, place, and nature of these assemblies, see Alexander Tille, Yule and Christmas: Their Place in the Germanic Year (London: Nutt, 1899), 47-48, 71; Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, tr. James S. Stallybrass, 3 vols. (London: Sonnenschein & Allen, 1880), 1:66-87; Herrmann, Nordische Mythologie, 497-99, 503-4, 509; Carl Clemen, Religionsgeschichte Europas, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1926), 1:355-61; Tacitus, Annals X, 51; Thietmar Merseburg, Chronicon I, 17, in Robert Holtzmann, ed., Die Chronik des Bischofs Thietmar von Merseburg und ihre Korveier berarbeitung, vol. 6, part 9, of Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Berlin: Weidmann, 1955); and numerous references in the sagas, especially Finnur J¢nsson, Egils Saga Skalgr¡mssonar (Halle: Niemeyer, 1924). The classic study of the survival of the old Germanic assemblies in the Middle Ages are Charles Du Cange's dissertations, "Des assembl‚es solenelles des rois de France" and "Des cours et des festes solenelles des roys de France," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 10 vols. (Paris: Didot, 1850), 7:15-23. 7. John Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom (London: Williams and Norgate, 1898), 192. Another such stone, "a petra quadrata in ora fontis," is described in the Book of Armagh, in Ioannes Zwicker, ed., Fontes Historiae Religionis Celticae (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1934), 2:154. The stone of Tara was moved to Tailtiu when that became the capital, Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, 207, 576, 585. See also Henri Hubert, "Le culte des h‚ros et ses conditions sociales," RHR 70 (1914): 12, 15; and 71 (1915): 208-9; Henri Hubert, Greatness and Decline of the Celts (London: Paul, Trench, Trbner, 1934), 241-42, and L. D. Agate, "Pilgrimage," in James Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 13 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1928), 10:21. 8. Henry d'Arbois de Jubainville, The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology, tr. Richard Best (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1903), 3; Hubert, Greatness and Decline of the Celts, 1-4, 242; Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, 409, 460, 514-17, 519-20, 459-60, 412, 581, 608, 614; J. A. MacCulloch, Celtic Mythology, vol. 3 in Louis H. Gray, ed., Mythology of All Races, 13 vols. (Boston: Jones, 1918), 28, 34-36; Hadrian Allcroft, The Circle and the Cross, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1927-30), 2:73, 20, 207. 9.Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum No. 4039K, cited in Allcroft, Circle and the Cross, 1:299; cf. Strabo, Geography XII, 5, 1. 10. British assemblies described in a letter from Gregorius Magnus (Gregory the Great), Epistolae (Epistles) XI, 77, in PL 77:1215-16; at the Council of Cloveshove, a.d. 747, in Joannes D. Mansi, Sacrorum Concilorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, 31 vols. (Graz: Akademische, 1901), 12:400; by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae III, 5; see especially the Welsh version, tr. Acton Griscom (London: Longmans, Green, 1929), IX, 1; III, 3. The year-drama is described by Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, 155-58, 160-65, 562; cf. Mary Williams, "An Early Ritual Poem in Welsh," Speculum 13 (1938): 43-51; and Raymond W. Muncey, Our Old English Fairs (London: Sheldon, 1935), 46, 103, 116, 145-47, 156, 162-63, 166. 11. General descriptions: Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 34 (150-52); Venatius Fortunatus, Vita Sancti Amantii X, 108-10, in PL 88:522-23; Strabo, Geography IV, 3, 2-3; V, 11, 1; Gregory of Tours, De Gloria Confessorum 11, in PL 71:836-37; Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, 383-86, 390, 394-96, 407-9, 419-21, 429. 12. Cicero, In Verrem III, 48, 106-7; LIII, 117-18. 13. Andr‚ Piganiol, "Les origines du forum," Melanges de l'‚cole de France de Rome 28 (1928): 250-51, 271-72, 276-78; Stefan Weinstock, "Templum," Mitteilungen des Deutschen Arch„ologischen Instituts. R”mische Abteilung 45 (1930): 118. On the mundus as the model of the universe, J.-A. Hild, "Mundus," in Charles V. Daremberg and Edmond Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquit‚s grecques et romaines, 6 vols. in 10 (Paris: Hachette, 1877-1919), 3:2:2021-22; and Wilhelm Kroll, "Mundus," in RE 16:560-64. 14. The basic descriptions in Zosimus, Historia Nova II, 5-6; the Acta Ludorum Saecularium in Theodor Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, 8 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905-13), 8:572-73, 598-99; Statius, Silvae I, 6; Ovid, Fasti III, 525-30; Cassiodorus, Variae VIII, 33. See especially Andr‚ Piganiol, Recherches sur les jeux Romains (Strasbourg: Librairie Istra, 1923); E. Diehls, "Das Saeculum, seine Riten und Gebete," Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie 81 (1934): 256-58; Georg Wissowa, "De Feriis Anni Romanorum Vetustissimi Observationes Selectae," in Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur r”mischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1904), 154-74; Otto Huth, Janus (Bonn: Rohrscheid, 1932); Fritz Blumenthal, "Ludi Saeculares," Klio 15 (1917-18): 232. 15. Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae no. 12, in William R. Halliday, The Greek Questions of Plutarch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 72; also 9, 35, and 59. 16. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 1:778-82; and Martin P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipzig: Teubner, 1906), 156-57, 319, n. 1; Paul Stengel, Die griechischen Kultusaltertmer (Munich: Beck, 1920), 190-216. 17. Jane Harrison, Themis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 389-96 (Delphi); cf. also Francis M. Cornford's study on Olympia, "The Origin of the Olympic Games," in ibid., 212-59, and Gilbert Murray, "An Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy," in ibid., 341-63. 18. Clemen, Religionsgeschichte Europas, 1:374-77, 386-87. Descriptions of the various assemblies in Karl H. Meyer, ed., Fontes Historiae Religionis Slavicae (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931), 7, 35 (Ebbo), 63-64, 66-67 (Dlugosz), 70, 77, 94-95 (Ibn Rusta). Cf. Jan Machal, Slavic Mythology, vol. 3 in Gray, Mythology of All Races, 279-80, 286-87, 281-84, 295, 305, 307-9, 311-12, and A. Brueckner, "Slaven und Litauer," in Alfred Bertholet and Edvard Lehmann, eds., Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols., 4th ed. (Tbingen: Mohr, 1925), 2:510-21; Helmold, Chronicle of the Slavs I, 16; 52; 69; and 83. 19. Hermann Kees, „gypten, in Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 3, pt. 1, 3a (Munich: Beck, 1933), 28, 175, 177-78, 195; Adolf Erman, „gypten und „gyptisches Leben in Altertum (Tbingen: Mohr, 1923), 41, 59-60, 294; Arthur Weigall, History of the Pharaohs, 2 vols. (London: Butterworth, 1931), 1:118. 20. C. N. Deedes, "The Labyrinth," in Hooke, The Labyrinth, 3-5, 13-14; Fritz Hommel, Ethnologie und Geographie des alten Orients (Munich: Beck, 1926), 882-83, 761-63, 935-38, 939-41, 948, 955-56; Kees, „gypten, 155-58; see especially H. R. Hall, Review of Adriaan de Buck, De Egyptische voorstellungen betreffende den oerheuvel, in JEA 10 (1924): 185-87. 21. On the rites: Plutarch, Isis and Osiris; Herodotus, History II, 58-65; Deedes, "Labyrinth," 3-42; Hugo Gressmann, Tod und Auferstehung des Osiris nach Festbr„uchen und Umzgen (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1923). 22. Richard F. Burton, Guidebook to Meccah (London: Philpot, 1924), 54. 23. Ibid., 32, 43-44; Christiaan S. Hurgronje, Het Mekkaansche feest (Leiden: Brill, 1899); Julius Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums (Berlin: Reimer, 1897), 84-94. Arabic literature is full of the great assemblies of men, jinns, animals, birds, and so forth, the most impressive treatment of the theme being in the text edited by Friedrich Dieterici, Thier und Mensch vor dem K”nig der Genien (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1881), passim. 24. Aubrey R. Johnson, "The Role of the King in the Jerusalem Cultus," in Hooke, Labyrinth, 73-77; and also Eric Burrows, "Some Cosmological Patterns in Babylonian Religion," in ibid., 53-56; A. J. Wensinck, "The Semitic New Year and the Origin of Eschatology," Acta Orientalia 1 (1922): 158, 176; Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, tr. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies (Edinburgh: Black, 1885), 17-28, 103-8; Alfred Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 647-48. That there was originally only one festival, see Albert Brock-Utne, "Eine religionsgeschichtliche Studie zu dem ursprnglichen Passahopfer," Archiv fr Religionswissenschaft 31 (1934): 272-78. 25."Our Ras Shamra text affords the prototype of New Year rituals still surviving in Jerusalem in the 6th century b.c.," says Theodor H. Gaster, "Ras Shamra, 1929-39," Antiquity 13 (1939): 316. Widely identified with other rites by Theodor H. Gaster, "The Story of Aqhat, I," Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 12 (1936): 127-32. See especially Lucian, De Syria Dea (On the Syrian Goddess). 26. E.g., that at Abraham's Oak in Mamre, Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) II, 4, in PG 67:941-44, and Eusebius, Vita Constantini (The Life of Constantine) III, 53, in PG 20:1116. 27. Burrows, "Some Cosmological Patterns," 46-57; Heinrich Zimmern, Das babylonische Neujahrsfest (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1926); Jeremias, Das Alte Testament, 6-34, 65-87. For the Sumerian version, Morris Jastrow, Jr., "Sumerian and Akkadian Views of Beginnings," JAOS 36 (1916): 276-78. 28. William F. Albright and Paul ‚. Dumont, "A Parallel between Indic and Babylonian Sacrifical Ritual," JAOS 54 (1934): 107-28; Paul ‚. Dumont, L'Asvamedha (Paris: Geuthner, 1927), is the classic treatment of the subject. On the Indian "navel of the earth," see Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "The Pilgrim's Way," Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society 33 (December 1937): 457, and E. Washburn Hopkins, "The Divinity of Kings," JAOS 51 (1931): 309, 311. 29. Al-Biruni, Chronologie orientalischer V”lker, ed. Edward C. Sachau (Delhi: Chard, 1923), 221-24, 226-27, 230; Herodotus, History IX, 110; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 145a; Clemen, Religionsgeschichte Europas, 1:181-83; Albert J. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, vol. 6 in Gray, Mythology of All Races, 269-71, 293, 297, 299-300, 304-5, 307-8, 313-19, and Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in Connection with Similar Babylonian Beliefs," JAOS 36 (1916): 300-320. 30. Thus among the Quechua of Peru, Paul Radin, Social Anthropology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1932), 85-90, and the Baganda, 82-84. 31. To works cited above, add Cyril J. Gadd, Ideas of Divine Rule in the Ancient East, Schweich Lectures, 1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1948); and Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religions as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). 32. Alan H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), 74; Alexandre Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1929), 1:213. 33. Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4 vols. (Jena: Diederich, 1928), 2:72; cf. Kees, „gypten, 172-85. 34. Gadd, Ideas of Divine Rule, 34. 35. Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 1:355, 357. Albrecht Goetze, Hethiter, Churriter und Assyrer (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1936), 15-16, 39-40. 36. Daniel D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), 1:passim. 37. Ibid., 170, 185. 38. Cl‚ment Huart and Louis Delaporte, L'Iran antique: ‚lam et Perse et la civilisation iranienne (Paris: Michel, 1943), 115-19. 39. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4:21-22; Huart and Delaporte, L'Iran antique, 289, 380. 40. Sven Hedin, My Life as an Explorer, tr. Alfhild Huebsch (Garden City: Boni and Liveright, 1925), 85. In a.d. 562, Chosroes called himself "divine, beneficent," "King of Kings," "giant of giants," "whose nature is from the gods," and so forth. Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes, in PG 113:860. 41. Optatianus Porfyrius, Carmina II; cf. Rutilius Namatianus Claudius, De Reditu Suo I, 47-48 and 61-66; Aelius Aristides, Encomium Romae (To Rome) 30, 72, and 77; Propertius, Elegies III, 1; IV, 2 and 6; Claudius Claudianus, Bellum Geticum (The Gothic War) 623-47; Horace, Odes III, 5; IV, 2. 42. Horace, Carmen Saeculare; Vergil, Aeneid VI, 793-800; Vergil, Eclogues IV, 48-49. On the hierocentric idea, "Janus est mundus et mundus quattuor partibus constat" (Janus is the world and the world consists of four quarters), Augustine, De Civitate Dei (The City of God) VII, 8. 43. Dio Chrysostom, Discourses I, 37; II, 75; IV, 4; XIV, 23; XXXVI, 22-23, 36; LVI, 4-5. 44. Charles Diehl and Georges Mar‡ais, Le monde oriental de 395 … 1081 (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1936), 55-56, 487-95. 45. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, intro., in PG 113:160, with much more to the same effect. 46. Gunter, cited in Du Cange, "Des cours et des festes solenelles des roys de France," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 7:20, unconsciously quoting Esarhaddon: "Where shall a fox go to escape the sun?" Luckenbill, Ancient Records, 2:210, n. 523. 47. Du Cange, "De la pr‚‚minence des rois de France au-dessus des autres rois de la terre," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 7:112-15. 48. Jordanes, Historia Getica Getarum (Gothic History) 35. 49. Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:708, 716. 50. Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 14, in PG 113:904 (a.d. 575). 51. Herodotus, History IV, 126. 52. Ren‚ Grousset et al., L'Asie orientale des origines au XV e siŠcle (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1941), 351-52, 355-56, 361-62, 364, 367, 369, 406-7. 53. Michael Prawdin, The Mongol Empire: Its Rise and Legacy, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Allen and Unwin, 1940), 283. 54. Boris Vladimirstov, The Life of Chingis-Khan, tr. D. S. Mirsky (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 65-66; Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 367. 55. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 173. 56. Ibid., 282. On the seal, Giovanni P. Carpini, History, 26, in Manuel Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo (New York: Liveright, 1928), 44. 57. Ren‚ Grousset, Histoire des Croisades (Paris: Plon, 1936), 3:569-70. 58. Ernst F. K. Rosenmueller, Institutiones Iuris Mohammedani circa Bellum contra Eos Qui ab Islamo Sunt Alieni (Leipzig: Barth, 1825), nos. 1, 3, 4, 5. 59. Adam Mez, Die Renaissance des Islams (Heidelberg: Winter, 1922), 132-33, 136, 332. 60. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 389. "According to Chinese political philosophy there could be in the world only one rightful `Emperor,' however many kings there might be." Thus William M. McGovern, The Early Empires of Central Asia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939), 321. 61. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 414. 62. Ibid., 512-18. 63. August Mller, Der Islam in Morgen- und Abendland, 2 vols. (Berlin: Grote, 1885-87), 2:268, gives a psychological explanation for this phenomenon. 64. William of Rubruck, Journal 54, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 188. 65. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 2:72, 311. 66. Grousset, L'Asie orientale, 42: "La notion du monarque universel ou tchakravartin . . . provient des vastes dominations de l'Asie Anterieure" (the idea of a universal ruler or tchakravartin originates in the vast realms of Western Asia). 67. McGovern, Early Empires of Central Asia, 224, 245, 255, 268, 288, 294. 68. Mez, Renaissance des Islams, 136; cf. 130-43. 69. Works cited above (nn. 4 to 29 inclusive) nearly all mention this combination, but special treatment of the theme may be found in Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama, 138, 169-71, 185-86, 388; and Hall, Review of de Buck, Egyptische voorstellingen betreffende den oerheuvel, 185-87. 70. Elliot Smith and others have shown that the special business of all dragons is to prevent people from reaching water. Can this otherwise unaccountable peculiarity be explained by the retreat of amphibious monsters--snakes and saurians--to the shrinking water holes of a drought-ridden world, there to become a frightening obstacle to those who came there for the "water of life"? T. Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1919). 71. For the literal reality of the situation among the Mongols of today, see Henning Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia (New York: Dutton, 1935), 246, 281; the election of Chingis Khan was at such a place, Friedrich E. Krause, Cingis Han: Die Geschichte seines Lebens nach den chinesischen Reichsannalen (Heidelberg: Winter, 1922), 11, 14, 18-19, 25, 28, 30, as was that of the Mongol emperors of China, according to The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian, ed. John Masefield (London: Dutton, 1908), 166-71 (II, 6), the Naimans, Krause, Cingis Han, 28, and Turks, Edwin S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1854-56), 1:9-11; Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes, in PG 113:904, 885; the Golden Horde, Carpini, History 25, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 42-43; the Armenians, Moses of Chorene, Armenische Chrestomathie, ed. Max Lauer, 2 vols. (Wien: Braumller, 1881), 2:40-41, 101- 2; Persians, Friedrich von Spiegel, Erƒnische Alterthumskunde, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1871-78), 2:53-54; Xenophon, Anabasis I, 2, 7, as well as the ancient Indians, Hanns B„chtold-St„ubli, Handw”rterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 10 vols. (Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1927-42), 6:1418-21; Hedin, My Life as an Explorer, 460-61, 467-68, 122, all held their great assemblies in such a setting. The Assyrian kings built their parks "like unto Mount Amanus," with special channels "for the watering of horses" (cf. fig. 9, p. 103), Luckenbill, Ancient Records, 2:162, 170, 185, 188, 269. The Goths met in such a place, Jordanes, Gothic History 51, as did the Scythians before them, Herodotus, History IV, 52; and the Arabs believe that Mecca was transported from Adam's Mount in Ceylon, which is such a place, Masefield, ed., The Travels of Marco Polo, 372 (III, 23). Even the oasis of Ammon followed the plan, according to Arthur B. Cook, Zeus, 3 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1925), 1:369, as certainly did the shrine of Dodona--the oldest in Greece--which was transported from Ammon's oasis. The whole picture is given in certain Babylonian hymns; see Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2:165, 167. The same in the ancient North, Gylfaginning 4. 72. Pindar, Olympian Odes II, 1-4, cf. I, 1-17; Tertullian, Ad Nationes II, 10; Augustine, The City of God VI, 7, 2; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae no. 35; Plutarch, Romulus 4-5. 73. Henri Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London: Macmillan, 1939), pl. XVIIc; p. 90; Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2:165. 74. Qur'an 22:28, 34, 36. 75. Hommel, Ethnologie und Geographie des alten Orients, 118. 76. Du Cange, "Des assembl‚es solenelles des rois de France," and "Des cours et des festes solenelles des roys de France," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 7:15-23. 77. Hyginus, Fabulae 140. 78. William of Rubruck, Journal, 19, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 95. 79. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 205; cf. 239. 80. Vladimirstov, Life of Chingis-Khan, 38. 81. Al-Fakhri, Al-Adab as-Sultaniyya wa'd-Dawla al-Islamiyya (Cairo: n.p., n.d.), 117, 119. 82. Luckenbill, Ancient Records, 1:295-96, 59, 156, 154. 83. Ibid., 2:170-71, 190, 268, 314, and so forth. 84. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4:49, 55; Herodotus, History I, 95; Xenophon, Anabasis IV, 4, 4. 85. Xenophon, Anabasis V, 3. 86. Spiegel, Erƒnische Altertumskunde, 2:106. 87. Xenophon, Cyropaedia III, 1, 8; Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:720-21; Jordanes, Gothic History 10; cf. Herodotus, History I, 205-14; the best description is in Ibn Batuta, Rihla, 2 vols. (Cairo: 1938), 1:214. 88. Xenophon, Anabasis V, 6, 17. 89. Thus Adam, Cain, and Noah, Book of Jubliees 4:9, following the divine pattern, Sibylline Oracles 3:772-76. Gadd, Ideas of Divine Rule, 6, comments on the strange persistence of building motifs in the earliest creation legends. 90. Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 151-52, 156. Cf. the case of the Hun J‹j‹ in a.d. 43, McGovern, Early Empires of Central Asia, 191. 91. Mildred Cable, The Gobi Desert (New York: Macmillan, 1944), 133. Cf. Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 125, 128. Huart and Delaporte, L'Iran antique, 307; Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:725 (Attila's palace). 92. George Vernadsky, Ancient Russia, vol. 1 in George Vernadsky and Michael Karpovich, A History of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943), 237-40, 248; cf. 292. 93. Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 1:278. 94. See Hugh Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State," Western Political Quarterly 2 (1949): 338-40; reprinted in this volume, pages 12-16. 95. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 185; Vladimirstov, Life of Chingis-Khan, 51-52. 96. Xenophon, Cyropaedia II, 4, 19-22. 97. Giovanni P. Carpini, History, 6, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 12. 98. Ammianus Marcellinus XXXI, 2. 99. Luckenbill, Ancient Records, 1:82, 86-87, 121-22, 189, 271; 2:392. 100. Max Seligsohn, "Nimrod," in Isidore Singer, ed., Jewish Encylopedia, 12 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1905), 9:309-11; Clementine Homily IX, 4, in PG 2:244; Jeremias, Das Alte Testament, 158-59; Book of Jasher 7:39-46; 9:20-22. 101. Homer, Hymn to Pythian Apollo 370-74; Euripides, Iphigeneia at Taurus 1234-82. 102. Snorri Sturluson, Edda Formali, chs. 10-11. 103. Moret, Histoire de l'Orient, 1:298. 104. Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 310, 132-49. There were Christian tent churches to match these temple tents, Grousset, Histoire des Croisades, 3:564, 722; cf. E. A. Wallis Budge, ed., The Chronography of Gregory Ab–'l Faraj, the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew Physician, Commonly Known as Bar Hebraeus, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1:505-6. 105. Daniel 7:9; 1 Enoch 14:18; Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes, in PG 113:885; Odoric, Journal, 12, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 239-40. 106.Life of Adam and Eve 22:3; 2 Enoch 8:3. 107. William of Rubruck, Journal, 21, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 98. 108. Jordanes, Gothic History 40, the shield-wall duplicated in the funeral-ring, ibid., 49; Ammianus Marcellinus XXXI, 2; 7-8; and 12; Xenophon, Anabasis I, 8, 12; Huart and Delaporte, L'Iran antique, 380; William of Rubruck, Journal, 29, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 124. 109. Herodotus, History IV, 158. 110. Attila moved constantly from palace to palace, accompanied by his mighty host, "in the manner of the Scythians," says Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:720. Cf. for the same picture, William of Rubruck, Journal, 12, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 76; and Ammianus Marcellinus XXXI, 2. 111. Odoric, Journey, 11, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 237; see n. 112. 112. Attila sat on heaped-up rugs and cushions, Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes, in PG 113:732, and his dining hall was hung with curtains and rugs "like a Greek or Roman bridal bed," ibid., in PG 113:737. Batu's throne was "like a bed," William of Rubruck, Journal, 21, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 99, and Scacatar "sat upon his bed holding a guitar in his hand, and his wife sat by him, ibid., 12, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 77. Ibn Batuta, Rihla, 1:26-27, actually calls the Khan's throne a firash (bed). 113. The throne must be covered by a tent, Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes, in PG 113:885, and, indeed, "the canopied throne" is part of the original equipment of the primitive nomad tent-temple, according to Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 283. 114. Gadd, Ideas of Divine Rule, 36. 115. Prawdin, Mongol Empire, 477- 78; Tamerlane built his palaces like pavilions, "using them for the same purpose as his ancestors used tents." The palace at Peking was "supported" by two hundred silken tent-cords, Masefield, ed., The Travels of Marco Polo 146 (I, 57); cf. 166-71 (II, 6); cf. Odoric, Journey, 11, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 237. 116. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4:111; Diehl and Mar‡ais, Le monde oriental, 339; Huart and Delaporte, L'Iran antique, 373. The same artisans who built St. Sophia also built the Mosque of Damascus, Ibn Batuta, Rihla, 1:52-53. It has often been observed that domed tents are found originally only in Central Asia, where the royal white yurt, covered with brilliant color and design, reached enormous proportions. It is hard not to see in the "golden dome" of the Grand Khan, Ibn Batuta, Rihla, 1:213, the prototype of these golden domes that everywhere rose above the heads of kings and the altars of cathedrals. The Travels of Marco Polo, ed. Masefield, 169 (II, 6), speaks of what can only be colored glass windows at the court of the Khan. 117. Moritz Hoernes, Natur- und Urgeschichte des Menschen, 2 vols. (Vienna: Hastlben 1909), 1:380. Mohammedan law defines legitimate spoils as "clothes, arms, and wagons." Rosenmueller, Institutiones Iuris Mohammedani, no. 28. 118. Hedin, My Life as an Explorer, 107, notes that the court ceremonial of Samarkand is exactly the same as described by Clavijo; and Haslund-Christensen, Men and Gods in Mongolia, 297-98, observed in the royal camp of the Torguts exactly the same tent arrangement as the one which Xenophon tells us was used 2,400 years before in the camp of Cyrus. 119. Rosenmueller, Institutiones Iuris Mohammedani, no. 53, pp. 11-13. Only the horse makes noble; camels, mules, etc., do not count--which betrays the Central Asiatic origin of the code, ibid., nos. 31-32. 120. Goetze, Hethiter, Churriter und Assyrer, 39-41, 110-12. 121. Quotation from Odoric, Journal, 12 and 14, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 238, 242; cf. Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:713, 737-38; Carpini, History, 20, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 35; Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 8, in PG 113:885; William of Rubruck, Journal, 4, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 63; Masefield, ed., The Travels of Marco Polo, 182-86 (II, 10); Ibn Batuta, Rihla, 1:213, 218. 122. Edvard Lehmann, "Die Perser," in Bertholet and Lehmann, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2:257. The Byzantine court went so far as to imitate flying angels: Note of Anselmus Bandurius, cited in Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio 36, in PG 113:305-7. 123. The colors stand for the four quarters, Carpini, History, 24, in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 40; William of Rubruck, Journal, 53, in ibid., 187; The Story of Ahikar, 6:10-13, in R. H. Charles et al., eds., The Apocrypha and Pseudipigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913), 2:758-59. On western livery, Du Cange, "Des cours et des festes solenelles des roys de France," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 7:19-23. 124. Du Cange, "Des cours et des festes solenelles des roys de France," in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 7:19-23. 125. Jordanes, Gothic History 56. 126. Budge, The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, 1:496. 127. Varro, De Lingua Latina V, 33. 128. Claudius Claudianus, The Gothic War 355. 129. Rosenmueller, Institutiones Iuris Mohammedani, nos. 13, 16, 22, 27, 39, 47-48, 55. 130. Jordanes, Gothic History 52. 131. Robert Eisler, Iesous Basileus ou Basileusas, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1930), 2:625; August von Gall, Basileia tou Theou (Heidelberg: Winter, 1926), 241-42. 132. See Wilhelm Nestle, Der Friedensgedanke in der antiken Welt (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1938), and Harald Fuchs, Augustin und der antike Friedensgedanke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1926), 39-40, 115-17. 133. Budge, The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, 1:490. 134. This is exhaustively demonstrated by Semen Lipkin, Manas Velikodushnyu (Moscow: Sovietski Pisatyel, 1947), a study of the Kirghiz, in which the enemy chieftains are invariably inarticulate monsters, while the friendly ones are holy knights. 135. Rosenmueller, Institutiones Iuris Mohammedani, no. 17. 136. Ammianus Marcellinus XXXI, 3, 8. 137. George of Pisidia, De Expeditione Persica II, 240-55, in PG 92:1226-27; Menander, De Legationibus Gentium ad Romanos, in PG 113:824-25; though the other side do everything we do, with us it is virtue; with them a base perversion. See Theodore the Alan, Alanicus 6, in PG 140:393. 138. Illustrated by the arguments and discussions in Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:708, 725, 728- 29, 732. While the West posed as champion of liberty, everyone was fleeing to Persia: "Malunt enim sub specie captivitatis vivere liberi, quam sub specie libertatis esse captivi" (they prefer to live as free men in the guise of bondage, rather than to be slaves in the guise of freedom), Salvianus, De Gubernatione Dei V, 5. 139. Jordanes, Gothic History 58. 140. Ammianus Marcellinus, XXXI, 2, 12. 141. Jordanes, Gothic History 34. 142. Ibid., 53. 143. Ibid., 58. 144. Agathias, History V, 23, in PG 88:1589-96; Menander, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes, in PG 113:852; Justinian showed this partiality even before he became emperor, according to Procopius, Anecdota XI, 5. 145. Procopius, Anecdota XI, 12. 146. Ibid., XXI, 26, 28-29; XXV, 25. 147. Ibid., VII, 8-9; 11-14. 148. Ibid., VII, 11-14. 149. Ibid., VI, 21. 150. Ibid., XI, 1. 151. Ibid., VIII, 5. 152. Ibid., VIII, 9. 153. Ibid., VIII, 4-5. 154. Ibid., XXX, 24. 155. Ibid., XI, 3; XXVI, 23. 156. Ibid., XXX, 26. 157. Ibid., XXX, 23. 158. Ibid., XII, 25. 159. Ibid., XIV, 2. 160. Ibid., XIX, 14-15. 161. Ibid., XIX, 16. 162. Ibid., XXX, 30. 163. Fulcher, Historia Hierosolymitana I, 1-7, especially Urban's speech, chs. 2-3, in PL 155:825-41. 164. Guglielmo Ferrero, Characters and Events in Roman History (New York: Putnam, 1909), 233. 165. "Christianity had adopted the astrological Weltbild given by the East to the West," Frederick J. E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1927), 70. One might trace the unbroken descent of the hierocentric universe from the Pythagoreans to Dante. Clementine Homily 14, in PG 2:349, is a good description. 166. ‚ttienne Gilson, La philosophie au Moyen Age (Paris: Payot, 1944), 253-58. 167. Diehl and Mar‡ais, Le monde oriental, 487-95; Eusebius, Life of Constantine, passim, in PG 20; Louis Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, 3 vols. (London: Murray, 1931), 2:518-26. 168. Louis Duchesne, Origines du culte chr‚tien (Paris: De Boccard, 1925), 47-88. 169. E.g., Saint Ignatius, Liturgy, in PG 5:972. Of course, one spoke much of the monarch's all-pervading justice and compassion, Theodore Silverstein, "The Throne of the Emperor Henry in Dante's Paradise and the Mediaeval Conception of Christian Kingship," Harvard Theological Review 32 (1939): 115-29, but what pagan autocrat's supporters did not do the same? 170. Grousset, Histoire des Croisades, 3:565. 171. Franz Oppenheimer, The State, tr. J. M. Gitterman (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1914), ch. 2; Goetze, Hethiter, Churriter und Assyrer, 33-42, 85-87, 96-97, 117-20, 126-32. 172. Arnold J. Toynbee, "The Unification of the World and the Change in Historical Perspective," History 33 (1948): 25-26. 173. Petrus Patricius, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 12, in PG 113:668-69. This article was originally published in Western Political Quarterly 4/2 (1951): 226-53. Figure 9. Like the famous Roman castra of later centuries, this Assyrian royal camp (A) has two intersecting avenues dividing it into quadrants with scenes of sacrificing and cooking. Even the king's horses have their own elaborate tent as preserved on a stone relief from the throne room of Assurnasirpal II, Nimrod, Iraq, 883-859 b.c. Millennia later the same ideal geometry demands that the sacred city of the Jews and Christians must also be perfectly encircled by battlements, as depicted in this Icelandic map (B), a.d. 1200-1300. It ignores the actual shape of the outer walls of Jerusalem but accurately depicts its streets in the cardinal directions (C). Figure 10. An 1880 eyewitness sketch of one of the imperial ceremonies at the circular marble terraces of the Altar of Heaven, Peking. Officials of the Manchu government have erected a square canopy over wooden tablets representing the ancestors of the Ch'ing Dynasty. It is on this same sacred center that the Emperor stands at the solstices in his role as the Son of Heaven. In the distance, at the other end of the sacred axis, is the oft-photographed Hall of Abundant Harvests with its encircling twelve columns and three-tiered roof. Figure 11. This two-storied royal wagon throne shows the Persian king seated on his couch with the crescent moon on his shoulders as well as below him on this Sassanian silver plate (A), c. a.d. 300. The cherubs on either side lead the four leaping zebu upward, identifying the king lumbering along in his wagon with the divine movement of the heavens. In the same way, a statue of a deceased Roman emperor in a wheeled temple is pulled by four elephants in a procession commemorating his deification, as shown by the welcoming reception of the gods above, on this ivory panel (B), a.d. 425-450. The popularity of this circus parade is shown by the abundance of commemorative coins: (C) brass coin of Faustina Antonini, (D) sertertius of Titus, (E) coin of Domitian. Figure 12. "Measuring once the breadth between the wheel-ruts of one of their carts, I found it to be twenty feet over: I counted twenty-two oxen in one team, the axletree of the cart was of huge size, like the mast of a ship. And a fellow stood in the door of the house, upon the forestall of the cart, driving the oxen."--William of Rubruck, c. 1250. In the background, we can see the various stages of erecting the traditional yurt, still used today, from the placing of the sacred wheel frame of the smoke-hole, to the lattice supports of the felt pieces that form the tent itself. All of the work is done by women, of course. Sparsiones The Roman practice, best described as sparsio, of bestowing public donatives by throwing things among the multitude to be scrambled for in scenes of wild disorder has never received the attention which its strangeness solicits and its significance for the study of Roman politics and economics deserves. Though a preliminary view of a neglected and highly speculative field cannot but raise more questions than it answers, the nature and importance of the sparsiones may, we believe, be adequately demonstrated by consideration of three points: (1) what was distributed by sparsio, (2) by whom and on what occasions, and (3) by what particular methods. What was distributed by sparsio? The articles scattered to the Roman multitude have long been the object of careful study. They fall into two classes, tokens and gifts "in kind." The tokens--tesserae, coins, little balls, sections of reed, and such bizarre objects as figurines and inscribed spoons--are such by virtue of their designated exchange value. As gifts "in kind" may be classed figs, dates, nuts, sweets, and cookies, as well as such less appetizing bits as vegetables, fruits, grain, chick-peas, beans, birds, and flowers. The solid sparsio was often accompanied by a liquid one of water, wine, perfume, or oil. Meal, blood, and ashes were also strewn abroad in rites in which the public scrambling played a conspicuous part. The tokens in question were of course "symbols" (the word originates with them, in fact), but no more so than the other gifts. Figs, nuts, fruits, meal, flowers, and so forth are well-known symbols of fertility, possessing in the sparsio the broader signification of a "general blessing." The ancients tell us that a shower of chick-peas and beans stands for omnia semina (all kinds of seeds), and that Janus's scattering of sweets is but an earnest of sweet things to follow through the year. The same motif of abundance is evident in the tokens and figurines, which were interchangeable with gifts in kind and could represent omne genus rerum (every sort of thing)--it was not just bread that the emperor scattered; it was "perpetual daily bread." The keynote is abundance--abundance of everything good, the plouthygeia of the Greek sparsio as it appears in the gifts of the Hygeia, Thalysia, Panspermia, Thargelos, and so forth, when mixtures of grain and fruits were scattered over the heads of the recipients to impart all the blessings of life, and life itself. With such a mixture the Romans showered their archaic Vortumnus, god of the annus vertens at his festival, and were themselves showered at the year-feast of the Floralia, when "omnia semina super populum spargebant" (they strewed every kind of seed on the people), as well as nuts, flowers, and beans, in primitive chthonian-agricultural rites. But the true Roman equivalent of plouthygeia is the strena, the king's gift at the New Year, which in its primitive form of laurel branch seems to have figured in sparsiones, as it certainly does in its other forms. Whether the original sparsio was a scattering over the people and fields of Zeugungskraft (reproductive power) in the form of blood, ashes, or fresh remains of the dismembered year-god, or whether it was a strewing of bloodless offerings such as honey-cakes or mola salsa, it would be useless to inquire, since both forms are found together from the earliest time. Who gave the sparsiones, and on what occasions? So far we are on familiar ground. No one will deny that some sparsiones followed a New Year's pattern. But were there any that did not? The answer is in the negative. In maintaining that the great public distributions were simply the extension of unpretentious private festivities, scholars have ignored the essential aspect of the latter, especially where sparsiones are concerned; namely, that they were not private at all. Private sparsiones were for celebrations marking some rite de passage in a family--a birth, death, marriage, coming-of-age, or the like. These are precisely the occasions on which the individual's case, overpassing the bounds of everyday life to establish contact with the spirit world, becomes a concern of great moment to the entire society. The Roman funeral was a public affair; the Roman people could in fact commandeer the funeral of anyone at will, and compel the dead, through his heir, to make that public distribution which belonged to a funeral. If the defunct could not afford this donative, a public collection would be taken, a "shower" which the heir would presently redistribute as the dead man's gift to the people. At marriages it was the same story, and bride and groom could no more evade the obligation of scattering presents to the populace than they could avoid the meal that the populace threw at them. Likewise, the triumphator both received and gave a shower; indeed, Lord Raglan has recently called attention to the obvious fact that triumph, wedding, and funeral are in all essentials ritually identical. Alike they mark the beginning and end of a life-period; for the individual they are little New Year's days, celebrated with the same feasting, games, greetings, and sparsiones as mark the regular New Year, a time when public and private rites seem to be wholly mingled and confounded. The giver of a sparsio, furthermore, ceased by that act to be a mere private individual, for he received a statue in his memory, and was annually glorified in a public feast of his own providing. The striking resemblance of various important Roman festivals to each other has been explained by referring them to a single common prototype. This was the Secular celebration, the inauguration of the Great Year, marking the life-cycle of the Roman people, individually and collectively. And this Secular rite was before everything the great sparsio, deriving its name from the primitive *se-tlo-m, "was das S„en erm”glicht" (that which sowing makes possible)--the sowing, specifically, of men and animals, the begetting of the race. The central act of the celebration was the redistribution to all the people by the king (the emperor in the revived version) of praemitiae--beans, barley, corn--which they had brought in as year-offerings. Much the same thing took place at Delphi originally "on the birthday of the god": all over the ancient world, in fact, a royal sparsio dramatized the begetting of the race on the day of creation, the New Year. It is quite proper that the chief patron of the sparsiones should have been Janus, first king and father of the race, and that the hero-kings of the first age--Janus, Saturn, Semo-Sancus, Cereus, Lupercus, Faunus, and so forth--should uniformly figure in the role of the sower. If private sparsiones had to be given by one who was mactus (honored, glorified) by virtue of standing for the moment between one world and another (for such is the rite de passage), the king was always mactus: he was the type and model of the one who gives the sparsio. During the Republic, for example, a magistrate giving grain on a lavish scale could be charged with trying to play king to the people, which clearly betrays the origin of the system. The public donative as a royal but at the same time very popular survival was a source both of power and embarrassment to the oligarchs. Cicero has only praise for a system which enables great men to win all but regal acclaim, yet he is quite aware how ill the usage suits a republican order and insists that public liberality is a royal, not a private, virtue. It is impossible indeed to conceive of a system less compatible to the good order of the Republic, or more plainly and fatally designed to beget corruption in it, than that of the Roman collections and distributions, or any more blatant offense to every idea of order and decorum (so dear to the Republic) than a public scramble. The distribution, particularly the sparsiones, it is safe to say, could hardly have arisen and taken root under the very noses of the conscript fathers without their knowledge and consent: if they were not suppressed along with newfangled cults and luxuries, it is because they were classified among the sacrosanct and ineradicable survivals of an earlier day. Their immense vitality and popularity carried them right through the Republic, in fact, to become the very cornerstone of imperial authority. From the first the emperor was careful to reserve to himself the sole right of making donatives ( cf. fig. 13). Not only was this his exclusive and inescapable office, it was also his one sufficient claim to rule if all else failed. A reading of Dio, Suetonius, or Tacitus will suffice to show that a ruler at Rome was popular in that degree to which he resembled a Saturnalian king, and that from the first every emperor made a determined effort to play that strange and hilarious role. It was the people who insisted on this: even though he forbade it, they persisted in giving the emperor that popular title of Dominus, the specific fixture of public feasts, which proclaimed to the scandalized world that he was dominus et deus, nothing less than the old festive king, dominus convivii, giver of all good things, the equivalent of the Greek basileus, the despotes who in the Old Comedy bursts on the scene with a shower of gifts and a clamorous invitation to all the world to come and feast at his house. It was with this festive office of year-king, with its boundless popular appeal, that the political rivals of the late Republic played so dangerously. It was as praefectus annonae that Pompey earned his title of The Great and the right to wear royal insignia at festivals. When a Crassus, Sulla, or Lucullus gave a feast of abundance, it was at the very Ara Maxima where Hercules, as type and model of the victorious year-king, had set the example. Brutus and Octavian bid desperately against each other for the right to play year-king, and Antony with equal presumption could take the role of King Lupercus at Rome or Dionysus at Athens. Caesar's Clodius posed as the New Numa, and Caesar's own regalia was that of the festive king. It was, moreover, as lord of peace and plenty that both he and his successor enjoyed the grant of sovereign power by a popular consent which recalls the manner in which Cyrus became king of the Persians in return for a timely feast. Indeed, it was an established procedure in ancient times for an ambitious man to seize a throne simply by getting himself made King of the Festival and then, by exercising his ceremonial right to demand year-gifts and to redistribute them, reorganize the state while refusing to yield up his royal office. It was for that matter at the Ludi Saeculares that Augustus himself assumed rule of the world. An unbroken tradition binds the imperial bounty to the Saturnia regna of the fabled priest-kings: to the end the emperor remains the magnus parens mundi, the lord of peace and plenty, the New Hercules, King of the Golden Age, "sowing his gifts broadcast as a sower his seeds." What was the method employed in the sparsiones, and why? On tokens used in the distributions are found representations of the emperor handing out gifts, or of Liberalitas shaking out the contents of her cornucopia, from a raised platform. Heliogabalus is described as acting Phoenicio ritu when, dressed as the Sun, he mounts a specially built platform to shower gold and silver cups on the people. Certainly the picture of Gaius flinging gold and silver from the palace roof suggests the famous scene from the tomb of Ay ( cf. fig. 14), in which Amenophis IV throws gold from a palace balcony while above his head, to make the meaning clear, the Sun with outstretched hands showers his gifts at the same time. But, while it has notable archaic affinities, the custom of casting gifts from a high platform is no late Oriental importation at Rome, for the old Republican usage was to scatter nummos (coins) from the rostra, apparently the survival of a very primitive native sparsio. Likewise the chariot from which the emperor would fling his gold at the New Year, while it has striking Oriental parallels in the heavenly car or plow from which the year-god showered blessings over men and fields, has just as definite counterparts in the North and West among the Scythians, Celts, Greeks, and Germans, all of whom remember in their oldest ritual and legend the gold that fell from the wagon or plow of the god at the turn of the year. The holy vehicle also appears in Rome as the chariot of the sparsio-giving triumphator (cf. fig. 11B, p. 117), the quadriga in the Vulcanal, or that heavenly car mounted upon the topmost part of the Capitol, upon which the fertility of the Roman fields was believed to depend. Besides the platform and chariot, one must consider the linea, stretched high overhead, from which, in some endlessly puzzling fashion, sweets and tokens were shaken down over the crowd in what the ancients refer to as imber, pluviae, grando, nubilia, and so forth. This is more than a poet's fancy. The sparsio that fell from on high was actually thought of as falling from heaven. Throughout the ancient world one meets in legend and ritual the golden shower that descends upon the world to fructify it on the day of creation. The Roman version of this is King Janus's sweet rain of honey and gold; it is the sparsio, from the golden chariot or gilded platform, of gilt tokens and golden grain, of crocus, saffron, powdered chrysolite or bean-straw, gilt figs, dates, and cookies--the golden color predominates in the sparsiones: as in the year-rites of India, everything that is scattered is thought of as golden because or est semence (gold is seed). What is more natural than that such a shower should usher in the aureum tempus (Golden Age) at the Saturnalia? The golden shower belongs to the familiar hieros gamos: it is the fructifying of the earth by the shower, thought of both as seed and as water, that falls from heaven. This treasure is stored in the inner chamber of the Earth-Goddess--represented at Rome both by the temple of Vesta and the treasury of Ceres, that immemorial shrine of the plebs, wherein was kept both the yellow grain and the yellow gold of the state, both being scattered abroad at the proper time under her sponsorship. It was Flora, the Terra Mater, who "prima per immensas sparsit nova semina gentes" (first scattered new seeds among countless peoples). But, though it reposes by right in the bins of the goddess, the ultimate source of this wealth is her heavenly spouse. This concept is familiar to the whole ancient world. In the common Egyptian formula "all things good and pure" are "given of heaven, formed by the earth, conveyed by the Nile." "From heaven shall abundance come down upon thee," is the Sumerian version, while Babylonian Marduk filled the land with feasts of plenty when he "poured out abundance over Shidlam," even as the God of Israel "commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna . . . and had given them of the corn of heaven: man did eat angels' food; He sent them meat to the full; . . . He rained down flesh upon them as dust," etc. Though early Easter ceremonies furnish some of the most striking instances of sparsio, it was not through Christian channels that the idea of the heavenly donative reached Rome; for when the boys of the city gathered beneath the Pope's window to sing for a largess at the New Year, it was "quomodo qui ad Caesarem" that they called to him to appear at his high window like the sun, moon, and cloud, to scatter good things over them. This donative is the equivalent of the English "singing cakes" or "singing silver," which, as in the Sarum usage, "must be caste out of the steple, that all the boyes in the parish must lie scrambling by the eares." It recalls the office of Augustus, who, upon becoming patron of the iuventus, all over Italy supervised such youthful scrambles for tokens and sweets. There is an ancient representation of the linea in action which clearly portrays its heavenly nature. It is from a lost glass vase of the fourth century and depicts the distribution of the annonae: high above a group of people with birds, flowers, and festive mappae in their hands fly two winged genii, each holding a string of bellaria in either hand--they are plainly heavenly purveyors of heavenly gifts ( fig. 15). The Romans not only received year-gifts by sparsio, but made them in the same way; that is, by throwing cakes, coins, tokens, flowers, etc., into pits or waters leading to the other world. Though this practice is found among ancient peoples everywhere, none make more of it than the Romans. The original Roman stips was food or a coin that was tossed or thrown to the god; only later was it laid on the sacra mensa. Archaic Roman offerings to chthonian deities had to be thrown or tossed in some way before being burned, quite like the Jewish heave- and wave-offerings, and the burning itself was a kind of sparsio. Though throwing is a well-known way of banishing evil, and the act of sparsio may have been designed "both to get rid of the evil and to distribute the good fertility charm over the fields," the main thing about throwing objects, good or bad (and who shall see evil in honey-cakes and lucky coins?) is that thereby the gift or curse is passed through the void, from one world to another, as it were, with careful avoidance of physical contact between giver and receiver. The spirits are fed--at a safe distance--by sparsio. If food fell from the hand or the table by accident it could not be retrieved, for it had passed to the spirits--to Hecate, who would redistribute it to the poor (earthly counterpart of the spirits) by sparsio. New Year's gifts are both given and received through the void. They fall in some unaccountable way into one's shoe or stocking, or they are suddenly thrown in through the window or chimney; they are not transmitted directly, but descend mysteriously in the night, like manna--it is even dangerous to recognize the giver. This avoidance of contact is the idea behind royal sparsiones among certain backward peoples of antiquity, where the king, living aloof from the world of men, took his meals behind a partition, removed only at the New Year, or in a secret room, or at a table set apart as if for a spirit from the other world. The world was thought of as living on the crumbs from his table, and he gave his portions by throwing them to his subjects, who would scramble after them "like dogs." One cannot sufficiently admire the mentality which, having introduced the tesserae into Rome as a means, for so we are assured, of procuring good order and regularity in the grain distributions, chose to dispense the same in mad, universal scrambles. The sparsio does not of itself call for a scramble--there was more than enough for all, and no one was allowed to be disappointed. Plainly the undignified rixa, direptio, rapina, tumultus, and so forth were a regular and necessary part of the business. What the scramble represented was a sort of grab bag, for the sparsio was a kind of lottery. The element of chance plays a most important role in the distributions: the fundamental principle even of the highly regulated annona was at all times simply luck, admission to the grain-lists being determined solely by lot. Everything about the Saturnalia smacks of divination--the very food of the year-feast is prophetic. A gift received by sparsio falls into one's hands by the imponderable working of fate; it is a providential thing, a present for which one is beholden to no man; it is a boon from heaven, given with majestic impartiality in bewildering abundance and unrestrained disorder. It is a sign and a promise, a communication from on high. How far the ancients went in this interpretation of the sparsio can be seen if one considers the objects of the rixae. They were sortes. The word comes from sero, "set in rows," i.e., "strung on a line," and goes back to the oracular shrines of prehistoric Italy, where at the New Year the Earth Goddess (as Fortuna) would tell people their fortunes by means of lots and dice. The lots--sortes--were hung on a line, a linea, and "devenaient proph‚tiques par le seul fait qu'elles ‚taient tir‚es sort" (became prophetic for the simple reason that they were cast). All this fits with the sortes of the sparsio, which also came from an oracular shrine, were perforated for hanging on a line, were given out at the New Year, and bore the name of Fortuna, whose gifts, moreover, were commonly thought of as coming by sparsio. In form as well as name the tokens are thus seen to be real sortes. Quite as specific is the borrowed term for sortes, tesserae, which means simply "dice" or "tablets." Dice and tablets were used together at the primitive divination shrines, where one would compare marks on dice with those on tablets to learn his fortune. Just so the value of a tessera could be realized only by matching it with other symbols, the original tessera being employed as a ticket of identification which admitted the holder to a feast when it matched a like token kept by the giver of the feast. For admission to public feasts every holder of a tessera had to have his name on the bronze tablets or incisi kept on the Capitol. The interesting custom of admission to public feasts by ticket, though it has been ignored by scholars, is found at archaic year-festivals everywhere, from the festival tablets of the Sumerians and the arrows of the Asiatics (serving both as tickets and as gaming pieces) to the wooden tags of the Scandinavian North and the laurel leaf tickets of the primitive Greeks and Romans--which, incidentally, bring us back to the strena. Also widespread is the idea of registration in a great list of incisi, a "Book of Life" opened at the foundation of the world, containing the names of those to whom life is given for the new age. To be written down in this book is to be admitted to the banquet of life, to receive a tessera, "a white stone, and in the stone a new name written," and with it a share in the feast of the "hidden manna" (Revelation 2:17), the food that falls from heaven. Such was the economy of the mystery feasts, which present indeed the closest affinity to the rites of the ludi saeculares, the sowing festival, including tesserae and sparsio. At the Saturnalia feast of the Arval Brethren a gold coin was presented to each of the guests as the gift of life itself. The sparsio of life-giving stones in the Deucalion legend follows upon a casting of dice, which determines the method by which the race is to be created and also the lot in life of the persons thus begotten. By a like sowing Cadmus, at the beginning of the "Great Year," produced a race of men fittingly called Sparti. It is only natural, as Wissowa points out in the case of Fortuna, that people should come to think of one who gives certain assurance of a boon as the actual giver of the boon, and regard those tokens which merely promise life and prosperity as the very gift itself: the die or sors which indicates the blessings of life to follow is not to be distinguished from the seed from which those blessings spring. The tessera, like the Oriental seal, gave one a place and a status in the world of men: it was the gift of a grain tessera that assigned a slave his freedom and his place in a tribe. As seal and tessera witness solemn contracts between men and gods, the sparsio of itself is such a contract: on the giver's part it promised a golden age of peace and prosperity--this the sparsiones songs make clear. As to the one who caught the falling gold, he accepted a contract on his part and recognized the rule and dominion of his benefactor in formal acclamations, found sometimes actually written on the tesserae. While the tesserae may be described variously as tickets, tablets, coins, or seals, they are particularly interesting as dice. They actually take the form of gaming pieces in many instances, and on some of them the iactus venerius is indicated. This last opens up a wide vista into the background of the sparsio, for it recalls the old Roman custom of choosing a rex bibendi at feasts (the "king" being the first guest to throw the Venus), a practice which can have been inspired only by the example and tradition of choosing the rex Saturnalius, King of the Great Feast, by lot. Dicing, it should be remembered, was legal at Rome only during the Saturnalia. The Venus also indicates the archaic background of those tesserae lasciviae, which have shocked scholars as symbols of Roman degeneracy and decline, for it recalls a very widespread and ancient legend of how the king during the New Year's feast casts dice with a stranger from the underworld for the hand of a fair lady and the possession of the kingdom. This legend appears in the oldest stratum of Roman tradition as the story of Hercules and Acca Larentia, in which the hero wins the lady and a feast by dicing at the Saturnalia. Not to pursue them further, the many and complex connections between sortes, tickets, feasts, goddesses, and the rest may be summarized in the herald's order at the Greek revels: "Come hither, . . . that Tyche may by lot tell each man where he is supposed to eat!" We have discussed the sparsiones of the Romans only in a broad and general sense. If the evidence is scarce enough to require such treatment, it is also consistent enough to support it. The multiple aspects of the institution fit nicely together and may be matched in every point with common practices of other peoples, the same peculiar elements appearing in the same complex combinations. We can therefore with confidence answer the three questions proposed at the outset of this study in the following general but specific terms: (1) the objects of the sparsiones were tokens symbolic of life, health, strength, and abundance, and were actually exchangeable, as far as possible, for the tangible realization of these blessings; (2) they were given by the king or his counterpart--emperor, magistrate, or paterfamilias--as the living representative of the father and founder of the race, by (3) being scattered like seed or rain from a celestial station in a manner to simulate the sowing of the race itself on the day of creation, with all the blessings and omens that rightly accompany such a begetting and amid acclamations that joyfully recognize the divine providence and miraculous power of the giver. The sparsio is the authentic heritage of the Golden Age, the sublime economy of which remains throughout antiquity, and indeed in religious ideology down to the very present, the ultimate basis of the social, economic, and political structure. Notes 1. Treatment of the sparsiones must be sought for in works dealing primarily with other things. The most instructive of these are Michael Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae (Aalen: Scientia, 1969); Joachim Marquardt, R”misches Staatsverwaltung, 3 vols., 2d ed. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1885), 3:475-96; Ludwig Friedl„nder, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, 4 vols., 8th ed. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1910), 2:316-18; Ph. Fabia, "Sparsio," in Charles V. Daremberg and Edmond Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquit‚s grecques et romaines, 6 vols. in 10 (Paris: Hachette, 1877-1919), 4:2:1418-19. The ritual side of the sparsio is discussed at length by Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 2 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1941), 1:110-25; Francis M. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 100-102 and passim; Samson Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer der Greichen und R”mer (Kristiania: Dybwad, 1915), 261-69. Less important works are indicated in the course of the present study. 2. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, is the classic treatment of the tokens, which he also discusses in "Congiarium," in RE 4:875-80. Berve, "Liberalitas," in RE 13:86-93, also deals with the tokens, as does Martin Lipenius in his extensive Strenarum Historia, in Johannes G. Graevius, Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum, 12 vols. (Rhen.: Halmam, 1694), 12:409-552. 3. Types of bellaria are listed by Friedl„nder, Sittengeschichte Roms, 2:316-18. 4. The liquid sparsio is discussed by Fabia, "Sparsio," in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquit‚s grecques et romaines, 4:2:1418-19, with the exception of the oil, which figures in the old bridal sparsio (see below, n. 31), and in certain primitive scrambles, see Servius, Commentarius in Georgica 384. 5. The blood of the October horse, mixed with the ashes of the Fordicidia calves, was distributed to all the people and strewn over the fields; see Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer (Munich: Beck, 1912), 200-201; Franz Altheim, Terra Mater: Untersuchungen zur altitalischen Religionsgeschichte (Giessen: T”pelmann, 1931), 121. The fullest treatment of these bloody sparsiones is Samson Eitrem, Beitr„ge zur griechischen Religionsgeschichte, 3 parts (Kristiania: Dybwad, 1917-19), 2:19-49. Both animals in question had been the victims of violent dismemberment, a wild tussle being held for the right to sprinkle the blood of the horse; in Sextus Pompeius Festus, De Verborum Significatu Quae Supersunt cum Pauli Epitome, ed. Wallace M. Lindsay (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), 190-91. The Greek pharmakoi were hung with objects used in sparsiones, such as figs, cakes, and so forth, and their own ashes were scattered, in Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 55-56; see below, n. 118. 6. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 117; Theodor Mommsen, "Das r”mische Gastrecht und die r”mische Clientel," Historische Zeitschrift 1 (1859): 340-41; cf. "symbol" in James Murray, ed., Oxford English Dictionary, 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933). 7. For a broad treatment of this subject, see Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 261-80; Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 1:113-15; Edvard Lehmann, "Erscheinungs- und Ideenwelt der Religion," in Alfred Bertholet and Edvard Lehmann, eds., Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols., 4th ed. (Tbingen: Mohr, 1925), 1:26, 40-43. 8. Scholiast to Persius, Satires V, 177-79. 9. Ovid, Fasti I, 187-88: " `Omen,' ait [Janus], `causa est, ut res sapor ille sequatur, et peragat coeptum dulcis ut annus iter.' " ("It is because of the omen," said [Janus], " . . . that the taste follows the event, and that the whole course of the year may be sweet like its beginning.") 10. Whether or not the sigillaria and the dulces figuras scattered at the Saturnalia (Martial, Epigrams XIV, 222) were the same, as some commentators on Statius, Silvae I, 6, 17, have maintained, originally representing the body of the slain vegetation god (Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 102), it is certain that as New Year's gifts both impart luck and prosperity. The principle of substitution is very conspicuous in the sparsiones. The rule, in sacra simulata pro veris accipi (to accept imitation holy objects as though they were genuine), makes possible, says Servius, Commentarius in Aeneidem (Commentary on the Aeneid) II, 116, the use of models de pane vel cera (of bread or wax) for any costly object. Types of substitution in sparsiones are discussed by Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 277-78. A special coin takes the place at Rome of every kind of food offering or contribution, so that in time such terms as visceratio, epulum, cibus, sportula, congiarium, munus, and so forth, come to mean simply "a coin"; vid. lexicons, Hug, "Sportula," in RE 2:3:1884; Berve, "Liberalitas," in RE 13:85, 88; Mommsen, "Das r”mische Gastrecht und die r”mische Clientel," 340-42; Otto Toller, De Spectaculis, Cenis, Distributionibus in Municipiis Romanis Occidentis Imperatorum Aetate Exhibitis (Altenburg: Bond, 1889), 77-90. This substitution is very ancient with the Romans, see Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 428-29; cf. Deuteronomy 14:23-26. 11. Suetonius, Domitian 4; cf. Suetonius, Nero 11; Suetonius, Augustus 98. 12. Joannes Malalas, Chronographia XIII, 322-23, in PG 97:481-84; Chronicon Paschale, in PG 92:641; cf. Plutarch, Crassus 2. 13. Aristophanes, The Birds 725-52 (a typical year-song of the quˆte variety). 14. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 1:116-18, 439, 503. 15. Sparsio rejuvenates (Aristophanes, Plutus 1197-207) and restores the dead; see Cicero, De Legibus II, 25 [63]; cf. Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 262. 16. Propertius, Elegies IV, 2; cf. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 287-88. 17. The festival of Flora was a duplicate of that of Acca Larentia, Plutarch, Romulus 4-5; cf. K. Schwenck, "Hercules und Acca Larentia," Rheinisches Museum 22 (1867): 129-31; Wilhelm H. Roscher "Acca Larentia," in Wilhelm H. Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon der griechen und r”mischen Mythologie, 7 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1884-1937), 1:6; Altheim, Terra Mater, 142-43), which was a chthonian "Totenmahl" held on Midwinter Night; see Macrobius, Saturnalia I, 10, 17; Varro, De Lingua Latina VI, 23-24; Gellius, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights) VII, 7, 7; Plutarch, Romulus 4-5; and Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae nos. 34-35. 18. Scholiast to Persius, Satires V, 177-79; cf. Altheim, Terra Mater, 136. This seems to have been the classic sparsio at Rome, for when in a.d. 217 such distributions were abolished, the Floralia was specifically excepted; see Marquardt, R”mische Staatsverwaltung, 3:497; Dio Cassius, LXXIX, 22, 1. 19. The laurel switch was used in the water sparsiones that accompanied the sprinkling of ashes, blood, and bean-straw at the Palilia; see Ovid, Fasti IV, 721-40; V, 675-80; Zosimus, Historia Nova VI, 6; cf. Marquardt, R”mische Staatsverwaltung, 3:248, n. 7. Is it possible that the word strena is to be referred to sterno, struo, rather than to the hypothetical *st(e)re suggested by Alois Walde, Vergleichendes W”rterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 3 vols. (Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1927-32), 2:627-28? 20. See below, n. 81, passages describing the hypateia of the emperors at Constantinople. 21. Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 58-69, 85-86, 90-102, is especially convinced that a sparsio must follow a sparagmos (tearing, mangling) of the divine victim, with all the connotations which Frazer has made familiar. Cf. James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 12 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 7:214-69. 22. Ancient tradition gave the bloodless form priority: Empedocles, in Hermann Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., 6th ed. (Zrich: Weidmann, 1951), 1:362-63, frg. 128; Plutarch, Numa VIII, 8; cf. Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 273-74. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 410, 412, holds the strewing of meal to be the older form at Rome. 23. E.g., in the clumsy strewing of bloodless offerings over animal victims (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities VII, 72, 15-18; Hyginus, Fabulae 277). The October horse was decked with bread, and human victims were adorned with the bloodless objects of the sparsiones, see Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 55-56. On the association of bloody and bloodless sparsio, cf. Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 261-80. 24. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 20-21, and in "Congiarium," in RE 4:875, 880, is particularly insistent on this point, while Berve, "Liberalitas," in RE 13:82-83, actually maintains that the sparsiones were not only strictly private, but entirely spontaneous and devoid of any motive but the desire for a little fun. 25. Occasions listed by Rostovzeff, "Congiarium," in RE 4:878; cf. Terence, Phormio I, 41-51, on the gift days. On these occasions one gave a coin to each member of the community (Pliny, Epistulae [Epistles] X, 117; Plautus, Aulularia V, 107), or to a common fund (Georg Wissowa, "Iuventas," in Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon, 2:1:764; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 58, 128, 135, 168), or received gifts from the same; Terence, Phormio I, 41-51; Theodor Mommsen, R”mische Geschichte, 8 vols., 2d ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1856), 1:787, on "Pfennigcollecten" at funerals. 26."Il n'y avait point de solennit‚ au sein d'une famille riche qui ne f–t c‚l‚br‚e par une gratification au peuple, par un festin public ou des jeux" (there was no celebration observed by a rich family that was not also marked by a gift to the people, by a public festival or by games), in V. Duruy, "Du r‚gime municipal dans l'empire romain," Revue historique 1 (1876): 348. The interested presence of all the race, living and dead, at these affairs is the subject of Erich Bethe, Ahnenbild und Familiengeschichte bei R”mern und Griechen (Munich: Beck, 1935), 1-5. 27. Polybius, Histories VI, 53. 28. Victor, De Viris Illustribus 15; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities VIII, 58; Livy, II, 16, 7; cf. III, 18, 11; II, 61, 8-9; Dio Cassius, XXXIX, 64; XL, 49, 1-3; XLVIII, 53, 5. 29. Cf. Duruy, "R‚gime municipal dans l'empire romain," 349, for references; Johann Kirchmann, De Funeribus Romanorum (Lbeck: Jauchius, 1625), 583-84. From Livy, VIII, 22, 2-3, it is plain that Flavius's distribution never would have been tolerated on any other occasion than a funeral. The compulsory public distribution is found in ancient funeral practices elsewhere, e.g., Josephus, Jewish Wars II, 1. 30. Victor, De Viris Illustribus 32 and 18; cf. Pliny, Natural History XXI, 10, in which this public contribution accompanies an actual shower of flowers. On showering the dead with good things, especially grain, cf. Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 261-80. 31. Vergil, Eclogues VIII, 30, "Sparge, marite, nuces" (scatter, bridegroom, the nuts; cf. Festus, Lindsay, ed., 178-79), is matched by a like obligation put upon the bride; Apuleius, Apologia 88; cf. Diodorus, XIII, 84; Pliny, Natural History XV, 86. Other wedding sparsiones were the scramble for the spina alba, which was broken up and distributed among the people tanquam vitae praesidia (cf. modern bride's bouquet), and the sprinkling of the threshold with oil by the bride; Pliny, Natural History XXVIII, 135; Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid IV, 458, a custom still observed in Syria. The private katachysmata (handfuls of figs, nuts, and so forth) that introduced a Greek bridegroom or new-bought slave to his new life (Aristophanes, Plutus 768) is not to be distinguished from the great public showers; ibid., 794-822. 32. On the showering of the victorious emperor or contestant by the people, cf. Herodian, Histories VII, 10, 8; for the similar phylloboloi (showering with leaves), cf. Pindar, Pythian Odes IX, 123-25. The symbolism of the triumphal shower is treated by Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 266-67, and Ludwig Deubner, "Die Bedeutung des Kranzes im klassischen Altertum," Archiv fr Religionswissenschaft 30 (1933): 79. Vortumnus, showered with fruits at the turn of the year, was the prototype of the triumphator; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 287-88. On the scattering of gifts by the victorious emperor, see below, n. 81. 33. Lord Fitz R. Raglan, "Magic and Religion," Folklore 50 (1939): 129. Thus the symbolic nut shower of the wedding (Festus, Lindsay, ed., 178) also appears in the year-rites of the Saturnalia (Martial, Epigrams V, 30, 8) and at funerals; see Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 262-63. On the identity of funeral and triumph in ritual, cf. Ch. Picard, "Les B–chers sacr‚s d'Eleusis," RHR 107 (1933): 137-54. 34. Cf. Wilhelm Schmidt, Geburtstag im Altertum (Giessen: T”pelmann, 1908), 36-37. All bellaria were of the nature of second tables (Gellius, Attic Nights XIII, 11, 7), which would make them necessarily New Year's rites at Rome; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists XIV, 639; cf. Jane Harrison, Themis, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), 250-51. On the significance of Roman festivals as anniversaries, cf. Andr‚ Piganiol, Recherches sur les jeux romains (Strasbourg: Librairie Istra, 1923), 145-48. 35. The identity of birthday and New Year is especially evident in the economy of the more ancient collegia. Thus the Arval Brethren and the Salii had the primary duty of celebrating birthdays and the New Year with identical rites, Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 345-47, and "Arvales Fratres," in RE 2:1472-73, 1485. The college of Aesculapius and Hygeia gave its sparsiones out on the emperor's birthday, the birthday of the college, and at the New Year; Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 98. The identity of the emperor's birthday with the New Year (the official birthday of all Romans, for that matter, Wissowa, "Arvales Fratres," in RE 2:1485), is emphasized by Statius, Silvae IV, 1-2. The genesia is at once birthday and "Totenfeier" (Schmidt, Geburtstag im Altertum, 9-13, 37-45; Erwin Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks [London: Kegan Paul, 1925], 167), held at Rome for all the dead on Midwinter Night (Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 233), when alone, says Macrobius, Saturnalia I, 10, 18, the cry of "Io Saturnalia!" was legal. The Matronalia, on March 1, the old Roman New Year, resembled a birthday celebration in every respect (Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 185), while every Roman bride celebrated her marriage with coin- and cake-tokens not on the marriage day, but at the Compitalia at the end of the Saturnalia; see ibid., 167-68. 36. Malalas, Chronographia, in PG 97:481-82; Chronicon Paschale 262-63, in PG 92:641. Cicero, Pro Archia Poeta XII, 30, shows how established the custom was. At all periods the rewards for gifts of grain to the people was a statue in one's memory; Pliny, Natural History XVIII, 15; Gellius, Attic Nights VII, 7, 1; Chronicon Paschale 391, in PG 92:1004. The statue and feast that went with it amounted to cult veneration, writes W. Buckler, "A Charitable Foundation of a.d. 237," Journal of Hellenic Studies 57 (1937): 1-10; cf. Duruy, "R‚gime municipal dans l'empire romain," 347; Samuel Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (New York: Wold, 1905), 275. 37. In all the above instances the statue marks the scene of such a feast. Not a single instance is known in which a group observes a memorial feast at its own expense (cf. Schmidt, Geburtstag im Altertum, 37-38). To be rich was to be a hero (Pausanias, Description of Greece IV, 32, 2; Diodorus, XIII, 84 and 90). Such donatives were "a manifestation of power and enhancement of the personality" exalting the status of the giver to a superhuman level; cf. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists X, 418B, and the discussion by Bronislaw Malinowski, Crime and Custom in Savage Society (London: Paul, Trench, Trbner, 1926), 29; quote from the latter. 38. The definitive studies are by Georg Wissowa, "De Feriis Anni Romanorum Vetustissimi Observationes Selectae," in Geschichtliche Abhandlungen zur r”mischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1904), 154-74; Ludwig Deubner, "Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der altr”mischen Religion," Neue Jahrbcher fr das klassische Altertum 27 (1911): 321-35; Alfred von Domaszewski, "Die Festcyclen des r”mischen Kalenders," Archiv fr Religionswissenschaft 10 (1907): 333-34; and Eitrem, Beitr„ge zur griechischen Religionsgeschichte, 2:19-22. All are in agreement that a single great festival was either repeated or prolonged by installments throughout the year; cf. Mommsen, R”mische Geschichte, 1:788. 39. No one was allowed to be absent from the secular rites held in his generation, and no one might live to behold those of another; Zosimus, Historia Nova II, 5, 1; Suetonius, Divus Claudius 21; Acta Ludorum Saecularium, lines 52-57, in Theodor Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, 8 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905-13; reprinted 1965), 8:572; cf. 578-80. 40. E. Diehl, "Das Saeculum, seine Riten und Gebete," Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie 83 (1934): 255-56; cf. Fritz Blumenthal, "Ludi Saeculares," Klio 15 (1917-18): 242. 41. Zosimus, Historia Nova II, 5. The redistribution appears "unsinnig" to Blumenthal, "Ludi Saeculares," 232, and puzzling to Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, 8:596, but has been explained convincingly by Piganiol, Recherches sur les jeux romains, 92-101. 42. Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae no. 12; see William R. Halliday, The Greek Questions of Plutarch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 72-73. On the primitive bringing of first-fruits to Delphi, cf. Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae no. 35. The function of the god there was to bestow equally crops and children; Euripides, Io 301-3. 43. See below, nn. 83, 86, 91. The ludi saeculares are the founder's festival, the saeculum urbis conditae; Diehl, "Das Saeculum, seine Riten und Gebete," 370; cf. 371-72. The day of sowing is the day of creation, for the Romans considered "Erzeugung" and birthday one and the same event; cf. Franz Altheim, "Altitalische und altr”mische Gottesvorstellung," Klio 30 (1937): 51. 44. This subject has particularly engaged the attention of Albert Schwegler, R”mische Geschichte, 3 vols. (Tbingen: Mohr, 1884), 1:212-39; and Ludwig Preller, R”mische Mythologie, 2 vols. paginated sequentially, 2d ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1865), 92-146, 294-374, 401-501. Of the large Janus literature, it is sufficient to cite the summary of the god's offices and his predominance in the economy of tokens and distributions (Ovid, Fasti I, 185-86) by Otto Huth, Janus: Ein Beitrag zur altr”mischen Religionsgeschichte (Bonn: R”hrscheid, 1932), 23 and passim. Does the Jano struem of Cato, De Agri Cultura 134, refer to the sparsio of cakes? The identity of New Year's distribution with feasts of the dead and the gifts of the sower is generally explained on the ground that the act of opening the subterranean corn-bin is both a chthonian and a New Year's rite: this theory, introduced by Otfrid Mller, has been popular since its revival by William W. Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People from the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus (London: Macmillan, 1911) or The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London: Macmillan, 1899); cf. Stefan Weinstock, "Templum," R”mische Mitteilungen 45 (1930): 115; W. Kroll, "Mundus," in RE 16:561-63; Martin P. Nilsson, "Die Griechen," in Bertholet and Lehmann, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2:297-98, 369; see below, n. 101. 45. That the private sportulae were never bestowed in kind, as the public often were, indicates their later origin; Hug, "Sportula," in RE 2:3:1885. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares XI, 28, speaks of distributions as private in the sense of having no constitutional significance, i.e., as nonpolitical; but there is no issue as to the priority of private or public sparsio, since any liberalitas is meaningless unless the gift is made both (a) from private means and (b) to parties outside one's family circle. Thus Augustus, in Monumentum Ancyranum I, 32-35, boasts: "populum universummis impensis liberarem" (I freed the whole people by my generosity), his private gift to 320,000 Romans being given on the very public occasion of his assuming the tribunate and consulship; ibid., III, 15-17. So Crassus "out of his own means" fed all the Romans for three months, but this again was to celebrate a consulship (Plutarch, Crassus 2); so too with Caesar (Plutarch, Caesar 55-56). 46. For sources, cf. Theodor Mommsen, "Sp. Cassius, M. Manilius, Sp. Maelius, die drei Demagogen des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts der r”mischen Republik," Hermes 5 (1871): 228-71; and Schwegler, R”mische Geschichte, 3:132-36, 282-98. The Gracchi and even Caesar would come under this head. Maelius expected to restore the monarchy by giving but two pounds of grain to every plebeian, a ridiculously small bribe, unless for the people it had a deeper significance. Cf. ibid., 3:314-15. 47. Cicero, De Officiis II, 61-64; Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum I, 16, 12; Cicero, Pro Murena 36; cf. Tacitus, Annals IV, 62; Appian, Samnite History XI, 1, where he writes that to give money and gifts to the populace is an archaic Roman tradition. 48. Cicero, De Officiis II, 73, 77; Cicero, Pro Ligario VII, 23; Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares IX, 13, 4; Cicero, Pro Rege Deiotaro 26. 49. Emphasized by Theodor Mommsen, De Collegiis et Sodaliciis Romanorum (Kiel: Libraria Schwersiana, 1843): 50-55; and Mommsen, R”mische Geschichte, 1:787. 50. Sparsiones are never objected to on principle, but only because they have become the plaything of the lowest classes; Persius, Saturnalia V, 177; Minucius Felix, XI, 37. Epictetus, Discourses IV, 7, 22-24, objects to scrambling for figs and nuts since dignified men do not scramble "for such small stakes!"; cf. Cicero, Pro Murena 19; Appian, The Civil Wars V, 12-13, 128; Cicero, De Officiis II, 57. 51. Just as the popular burials in the Forum, though dreaded by the senate (Dio Cassius, XXXIX, 64; XLVIII, 53, 5; cf. Livy, VIII, 22, 2-4), weathered every attack because they were a primitive popular custom. Cf. Lucan, Bellum Civile II, 222; David Randall-MacIver, Villanovans and Early Etruscans (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 73-83. 52. Cf. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 11, 39-40; Rostovzeff, "Congiarium," in RE 4:876, 880; cf. Viktor E. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit, 1 vol. in 3 parts (Leipzig: Teubner, 1891-96), 1:2:588; Otto Hirschfeld, Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der r”mischen Verwaltungsgeschichte (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877), 120. 53. No emperor could escape loud popular censure if he failed to give lavishly; Suetonius, Divus Claudius 12; Zosimus, Historia Nova IV, 16; Plutarch, Galba 18, and so forth. 54. See Berve, "Liberalitas," in RE 13:89-90. 55. The evidence is collected in Friedl„nder, Sittengeschichte Roms, 2:299-305. 56. Thus, during the sparsiones, "tollunt innumeras ad astra voces Saturnalia principis sonantes et dulci dominum favore clamant: hoc solum vetuit licere Caesar" (they raise countless voices to heaven proclaiming the Saturnalia of the emperor and saluting their lord with warm admiration; this alone Caesar forbade)--Statius, Silvae I, 6, 81-84. Augustus strictly forbade this dominus title (Suetonius, Augustus 53), as did Tiberius (Suetonius, Tiberius 27). According to Victor, De Caesaribus XXXIV, 4, Diocletian "primus omnium post Caligulam Domitiumque dominum se palam dici passus et adorari se appellarique uti deum" (after Caligula and Domitian, Diocletian was the first of all of them who allowed himself to be called "lord" [dominus] openly and to be venerated and addressed as though he were a god). Cf. Victor, De Caesaribus XI, 2, and Victor, Epitome III, 8; XI, 6. The dominus title would never have caused the scandal it did, had it originated, as Theodor Mommsen, R”misches Staatsrecht, 3 vols., 3d ed. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1885-87), 2:760-63, claims, in the old economy of the Roman household, nor would it have been inseparably connected with the title of deus (ibid.) had it referred strictly to the private relationship of servant and master. 57. Cf. Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1934), s.v. "dominus"; Suetonius, Domitian 13. 58. Suetonius, Domitian 13; cf. Livy, XXIII, 8, 6-7. When Trimalchio regales his guests with a sparsio, they immediately interpret it as a religious donative stemming not from their host but from the emperor: "Rati ergo sacrum esse ferculum tam religiso apparatu perfusum, consurreximus altius et `Augusto patri patriae, feliciter' diximus. Quibusdam tamen etiam post hanc venerationem poma rapientibus, et ipsi iis mappas implevimus." (We thought that it must be a sacred dish that was drenched with such holy trappings; we stood up straight and said, "May it go well for Augustus the father of his country." But since many were grabbing for the fruit even after this solemnity, we filled our napkins ourselves.) Petronius, Satyricon 60. 59. Claudius's behavior at his revived version of the archaic year-feast, where he waited on tables, addressed his guests as domini, and so forth (Suetonius, Divus Claudius 21), closely resembles that of King Cotys; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 131; cf. X, 439. At the Saturnalia (Macrobius, Saturnalia I, 7, 26; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists XIV, 639-40), as at the old sparsiones-festival of the Floralia (Dio Cassius, LVIII, 19, 1), the emperor was treated in every way as a festival king. Since these celebrations are beyond doubt archaic, the origin of the supreme office cannot be dissociated from them (see below, n. 70). 60. Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 1144-65; cf. Altheim, Terra Mater, 19. At the Saturnalia the emperor keeps open house (Statius, Silvae I, 6, 39-50). 61. Amid all the vicissitudes of the late Republic the common people of Italy remained loyal to the folk-memory of a Golden Age, and at the end of the Republic were looking forward with particular enthusiasm to the return of the Saturnia regna. Cf. Guglielmo Ferrero, Greatness and Decline of Rome, 5 vols. (New York: Putnam and Sons, 1909-10), 2:339; Vergil, Eclogues 4. 62. Cassiodorus, Variae VI, 18; Plutarch, Pompey 28; Velleius Paterculus, Historiae Romanae II, 40. 63. Preller, R”mische Mythologie, 650, 653-54, 657. At Rome the prototype of the feast-giving year-king is Hercules, who takes the place of the old local Cererius and Jovius as sponsor of public feasts; cf. Piganiol, Recherches sur les jeux romains, 121-25. It is he who presides over the food distribution of the Ara Maxima, an event which Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 277, holds to be the oldest public rite of the Romans: it was a true year-feast of abundance, at which food was ostentatiously thrown away; ibid., 278. Wissowa, in ibid., 276-77, 282-83 (cf. 271), identifies this Hercules with the autochthonous Garanus, as in this same office he is identified with the old native sowing-god Semo Sancus; Schwegler, R”mische Geschichte, 4:346, 368-69, 375-76; Preller, R”mische Mythologie, 79, 238, 634, 637-38. "The ancients had a way of calling all mighty men Hercules," says Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid VIII, 203, and everywhere the hero appears as the year-king; Dio Chrysostom, Orations I, 50-74; Schwenck, "Hercules und Acca Larentia," 129-31; cf. Michael Rostovzeff, Mystic Italy (New York: Holt, 1927), 137, on Hercules as the great mysta. Even the Oriental year-king, as Ningizzida, Ninurta, Ningirsu, Tammuz, and so forth, "seems to be in possession of all the attributes of Herakles," Henri Frankfort, "Gods and Myths on Sargonid Seals," Iraq 1 (1934): 14. 64. Appian, Civil Wars III, 21, 23-24; cf. Kenneth Scott, "The Political Propoganda of 44-30 b.c.," Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 11 (1933): 7-49. 65. Cicero, Philippics II, 84-85; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 148. 66. Mommsen, R”mische Geschichte, 3:290-91. 67. Dio Cassius, L, 10, 2; Florus, Epitome II, 13; Suetonius, Caesar 79. Caesar's public feasts, given on a royal scale (Plutarch, Caesar 5), are described as archaic by Ausonius, Technopaegnion IX, 5. 68. Plutarch, Caesar LV, 57; Tacitus, Annals I, 2. 69. Herodotus, History I, 126. On Cyrus as the model year-king, cf. Alfred Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East, 2 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate: 1911), 2:231-32, 274-76. 70. In that way the gardener Ellil-banai became king of Babylon in grauer Vorzeit (in the mists of time); Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1925), 2:99. At Tarsus the Epicurean Lysias, chosen "crown wearer" (Priest of Heracles), refused to give up the insignia after the festival and made himself absolute tyrant, "first of all dividing the wealth of the rich among the poor, killing all who refused to contribute"; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists V, 215. Later, when the people of that city formed factions, they crowned Cassius and Dolabella as rival kings; Appian, Civil Wars IV, 64. Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 26, has very plausibly suggested that the famous ruse of Pisistratus and his masquerade-Athena succeeded because, insofar as it concerned the old year-king, he could rely "on the conception being familiar to the simple-minded folk in ritual." When Timaeus wanted to become king of Cyzicus, he began by "bestowing a largess of money and grain upon his fellow citizens"; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists XI, 509. The formula was followed in Sicyon, where "the king receives honors and in turn gives gifts" of land, grain, and money to everyone (Livy, XXXII, 40, 8-9). Distributions as a rule follow confiscations, as in the case of Molpagoras at Cius (Polybius, Histories XV, 21, 1-2), Charops in Epirus (ibid., XXXII, 5), Chaeron at Sparta (ibid., XXIV, 7, 2-3), Phintias in Sicily (Diodorus, XXII, 2), Nabis at Sparta (ibid., XXVII, 1), and so forth. In Roman legend there are many traces of such practice. When all the people chose Tullus Hostilius king, he divided up all the royal lands among them (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities III, 1), following the example of Romulus himself, who willed to each Roman a couple of jugera as an heredium (Varro, De Re Rustica I, 10, 2). King Numa "abolished poverty by force" when he gave to the masses "all the land which Romulus had won by the spear"; Plutarch, Numa 16. When Sextus, son of Tarquin, became King of Gabii, he "destroyed the more influential citizens and distributed their wealth among the populace"; Zonaras, Annals VII, 10. Lepidus had the people plunder and divide the effects of all who opposed his (royal) triumph, Appian, Civil Wars IV, 5, 31. 71. Cf. Diehl, "Das Saeculum, seine Riten und Gebete," 348-52. It was at the great year-festival of the Gauls at Lyons that Drusus induced these people to accept Augustus as ruler and god; it is evident from the ease with which this plan succeeded that he was following a pattern as familiar to the Gauls as the secular celebration was to the Romans; H. W. Lawton, "The Religion of the Gallo-Romans," in Speculum Religionis: Studies in Honor of Claude G. Montifiore (Oxford, Clarendon, 1929), 73. 72. Such symbolic titles are very common, e.g., Martial, Epigrams XII, 62, 1-4; Statius, Silvae I, 6, 2; IV, 1: Vergil, Bucolics I, 6-7; Seneca, Epistulae I, 73; Claudianus Mamertus, Panegyrics V, 2; VI, 1; Cassiodorus, Variae VI, 4; IX, 17; XII, 11; Corippus, Justin IV, 165-74; Nicolaus Damascenus, Vita Caesaris 12, and so forth. The familiar concept of the king as the ultimate source of the food supply, expressed in these passages, needs no discussion. "AUG" on coins "in effect raises the Emperor to the level of a symbol typifying, in a more than earthly capacity, the blessings which the more humble of the earth may enjoy"; C. H. V. Sutherland, "The Historical Evidence of Greek and Roman Coins," Greece and Rome 9 (February 1940): 74. Caesar was the first Roman to put his own image on coins, an honor reserved before that time for deity; ibid., 72. 73. Cassiodorus, Variae III, 29. 74. Berve, "Liberalitas," in RE 13:90. 75. Herodian, Histories V, 6, 9. 76. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XIX, 1, 5. 77. R. Lepsius, Denkm„ler, 3:103-9; reproduced in E. A. W. Budge, A History of Egypt from the End of the Neolithic Period to the Death of Cleopatra, 8 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner, 1902), 4:121, 123; cf. 127: the gifts include all the fruits of the earth, but also many ankh tokens, showing that the god is bestowing life itself. 78. Dio Cassius, LIX, 25, 1-5: Gaius had ordered a high bema erected on the shore and from it supervised his soldiers as they gathered shells from the beach, following a mock combat. Then he gave them rich presents, as if they had won a great victory, and marched with the booty back to Rome, where he immediately mounted another platform to watch the people gathering silver and gold in the same manner. The whole story of the farcical British expedition, with its island objective, its mock combats, its triumph and collecting of shells and gold, and so forth, closely resembles Alexander's mythical expedition to the underworld (Pseudo-Callisthenes, Life of Alexander II, 41), a tradition with an Oriental year-rite background (cf. Julius Zacher, Pseudocallisthenes [Halle: Buchhandlung des Walsenhauses, 1867], 141-42); also Octavian's unsuccessful attempt to satisfy his soldiers with such a token triumph; Appian, Civil Wars V, 13, 128. 79. Cicero, Philippics II, 16. 80. Besides sparsiones, memorial speeches were given from the rostra (Polybius, Histories VI, 53, 2), where stood the golden statue of Memory (Cicero, Philippics II, 84). Herodotus, History IV, 26, describes the same remarkable combination of sparsio, memorial rites, and golden statue among the Scythians, and compares it with the Western genesia. The actual distribution of the dismembered body of the defunct in the Eastern rite may well represent the original form of the visceratio or Roman funeral distribution of meat (Livy, VIII, 22, 2; XXXIX, 46, 2; cf. above n. 21). The older rostra, to which Cicero refers (Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 77), was the seat of Lupercus (Cicero, Philippics II, 84; Suetonius, Caesar 79), and stood on the site of the earlier Volcanal, a raised platform from which the kings would address the people (references in Samuel B. Platner and Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome [London: Oxford University Press, 1929], 583). Livy, XXXIX, 46, 5; XL, 19, 2, tells of showers of blood in Area Vulcani, implying that the spot was actually the scene of bloody sparsiones. For another type of chthonian sparsio taking place there, see below, n. 116. 81. Heliogabalus varied the platform routine with the golden chariot; Herodian, Histories V, 6, 6-9. The solar costume went with both, for at Constantinople the emperors wore it for their chariot sparsiones (Theophanes, Chronographia, anno 791; Cedrenus, I, 710). In a relief from an ivory plaque one sees the deified emperor in a chariot mounted on a very high wooden platform hung with draperies (cf. fig. 118, p. 117); Henri Leclerq, "‚l‚phant," in Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'arch‚ologie chr‚tienne et de liturgie, 15 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et An‚, 1907), 4:2656; cf. Herodian, Histories, IV, 2, 1-4; Lucius Ampelius, VIII, 19. Representations of exalted chariots are very common (see fig. 11, p. 117 in this volume). 82. The Babylonian year-god scatters seed from his heavenly car or mountain top; cf. below, n. 91. His special symbol is the plow (V. Scheil, "La Charrue Symbole de Ningirsu," Revue d'Assyriologie et d'Arch‚ologie Orientale 34 [1937]: 42), which identifies him with year-gods everywhere (cf. Frankfort, "Gods and Myths on Sargonid Seals," 13-14), notably with Triptolemus (Hyginus, Fabulae 147, with specific reference to sparsiones), of whom Arthur B. Cook, Zeus, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), 1:214, 225, observes "a remarkable similarity between the equipment of Triptolemus and that of Dionysus," including chariot and plow. 83. Herodotus, History IV, 5: the sacred gold of the Scythians fell from the sky at the creation, along with a plow. The one able to take up this gold was declared king. 84. Of great antiquity is the story of Lo(v)ernius, Luernes, Ariamnes, etc., who feasted all the Celts for a year and was acclaimed leader and benefactor of the race as he "drove his chariot across the fields, scattering gold and silver for the thousands of Celts who followed him"; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 152; Strabo, Geography IV, 2, 3. 85. Cf. Hyginus, Fabulae 147. The practice of scattering seeds and chopped straw in the wake of a plow or wagon at New Year's still survives in Northern Greece; Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 63. 86. The Greek custom is found among the Germans as well (Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, tr. James S. Stallybrass, 3 vols. [London: Bell, 1883], 1:275-76), imitating in this case the Earth-Goddess and/or her consort, who ride through the sky on Midwinter Night scattering shavings and straw from their wagon or plow, bits which on being picked up turn to gold; cf. Pseudo-Callisthenes, Life of Alexander II, 41; Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1932-36), F342. 87. The chariot of the triumphator is that of Jupiter himself; Ludwig Deubner, "Die Tracht des r”mischen Triumphators," Hermes 69 (1934): 320. It is also the royal chariot (Velleius Paterculus, Historiae Romanae II, 40) and the victorious chariot of the games, to judge from Suetonius, Vespasian 5. 88. This quadriga had been placed by Romulus himself in the temple of Vulcan (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities II, 54, 2; cf. Platner and Ashby, Topographical Dictionary, 583), the source of the archaic sparsiones (see above, n. 80). It goes back to the time when Vulcan ruled before the arrival of Jove, J‚r“me Carcopino, Vergile et les origines d'Ostie (Paris: de Boccard, 1919), 98-102. 89. Plutarch, Publicola 13; cf. Emil Aust, Die Religion der R”mer (Mnster: Aschendorff, 1899), 49-55. 90. Martial, Epigrams VIII, 78, 7-12; Statius, Silvae I, 6, 9-10; 20-27; Ovid, Fasti I, 185-86, and so forth. 91. To cases cited above in nn. 83-86 may be added the golden sparsiones (soma, rice, butter, gold, and so forth) of the Asvamedha, the archaic New Year's celebration of India; Paul ‚. Dumont, L'Asvamedha (Paris: Geuther, 1927), v-viii, 252-53. This rite has been identified with the oldest Sumerian year-practices by William F. Albright and Paul ‚. Dumont, "A Parallel between Indic and Babylonian Sacrificial Ritual," JAOS 54 (1934): 107-28; cf. the Babylonian sprinklings of honey and milk in Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2:238-39. For interesting Armenian sparsiones, cf. Zabelle C. Boyajian, Armenian Legends and Poems (London: Dent and Sons, 1916), 49, commenting on Moses of Khorene. At the Persian creation golden streams flow down and a golden shower falls from heaven to earth; Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in Connection with Similar Babylonian Beliefs," JAOS 36 (1916): 301; and Albert J. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, vol. 6 in Louis H. Gray, ed., Mythology of All Races, 13 vols. (Boston: Jones, 1917), 299-300. For the flowing gold of the Ras Shamra ritual texts, cf. George A. Barton, "The Second Liturgical Poem from Ras Shamra," JAOS 55 (1935): 38-44. At the founding of Athens and the birth of Athena, Zeus sent a shower of gold over the place (Pindar, Olympian Odes VII, 8 and 50). The cases of Danae and others will come to mind. The golden tears of the goddess give life to the world as rain; J. Rendell Harris, Picus Who Is Also Zeus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1916), 45-47; cf. Pausanias, Description of Greece II, 31, 14. 92. In the chariot sparsiones cited above, n. 81, it is specifically reported that the chariot was of gold; cf. Pindar, Olympian Odes I, 37-41. 93. Martial, Epigrams VIII, 33, 3-4; and in Martial, Liber Spectaculorum II, 3; for saffron, Martial, Epigrams V, 25, 7-8. The throne of Lupercus on the rostra (see above, n. 80) was the sella aurea; Cicero, Philippics II, 3; cf. Pindar, Nemean Odes I, 37. 94. This theme is treated by Fabia, "Sparsio," in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquit‚s grecques et romaines 4:2:1419; on gilding, cf. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 116; Martial, Epigrams XIII, 27; cf. Mirabilia Romae I, 4 on the "golden bread," reminding one of the Dutch-gold on the gingerbread figures at old-world fairs. 95. Dumont, L'Asvamedha, 249; cf. 15-16. Of the importance of gold as a universal luck- and fertility-charm nothing need here be said. 96. It is so described by Statius, Silvae I, 6, 40; cf. Vergil, Eclogues IV, 6-10, where "nova progenies caelo demittitur alto" (a new generation is sent down from heaven on high) refers, of course, to the gens aurea of line 9. 97. It is the marriage of "the Earth-Mother and the Heaven-Father, whose rain falls in a life-giving stream into the womb of Earth"; Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 19; cf. Morris Jastrow, "Sumerian and Akkadian Versions of Beginnings," JAOS 36 (1916): 290-95, and the broad treatment by G. W. Elderkin, "The Marriage of Zeus and Hera and Its Symbol," American Journal of Archaeology 41 (1937): 424-35. Water in the New Year's rites has a special fertilizing power, discussed by A. J. Wensinck, "The Semitic New Year and the Origin of Eschatology" Acta Orientalia 1 (1922): 164-65 and passim. In the Indian year-rites "water is seed"; F. Max Mller, ed., The Upanishads, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879-84), 1:238-39. In the ancient Easter rite the wax of the Easter Taper "is dropped into the font in the form of a cross, and the candle itself is dipped into it. . . . Then the people are sprinkled with this Easter water" (Henry J. Feasey, Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial [London: Baker, 1897], 238-39), while the wax of the taper itself may be distributed among the multitude in the form of little wafer-tokens to bring prosperity for the year; ibid., 203-4. Greek sparsiones were accompanied by liberal water lustrations over the multitude; Aristophanes, Pax 962-72; cf. Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 101-2. The liquid and flower showers of the Isis cult (Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI, 9) and the sprinkling of Nile water in the same (Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid II, 116, and IV, 512) certainly have the same significance as the life-giving "drop" of the Egyptian New Year. The sprinkling of the life-giving water by the Pharaoh at the great year-festival (the Sed Festival) is often depicted in murals and reliefs; for example, see Edouard H. Naville, Festival-Hall of Osorkon II (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trbner, 1892), pl. XI and p. 24. Befeuchter and Befruchter are concepts identical with those of the ancients; Altheim, Terra Mater, 150; Preller, R”mische Mythologie, 335. Cf. G. Dossin, "Un rituel du culte d'Istar," Revue d'Assyriologie 35 (1938): 9. 98. From the golden horde of Demeter came the sparsiones of the Thalysia; Homer, Iliad 9:534; Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 1:117; Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 27. Frigg, or Freyja, was called Folla, Abundia, Dame Habonde, and so forth, because "she bestowed prosperity and abundance on mortals"; she kept "the divine mother's chest (eski), out of which gifts were showered upon [the people]"; Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 1:308. This treasure was "the gold of Frigg"; ibid., 1:307. The treasure chamber of the goddess always appears in close connection with the royal marriage motif (Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 26-27), of which the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in its numerous Oriental versions is perhaps the most instructive instance, though the reader may recall various Celtic legends of the same intent, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae II, 14; cf. Herodotus, History II, 121-26; II, 135; I, 187, and so forth. 99. This was the penus (provisions) of the community and the arca pontificum (treasury of the pontifices), from which festival expenses were paid; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 407, 471. After half the blood of the October horse had been sprinkled, the other half was stored there for future sparsiones (ibid., 145; see above, n. 5). 100. Ibid., 300; it was the "Archiv und Kasse" into which all fines were paid, and from which the cura annonae was administered; cf. ibid., 302, 297; cf. Altheim, Terra Mater, 118; Piganiol, Recherches sur les jeux romains, 2, 12, 85, 91, 101, and so forth; Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, 74-79. 101. In connection with the sparsiones the goddess appears most often as Fortuna (see below, nn. 141-46) and as Annona: the Annona Augusti Ceres of the Imperial coins representing "Ceres . . . in her guise as Imperial Corn Supply"; Sutherland, "Greek and Roman Coins," 74-75. Annona is the emissary (Oehler, "Annona," in RE 1:2320), and the indigitamentum of Ceres; Georg Wissowa, "Annona," in Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon, 1:360; Berve, "Liberalitas," in RE 13:89-90. Ceres received and dispensed the praemitiae as archaic patroness of the cura annonae and of the primitive games (see above, n. 100). Her mate is the year-god Janus-Cerus; Huth, Janus, 22-23, 93; Wilhelm Roscher, "Ianus," in Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon, 2:1:30; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 103-4, 109; and it has often been noted that her festival was the year-festival (Piganiol, Recherches sur les jeux romains, 91; Fowler, Roman Festivals, 74-79), the primitive year being marked by the opening and shutting of her subterranean corn bin; see above, n. 44; cf. Altheim, "Altitalische und altr”mische Gottesvorstellung," 47-50; Wissowa, "De Feriis Anni Romanorum Vetustissimi," 154-55. The name Annona refers specifically to the yearly office of distribution. 102. Ovid, Fasti V, 221; on Flora as Ceres, cf. Altheim, Terra Mater, 132-33. 103. The treasury of the goddess is also that of Pluto, and the counterpart of the heavenly treasury of Zeus; Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 27; Aristophanes, Plutus 131-34. Lydus, De Mensibus IV, 85, argues that Pluto is the Sun in the underworld with Kore, who personifies "that power which is upon the seeds as they fall from heaven to earth." At all times the substance of the Roman sparsiones was taken in theory from the aerarium Saturnii (Oehler, "Annona," in RE 1:2319), and Saturn's temple was the city treasury; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 57. In the East the waters of heaven and those of the underworld are identical, and the gold shower is supplied from a heavenly rain-pond, which is at the same time the water of the abyss; cf. Lehmann, "Erscheinungs- und Ideenwelt der Religion," in Bertholet and Lehmann, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 1:105-6; and Edvard Lehmann, "Die Perser," in Bertholet and Lehmann, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2:228. 104. Alan H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), 296, cites references to this. 105. Anton Deimel, Sumerische Grammatik (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1924), 119; cf. 110: "von Phallus berschssiger Kraft, vom Hause des Sturmflutes, vom Gebirge, dem heiligen Orte werde ich dir [i.e., the King] einen Wind schicken: das Land wird er mit Lebenshauch beschencken." It is the goddess who brings forth this shower; Jastrow, "Sumerian and Akkadian Versions of Beginnings," 292-93. 106. Hammurabi Code, prologue, cols. 2-4; Robert F. Harper, Code of Hammurabi (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1904), 5-9. The Persian god sits in heaven "on a golden throne . . . with hands overflowing"; Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, 229-300. 107. Psalms 78:23-29 (for the New Year); cf. Malachi 3:10. 108. Cf. Wensinck, "Semitic New Year and the Origin of Eschatology" 158-99; Feasey, Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial, 55-72. 109."Domine aperi fenestram. Sol veni! Luna veni! Nubes celestis cum manna veni!" (Henri Leclerq, "Laudes Pueriles," in Cabrol and Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'arch‚ologie chr‚tienne et de liturgie, 8:2:1913.) 110. Feasey, Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial, 74, 76-77; cf. 58. 111. Suetonius, Augustus 98. As princeps iuventutis (Augustus, Monumentum Ancyranum III, 1-6) he would distribute tokens marked MAG(ister) IUVENT(utis); Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 59; cf. Hubert D‚moulin, "Encore les collegia iuvenum," Mus‚e Belge 3 (1899): 177-92. 112. Henri Leclerq, "Annone," in Cabrol and Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'arch‚ologie chr‚tienne et de liturgie, 1:2275-76, fig. 776. Leclercq's explanation is that "deux g‚nies couvrent les ‚poux de fleurs" (two geniuses are showering the married couple with flowers), although the objects on the strings in no way resemble flowers, and the strings are not held lightly like garlands, but are clutched firmly and hang straight, though at odd angles, as if they were being shaken. 113. Plutarch, Romulus 11. The best-known example is that of the Lacus Curtius, into which every Roman tossed a coin or fruit offering "quotannis ex voto pro salute eius" (each year in fulfillment of a vow for his welfare); Suetonius, Augustus 57; cf. Livy, VII, 6, 3-6; Propertius, Elegies IV, 2, 61. The mouth of the underworld was the mundus, which has been persistently identified with the subterranean public silo from which the grain distributions were made, the mundus Cereris (Festus, Lindsay, ed., 144; Macrobius, Saturnalia I, 16-18; see above, n. 101). 114."Diese Sitte der Mnzspende an Quellen und Flsse geht durch die ganze antike Welt," according to Franz D”lger, "Die Mnze im Taufbecken und die Mnzenfunde in Heilquellen der Antike Kultur- und Religionsgeschichtliches zum Kanon 48 der Synode von Elvira in Spanien," in Antike und Christentum, 6 vols. (Mnster: Aschendorff, 1929), 3:13, who has treated the subject extensively; ibid., 3:1-24. Additional instances of the throwing of year-offerings into the abyss of the netherworld are to be found in Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) 2, 4; Gregory of Tours, De Gloria Confessorum 2, in PL 71:830-31; Pausanias, Description of Greece I, 18, 7; VII, 24, 2; III, 23, 9; III, 26, 1 (this Ino is identified with the Roman Mater Matuta in ritual; cf. Schirmer, "Leukothea," in Roscher, Ausfhrliches Lexikon, 2:2:2012); Lucian, De Syria Dea (On the Syrian Goddess) 12, and so forth. The Demeter pigs of the Thesmophoria were thrown into a pit before being scattered over the fields, according to Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 30. 115. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 429. One is reminded of the Greek katabolia, the act of contributing one's offering to a public feast by throwing it onto the common pile; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists VII, 362; Johann Tzetzes, Ad Hesiodum 2. 116. Cf. H. J. Rose, "The Cult of Volkanus at Rome," Journal of Roman Studies 23 (1933): 58-61; J. Toutain, "Sur un rite curieux et significatif du cult de Vulcain Rome," RHR 103 (1931): 136-37. 117. Leviticus 5; 8:26-30; 14:6-7, 16; 23:11, 20, and so forth. These rites are a complicated series of throwing, waving, sprinkling, and mixing of oil, blood, water, bits of meat, and fruits of the earth, with much liquid sparsio over altar, priests, and congregation. They are full of instructive parallels which cannot be treated here. 118. As seen in the scattering of ashes to the winds, in which every vestige of the object of sacrifice follows the course of the flame and smoke to the other world. The ashes of various "vegetation gods" were sown abroad in true sparsiones; Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 97-98. On burning as a means of banishment, cf. Pausanias, Description of Greece II, 10, 1. 119. Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 55-56; Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 280-94. 120. Roman practices of banishment recall the Hittite system, which puts things "on the road to the Sungod in the Underworld" by throwing them into a fire, a stream, or a pit; Albrecht G”tze, Kleinasien (Munich: Beck, 1933), 146-47. The Sumerian compound for "dedicate," "sacrifice," is a-ru, literally "throw into the water," writes Deimel, Sumerische Grammatik, 42. Objects tossed into the year-fires of Europe (Grimm, Teutonic Mythologie, 1:43) were also cast into holy fountains, both acting as "Bote zwischen der g”ttlichen und der menschlichen Welt" (a messenger between the divine and the human worlds); Paul Herrmann, Altdeutsche Kultgebr„uche (Jena: Diederichs, 1928), 33; cf. 40, 59. The year-fire itself is transmitted from heaven by a burning-glass, a "type of the Orient on high," passing from the world above to that below without any contact of the two; Feasey, Ancient English Holy Week Festival, 187-88, 180-81. 121. Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 282-90; Rose, "Cult of Volkanus at Rome," 61; Paul Radin, Social Anthropology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1932), 306. The throwing of food or stones keeps the spirits at a distance either by satisfying them (Cerberus) or scaring them off; cf. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, H331; R231 (Atalanta motif); G512. With the sparsio as a form of combat (e.g., confetti) the present study is not concerned. It will be enough to note that the adorea of kisses, flowers, fruits, and vegetables (Plutarch, Cato Minor 46) thrown to actors in the theater could, if an actor did badly, take the form of a shower of stones: in either case it was a sparsio; but Franciscus B. Ferrarius, De Veterum Acclamationibus et Plausu, in Graevius, Thesaurus Antiquitatem Romanorum, 6:82-88, warns against confusing ritual combats with stoning rites (cf. Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 290). 122. The spirits were waiting to snatch it: they were the Harpies, the rapacious dead; Kirchmann, De Funeribus Romanorum, 578-80; Georg Weicker, Der Seelenvogel in der alten Litteratur und Kunst (Leipzig: Teubner, 1902), 20. In Babylonia the stray animals that snatched food from the ground were "the shadow-spirits of the dead"; Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 1:419. To appease such the Philageians would carry some crumbs from the year-feast; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 149C; cf. Franz D”lger, "Die Eucharistie als Reiseschutz: Die Eucharistie in den H„nden der Laien," in Antike und Christentum, 5:232-47, 258. After the German year-feast the crumbs were scattered over the fields with cries of "w“ld! w“ld!" (Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 1:156), the sowing of the fields and the feeding of the dead being the same act; Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 262. For the Pythagoreans all food that fell from the table passed tois erosi and could not be used by mortals; Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1:463; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers VIII, 34. Whatever is thrown or dropped is lost to this world, whatever is caught is gained; Pausanias, Description of Greece I, 17, 3; Aelius Spartianus, Hadrian XXVI, 7. 123. Hecate takes a deipnon from the rich to feed the poor, who must snatch the food before it is set down; Aristophanes, Plutus 594-99; Joannes Tzetzes, Commentarii in Aristophanem, vol. 6:1 of Scholia in Aristophanem, ed. W. J. W. Koster (Groningen: Wolters, 1960), 142. The crumbs for Hecate (see Gulick's note on Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 149C; cf. III, 110C) were a sort of Hygeia-bread, like the cakes of the Kollyridian rites; Franz D”lger, "Heidnische und christliche Brotstempel mit religi”sen Zeichen: Zur Geschichte des Hostienstempels," in Antike und Christentum, 1:13-14. The remnants of the Christian agape, heavenly food, were distributed among the poor; Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History IV, 36, in PG 86:2:2769; I. Bekker, ed., Georgius Cedrenus 1:686-88, as were the untouchable remains of the great Slavic year-feast for the dead; Jan Machal, Slavic Mythology, vol. 3 in Gray, Mythology of All Races (Boston: Jones, 1918), 236. In Israel what fell from the sacred bread-fruit tree in the temple could be picked up only by the poor; Babylonian Talmud Pesah 52b; cf. the gleaning-law, Leviticus 19:9-10. Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 263-64, 267, gives other cases in which "die Armen vielfach den Platz der Totenseelen eingenommen" (the poor took the place of the dead). 124. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 1:273-74, 282. Unless the god unexpectedly lets fall a shoe or ring, and so forth, from his statue, these must be snatched from him unawares by one who would obtain prosperity; ibid., 1:114, n. 2. Cf. such year-motifs as Gilgamesh snatching the tablets of Destiny, Prometheus stealing fire, and so forth. The throwing or accidental dropping of a spindle into running streams at the New Year gratifies the earth-goddess; cf. Adolf Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart (Berlin: Wiegandt and Grieben, 1900), 26 (24), 29-30, 32; Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, G423, a motif occurring very anciently in the Ras Shamra fragments; Barton, "Second Liturgical Poem from Ras Shamra," 38. 125. See Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, E545, 561, 373. 126. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 145; cf. 146B; Herodotus, History IX, 110. 127. G”tze, Kleinasien, 153, 155 (of the Hittite king). 128. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 153. The symbol of Orestes' utter banishment from the world of men is his eating alone at a table set apart (Euripides, Iphigeneia at Taurus 949-54). 129. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 145; Herman Kees, „gypten, in Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 3, pt. 1, 3a (Munich: Beck, 1933), 64. 130. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 151 (Thracian), 153 (Parthian). It is still considered an ill omen in the East for food to pass directly from the hand of a giver to that of a receiver. 131. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 13, 16-17, 38, 55, is insistent on this point. 132. Many were actually killed in scrambles for tesserae (Dio Cassius, LIX, 25, 5; Herodian, Histories V, 6, 10). Yet for Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 4, "Ausstreuen" is nothing more than a convenient means of distribution. 133. Gifts were flung until "desunt qui rapiant, sinusque pleni gaudent" (there are too few to grasp them all, and full laps shout for joy); Statius, Silvae I, 6, 79-80. When "omne genus rerum missilia sparsit, et . . . pars maior intra popularia deciderat" (he scattered gifts of all sorts of things, and the greater part fell among the people), Domitian gave the knights and senators a special repeat shower, Suetonius, Domitian IV, 5; cf. Suetonius, Augustus 41, and Duruy, "R‚gime municipal dans l'empire romain," 348. Rich senators complained if they failed to get their share of these trivial "hand-outs," a plain indication of their symbolic nature (Symmachus, Epistolae IX, 153; cf. Commodian, Instructiones II, 34). 134. Quite apart from the fun of the licentia diripiendi (Suetonius, Augustus 98; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XIX, 1, 13, 93), there is an archaic background to the rixae (brawls), as seen in Apollodorus, I, 9, 23; Hyginus, Fabulae 22, where Jason's sparsio of stones that begets a race of men is followed by yet another which sets them fighting by the ears. Altheim, Terra Mater, 136, surmises a "kultische Bedeutung" (cultic meaning) in the rixanti populo (brawling mob) of Persius, Saturnalia V, 176, but is not more specific. The rixa figures also in the Greek sparsio; Aristophanes, Wasps 58-59; cf. Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, 100-101. 135. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 56, and Friedl„nder, Sittengeschichte Roms, 2:317, both use the term without following up the clue. 136. Hermann Dessau, Geschichte der r”mischen Kaiserzeit, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1924-26), 1:339. 137. Alexander Tille, Yule and Christmas: Their Place in the Germanic Year (London: Nutt, 1899), 31-32, 114-15. The famous year-cake of the Slavs (Machal, Slavic Mythology, 218-19) recalls the round Janus cakes of the Roman New Year (Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 111, n. 3). Contributions to the Greek feast had to be caught, not purchased; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 141; Pausanias, Description of Greece VII, 18, 7; cf. 1 Samuel 2:13-14, where the priest receives his share by a sort of grab-bag. A fowl alighting on the emperor's table during the scrambles of the Saturnalia was hailed as the best of omens; Aelius Lampridius, Severus Alexander XXXVII, 6; cf. Franz D”lger, "Die Apollinarischen Spiele und das Fest Pelusia," in Antike und Christentum, 1:153; and Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 89, on "die sacrale Grundlage der Jagd" (the sacral basis of the hunt). 138. All this is implied in the symbol of the cornucopia, the impartiality motif in the formula, "O dominum aequum et bonum" (O just and good lord)! (Suetonius, Augustus 53; cf. Dio Chrysostom, Orations III, 73; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists I, 13; Livy, XXXI, 4, 6-7; Tacitus, Annals IV, 64). 139. E.g., Aelius Lampridius, Heliogabalus 22; Suetonius, Augustus 75. 140. V. E. Ehrenberg, "Losung," in RE 13:1459; A. Bouch‚-Leclercq, "La Divination italique," RHR 1 (1880): 43-44; cf. Cicero, De Divinatione I, 34; II, 85-87. It should not be overlooked that sero, serere also means to "sow." 141. Ehrenberg, "Losung," in RE 13:1455-57; Bouch‚-Leclercq, "Divination italique," 44-45. In this capacity Fortuna is an old autochthonous version of the Mother Goddess (see above, n. 101). 142. Ehrenburg, "Losung," in RE 13:1455-57. The great shrine of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste was open only at the New Year (cf. refs. in Bouch‚-Leclercq, "Divination italique," 46-47); so also the Pythian originally gave oracles only one day a year, on the god's birthday (Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae no. 9). 143. Bouch‚-Leclercq, "Divination italique," 44; Ehrenberg, "Losung," in RE 13:1475; Cicero, De Divinatione II, 85-87. 144. The numerous tesserae from the shrine of Aesculapius and Hygeia on the Tiber Island fulfil all these conditions; Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 2-3, 99. 145. Hers is the most common name on all tokens; Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 97; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 246; and designates the goddess as "Spenderin von materiellen Gtern" (distributor of material goods); Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 110. 146. Seneca, Epistulae I, 74, 6: "ad haec, quae a fortuna sparguntur, sinum expandit et sollicitus missilia exspectat" (opens his arms for what is scattered by fortune and waits anxiously for her gifts). 147. Cf. lexica; Mommsen, "Das r”mische Gastrecht und die r”mische Clientel," 340-41; K. Regling, "Tessera," in RE 2:5:851-54. 148. Pausanias, Description of Greece VII, 25, 6; II, 20, 3 (where Tyche corresponds to the Italian Fortuna). 149. The classic treatment of this is by Mommsen, "Das r”mische Gastrecht und die r”mische Clientel," 339-42, and Theodor Mommsen, "Das r”mische Gastrecht," in R”mische Forschungen, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1864), 1:338-43. The need for such tickets argues their origin in public rather than in the intimate private cult. 150. Cf. Regling, "Tessera," in RE 2:5:851-54; Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 1; Marquardt, R”mische Staatsverwaltung, 2:128: the incisi (those whose names are inscribed) possess "ein fr allemal eine tessera" (a permanent tessera) to match their names in the list. Cf. Livy, VIII, 20, 8, and Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 131, on the great tessera of the state. 151. Deimel, Sumerische Grammatik, 73, 77-78 (dated New Year), 86-87, 210, 224. 152. Throughout the Middle East it was the custom for everyone coming to the king's feast at the New Year to contribute an arrow; Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, 306-8. These were the baresmen used by the king in divination as he sat "on a golden throne, on a golden cushion, on a golden carpet . . . with hands overflowing" (ibid., 299-300), as appears from comparison with the Tartar custom described by Joinville, Histoire de St. Louis (Paris: Foucault, 1824), 475-78. For the Scythian version cf. Herodotus, History IV, 81; for the Caucasus, William E. D. Allen, A History of the Georgian People (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner, 1932), 331. The use of lucky arrows in determining portions at feasts is frequently mentioned in Arabic sources, e.g., Qur'an 2:216; Mucallaqat, 2, 104. The same association of arrow-token (or seal) and feast is apparent in very early Babylonia, where seals seem to have originated as arrows or reeds (William H. Ward, The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia [Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute, 1910], 5), the earliest of these being devoted to New Year's banquet themes. According to Frankfort, "Gods and Myths on Sargonid Seals," 7, 6, their "designs of good omen," which reflect "the Babylonian New Year festival . . .antedate by 2,000 years the texts upon which we must draw." The favorite subjects of the very earliest seals are banquet and hunting scenes; Leon Legrain, Archaic Seal Impressions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), 4. The arrow appears as a device for carrying a message between this world and the world above in much folklore, e.g., Herodotus, History V, 105. See "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State," pages 1-32 in this volume. 153."Marks were cut on pieces of wood, . . . and each person had his mark. Sometimes the places at feasts were assigned by lot; . . . images of some of the gods were sometimes marked on the lots"; Paul B. Du Chaillu, The Viking Age, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1890), 1:350. Runes and ogam characters take their form from being cut on such pieces of wood (John Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom [London: Williams and Norgate, 1898], 268), just as Babylonian characters appear on seals "long before we meet any instance of writing on clay tablets"; Legrain, Archaic Seal Impressions, 4. Such marks exactly resemble the Hausmarken, or private seals, derived anciently from some southern European alphabet "most like the North-Etruscan," according to Gustav Neckel, "Die Runen," Acta Philologica Scandinavica 12 (1937-38): 114-15; cf. 112-13. 154. For admission to the primitive Greek feasts the poor would present a section of reed or a laurel leaf; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 140, 141E. The leaf would be given back to the holder with a paste of oil and barley on it, both laurel (ibid., IV, 140C) and reed serving as cheap and convenient containers; Campbell Bonner, "Notes on the Use of the Reed, with Special Reference to Some Doubtful Passages," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society 39 (1908): 35-48. The laurel leaf here has a token value, for one could pay certain fines either with a cake (kamma) or with a laurel leaf (kammatis); Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 141A. The leaf was put to the same use by the early Romans, who would cook their New-Year and birthday cakes on them and call them panes laureati; Cato, De Agri Cultura 75-76 and 121. In the East the strena takes the alternative form of sections of reed under the Empire; Malalas, Chronographia, in PG 97:481-84; Chronicon Paschale, in PG 92:641. An unexplained passage from Wilhelm Henzen, ed., Acta Fratrum Arvalium Quae Supersunt (Berlin: Reimer, 1874), 26, seems to imply that there was a scramble in the giving out of the panes laureati: "et panes laureat(os) per public(os) partiti sunt; ibi omn(es) lumemulia cum rapinis acceperunt" (they distributed the panes laureati among the crowd; everyone got the lumemulia there in wild scrambles). Since the meaning of lumemulia is entirely unknown (ibid., 32), may not the rapinae refer to rixae of the distributions rather than to "beets"? 155. Wensinck, "Semitic New Year and the Origin of Eschatology," 172 and passim, citing especially Ephraim Syrus, Hymn II, 2; VI, 13. The heavenly Book of Life is matched by like tablets kept in the underworld; Aeschylus, Eumenides 273-75. The worst of all penalties is to be blotted out from the Book of Life, to be "cut off from among the people," and so forth. 156. Blumenthal, "Ludi Saeculares," 231-32; cf. Herodian, Histories III, 8, 10. 157. The Golden Tablets of the Orphic mysteries as "passports to the other world" (Rohde, Psyche, 249-50 [vii, 21]) resemble the coins or cakes with which the dead were expected to pay their admission to the banquets of the beyond, thus assuring their non-return; Paul Sartori, "Die Totenmnze," Archiv fr Religionswissenschaft 2 (1899): 210, 213. A dos or sportula had to be presented by all seeking entrance to the feasts of the various collegia and mysteries; D”lger, "Die Mnze im Taufbecken," in Antike und Christentum 3:9-12; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 407. 158. The Phyllobolia was one of the formal steps of initiation into the mysteries; references in Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer, 279. In the famous picture of the heavenly banquet of Vibia, depicting certain mysteries (Rostovzeff, Mystic Italy, 145-46; cf. Johannes Leipoldt, Die Religionen der Umwelt des Urchristentums [Leipzig: Deichert, 1926], no. 166), two youths are seen in the foreground on a flowering field; one of them scatters small objects which the other gathers up and puts in his mouth; Raffaele Garruci, Storia dell'arte cristiana nei primi otto secoli della Chiesa, 6 vols. (Prato: Giachetti, 1880), 6, pl. 494; Henri Leclerq, "Agape," in Cabrol and Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'arch‚ologie chr‚tienne et de liturgie, 1:839-40, fig. 186. Cf. Aischrion, I, 43, in Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ed. Theodorus Bregk (Leipzig: Teubner, 1882), 2:517: "kai theon (broma) agrostin heures, hen Kronos katespeiren" (you have found dog's-tooth grass, the food of the gods, which Kronos scattered about); and Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, 308: "And there shalt thou place the meadow where unceasingly the golden-colored, where unceasingly the invincible food is eaten." The feast on the grass with its miraculous abundance occurs in Herodotus, History I, 126; Matthew 14:19; and Mark 6:39; and in the archaic Roman year-feasts; Ovid, Fasti III, 532-40; this Anna Perenna, the year-goddess, is identical with Ceres; Altheim, Terra Mater, 93; Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium, 26: "in cespite . . . sacr(um) fecer(unt)" (they held the banquet . . . on the grass). 159. A remarkable parallel is the Indian Asvamedha feast, at the end of which the king gave to each priestly guest a piece of gold of 100 grains, "because the life of man is 100 years" (Dumont, L'Asvamedha, iii, 15-16; cf. v; 249). Just so, after the Arval banquet each of the brethren received a sportula of gold coin, which is always specified as 100 denarii (Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium, 13, 16-17, 26-27, 45-46); though it is not stated that this is for one hundred years, such was in fact the secular life-span, and the coin was exchanged for the wish, "augeat t(ibi) I(uppiter) a(nnos)" (may Jupiter increase your years); ibid., 45-46; cf. Wissowa, "Arvales Fratres," in RE 2:1475. 160. P. Nigidius Figulus, frg. 99; Scholia ad Germanicum (ed. Maas), 85, 154. 161. Apollodorus III, 4, 1; Euripides, Madness of Heracles 4-7; Hyginus, Fabulae 178; Ovid, Metamorphosis III, 101-30; cf. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, A1245. On Spartoi from speirein, cf. Trk, "Spartoi," in RE 2:3:1538-40. 162. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der R”mer, 261-62. 163. Marquardt, R”mische Staatsverwaltung, 2:130. 164. The seal was a contract between god and man as it was between men; Otto Weber, Altorientalische Siegelbilder (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1920), 1, 5. It was "the emblem of the Creator God, as a symbol and guarantee of his assistance," W. M. Flinders Petrie, Scarabs and Cylinders with Names (London: University of London, 1917), 3-4; also "a peculium of their owner," that had "a protective virtue . . . [and] may have conveyed a sense of divine companionship," Arthur J. Evans, The Palace of Minos at Knossos, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1935), 3:144. On the tessera as contract, see above, n. 149. 165. Such were the song of the Sicilian bukoliasts (Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 1:118), the Eiresione song (ibid., 1:114), and the typical "quˆte" song in Aristophanes, The Birds 723-36. Latin equivalents of these are the laudes pueriles, a collection of which may be found in Leclerq, "Laudes Pueriles," in Cabrol and Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'arch‚ologie chr‚tienne et de liturgie, 8:1910-16, and the panegyrics, collected in Henri Leclerq, "Pan‚gyrique," in ibid., 13:1016-45. The activities of these youthful New Year's choruses closely resemble those of the Arval and Salian brethren; cf. Robert S. Conway, Ancient Italy and Modern Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 2-10. When a sparsio is given at a private party, the guests spring to their feet and recite an acclamatio to the Emperor; Petronius, Satyricon 60. 166. This appears in a very ancient form of marriage contract, wherein one party catches the gold or silver thrown by the other; Poetae Lyrici Graeci 2:299 (epigrams 2-3), also in Elegy and Iambus with the Anacreontea, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 2:6-7 (epigrams 7-8); Herodotus, History I, 199; Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, H316, where both throwing and catching serve to establish a contract. If the gifts thrown into the abyss at the New Year disappeared, it was believed that the god had accepted the contract; if not, it was taken as a bad sign; Pausanias, Description of Greece III, 23, 9. 167. Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 41. Many of these acclamations are collected by Ferrarius in Graevius, Thesaurus Antiquitatem Romanorum, 6:104-15, 123-36, 150-83, 199-230; and Leclerq, "Laudes Pueriles," in Cabrol and Leclerq, Dictionnaire d'arch‚ologie chr‚tienne et de liturgie, 8:1910-16. The hundreds of acclamationes almost without exception (1) hail the donor as worthy and victorious, and (2) wish him multos annos (many years). 168. The principle of substitution is here in full force. The common resemblance of tesserae to coins is explained by the substitution of coins and dice alike for those primitive astragals of which Neolithic Italy has yielded a great harvest, but which disappear completely in historic times to survive in altered form both as coins and as dice; Ehrenberg, "Losung," in RE 13:1485; Hugo Blmner, Die r”mischen Privataltertmer (Munich: Beck, 1911), 412, n. 12. The Lydians, who are traditionally said to have invented money, also invented lots and games of chance, and that in an attempt to solve the food-distribution problem; Herodotus, History I, 94. Since writing possibly began with seals, it is significant that Cadmus, who begot the race by sowing tokens, is also credited with the invention of written symbols. Diogenes recommended the universal use of dice as money; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists IV, 159; and indeed gilt astragals marked like dice still serve as money in the most civilized parts of the East Indies. Blmner, R”mischen Privataltertmer, 415, finds that the Romans never diced except for money, so that the coin was part of the game. While coins may have originated from seals (Arthur R. Burns, Money and Monetary Policy in Early Times [New York: Kelley, 1927], 37), dice and seals are also confused and identified in archaic times; Fritz Hommel, Ethnologie und Geographie des alten Orients (Munich: Beck, 1926), 48-49 (Hittite), 66 (Etruscan). 169. A large class of bronze and the whole class of bone tesserae are tesserae lusoriae; Regling, "Tessera," in RE 2:5:851-54. 170. Regling, "Spintria," in RE 2:3:1814, and Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 56-57. 171. Horace, Carmen Saeculare I, 4, 14; II, 7, 25-26; Mau, "Astragalos," in RE 2:1795, suggests that this is the reason for calling Venus basilikos; cf. Plautus, Curculio 357. 172. Tacitus, Annals XIII, 15; Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum V, 20, 5; Lucian, Saturnalia 2-4, and 9; Seneca, Apocolocyntosis 8. The Roman emperor learned the fortune of his rule by dicing at the New Year in the shrine of Fortuna at Praeneste (Suetonius, Domitian 15) exactly as the Babylonian monarch would dice in the Chamber of Destiny, or the kings of the North would cast dice in the temple of Uppsala to win 300 years of life; Paul Herrmann, Nordische Mythologie (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1903), 531. King, high-priest (Cicero, In Verrem II, 2, 126), and scapegoat (Leviticus 16:8; Babylonian Talmud Yoma 63b; Helmold, Chronicle of the Slavs I, 52, and so forth) were all chosen by lot. 173. Martial, Epigrams V, 84; XI, 6; cf. Suetonius, Augustus 71. 174. E.g., Rostovzeff, R”mische Bleitesserae, 59; Regling, "Spintria," in RE 2:3:1814. Far from being a late invention, just such "obsc”ne Bleispiegel und Bleiplaketten" (obscene lead mirrors and lead plaques) were found in the temple of Ishtar at Assur (Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2:438), and refer no doubt to that system of ritual prostitution for which Herodotus, History I, 196, actually finds parallels in Italy; cf. Joshua Whatmough, The Foundations of Roman Italy (London: Methuen, 1937), 173. 175. Best known in its Celtic versions; cf. Henry d'Arbois de Jubainville, The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology, tr. Richard I. Best (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1903), 178-82. A very old version of the story is the Setna legend, dating at least from the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt, Max Pieper, „gyptische Literatur (Potsdam: Athenaion, 1927), 93-94; Gaston Maspero, Les contes populaires de l'‚gypte ancienne, 3d ed. (Paris: Guilmoto, 1906), 100-101. Pieper identifies it with the Rhampsinitus cycle; Herodotus, History I, 121-26, with its remarkable dicing episode, ibid., I, 122, and its tesserae lasciviae, ibid., I, 126. 176. Macrobius, Saturnalia I, 10, 12-14; Tertullian, Ad Nationes II, 10; Augustine, De Civitate Dei (The City of God) VI, 7, 2, in PL 41:184-85; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae no. 35; Plutarch, Romulus 4-5. Acca divided up all her property among the Roman people, as did her mate at the Ara Maxima, and they celebrated her bounty in a midwinter feast at her tomb; Gellius, Attic Nights VII, 7, 7, citing Cato; cf. Macrobius, Saturnalia I, 10, 16; Varro, De Lingua Latina VI, 23-24; Plutarch, Romulus 4-5; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae no. 34. From Herodotus, History II, 121-22, it is plain that the lady of the Setna cycle, whom Herodotus calls Demeter, is none other than Acca's indigitamentum, Ceres. 177. Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 687-88, 834-37. Tyche, like Fortuna, was a dicing goddess, and as such, like Acca, the companion of Hercules; Pausanias, Description of Greece II, 20, 3. This article was originally published in Classical Journal 40 (1945): 515-43. Figure 13. On one of the finest congiaria to survive (A), Trajan is shown enthroned with his deputy seated before him giving handouts. Behind the deputy stands the figure of Liberalitas holding a tessera. The man climbing the ladder represents the people receiving the Imperial donatives for the third time, as declared by the inscription. We see the curtains of the stagelike aedicula drawn back, revealing the haloed figure of the Augustus, Constantius II (B), in typical Byzantine splendor, c. a.d. 350. He is seated on a odd-looking throne and is showering gold coins with his right hand to the people below. Figure 14. As stepfather of the renowned beauty Nefertiti, Ay enjoyed Pharaoh Akhenaton's confidence as shown by his titles--Bearer of the Fan, Master of the Horse, Father of the God (Father-in-law of the King) as recorded in his tomb at Tel el-Amarna, c. 1350 b.c. He and his wife Tyi are shown reverently catching the wide variety of gifts being thrown to them by the entire royal family amidst exuberant dancing and rejoicing by the assembled court. Among the usual golden necklaces we see vases, signet rings, and the earliest-known depiction of gloves, painted red. To commemorate such an unusual gift, he had himself shown outside the palace showing them off to his admiring friends (inset). Figure 15. The praefect of the Annonae, his wife, and two children are interspersed with the smaller figures representing the four seasons--the full circle of the Annus, or year. Both father and son make the gesture of speaking (cf. figure 17, p. 262). The Unsolved Loyalty Problem: Our Western Heritage A serious defect in recent discussions of the problem of loyalty has been the lack of any sound historical treatment of the subject. Much that is contained in the records of antiquity reveals a conscious concern of early governments with the problem of loyalty. Royal inscriptions and letters, abundant ritual texts, and the fervors of prophets and poets in every age of crisis betray a desire to incite feelings not of fear and submission alone but of genuine loyalty in the hearts of subjects and citizens, and might well be studied as propaganda literature. But for the fullest and most illuminating commentary on regimented loyalty one must turn to the rich and revealing records of the Roman world in the fatal years between the victory of Constantine and the sack of Rome by the Vandals in a.d. 450. It is no accident that scholars since World War II have gravitated with unerring instinct and unprecedented zeal to those documents that depict with unrivaled clarity the starts, alarums, and desperate devices of a world empire in disintegration, striving before all things to inspire that general loyalty which alone could arrest "the internal decay of the second half of the fourth century [which] had become as bad as a cancerous growth." The purpose of this paper is to consider three significant aspects of the Roman loyalty program in the period designated. These are (1) the attempt to excite loyalty by appealing to the traditions of Western civilization while emphasizing a worldwide culture-polarization, (2) the attempt to solve the problem of divided loyalty by lumping all good things together in a "one-package loyalty," and (3) the attempt of certain large and important interest groups to use the new loyalty as a club against old opponents, thereby effectively wrecking the whole program. In the course of the discussion it will become clear that we are dealing not merely with the desire of the Imperial government for loyal subjects but with concrete projects for the implementation of that desire. The present study is essentially a report on the effectiveness of those projects, resembling as they do certain controversial procedures of the present time. Polarized Loyalties In the fourth century a.d., Western civilization was threatened with the greatest crisis--internal and external--in its history. When cities (including the capital itself) were as likely to be taken by the operation of traitors and fifth-columnists as by enemy assault, when the fate of the world depended on the loyalty of some Gothic or Hunnish general to an emperor who did not know his own mind, when the armies of many nations could be hurled against each other or united in brotherhood by the force of a single order, when powerful pressure-groups and colorful individuals were bidding against each other for the support of mankind, when the life of prefect or governor could depend on the whim of a military or city mob--at such a time the survival of civilization depended on the possibility of inducing the world at large to declare its allegiance to some specific thing and of holding it to that allegiance with firm and sacred bonds. To the Roman mind, fides, a sense of personal reciprocal obligation, was the key to peace and security in life--the very essence of the social order. The same concept of loyalty imbues almost every page of Greek tragedy, investing it with a profoundly intimate and domestic atmosphere, which distinguishes the "Western" mind from the aloof ritualism of the gorgeous East. But by the fourth century long years of civil war and world crisis had widely uprooted the old domestic loyalties of Greek drama and Roman legend, and turned the oecumene into a world of displaced persons, inevitably drawn towards the Big City. To take the place of the old lost loyalty--the prisca fides--a new super-loyalty was needed to guarantee the permanence of the social order: men were taught to declare allegiance to a super-thing, a noble abstraction loosely designated as Romania or Romanitas. A host of studies has come forth in recent years, showing the concept of Romanitas to be something very close indeed to that "Western Civilization" by which one conjures in our own day. At the end of the fourth century, Prudentius repeated what Aelius Aristides had proclaimed at the end of the second: Rome is more than a political or geographical entity, the mixed blood of all the nations; its culture is Culture itself, the extent of its rule is the orbis terrarum, the oecumene, its mission the realization of the Stoic doctrine "that nature intended that all men should as rational beings form a single community under the guidance of divine reason." The certainty with which public opinion glorified the empire as a world community is astonishing, says Vogt. Nor was this apparent love for a lofty abstraction a cold and impersonal sort of thing: devout Christian writers display as warm and vital an attachment to their Roman heritage as the church itself in the fourth century. This was the positive appeal to loyalty. But men's passions are more quickly and keenly stirred by opposition than by approbation, and the inevitable corollary to the doctrine of Romania was that of Barbaria. "Everything that existed outside of this unified world was viewed by the general public as desolation and barbarism." This again was an abstract and artificial thing--it was the old doctrine of the Two Worlds that has been discussed in this journal before, but, for all its hollowness, a highly effective force in history. Externus timor, maximum concordiae vinculum was an old Roman maxim--the secret of unity is to find an external foe. Since Republican times, Parthia had been "the type and representative of the untamed Orient," the Eastern peril, the symbol of Asiatic barbarism; but when the Parthians were absorbed by the revived and highly centralized Persian Empire, or during the years when Barbaria was united under a superman such as Attila, conditions were present for a true world polarization, with the East replying in kind to Western charges of barbarism and aggression. The situation may be illustrated by the story of Priscus on the steppes. In a.d. 448 a Roman ambassador who had just arrived at the court of Attila, rex omnium regum, on the plains between Europe and Asia, came upon a well-dressed Scythian who, to his surprise, spoke Greek. He learned from the man that he had been a successful merchant in Moesia, but when his city fell, to save his business, he had joined up with the conquering hosts and soon found in the Scythian community a far better way of life than he had ever known as a Roman. [He said that] once the war was over, anyone could live among the Scythians in complete independence, being free to manage his personal affairs exactly as he chose with virtually no interference from anybody. On the other hand, anyone living the Roman way of life stood a very good chance of getting killed in case of war, being forced to rely for his survival on the operations of others, since the mean suspicion of the government forbade anyone to bear arms in his own defense. Furthermore, those entrusted with the business of defense were rendered ineffectual by incompetent and cowardly commanders. And the burdens of peace were actually harder to bear than those of war--the intolerable load of taxation and tribute, the insults and injuries of rascally officials, the unequal application of the laws, by which an offender if he was rich enough got off scot-free, but if he was poor felt the full weight and majesty of the law for even the slightest unintentional slip; and if he lived long enough to see his case through the courts, would find himself utterly ruined by long, drawn-out, and expensive legal proceedings. The most disgusting thing about the whole business, he said, was that law and justice were strictly for sale. "When he had run on this way at great length," says Priscus, "I finally asked him politely if he would consent to listen to my side of the story for a while." Then Priscus proceeded to point out that in theory there never was a better system than the Roman, in which each bore his proper burden, whether on the farm, in the army, or in government service. Priscus continues: We are all bound to obey the laws, and that goes even for the Emperor himself; which is just the opposite of what you say, that the rich can gouge the poor with impunity--unless someone escapes justice by hiding. But in general you will find that what applies to the rich also applies to the poor. . . . That is the rule not only among the Romans but everywhere in the civilized world: every man thanks his private fortune for whatever befalls him as a free man, and is not dependent for it on the will of this or that military despot. The Romans, he says, treat their house-slaves better than the barbarians do their subjects, "and they certainly do not have the power of life and death over them as your Scythian masters do. By and large, it is a free way of life." At this point, Priscus avers, his new friend shed tears and confessed that the laws were indeed fair and the Roman government a good one, "but that the men who administered it had lost the good old Roman spirit, and had corrupted it." To this the Roman has no answer, and the conversation is conveniently interrupted. Gibbon saw in this debate only an effective statement of the case against Rome, to which the "prolix and feeble declamation" of the ambassador was no reply at all. Yet Priscus plainly thinks he has won the argument, and the modern reader, made wise by new experience, knows that this is one of those ideological discussions in which neither side is ever beaten. For all his fine Ciceronian afterthoughts, Priscus does not invent the issue, for Agathias some years later describes a general migration of "Christian philosophers" to the court of the Persian king, which at a distance looked to them like a true Utopia, and Procopius tells how the poorer classes, "the mechanics and hand-workers, were naturally compelled to struggle with hunger, and many in consequence changed their citizenship and went off as fugitives to the land of Persia." Salvian, a contemporary of Priscus, reports from far western Gaul that "people are everywhere going over to the Goths, the Bagaudi or any other ruling tribe of barbarians. . . . For they prefer to live as free men sub specie captivitatis rather than to go on living as captives sub specie libertatis." Worst of all, says Salvian, those who have been the most loyal, deserving, and patriotic Romans are the very ones who are now "moved to declare that they wish they were not Romans!" Here again it is the clash between the Two Worlds, each describing itself as the free world and its rival as a slave-state. But if the freedom of the West is for Salvian only "so-called freedom," the case is no better with the vaunted barbarian freedom: the very purpose of Priscus's mission was to discuss the return to Attila of numerous of his subjects who had fled to the Empire seeking refuge from barbarian "freedom." On both sides the ancient propaganda of freedom has a singularly hollow ring. Within the overall polarization of East and West, each of those conflicting spheres was in itself a world of factions and parties, of rival ideologies and rival cultures pitted against each other in deadly conflict, yet so exactly alike in everything but label (and usually the rivals were contending for the possession of some world-commanding label) as to give the impression that one antagonist is simply a mirror-image of the other. A visitor to the field headquarters of any faction during the civil wars that opened the fourth century would have been at a loss to discover from his surroundings whether he was in a Christian or pagan, Roman or barbarian camp: in either case he would find the chief at prayer in his tent, long-robed priests chanting and burning tapers or busily practicing the arts of divination; and if he came at the right time such a visitor might even discover the nature of those signs in the heavens that each commander devoutly claimed as a special manifestation of Providence to himself and his followers. If our visitor toured about among the cities, he might marvel, as did Agathias, that the course of civil life was virtually the same in the Persian and the Roman Empires, and if he attended the synods of the church which made the age illustrious, he would have some difficulty to discern which side was which; for, as Hilary observed, that group which with fierce devotion supported a doctrine at one session might within the month be found espousing the very opposite doctrine with equal fervor. If he went to the games and shows that consumed almost the whole time and energy of the urban masses, the visitor would be required, as if his life depended on it, to take his stand with one noisy faction or another, with nothing in the world to enable him to distinguish between them save the colors they wore. Finally the bemused wanderer, if he went to court on a crown-day and stood in the presence of God's representative on earth, would surely have to ask a bystander whether it was the true ruler of the world he beheld or his depraved counterpart--for the court ritual of the two empires was identical, and it was the custom of the emperors of Rome and Asia to describe themselves in identical terms, while each accused his rival of being nothing but a base forgery and depraved imitation of himself. This all-pervading identity of institutions shows that we have here not a real clash of ideologies at all but only the rivalry of parties animated by identical principles and racing for the same objective. Yet loyalty to the West was no glib and superficial thing but a deeply ingrained cultural heritage. The concept of civilization as liberalitas, the free way of life, and of civilized man as one engaged in liberal thought and speaking the common language of all free, civilized men, as opposed to the barbarian who was necessarily inferior and necessarily a slave, was deeply felt and clearly formulated in late antiquity. It had far deeper roots, in fact, than the copy-desk clich‚s of our own day, for the permanent proximity of unassimilated barbarians made the idea of the Two Worlds an intimate reality. The age-long struggle to repel, check, or annihilate the perennial enemy from the steppes was once popularly described as "the eternal question," "the strife between Europe and Asia, between east and west, between Aryan and non-Aryan." But this is only the Western version of the conflict which all the great peripheral civilizations, from China to Britain, have had to wage with the "Heartland," whose hordes have been dealt with for thousands of years in the same established ways: by subtle and disruptive diplomacy, by the long and costly limes (borders), by punitive and deterrent expeditions, and, when all else has failed, by the reluctant absorption of their barbarian conquerors. The marvelous victories that thwarted the great Persian attacks on Greece in the fifth century b.c. had been to the men who won those victories a plain manifestation of divine power, a sobering and chastening experience that placed all human pretense, Greek and barbarian alike, in its proper and humiliating perspective. But the men of a later age and another mold, viewing those successes in retrospect, preferred a more flattering interpretation of events: Marathon and Salamis were held up to posterity as a brilliant demonstration of the natural superiority of Western man over barbarians. Whereas Aeschylus and Herodotus have no fond illusions about Greek virtue and Asiatic baseness, the educators of succeeding ages fed upon such pleasing stuff and made it the mortar of a common sentiment which, to quote Eduard Meyer, "bound the civilized world together from the Rhone to Cyprus, from the Dnieper to the Crimea and Cyrene." Thus Western Civilization was nursed in the schools on a legend of Western Goodness: Hic est Ausonia, the Western World of clean, fresh, simple, unspoiled pioneers. This fiction became the very cornerstone of the official Vergilian doctrine of Romanitas--Rome was great because Rome was good. The emperors who after the second century took the names of Pius and Felix were giving expression "to the old Roman belief in the close association between piety and good fortune," while indulging in the ingrained Roman vice, blatantly paraded throughout the whole of Latin literature, of dwelling with a kind of morbid fascination on one's own simple goodness. School boys have been told for centuries that the Romans were a simple, severe, and virtuous folk, with a near monopoly on pietas and fides, because, forsooth, the Romans themselves always said so, though almost every page of the record contradicts the claim. What better demonstration for the effectiveness of the official propaganda? Teachers and orators drilled the essentials of Western goodness into their pupils and auditors until, by the fourth century, when hardly a speck of ancient virtue remained, men could talk of nothing but that virtue. They go right on sinning, Salvian reports, in the sublime conviction that no matter how vilely they may act, or how nobly the barbarians behave, God must necessarily bless them and curse the barbarians for being what they are. Yet Salvian himself shows how well the lesson has been taught when he stoutly affirms that, after all, no barbarian can be really virtuous! To the lessons of the schools, carefully supervised by the government, was added a more aggressive policy of deliberately widening the gulf between the Two Worlds. For centuries, barbarian and Roman, East and West, had been mingling on terms of greatest intimacy, producing a borderline culture in which it was quite impossible to draw the line between one culture and the other. Priscus mentions quite casually the presence of people from the West, visiting relatives in the camps of the Asiatics; he notes the busy coming and going of merchants between the Two Worlds and describes the kind hospitality shown him, a complete stranger, in the homes of the Easterners. But with this he gives us the other side of the picture--the official side: the ubiquitous activity of spies and agents in Roman pay, the infusion into the very court of Attila of large sums of Roman money to corrupt and divide, the insane and mounting conviction of each of the rulers of the two halves of the world (both barbarians!) that his was the divine calling to liberate the human race from the intolerable ambition of the other. The official attitude to the barbarians was set forth a few years after this in Synesius's instructions to the feeble Emperor Arcadius. According to the good bishop, every Roman household has its Scythian slave, every petty artisan and craftsman his Scythian helper, and every Roman street is alive with Scythian porters and runners, "as if these people thought service in Rome was the only thing." As to the moral qualities of these foreigners, Synesius must admit that they surpass the Romans in energy, honesty, reliability, and perseverance. Yet for all that they are still barbarians, and as liable to murder citizens in their beds as were ever any of their savage ancestors. "Your father made allies of these Scythians," he tells the young and idiotic emperor: "He should have known that there is no virtue in a barbarian. From that day to this they have simply laughed at us." Lacking the heroic qualities of their fathers, "they are slaves, for they are people without a land of their own. Hence the proverb, `the empty waste of the Scythians,' for they are always running away from settled life." Plainly Synesius thinks that the primordial ways of the nomads are some new sign of degeneracy. So far was one of the most learned men of his day, an expert advisor on foreign affairs, from comprehending the Asiatic way of life which was impinging upon the Roman world at a thousand points. For their part, the barbarians, at first enormously impressed by the Empire, became resentful of the snubbing they received and then, through long familiarity, openly and increasingly contemptuous. "We see the barbarians living intermingled with us in our armies, our cities, and our provinces," says Sulpicius Severus, "yet refusing to accept our culture as their own." In the fifth century, it was impossible, especially in the Western regions, to distinguish between Romani and Barbari, since they had become completely intermingled; in which state of things, he says, it was the barbarians who insisted on widening the breech, glorying in the name of "barbarian" as the only fit title for free men. There is no need to trace the endless course of this futile and paralyzing game; Nancy Lenkeith has shown how it persisted right into the Middle Ages, when even Pope Gregory would not come to an understanding with the Lombards "chiefly because the pontiff had a feeling of revulsion for the barbarians. . . . The Romans . . . de-spised Lombard laws, disliked their costumes, customs, and smell." The crippling effect of the doctrine of the Two Worlds is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the pathetic doctrine of the Super-Weapon: God has given the civilized world a super-weapon, that all may know where security and right reside. This wishful assurance is another invention of the fourth century, as we gather from the teachings of a later emperor to his son: This fire [Greek-fire] was revealed and taught to the great First Emperor of Christians, Constantine (as we are fully assured by ancient fathers and divines) by an angel from heaven, who gave him emphatic instructions to the effect that this weapon is only to be manufactured among Christians--nowhere else--and only in that city where they have their capital, and absolutely nowhere else. Under no circumstances is any sample of the substance or the formula for it to be transmitted to any other nation. It was for the purpose of keeping this secret under his successors that the same Constantine had placed upon the high altar of the Great Church itself an inscription to the effect that anyone who dares to give a sample of said fire to any other nation forfeits thereby the name of Christian and the right to hold any government office, that such an one should be stripped of any office he holds, be declared anathema forever and ever, and be made a public example--even though he be the Emperor or the Patriarch himself, or any other high official . . . any attempt to break this rule must incur the penalty. And he calls upon all who have the cause and fear of God at heart to treat anyone acting in a contrary way as a Public Enemy and a traitor to this supreme order, and to consign him to the most humiliating and painful death possible. It actually happened once (for there are always criminal types) that one of our generals accepted a huge bribe from a number of foreign (gentile) powers to provide them with a sample of this fire; but God, who would not suffer such a crime to be perpetrated . . . smote the offender with fire from heaven. . . and from that day no one, whether Emperor, prince, commoner, army officer or any other mortal, has ever dared to think of such an act, let alone making any attempt to perpetrate it ( cf. fig. 16). In this little lesson on loyalty, God, Christianity, civilization, the empire, the Imperial City, the government, and the ministration of angels are all on the side of the super-weapon, while those to whom the fire is denied are all lumped together as gentiles, foreigners, heathen, traitors, public enemies, criminals, and damned. Nor does it seem to occur to the devout monarch that if God's own fires are at the immediate disposal of Western civilization, there is little need for putting such desperate trust in the virtues of naphthalene and military security, or that an appeal to loyalty cannot well be accompanied by hysterical threats that only argue a lack of good faith in the one who is appealing. Certainly the super-weapon produced a serious weakening of military fiber in the West, and, once in the hands of the Arabs and Turks, was death to Western fleets and cities. One-Package Loyalty The hardest political problem with which the Greeks and Romans had to struggle was that of conflicting loyalties. The holy court of the Areopagus proved the problem insoluble when they deadlocked at the trial of Orestes, and the letters of Cicero set forth in detail the tragic dilemma of the Roman with his immense capacity and hunger for loyalty having to change sides with cynical dexterity in order to survive in the wars of class and faction. The fourth century was one of those times in Roman history when the tension of divided loyalties had become so intolerable that the world was ready for any settlement that would guarantee a measure of peace, unity, and security. The exhausted age accepted the same emergency solution that had given Rome the kingship, the consuls, and the principate. The aureum aevum (Golden Age) of Constantine that put an end to the long reign of civil discord, as that of Augustus had done three centuries before, was formally launched with all the solemn rites and theatrical properties familiar to the Romans since the days of the fabled kings. The purpose of the gorgeous displays of Diocletian and Constantine, pagan and Christian, as of all royal ritual, was to produce in the beholders a religious experience which would command loyalty--of that the poets and orators give us clear assurance. The great scaffoldings, acres of painted canvas, firmaments of tapers and torches, fabulous displays of jewels and lavish applications of gilt paint left no one in doubt that the glory of the Lord was round about. Heaven in Our Time was not something to be worked for but something to be accepted; not a hope, but a fulfillment, a stupendous miracle, nay, the Christian Emperor was hailed at his coronation as "dominus noster . . . praesens et corporalis deus" (Our Lord . . . God in the flesh among us), and Christian and pagan orators vied in proclaiming the long-awaited blessed age of the prophets and the Sibyl. Like a man distracted by the claims of a hundred creditors, who turns all his bills over to a lending agency in exchange for one simple, ruinous obligation, so the men of the fourth century lumped all their conflicting loyalties together in one single, unlimited obligation to the emperor and Romanitas. All good things became one vague and luminous whole; whatever could command loyalty was "in the composition of a specious argument . . . artfully confounded in one splendid and brittle mass." Caecilius in the Octavius had charged the Christians not with contempt of any particular doctrine or practice of the ancients but with failing to be duly impressed by the whole magnificent agglomeration of antique civilization as a fit object of veneration and awe. To this noble composite the church in the fourth century, as if to atone for her long hesitation and former aspersions, declared passionate allegiance, sustaining the traditional heathen dogma, that Roma aeterna was immortal and impregnable, long after the canny pagans themselves had given it up! Henceforward to be a Christian and to be a Roman were one and the same thing: "ubique patria, ubique lex et religio mea," cries Orosius, ". . . quia ad Christianos et Romanos, Romanus et Christianus accedo" (my country is everywhere, everywhere my law and religion . . . because I associate with Christians and Romans as a Roman and a Christian). When Christian writers can tell us that the distance between Roman and barbarian is as great as that between quadrupeds and bipeds, or that the laws of barbarian nations "bear the same relation to genuine law--Roman law--as a parrot's squawk to human speech," we have come a long way from the charity of the early Christian writers, who loved, like certain earlier Greek philosophers, to mock the vain and artificial distinction between "Jew and Greek, bond and free" (Galatians 3:28). But now the church was wholly committed--dangerously committed--to the program of the Empire: Prudentius boldly throws the challenge to the pagan world, that victory of Christian Rome over the barbarians will be sure proof of the truth of the Christian religion--one can imagine the reaction in both camps when Rome was thoroughly beaten! The complete identity of the interests of the church with those of the Empire in the fourth century was a revolutionary transfer of loyalty. "The imperial cult remains," writes Alf”ldi, "only such forms as offend Christian sentiments are a little veiled." The Church Fathers, diligently reconstructing history in retrospect, made it appear that the church and Rome had always been one. Eusebius, taking the lead, announces that Christianity and the Pax Romana "burst upon the world together as if germinated from a single seed: the twin blessing of the universe. . . . In the same moment all error and superstition were overcome and an end put to all war and hostility among the members of the human race. One Empire was set up over all the earth and all men became brothers, having one Father--God, and one Mother--true piety." In defense of this new one-package loyalty, philosophy and theology, riding high on the fashionable tide of Neoplatonism, were Aaron and Hur upholding the emperor's hands: "God is One," says Lactantius, "therefore there cannot be more than one ruler in this world: there are not many masters in one house, not many pilots in one ship, not many leaders in one flock or herd, not many kings in one hive, nor either can there be many suns in the sky, nor many souls in one body." These are the very terms in which the Khans of Asia have been wont to teach mankind the divinity of their single rule--the West of the fourth century and after speaks with a strong Asiatic accent. Just as all obedient subjects are embraced in a single shining community, so all outsiders are necessarily members of a single conspiracy of evil, a pestilential congregation of vapors of such uniform defilement that none can be ever so slightly tinged with its complexion without being wholly involved in its corruption. A favorite passage with the churchmen of the period was that which declared that to err in the slightest point of the law is to break the whole law. To accept the homoiousios (of similar substance) in place of the homoousios (consubstantial) is for the enlightened Hilary not just a mistake; it is the commission of every possible crime, the consummation of all that is depraved; it hands the whole world over to the Devil. By attending a discussion of the homoiousios the emperor has anathematized the holy men of Nicaea; thereby he has cursed all who have ever approved of those men; thereby he has damned his own father and set himself up as the foe of divine religion, the enemy of the saints, and a rebel against all sacred filial obligation. Nay, he is worse than a Decius or a Nero, for they fought only Christ the Son, while he fights both the Father and the Son! Again, the emperor who tolerates heretical groups is not just a dupe and a fool, he is a monster of iniquity, guilty of adultery, theft, and murder--and that not in a mere, crass physical sense, mind you, but in a spiritual sense, which is infinitely worse. If the emperor in question refuses to make a martyr of the churchman who flings the coarsest insults in his face, that does not soften his guilt but only deepens it--he is only being kind to be cruel, because he knows that such kindness will put his priestly assailants at a disadvantage. Yet from the festering depths of unspeakable depravity there is one thing that can save the debauched and unnatural animal--by a single act, in fact, he can redeem himself and become the holiest thing on earth, an emperor under God. And what is the miraculous prescription? It is very simple: "Fac transitum ad nos" (Come over to us)! All virtue is comprised in the fact of membership in Our Group; all vice consists in not belonging. It can be shown by a most convenient syllogism that since God is on our side we cannot show any degree of toleration for any opposition without incurring infinite guilt. In the fourth century everybody was officiously rushing to the defense of God; but John Chrysostom's pious declaration that we must avenge insults to God while patiently bearing insults to ourselves is put in its proper rhetorical light by the assumption of Hilary that an insult to himself is an insult to God. Therein lies the great usefulness of the doctrine of guilt and innocence by association that became so popular in the fourth century: one does not need to quibble; there is no such thing as being partly wrong or merely mistaken; the painful virtue of forbearance and the labor of investigation no longer embarrass the champions of one-package loyalty. No matter how nobly and austerely heretics may live, for Augustine they are still Antichrist--all of them, equally and indiscriminately; their virtues are really vices, their virginity carnality, their reason unreason, their patience in persecution mere insolence; any cruelty shown them is not really cruelty but kindness. Chrysostom goes even further: the most grossly immoral atheist is actually better off than an upright believer who slips up on one point, since though both go to hell, the atheist has at least the satisfaction of having gratified his lust on earth. Why not? Is not heresy in any degree a crime against God? And is not any crime against God an infinite sin? The insidious thing about such immoral conclusions is that they are quite logical. The cruelty of the times, says Alf”ldi, "cannot fully be explained by the corruption of the age; . . . the spirit of the fourth century has its part to play. The victory of abstract ways of thinking, the universal triumph of theory, knows no half-measures; punishment, like everything else, must be a hundred per cent, but even this seems inadequate." Compromise is now out of the question: God, who once let his sun shine upon the just and the unjust, and let the wheat and tares grow together, now insists that the unjust should cease to exist, that only wheat should grow in the earth, and that only sheep should inhabit it. In all seriousness the Emperor Justinian announced to the churchmen his intention of forcing the devil himself to join the true church and thus achieving in the world that perfect unity "which Pythagoras and Plato taught." Slanted Loyalty We have considered the first two steps in the development of loyalty propaganda in the fourth century, namely, the establishment of Romanitas as an object deserving the loyalty of all civilized men and the identification of Christian with Roman loyalty. The third and inevitable step was the employment of this magnificent imperative by various interest groups as a partisan weapon. The partisan groups we shall consider were the churchmen, the landowners, and the professors. The story of how the military went their own way and followed their own code of loyalty, cooperating only with governments and individuals who were willing and able to "make a deal," and of how their slanted loyalty brought them and the Empire to a common ruin, has been told often and well since the days of Gibbon. We need not repeat it here. We have just noted the use of absolutes in clerical polemic. The results were what might have been expected, but the ferocity of party conflict within the church as described by the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries exceeds the wildest imaginings. Even those men, St. Basil reports, who had fought the uphill fight for decency and striven conscientiously through the years to be just and fair with others, in the end found themselves forced to surrender and become just like the rest, who were all engaged in a frantic game of testing each others' loyalty. The result, he says, is that the church is entirely leaderless, everyone wants to give orders, but no one will take them; the self-appointed have grabbed what they could and broken up the church in a spirit of such savage, unbridled hatred and universal mistrust that the only remaining principle of unity anywhere is a common desire to do harm: men will cooperate only where cooperation is the most effective means of doing injury to others. It was characteristic of the Age of Constantine, says Burckhardt, "that a man could be intensely devout and at the same time grossly immoral." There was nothing contradictory in that--men had simply discarded personal integrity for a much easier group loyalty. "Who can swim against the tide of custom?" cries Augustine, who recalls how lightly he surrendered his own conscience to the keeping of the gang. The emperor's formula for establishing perfect unity and loyalty in the church and the empire was that plan which the clergy themselves constantly urged upon him and his successors, importunately demanding that he proscribe, banish, and anathematize whoever withheld allegiance from their particular parties. The Vita Constantini tells how the emperor attempted to end each crisis by outlawing all opposition, thereby inevitably sowing the seeds of the next crisis. But how could one expect a simple soldier to question the proposition that compulsory loyalty is the secret of universal peace, when it was being pressed upon him by all the cleverest men of the age? "The barbarians reverence God, because they fear my power," he had declared, and everyone had applauded his doctrine of compulsory reverence. But it didn't work. No sooner had Constantine removed his last civil and military opponents than the issue between his Christian and pagan subjects became acute. No sooner had he "given profound peace and security to the Church" by restraining her pagan opponents than the churchmen started accusing each other of heresy with a wild abandon that surpassed--as the emperor himself observed--any performance of the heathen. No sooner had his successors removed the last heretic and received the undying thanks of the church, than the true believers were at each others' throats. St. Ambrose notes that it is harder to make orthodox Christians live together in peace than it is to eliminate heretics. The problem was never solved, for the doctrine of absolute, one-package loyalty would allow no compromise. Consider next the landowners. The aristocracy living on its great estates (though possessing the wealth of the cities as well) was a characteristic fixture of Roman society throughout historic times; "the personnel of the ruling class might change," as it did under Vespasian and Diocletian, but that "could not have changed the nature of those classes themselves," who always remained true to a type and an ideal. The victory of the church only strengthened their hold, for they claimed Latin Christianity as peculiarly their own, and it has recently been argued with some plausibility that the breaking away from the church of "fundamentalist" sects, beginning with the Montanists, was "a series of peasant movements" protesting the capture of the church by the propertied classes. Loyalty was the watchword of the great landowners: pietas, fides, and fortitudo were at all times "the three distinguishing marks of the perfect Roman gentleman." Their typical representative in the fourth century was "aristocratic, senatorial, traditionalist, anti-oriental." But from Cicero it is clear enough that theirs was loyalty to a class alone, and their slanted interpretation reduced the noble abstractions in which they dealt so freely to "merely shop-worn catch phrases without real meaning in history." No word was dearer to them than libertas, the glory of free agency, but "the nobiles conceived of this popular political catchword as meaning freedom for them to exercise their dignitas," and not for people without money. In the fourth century they "had plenty to say about their humanitas, philanthropia . . . their mercy, their pious serenity. . . . But such self-praise carries no weight; the choice words are a mere empty form." In the Senate they called loudly for arms to defend civilization--when no personal sacrifice was involved; and when the barbarians were at the gates they spent their time not in meeting the foe but in hysterical attacks on possible subversives. When one considers the magnificently planned and executed defensive installations of the frontier, "one cannot keep from being amazed," say Diehl and Mar‡ais, "that they were not more effective than they were, and that this closely-knit network of skillfully deployed fortresses let the invaders pass through it so many times." This grim defect is attributed (1) to the economies of the government, which, while giving away enormous wealth to individuals, so reduced the personnel of the border forces that "the strong places, badly manned, were simply forgotten, often without garrisons," and (2) to the low morale and frequent desertions of the underpaid soldiers who remained. Nobody who could pay for defense was willing to do it. The great landowners "appreciated civilization and culture very highly," says Rostovzeff, "their political outlook was narrow, their servility was unbounded. But their external appearance was majestic, and their grand air impressed even the barbarians. . . . For the other classes they had neither sympathy nor understanding." Their fault was not that they would enjoy the good things of the earth, but that they would enjoy them exclusively: "The earth is the mother of all of us," said the starving field and factory-workers, "for she gives equally; but you pretend that she is your mother only." Their ideal was Cato, whose forthright and uncompromising dedication to his own interests, whose unflinching devotion to self and steely resistance to any ennervating impulse of sympathy for others had about it something of sublime integrity. Skimming the cream of the world's natural resources on their vast tax-free estates, these men thought of themselves as natural-born leaders of men; they oozed the virtue and loyalty of the prosperous: why should they not be loyal to Rome? They were Rome! Under the early emperors "the state's sphere of activity had been curtailed to an astonishing degree; the state simply secured peace and law in the world and then turned it over to private exploitation." Deeply loyal to a system that gave them everything, the great owners could not understand why all others should not be just as loyal. Nor could they, who soon learned that the secret of survival was absolute servility and had made an art of groveling to secure their broad acres, have any patience with those who refused to play the game. But when in the fourth century the Imperial government went after a larger share of the income in order to support the costly wars of defense, the great landowners displayed the quality of their patriotism by resisting savagely and cunningly. They quickly became experts in evading taxation and shifting the expenses of war and government to others. But it was their busy speculation in grain that brought the issue of loyalty into the open with the public threat of the Emperor Julian "to have all gentlemen arrested" for sabotaging his attempts at price control. They in reply accused the emperor of low demagoguery in trying to fix minimum grain prices in the face of drought and an artificial boom market created by the army; and they not only refused to sell at government prices, but bought up what grain they could at those prices to resell on the black market or outside the price-control zone. Small wonder that bishops, government officials, and the common people blamed "the rich" for deliberately engineering famines that were profitable to themselves. Whether these charges were true or not (and Libanius admits abuses), the grain scandals present a typical large-scale clash of loyalties, with each side accusing the other of treason to the res publica. This partisan concept of loyalty poisons the whole stream of Roman history. Curio, says Cicero, was wrong when he pleaded that the demands of the people beyond the Po were just but inexpedient: he should have known that demands cannot possibly be just which are not expedient to our interests: "non esse aequam, quia non esset utilis rei publicae." This, the morality of Trimalchio, was death to any true fides. At the end of the fourth century when Stilicho remained true to his master though it would have served his interests to betray him, native Romans could attribute his behavior only to a lack of good sense--so completely had they forgotten the meaning of fides at a time when loyalty to Rome was on the tongue of every orator. Just so the great landowners, failing utterly to recognize real loyalty when they saw it, sent their champion Aetius against the very peasants who in an "amazing" demonstration of loyalty to Rome stopped Attila on the Catalaunian Plain and in the end forced those peasants to join forces reluctantly with the barbarians whom they might have stopped for good had their loyalty been trusted. "Whatever the frequency of peasant revolts during the third and fourth centuries," says a recent investigator, "they reached such a climax in the first half of the fifth century as to be almost continuous." These were not slave uprisings or barbarian invasions: it was the scorned loyalty of the peasants, "ces hordes indigŠnes qui dans leur rage d‚truisirent tout ce qu'il y avait comme oeuvres de la civilisation" (those native hordes who in their fury destroyed all the achievements of civilization). Last come the leaders of education, which, in the fourth century, means the professors of rhetoric. It was, as we have seen, through the activity of professional rhetoricians that "the Greeks became aware of themselves as the makers and bearers of Western Civilization." By the fourth century the rhetoricians, by a process that cannot be described here, had gained complete and absolute control of every department of public life. It was what Ammianus calls "the yokes of the Empire," i.e., the specialists in words, the fast talkers, the experts on public relations, the supersalesmen, who by substituting sound for substance in their lush and busy careers completely undermined the rickety structure of the civilization which they claimed to be rescuing. The secret of success in these professions lay in their boasted power to command loyalty, a talent for which the world was willing to pay any price. The ancients defined rhetoric as "the technique of persuasion," "the art of convincing people," or of convincing everybody, of anything--for a fee. The art which keeps people stirred up from necessitas (need) rather than from puritas (disinterested motives), scattering to the public from its overflowing bosom an abundance of delights, and thus leading them to conform to its purposes--that art, according to Augustine, is called Rhetoric. The great power of rhetoric lay in its unique ability to create artificial values, "to make unimportant things seem important," in Plato's words or, in those of Clement of Alexandria, "to make false opinions like true by means of words." The rhetorician works with words alone: to treat his profession as a science defeats its purpose, Aristotle observes, which is to deal not with real things but with words, and to convince not by evidence, as science and art must do, but by argument; he is the supersalesman who sells not goods but, in the last analysis, himself: "cupit enim se approbare, non causam" (he desires to win approval for himself, not his argument), says the pious Seneca. The secret of commanding and controlling loyalty, rhetoric teaches, is always to give people whatever they want: unlike Pericles, who invariably gave the Athenians what they most needed and least wanted, the Sophist studied to give his public what it most wanted and least needed. The very opposite of a true leader, the rhetorician was by his own confession "the slave of a thousand masters." Philo describes the general public as a harlot and the rhetor as her minion, nay, her lapdog, whose purpose in life is to obey her, wait on her, and do all that gives her pleasure. It would be hard to say who was the more debauched by such a pact of mutual corruption, the lady or her dog, for the rhetor demanded a terrible price for his toadying: by giving the public exactly what it wants, Augustine boasts, the orator makes them clay in his hands, a helpless automaton without a mind or will of its own, completely at the bidding of the skillful word-master. Dio Chrysostom and Lucian have told how this irresistible predatory profession, jauntily sure of itself in handling the man in the street, the gullible rich, and the lazy student population, always won out because it always pushed downhill--selling whiskey to the Indians was not a surer thing, or a deadlier. Socrates prophesied in the Gorgias that a true teacher would have no more chance of holding his own against the smooth-talking Sophists with their easy but flashy and pretentious instruction, than an honest physician would have of winning child patients in competition with a pastry cook who prescribed nothing but dessert. Rhetoric was the ruin of all hard and honest thinking in the ancient world, but it paid big returns and swept all before it, to become the great heritage of the Middle Ages from Antiquity. Of the orating bishops, the glory of the fourth century, Gibbon says, "the true size and colour of every object is falsified by the exaggerations of their corrupt eloquence," a verdict which subsequent studies have fully confirmed. The only form of rhetoric that retained any real vitality in the fourth century was the panegyric, a formal set address in which the orator, in the name of the people or Senate, would declare undying devotion to the emperor or any other leader, civil or ecclesiastical, who had attained to a position of great political importance. Fides was the keynote, with ardent protestations of unfailing loyalty, delivered in set, conventional terms whose transfer from pagan to Christian use may be traced on coins and inscriptions as well as in the orators. Augustine, himself a one-time professional panegyrist, joyfully announces that the panegyric art, far from being discredited by Christianity, has received a new lease on life; for if rhetoric contributes a much-needed spice to the Christian teaching, that doctrine in return offers the exhausted panegyrist in the Christian God what he most needs--a materia grandis of unlimited possibilities. "The pagan emperors had been traditionally devoted to self-advertisement," says Cochrane, "but it remained for the first Christian sovereign to discover a more effective instrument of propaganda than any hitherto devised," in the Christian pulpit. From the capital the vogue for panegyrics spread, under government supervision, to the provinces. A local professor of rhetoric would be chosen to address the emperor as if he were present, and all people would be expected to applaud like mad "to prove their loyalty." The whole business was carefully controlled: the subject matter was prescribed, the time and place of delivery fixed, and the orator chosen by the very man who was to be acclaimed. M. Leclercq labors to exonerate the panegyrists of the common charges of being flatterers, liars, and pimps, on the grounds (1) that they fooled nobody (however hard, he admits, they tried), (2) that they had no choice in the matter but had to do what they were told (though they loved every minute of it and fought for the opportunity), and (3) that they were really sincere. Precisely in this last argument lies the most damning charge against the panegyrists, the secret of whose success was to make themselves sincere--for a fee. This is the classic dilemma of the rhetorician, who must employ all the exacting devices of his art to persuade his hearers before all else that he has no art. The sorriest victims of the dilemma were the fathers of the fourth century who, as has often been noted, use their most lush and artificial rhetoric to condemn the use of rhetoric. The result of this sort of thing was a ghastly air of unreality that characterized all attempts to win loyalty by formal persuasion. When men tried to bolster up the vast inertia of a sagging civilization with words alone, it was the world that remained unaffected, while the noble words were squashed flat and had all the meaning squeezed out of them by the dead weight of reality. The most successful panegyric of the age was a masterpiece in which the "ordinary reader . . . seeks in vain some glimmer of reasonableness, some promise of sense." The victory of the decadent rhetoric of the fourth-century schools was complete and conditioned all the thinking of the Middle Ages. Typical was the tendency to employ lofty abstractions, which imparts to Christian rhetoric an unmistakably pagan flavor which persists to the present day. The significant thing, however, is that the most movingly eloquent protestations of loyalty, though they did produce thunders of applause, failed to generate genuine loyalty, and the great Chrysostom observes often and with bitterness that the populace which recognizes him as perhaps the world's greatest orator will not pay the slightest heed to his mildest admonitions, but continues to go about the business of money-getting while he, Sunday after Sunday, speaks to empty walls. The world remained unconvinced, and to the end of the Middle Ages the darling theme of the rhetoricians, "the dream of a united Christendom . . . was seen to have been a dream." Conclusion Each of the three attempts to foster loyalty in the century of crisis was a conspicuous failure. The disillusionment with the ideological appeal of West versus East is voiced in Jordanes's commentary on the Battle of the Catalaunian Plain which, far from being a cosmic struggle between conflicting ways of life, proved to him only one thing: When such a slaughter of nations can be caused by the crazy obsession of one man, or when the whim of some arrogant chieftain can undo in an instant what it has taken nature centuries to produce--that proves that the human race lives for the benefit of kings. One-package loyalty was, as Alf”ldi shows, no less a hopelessly artificial concept that could only ruin what it meant to save. "Men were aware of the danger that threatened," writes Straub. "They felt that the emergency of the time called for drastic decisions; but the absolute domination of Divine Grace left little margin [Spielraum] for any attempts at political reform. It is thus by no means surprising that we are almost never confronted by any concrete suggestion." One does not reform a holy system, and where the social order was God's order, "the human mind," in Bury's words, "was cabined by the Infinite. Thought was rendered sterile and unproductive under the withering pressure of an omnipresent and monotonous idea." It was an age of "utter incapacity to invent anything new . . . devoid of all creative power and helplessly submitting to current practice." Partisan appeals to universal loyalty completed the crippling process: the whole Tragik of the Middle Ages, says Ladner, was the ruling out of all possibility of compromise by a theory of loyalty which was partisanship raised to the nth power (die ins Ungemessene gesteigerten Einseitigkeiten). "Reverence for Augustine," writes Father Bligh, "forbids me to say that his justification of persecution was wrong; but its fruits were evil in the centuries which followed, and we may suspect that, if he had had as much experience to reflect upon as we have, Augustine would have reverted to his first opinion." On the contrary, it is we who are reverting to Augustine's second opinion. Rostovzeff sums up all the evils of the age we have been discussing under one head: oversimplification. "Everywhere we meet with the same policy of simplification, coupled with a policy of brutal compulsion." The "system of the late Empire, despite its apparent complexity, was much simpler, much more primitive, and infinitely more brutal" than what had gone before. "In times of crisis," says Alf”ldi, "when the choice of the Government is simplified down to a plain `to be or not to be,' the policy that wins is that of the fire-brigade, which elects to destroy the contents of a house in order to save the naked walls." And the ultimate expression of this blunt oversimplification was the army of secret police, agentes in rebus, whose business was to check on everybody's loyalty. The fourth century is not the twentieth. But loyalty is a timeless thing, and if the experience of the century of crisis proves anything, it is that there is no problem of loyalty. Conformity can be had by bribery, flattery, or force, but one can no more legislate loyalty than one can legislate love, of which it is a part. "The professed object of Constantine," says Cochrane, "was to legislate the millennium in a generation." The legislation of loyalty lay at the core of his plan, and its miserable failure should mean something to a modern world in which no ruler possesses a tenth of the religious, political, and military prestige that Constantine did. Since the essence of loyalty is disinterested devotion, there is something distressing in the attempts of the fourth (or any) century to conjure it up by appeals to interest, fear, or expediency. Yet the "loyalty problem" is no mere question of semantics; the substitution of some such word as "security" or "conformity" for "loyalty" in designating the Executive Order of March 1947 does not really change the complexion of the thing. Loyalty is one of the few words in existence about whose meaning dispute is virtually impossible. Everyone knows what loyalty is, and what a desirable, nay indispensable thing it is to the survival of any community. Like honor and chastity, it is strongest when least talked about, and thrives only in a climate of uncritical acceptance. A virtuous investigation of loyalty is like a noisy oration in praise of silence, and the appearance of loyalty order and loyalty legislation such as are found in the Theodosian Code and elsewhere is a sign of lost confidence, a desperate groping in empty air for something which groping fingers only push farther out of reach. Two of the wisest contemporaries of Constantine, reflecting upon his Nicene Council, were not unaware of a serious implication in the holding of formal assemblies to decide upon the nature of God. "For if they believed," writes Athanasius," they would not be seeking as if for something they did not have," and Hilary says the same: "The Faith must be inquired after, as if we had none. The Faith must be written down, as if there could be any baptism without faith in Christ!" Just so, when we start defining loyalty we demonstrate to the world that we no longer know what it is. That is the lesson of the Age of Constantine. Notes 1."We are facing an utterly new problem in American life. . . . Others believe that some or all `loyalty measures' taken to safeguard the nation in the cold war reveal ignorance of the lessons of history and violate fundamental democratic principles." Thus Morris Ernst, Loyalty in a Democratic State, ed. John C. Wahlke (Boston: Heath, 1952), vi. Cf. Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 179 (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1952), 1-6. H. Westmann, "On Conflicts of Loyalties," Question 5 (Winter 1952): 5-15; C. R. Nixon, "Freedom vs. Unity: A Problem in the Theory of Civil Liberty," Political Science Quarterly 68 (March 1953): 88. 2. Andr s Alf”ldi, A Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire, the Clash between the Senate and Valentinian, tr. Harold Mattingly (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952), 40. Cf. below, n. 6. 3. Johannes Straub, "Christliche Geschichtsapologetik in der Krisis des r”mischen Reiches," Historia 1 (1950): 52, citing Johann Burckhardt, goes so far as to call it a crisis unique in history; cf. Johannes Straub, "Parens Principum," Nouvelle Clio 3-4 (1952): 94. 4. R. M. Henry, "Pietas and Fides in Catullus," Hermathena 75 (1950): 63, and 76 (1951): 48-57. 5."Carere patria intolerabile est. Aspice agedum hanc frequentiam, cui vix urbis immensae tecta sufficiunt . . . ex toto denique orbe terrarum confluxerunt" (Being without a country is unbearable. Look at this crowd, for whom the roofs of this vast city is scarcely enough. . . . They have gathered from every part of the world), Seneca, Ad Helviam Matrem De Consolatione XII. Cf. Cicero, Oratio Pro L. Cornelio Balbo IX, 24 ("libertas id est civitas"); Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, De Reditu Suo I, 66 ("urbem fecisti, quod prius orbis erat"), and so forth. The philosophers of the time "addressed themselves to a world of d‚racin‚s. They preached . . . salvation in `society' regarded as distinct from and independent of political forms." Thus Charles N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1944), 31. 6. To the previously mentioned works of Alf”ldi, Straub, and Cochrane (especially Cochrane's second chapter "Romanitas"), add Andr s Alf”ldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1948); Joseph Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert (Munich: Mnchner, 1949); Walther Eltester, "Die Krisis der alten Welt und das Christentum," Zeitschrift fr die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 42 (1949): 1-19; Andr‚ Piganiol, "L'Etat actuel de la question constantinienne 1939-49," Historia 1 (1950): 82-96; Aldo Marsili, "Roma nella poesia di Claudiano. Romanit… occidentale contrapposta a quella orientale," Antiquitas 1 (1946): 3-24, and other studies cited in the course of this paper. For a complete survey of the field and a demonstration of the great increase of interest in it, K. F. Stroheker, "Das konstantinische Jahrhundert im Lichte der Neuerscheinungen 1940-51," Saeculum 3 (1952): 654-80. 7. Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert, 12-15; Aelius Aristides, Orationes, ed. Wilhelm Dindorf (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1829), 14:206-8 (360-62); 225-27 (393-95); Prudentius, Contra Orationem Symmachi II, 578-633; Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, De Reditu Suo I, 47-66: "fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam" (you have created a single country for many diverse peoples). 8. Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert, 16. 9. See below, nn. 69-73; P. Chavanne, "Le patriotisme de Prudence," Revue d'histoire et de litterature religieuses 4 (1899): 333-34, 412-13; Cassiodorus, Variae I, 21. Gustave Bardy, L'‚glise et les derniers Romains (Paris: Laffont, 1948), 48. 10. Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert, 13; Marsili, "Roma nella poesia di Claudiano," 17-18, 23. 11. Hugh Nibley, "The Hierocentric State," Western Political Quarterly 4 (1951): 244-47; reprinted in this volume, pages 123-26. 12. Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert, 19-20; Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:736; Jordanes, Historia Getica Getarum (Gothic History) 36; Claudius Claudianus, Bellum Geticum (The Gothic War) 364-79; Horace, Carmen Saeculare I, 12 and 53-60. 13. Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 3, in PG 113:726-29. 14. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2 vols. (New York: Modern Library, 1932), 2:256. 15. Agathias, History II, 29-30, in PG 88:1393-95. 16. Procopius, Anecdota XXV, 25. 17. Salvianus, De Gubernatione Dei (On the Government of God) V, 3-11, in PL 53:96-97. The same sort of thing was going on 200 years earlier; Michael Rostovzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1926), 348-49. 18. Priscus Rhetor, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentes 1 and 3, in PG 113:704-5, 708, 716, where each side accuses the other of retaining its subjects, while denying the charge against itself. The Romans were constantly demanding the return of "deserters" who chose to live among the barbarians; E. A. Thompson, "Peasant Revolts in Late Roman Gaul and Spain," Past and Present 2 (November 1952): 15-18. Thompson cites a number of texts, including the fifth-century comedy Querolus, illustrating the degree to which the Romans idealized the free and simple barbarian way of life. 19. Henri Gr‚groire, "La `conversion' de Constantin," Revue de l'Universit‚ de Bruxelles 36 (1930-31): 231-34; and Gr‚goire Cassimatis, "La DixiŠme `Vexation' de l'Empereur Nic‚phore," Byzantion 7 (1932): 152-54, has spread consternation among the learned by showing how historians have confused and even reversed the roles of the great protagonists. 20. Eusebius, Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine) II, 4-6, in PG 20:981-93. 21. Ibid. I, 28-31; II, 6, in PG 20:944-45, 985. By an interesting coincidence, just such a heavenly manifestation is attributed to Cyrus, the archetype of the divine king, Xenophon, Cyropaedia IV, 2 and 15. 22. Agathias, History IV, 29, in PG 88:1532. 23. Hilary, Ad Constantium Augustum (To Constantius Augustus) II, 5, in PL 10:566-67. 24. Ludwig Friedl„nder, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, 4 vols., 8th ed. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1910), 2:338-39. 25."Eine Audienz bei Chosrau mit Vela, strenger Rangordnung der Dignit„re, dem Silentiumsruf des Zeremonienmeisters unterscheidet sich in nichts von der strengen Etikette eines byzantinischen Silention" (an audience at Chosrau's court with veils, with a strict ordering of dignitaries, with a silentium called out by the master of ceremonies cannot be distinguished from the strict court etiquette of the Byzantine silention); A. M. Schneider, "Das byzantinische Zeremoniell und der alte Orient," Jahrbuch fr kleinasiatische Forschung 2 (1952): 163. The Roman emperors were forced to adopt this ritual in the Prestigekampf (struggle for prestige) with the East, according to Andr s Alf”ldi, "Die Geschichte des Throntabernakels," Nouvelle Clio 2 (1950): 541. 26. George of Pisidia, De Expeditione Persica II, 240-51, in PG 92:1226-27: "He [the General of Error] occupies himself with musical instruments, cymbals, impious din of song, dances of indecent women in lustful nudity. While thou, our General of Wise Panoply, dost take thy pleasure in Psalms played upon mystic instruments, a godly singing rejoiceth thy heart as thou holdest solemn sport with virgins. . . . He puts his hope in the moon, but suffers violent eclipse seeking to eclipse thy sun." On the exact resemblance of Christ and Antichrist, Romanus, De Judicio Extremo 8-10, in Jean B. Pitra, Analecta Sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi Parata (Paris: Tusculan, 1876), 1:38-39. The antagonist is the perfect image of the hero, but wickedly inverted, as in a mirror: Eusebius, Life of Constantine II, 4, in PG 20:981; Julius Firmicus Maternus, De Errore Profanorum Religionum (The Error of the Pagan Religions) 23, in PL 12:1032-33; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis XV de Secundo Christi Adventu (Instruction XV about the Second Coming of Christ) 12, in PG 33:885, 1639. Naturally the painful resemblance of the adversary to the hero was attributed to a clever act of forgery by the demons. 27. Thus when Attila came upon a heroic painting in Milan depicting himself at the feet of the Roman emperor, he simply transposed the figures of the two leaders--the rest was as it should be, the clash being not between "ideologies" but personalities pure and simple, Suidas, cited by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 2:289, n. 53. 28. This is fully illustrated by the references given, under the heading of barbarus and related words, in any large Greek or Latin lexicon. 29. Thus J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (London: Macmillan, 1913), 230, who sees in the Persian War "the first encounter in that still unclosed debate." 30. Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 4 vols. (Jena: Diederich, 1928), 4:222-23, 277-316, 315-16, 340-75. 31. Ibid., 4:342. 32. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 65-72. 33. Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert, 59; Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 188-89, sees in these titles an Oriental borrowing inseparable from the "diadem and jewelled robes instituted by his [Constantine's] immediate predecessors." 34. Catullus beautifully illustrates both these points; cf. Henry, "Pietas and Fides in Catullus," 63-68. 35. E.g., Prudentius, Contra Orationem Symmachi II, 488-91 and 503-23; Marsili, "Roma nella poesia di Claudiano," 11-13. 36. Salvianus, On the Government of God VII, 2-3, in PL 53:130-32; V, 2-4, in PL 53:91-96. This reflects the traditional belief that "it is natural for Greeks to rule over Barbarians," Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis 1400, and that "among Barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves," Aristotle, Politics 1252B. The unquestioned acceptance of Roman Goodness remained part of the permanent heritage of the West, Nancy Lenkeith, Dante and the Legend of Rome (London: Brill, 1952), 17. 37. On government patronage and control of literary education, Heathcote W. Garrod, The Oxford Book of Latin Verse (Oxford: Clarendon, 1944), xxvi-xxxvii (introduction). 38. Rostovzeff, Social and Economic History, 458, 123-24, 201, 414; Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert, 19-21; F. Vittinghoff, "Zur angeblichen Barbarisierung des r”mischen Heeres . . . ,"Historia 1 (1950): 389-407; Zosimus, Historia Nova II, 34. 39. The embassy was almost wrecked when the report reached Attila that one of the Romans had said at dinner that his master was a god while Attila was only a mortal; the remark nearly produced a riot. 40. Synesius, Oratio de Regno 15, in PG 66:1093. 41. Ibid., in PG 66:1096-97. 42. Ibid., in PG 66:1132, 1096-97. 43. On imperial foreign policy during Justinian's reign, see Charles Diehl and Georges Mar‡ais, Le monde oriental 395 … 1081 (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1936), 79-81. 44. Ibid., 71-72, 79; Jordanes, Gothic History 38. 45. Sulpicius Severus, Chronicon Historia Sacra II, 3, in PL 20:130: "exercitibusque nostris, urbibus atque provinciis permistas barbaras nationes . . . inter nos degere, nec tamen in mores nostros transire, videamus." 46. Victor Vitensis, De Persecutione Vandalica 5, in PL 58:255b. 47. Lenkeith, Dante and the Legend of Rome, 4. 48. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio (On the Administration of the Empire) 13, in PG 113:184-85. 49. Cf. the hysterical security rules of Valens, given in Ammianus Marcellinus XXX, 1, and discussed by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 1:856-58, nn. 53-59. 50. Describing the siege of Ancona by the Saracens, a Florentine monk writes: "Ignis hi conficitur tantum per Paganos/ Ignis hic exterminat tantum Christianos/ Incantatus namque est per illos prophanos/ Ab hoc perpetuo, Christe, libera nos." Cited in Charles Du Cange, Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 3 vols. (Paris: Osmont, 1733-36), 3:1308-9. 51. For Cicero the solution of "the problem of leadership in a free state," was the existence of a natural, unforced loyalty--"concensus, concordia ordinum." Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 58-59. 52. Rostovzeff, Social and Economic History, 449. 53. The essence of Romanitas is restoration, according to Cochrane, who notes of Constantine's program: "Once more, as in the far-off days of Augustus Caesar, the Roman world was stirred by a sense of fresh hopes and fresh beginnings," Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 183. In his inscriptions Constantine claims to be restoring the Empire "to its ancient splendor and glory," Eusebius, Life of Constantine I, 40, in PG 20:956. Caelius Sedulius, Carmen Paschale, in PL 19:549-752, is simply a Christian elaboration of the Carmen Saeculare that launched the Principate. Restoration is the normal theme of the panegyrics: even Authulf in taking over Romania calls himself "Romanae restitutionis auctor" (the father of the Roman restoration), Orosius, Historiae adversum Paganos (History against the Pagans) VII, 43, in PL 31:1172. 54. For new light on the special terminology which demonstrated the "lealismo dei Cristiani" (loyalty of the Christians) to the old majesty, see L. Alfonsi, "L'epistola I clementina, i papiri magici, i ludi saeculari," Aegyptus 27 (1947): 111-14. Cf. Juvencus, De Laudibus Domini, in PL 19:385; and Juvencus, Triumphus Christi Heroicus, in PL 19:385-88, for typical ties between the old loyalty and the new. 55. Compare Julian's painted glory, Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) V, 17, in PG 67:1265-69, with Constantine's as described in the whole fourth book of Eusebius, Life of Constantine, in PG 20:1115-229. Also Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis XIV de Christi Resurrectione , in PG 33:841-44; F. Gerke, "Das Verh„ltnis von Malerei und Plastik in d. Theodos.-Honorianischen Zeit," Rivista di Archaeologica Cristiana 12 (1935): 140: the new art of majestas was the result of a "politisch gewordenen christlichen Weltanschauung" (politicized Christian world view). The super-ceremonial was no longer mere form, but a "Wirklichkeit auf einer neuen und h”heren Ebene des Seins" (reality on a new and higher plane of being), according to Schneider, "Das byzantinische Zeremoniell und der alte Orient," 154. 56. Elias Bickermann, "Die r”mische Kaiserapotheose," Archiv fr Religionswissenschaft 27 (1929): 21, citing Vegetius, II, 5. Cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History X, 4 and 9, in PG 20:848-80, 901-6; Eusebius, De Laudibus Constantini 17, in PG 20:1429-32, 1357; Eusebius, Life of Constantine II, 19 and 29, in PG 20:936-37, 1005-8. F. Cumont, "L'‚ternit‚ des empereurs romains," Revue d'histoire et de litterature religieuses 1 (1896): 435-52. The New Order is greater and holier (timiotera) than heaven itself, according to John Chrysostom, Expositio in Psalmum (Exposition on Psalm) 148, in PG 55:483. 57. Ammianus Marcellinus, XIV, 6, 3 and 6: "Virtue and Fortune have formed a pact of eternal peace . . . the tranquility of Numa's time has returned." Eusebius, De Laudibus Constantini 17, in PG 20:1429; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History X, 4 and 9, in PG 20:848-80, 901-6; I, 3-4, in PG 20:68-80; IV, 7, in PG 20:316-21 (quoting panegyric orations); Lactantius, De Justitia V, 6-7, in PL 6:569-74, 590-92; Epiphanius, Adversus Haereses III, 2, 7, in PG 42:784-85, and III, 2, 2-3, in PG 42:776-77; Jerome, Commentarius in Isaiam Prophetam (Commentary on Isaiah) 18:66, in PL 24:674, 885; John Chrysostom, De Sancta Pentecoste Homilia (Homily on the Holy Pentecost) 1, in PG 50:454; John Chrysostom, Contra Judaeos et Gentiles, quod Christus Sit Deus (Against the Jews and the Gentiles That Christ Is God) 11-12, in PG 48:829-30; Ambrose, Epistolae (Epistles) 12, in PL 16:987-90; Cyprian, Epistolae (Epistles) 7, in PL 5:246-51; and Cyprian, Liber de Lapsis (On the Lapsed), in PL 4:479; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis XVIII de Carnis Resurrectione XII, 18, in PG 33:1049, and so forth. 58. The quotation is from Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 1:644, describing the legend of Constantine's vision. The justice of its application in this instance may be seen from J. Gag‚, "Stauros Nikopolos: La victoire imperiale dans l'empire chr‚tien," Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses 13 (1933): 370-400, on the steps by which conflicting "Mystiques triomphales" were ultimately fused into a single whole in the Christian Imperial Cult. "The Roman world, whether for the moment dazzled by the prestige of the imperial physician or, perhaps because of its sickness ready for the most desperate expedient, appears to have accepted his ministrations without much visible indication of the scepticism which they deserved," thus Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 197. 59. Caecilius, Octavius IV-VIII. 60. Straub, "Christliche Geschichtsapologetik," 58-60, 76-77; Chavanne, "Patriotisme de Prudence," 349, 385, 400, 412. 61. Orosius, History against the Pagans V, 2, in PL 31:921-22. 62. Prudentius, Contra Orationem Symmachi II, 816-17: "Sed tantum distant Romana et barbara quantum/ Quadrupes abiuncta est bipedi vel muta loquenti." Cf. Ambrose, Epistolam ad Romanos I, 14, in PL 17:57. For the Byzantine emperors "barbarian" is synonymous with "pagan," and intermarriage with barbarians is a crime, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, On the Administration of the Empire 13, in PG 113:185. A famous Byzantine formula states that there are four mothers of heresy: Barbarism, Scythism, Judaism, and Hellenism; John Damascus, De Haeresibus, in PG 94:677; Epiphanius, Anacephalaeosis, in PG 42:840-45, 849; Chronicon Paschale, in PG 92:112. A fourth-century wood carving from Egypt depicts the "Vertreibung der Barbaren von der Feste des Glaubens," the Faith and Romania being identical, Josef Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom: Beitr„ge zur Geschichte der sp„tantiken und frhchristlichen Kunst (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1901), 81-84, table 3. 63. Lenkeith, Dante and the Legend of Rome, 25, citing the twelfth century Pseudo-Irnerius. How Christianity actually deepened the gulf between Barbarian and Roman may be seen from Origen, Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans) I, 14, in PG 14:861; cf. Jerome, Commentarius in Epistolam ad Galatas (Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians) 2:3, in PL 26:380. 64. Thus Tatian, Oratio adversus Graecos I, 27, 30, in PG 6:804-5, 865, 868; see especially R. Massuetus, Dissertatio de Valentino, in PG 7:44-49; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata I, 15-17, in PG 8:776-802; Tertullian, De Anima (On the Soul) XILX, in PL 2:733-34; Didymus Alexander, De Trinitate (On the Trinity) II, 18, in PG 39:729. Later writers compared this Christian teaching with like teachings of the Greek Philosophers: Nicephorus Callistus, Ecclesiastical History IV, 10, in PG 145:1000; Nicephorus Gregor, Byzantina Historia VIII, 8, in PG 148:569; Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio 5, in PG 83:944-52. 65. Straub, "Christliche Geschichtsapologetik," 63-64; cf. Claudius Claudianus, Panegyric on the Fourth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius 98-99; Marsili, "Roma nella poesia di Claudiano," 15; Lenkeith, Dante and the Legend of Rome, 18: "If Rome were destroyed the physical basis of the legitimacy of both Popes and emperors would be lost together." 66. Alf”ldi, Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, 117; cf. 106, 110, 112, 115-16. The fusion of Church and Empire is not without its modern panegyrists, e.g., A. Causse, "Essai sur le conflit du chistianisme primitif et de la civilization," RHR 78 (1918): 98-142, and 79 (1919): 175-223. 67. Walter V”lker, "Von welchen Tendenzen liess sich Eusebius . . . leiten?" Vigiliae Christianae 4 (1950): 157-80. Roman secular history was also rewritten to prove that the Romans had from the first been God's people; Lenkeith, Dante and the Legend of Rome, 9. 68. Eusebius, De Laudibus Constantini 16, in PG 20:1421-29; cf. Prudentius, Contra Symmachum II, 578-95 and 634-40. 69. Lactantius, De Ira Dei 11, in PL 7:110. 70. Aristides, Oration 14 (To Rome), ed. Dindorf, 200 (349), boasts that Rome has achieved what Asia has always attempted to, the rule of one man over all the world; in Rome the Asiatic ideal is realized, ibid., 205 (359), 222 (389). "There are not two suns in the heavens; how can the people have two lords?" asks Ghenghis Khan, Friedrich E. Krause, Cingis Han: Die Geschichte seines Lebens nach den chinesischen Reichsannalen (Heidelberg: Winter, 1922), 25. Bayazid's official pronouncement reads exactly like an excerpt from the Theodosian Code: "The Koran says, `Disquiet is worse than death,' the Sultan, the shadow of God upon earth, and the Lord of all true believers, ought to reign in conformity with the ever-to-be-imitated example of God, alone upon the throne, and without possibility of anyone revolting against him." Edwin S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1854-56), 1:50-51. Typically Asiatic is Basil's panegyric to the Pope of Alexandria, who shall trample his enemies under his feet: Basil, Liturgia Alexandrina, in PG 31:1632. Though Constantine "rejected the pretentions of the Oriental sacred monarchy," according to Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 179, he retained and strengthened all that the West had learned from it; ibid., 186, 188-89. The Church Fathers of the age remind us at times that all the pomp of this earth is mere empty show, "a game for children," a brief masquerade, and so forth, e.g., Eusebius, De Laudibus Constantini V, 6, in PG 20:1316-20, 1337-40; John Chrysostom, In Epistolam II ad Corinthios Homilia (Homily on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians) 15, in PG 61:508-9; but these are the commonplaces of the schools, in striking contrast to Hilary's frank and sorrowful admission that the Church "diligi se gloriatur a mundo, quae Christi esse non potuit, nisi eam mundus odisset" (boasts of being loved by the world, which could not be Christ's urch], unless the world hated it), Hilary, Contra Arianos (Against the Arians) 4, in PL 10:611. 71. For Claudius Claudianus, The Gothic War, passim, all who deny humble submission to Rome are faithless destroyers of peace, mad, demented, feeble-minded, insane, praedones, proditores, scellerati, presuntuosi, superbi, barbari, clienti, audacii falsi inerti, impii, rabiosi, perfidi, and so forth, see Marsili, "Roma nella poesia di Claudiano," 17-18. 72. Hilary, Against the Emperor Constantius 15, in PL 10:593, 586, 602-3; cf. Hilary, Contra Arianos, in PL 10:609-10: peace is the greatest of blessings, but whoever accepts any peace but ours is the Antichrist. 73. Lucifer of Caliaris, De Non Conveniendo cum Haeresibus, in PL 13:774, 786-87, 790-91, 806; Hilary, Against the Emperor Constantius 15, in PL 10:598-99, 583. 74. Hilary, Against the Emperor Constantius 8, in PL 10:584-85. 75. Lucifer of Caliaris, De Non Conveniendo cum Haeresibus, in PL 13:806. 76. Thus Optatus, De Schismate Donatistarum (On the Donatist Schism) II, 13, in PL 11:966, can show that "the true Church cannot be cruel," since "dum sanat, vulnerat" (it causes pain while healing), ibid., in PL 11:1020. Those whom we kill are not martyrs, since only members of our church can be martyrs, ibid., in PL 11:1013-15, 1019; our side cannot persecute, since we are in the right, while anything that displeases us is necessarily persecution, ibid, in PL 11:1013, 1017; since we have the Scriptures written in our hearts, all Scripture we cite condemns you, while any you may cite against us is void, ibid., in PL 11:1101. Pacianus, Epistolae (Epistles) II, 5, in PL 13:1061-62, assures the Novatians that his side does not persecute, since it attacks only with words: "We deal with you like doves, ore potius quam dente confligimus." Yet Optatus tells the opposition that when they attack with words only they cut more cruelly than any swords, "slaying with the sword of the tongue," Optatus, On the Donatist Schism II, 13, in PL 11:979, 983. Augustine, Contra Donatistas (Against the Donatists) II, 11, says that persecution by the Church is "the persecution of love," and that as long as the Emperor persecutes on the right side he does well, Augustine, Epistolae (Epistles) 43, in PL 33:321-23. 77. Lucifer of Caliaris, De Non Conveniendo cum Haeresibus, in PL 13:768-70, 774, 777, 787, 791. True, Lucifer is extreme, but Athanasius, Ad Luciferum Epistolae 2, in PL 13:1040-41, who calls him the most inspired voice of the age, is himself no less severe: "Christus recusat et respuit obsequium tuum" (Christ rejects and disdains your compliance), he writes to a too-tolerant emperor, Athanasius, Epistolae (Epistles) XVII, in PL 16:1002-5. 78."The common-sense republicanism of Tiberius Caesar had prompted the sentiment "deorum injuriae dis curae" (the gods' injuries are matters of concern to the gods). Constantine, however, undertook to support the prestige of deity by a law which forbade blasphemous utterances under pain of a fine of one-half one's goods." Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 204. 79. John Chrysostom, Homilia in Joannem (Homily on John) LIV, 4, in PG 59:301; Hilary, Against the Emperor Constantius II, 9, in PL 10:585: "unigenitus Deus, quem in me persequeris" (the only begotten God, whom you persecute in me). 80. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos (Narrations on Psalms) 62:15, in PL 36:684-85; Augustine, De Civitate Dei (The City of God) XX, 19, 3, in PL 41:686. "How can we be blessed unless we loathe you utterly?" is Lucifer's refrain, in Lucifer of Caliaris, De Non Conveniendo cum Haeresibus, in PL 13:770-71. 81. Augustine, Contra Julianum Pelagianum (Against Julian Pelagius) IV, 30-31, in PL 44:753-54, 763: "Unbelievers do evil even when they do good." Cf. Augustine, Sermones (Sermons) CXLI, 3-4, in PL 38:777; Augustine, Epistles 113, in PL 33:322; Augustine, Narrations on Psalms 57:15, in PL 36:684-85. To call the emperor Antichrist when he is mistaken "non est temeritas, sed fides; neque inconsideratio, sed ratio" (it is not rashness but loyalty, not thoughtlessness but concern), and so forth, Hilary, De Non Conveniendo cum Hereticis, in PL 13:806. When the Emperor puts his official severitas at the disposal of the Church, "neither brother, beloved wife, nor son" should be spared, all loyal subjects being armed "to dismember the sacrilegious," Julius Firmicus Maternus, The Error of Pagan Religions 30, in PL 12:1048. Writers of the fourth century sometimes yield to principles of humanity, "nec potest aut veritas cum vi, aut justitia cum crudelitate conjugi" (truth cannot be joined with violence nor justice with cruelty), says Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones (Divine Institutions) V, 20, in PL 6:615; yet Lucifer can twist this sentiment into a proof that the Church, being true and just, is never cruel, see n. 76 above. Jerome must confess a definite conflict between the justa judicia of the Church and her irrationabili (!) clementia, Jerome, Epistolae (Epistle) 17, in PL 22:828, while Optatus pays a touching compliment to kindness when he declares that the Donatists should suffer death because they lack charity! Optatus, On the Donatist Schism III, 8, in PL 11:1018-19. 82. John Chrysostom, De Virginitate 5, in PG 48:536-37. 83. Alf”ldi, Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire, 40. 84. John Chrysostom, Exposition on Psalm 50, in PG 55:530; John Chrysostom, Homilia in Isaiam 6:1 (Homily on Isaiah 6:1) IV, 1-2, in PG 56:121; cf. John Chrysostom, Homilia in Matthaeum (Homily on Matthew) XXXIII, 1, in PG 57:389, and John Chrysostom, Contra Judaeos et Gentiles, quod Christus Sit Deus 6 and 12-13, in PG 48:821, 830-31; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History X, 4, in PG 20:847-80; Zeno, Tractatus II, 44, in PL 11:496: "zizania . . . in laeta frumenta mutavit" (he changed tares into useful grains). 85. Cedrenus Georgius, Historiarum Compendium, 2 vols. (Bonn: Weber, 1838-39), 1:662. 86. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto (On the Holy Ghost) 76-77, in PG 32:213-17. This agrees perfectly with the description in John Chrysostom, Adversus Oppugnatores Vitae Monasticae III, 8-10, in PG 47:361-65. The fourth-century fathers "cast aside truth and decency [Anstand] and converted controversy into the business of questioning personal loyalty," thus Martin Schanz, Geschichte der r”mischen Literatur, 4 vols. (Munich: Beck, 1914), 4:1:534. 87. Basil, On the Holy Ghost 76-77, in PG 32:213-17. According to Chrysostom, the spirit of the times is well expressed in the common remark: "I wish an earthquake would come and kill everybody but me; then I would be the richest man in Antioch!" John Chrysostom, In Epistolam II ad Timotheum (Commentary on the Second Epistle to Timothy) VII, 1-2, in PG 62:638. 88. Jakob C. Burckhardt, Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1929), 452. Optatus affirms that if chastity and virginity are found among any barbarian nations it is because something has gone wrong, for that simply cannot be, in Optatus, On the Donatist Schism III, 3, in PL 11:999. 89. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History II, 28, in PG 67:1013-17. Later churchmen used Constantine's example to spur his successors to acts of increasing violence against unbelievers, P. Petit, "Libanius et la Vita Constantini," Historia 1 (1950): 581. In the Theodosian Code XVI, 1, 2, all who differ from the Emperor's theology are declared "extravagant madmen" who "must expect to suffer the severe penalties, which our authority . . . shall think proper to inflict upon them," cited in Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 2:8. Constantine shows an "obvious lack of any sense of the limitations of law," says Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 204; "Ses conseillers l'ont fait vivre dans un monde d'illusions" (his advisers let him live in a dream world), Piganiol, "L'‚tat actuel de la question Constantinienne 1939-49," 95. 90. The Emperor's famous letter is quoted in Eusebius, Life of Constantine II, 71, in PG 20:1044-45; Socrates, Ecclesiastical History I, 7, in PG 67:53-60; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History I, 16, in PG 67:909-12. 91. Ambrose, Epistles 12, in PL 16:988-89. John Chrysostom, De Sancto Babyla, Contra Julianum et Gentiles (On Saint Babyla, Against Julian and the Gentiles) 8, in PG 50:544, says that the Church was better off under pagan emperors, because the members fought less savagely among themselves. 92. Gerhard Ladner, "Das heilige Reich des mittelalterlichen Westens," Welt als Geschichte 11 (1951): 143-53, especially 149. See below, n. 146. 93. Thompson, "Peasant Revolts in Late Roman Gaul and Spain," 20. 94. John Morris, "Early Christian Orthodoxy," Past and Present 3 (February 1953): 12, cf. 14: "In 500 a.d. the new world was Christian; it was a very different Christianity. The church . . . belonged to the world of the rulers, not of the ruled." Cf. Jean-Paul Brisson, "Les Origines du danger social dans l'Afrique chr‚tienne du IIIe siŠcle," Recherches de science religieuse 33 (1946): 280-316. 95. Henry, "Pietas and Fides in Catullus," 63. 96. Marsili, "Roma nella poesia di Claudiano," 23. 97. C. D. Gordon, Review of C. Wirszubski, "Libertas" as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate, in Phoenix 6 (1952): 28, where the quotation is found. 98. Ibid. 99. Alf”ldi, Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire, 37. 100. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 91-193, comments caustically on this. 101. Diehl and Mar‡ais, Le monde oriental, 78-79. 102. Rostovzeff, Social and Economic History, 477. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 2:142: "The nobles of Rome express an exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of the human species." 103. Philostratus, Vita Apollonii (The Life of Apollonius of Tyana) I, 15; cf. Zonaras, Annals XII, 10. 104. Plutarch, Marcus Cato 5, says the Athenians treat their mules better than Cato did his faithful slaves, but the Roman nobility regularly followed his example, Zonaras, Annals XII, 10. Though Cato opposed the foreign excesses of the rich, Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 30-32, the "villa-system" and foreign policy he advocated as well as his own acquisitiveness all favored the tendencies he was combatting, ibid., 34-35, 45, 55. 105. Tacitus, Histories II, 61, blushes with shame that "a plebeian had the presumption to mix his name with the great events of the time." The Historia Augusta reflects the violently partisan spirit of the nobility in the fourth century, according to Alf”ldi, Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire, 25. Its fierce prejudices are apparent in Plutarch, Coriolanus; Ammianus Marcellinus, XXVII, 4; Livy, VII, 6-7; Appian, Roman History XII, 4; XI, 4; Zonaras, Annals VII, 14, and so forth. 106. Vogt, Constantin der Grosse und sein Jahrhundert, 46. 107. They were genuinely shocked when their Scythian house-slaves (who had been captured by trickery and enslaved in disregard of solemn promises) staged a rebellion in Asia Minor--treachery, they called it, base ingratitude! Eunapius, De Legationibus Romanorum ad Gentus 6, in PG 113:657. The same thing is described centuries earlier by Appian, Roman History XII, 4; XI, 4. "If it were not for the wealth possessed by the rich," they said, "the poor would have no one to lend them money in time of famine and so starve to death!" Zonaras, Annals VII, 14. They believed all things were created for them alone, Symmachus, Epistolae (Epistles) II, 46; even life was given to other creatures as a means of preserving their flesh until they were ready to eat or sell it, Varro, De Re Rustica (On Agriculture) II, 4 and 10; III, 3-6; including human flesh, ibid. II, 10; Seneca, Epistles I, 95; Philo, On Abraham 20-21. 108."Ruere in servitium consules, patres, eques. Quanto quis inlustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes." (Consuls, senators, and knights were rushing into slavery. The more distinguished the individual, the greater his hypocrisy and haste.) Tacitus, Annals I, 7, 1, cf. 35. The groveling and timidity of the Senate is a leitmotiv of Roman history: Polybius, Histories X, 3; Cicero, Letters to His Friends VI, 1; Tacitus, Annals XIII, 32; Ael