Next Mr. Frazer contends that since, at Zakmuk, the gods determined the fate of the king's life, it was a critical time for the king. Now 'the central feature of the Sacæa' appears to have been 'the hanging of the mock-king for the saving of the real king's life.'[7] Here, then, are two critical hours for the king: one at Zakmuk, when the gods settle his fate; one at the Sacæa when his life is saved by the execution of his proxy. Are not then these two critical periods one period, and is not Sacæa another name for Zakmuk?[8] But Mr. Frazer has also told us that the main feature of the Sacæa was the death of a man who represented Tammuz, and was killed after doing sympathetic magic with a sacred harlot.[9] Was there, then, in connection with this Tammuz man, a third Tammuz feast in March-April, for there were two, in June-September? Thus, even if we could admit that, because two periods are critical, both are the same period, yet as the victim of the Sacæa was a Tammuz man, slain to do good to the crops, we are unable to concede that he also died 'in the king's stead,' and to save his life, unless the king was Tammuz. Besides, no authority tells us that either, or both, of this victim's deaths occurred at the Babylonian feast of Zakmuk: it occurred at the Persian feast of the Sacæa, if at all. Indeed, even if Mr. Frazer's two arguments for the identity of Zakmuk and Sacæa were persuasive (and' how persuasive they are we have seen), there would remain a difficulty. For Berosus says, as we saw, that the Sacæa fell on Lous 16, which is July, whereas Zakmuk fell in March-April. I. HISTORICAL DIFFICULTY This obstacle seems to be, and really is, insuperable. But Mr. Frazer, undaunted, writes: 'The identification of the months of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar is a matter of some uncertainty; as to the month Lous in particular the evidence of ancient writers appears to be conflicting, and until we have ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus' (say 200 B.C.) 'it would be premature to allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals' (namely Zakmuk and the Sacæa). Henceforth Mr. Frazer's hypothesis seems to me to proceed on the fancy that Sacæa and Zakmuk are identical, which is impossible, since the Sacæa fall in July or September, and Zakmuk in March-April.