Next 'it would appear that the Zoganes' (the same old victim) 'during his five days of office personated not merely a king but a god, whether that god was the Elamite Humman, the Babylonian Marduk, or some other deity not yet identified.'[38] Next the victim personated 'a god or hero of the type of Tammuz or Adonis, (and) enjoyed the favours of a woman, probably a sacred harlot....' in addition to the caresses of the royal seraglio.[39] Next the indefatigable victim represented the king, 'the human god, the Saturn, Zoganes, Tammuz, or whatever he was called,' though all we know of the god Zoganes is that Zoganes was the title of the slave lord of the household at the Persian Sacæa.[40] It would thus appear almost as if all gods are one god to Mr. Frazer by a kind of scientific 'Henotheism.' Humman or Saturn, Zoganes or Tammuz, Marduk or Adonis, any one of them, or all of them, will do for the king to incarnate or personate. Any one of them, or all of them, will figure as representatives of vegetable life in company with Zeus and the horses of Virbius! 'We may conjecture that the horses by which Virbius was said to have been slain were really embodiments of him as a deity of vegetation.'[41] Now let me too say 'we may conjecture.' Mr. Frazer tells us that 'horses were excluded from the grove and sanctuary' of Virbius.[42] Is it putting too great pressure on evidence to conjecture that the horses, while being driven out, were whipped? Now the horses embodied, perhaps, as we are told, a deity of vegetation. They were whipped, and therefore it was usual to whip the representatives of a deity of vegetation. This solves our problem, why was the victim, the divine victim, whipped? Seriously, have we not in all this book to do with that method of arbitrary conjecture which has ruined so many laborious philosophies of religion? As to one essential conjecture, that the Babylonian, or rather the Persian, kings represented a deity of vegetation, I can offer only one shadowy testimony. Nebuchadnezzar for a while exhibited a caprice in favour of a purely vegetable diet. This may have been a survival of a royal taboo. As a god of vegetation, a king would not eat vegetables any more than a savage usually eats his totem. But some savages do eat their totems on certain sacred occasions, and that may be the reason why Nebuchadnezzar, for a given period, turned vegetarian. [1] _G. B_. iii. 185. [2] _G. B_. iii. 178. [3] _G. B_. iii. 185. [4] _G. B_. iii. 186. [5] _G. B_. ii. 253. [6] _Cieza de Leon_, p. 203. [7] _G. B_. i. 143. [8] Grinnell, _Pawnee Hero Stories_, pp. 362-369. [9] _G. B_., ii. 238. [10] _G. B_. ii. 24, note 1. [11] _G. B_. iii. 167. [12] _G. B_. iii. 171. [13] _G. B_. iii. 170, 171. [14] _G. B_. iii. 171. [15] _G. B_. i. 131-157. [16] _G. B_. ii. 24-26. [17] _G. B_. ii. 24-26. [18] _G. B_. ii. 8. [19] _G. B_. ii. 253, 254. [20] _G. B_. ii. 123. [21] _G. B_. ii. 254, note 1. [22] _G. B_. ii. 123. [23] _G. B_. ii. 123.