It may very naturally be thought that I am introducing these complexities and these difficulties by dint of wilfully or unconsciously misrepresenting Mr. Frazer's argument. But the argument, I sincerely think, is really a very tangled one. It seems plain that originally the victim was only conceived of by Mr. Frazer as dying to save the life of the king, who otherwise would have been slain as a god, on Mr. Frazer's hypothesis of religious regicide, as he could not be trusted 'to remain in full bodily and mental vigour for more than a year.'[38] The king was 'slain in his character as a god,' who could not be trusted for more than a year. Nothing was said to indicate that the mock king incarnated any special known god; say Tammuz. That conjecture appeared later,[39] and the date of the sacrifice was in June-July. Nothing was said, even now, about the victim's sacred harlot. The victim was content with the royal harem. As late as iii. 152 'the central feature of the Sacæa seems to have been the saving of the king's life,' by the slaying of the victim, and, to that main end of the rite, no sacred harlot was necessary. But the date had now been moved from midsummer to early spring, and into the neighbourhood of the feast of Purim. The religious character of the Sacæa period of wailing and rejoicing in sympathy with a god (Tammuz) now seemed to be overlooked, for Mr. Frazer says that the Sacæa 'was a wild Bacchanalian revel ...' and that Purim was the same: men and women disguising themselves, drinking, and behaving wantonly.[40]