But I am not quite sure that Mr. Frazer really holds his Sacæan victim to have played two parts, at two distinct times of year. Now, however, in connection with human scapegoats, our author does certainly make a victim 'double a part.' First, it was usual to kill a beast-god or man-god 'to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age.' Next, there were human scapegoats, driven away with all evil on their heads. But, suggests Mr. Frazer, 'if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god' (god-man, king, or his proxy) 'as a scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away sin, but to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but, since he had to be killed at any rate, people may have thought that they might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sin in order that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.'[12] Even so, when a Dublin mob was about to throw a man over from the gallery of the theatre, some economist cried, 'Don't waste him: kill a fiddler with him'! As proof that people might reason in this thrifty way we learn that, on March 15, a scapegoat man, called 'Old Mars,' was beaten at Borne and expelled. Mars, of course, was a god of vegetation, and here the man-god, 'Old Mars,' is both god and scapegoat. But he is not sacrificed, nor even hanged.[13] In Athens during plague, drought, or famine two human scapegoats were done to death, and Mr. Frazer infers, but doubtfully, were stoned to death. This also occurred yearly at the Thargelia; the stoning is a conjecture. In Greek cities of Asia Minor, in times of calamity, an ugly or deformed man was made to eat dried figs, a barley loaf, and cheese. Then he was beaten seven times in a special manner, with squills and myrtle boughs, was burned, and the ashes were thrown into the sea. The beating at once expelled evil influences and was good for the crops. So in this ugly poor devil 'we must recognise a representative of the creating and fertilising god of vegetation.' I really must try to save him from this general doom! These stupid cruelties, if they had the usual agricultural motive, worked _magically_ not _religiously_, worked by sympathetic magic, not by divine interference. This creature, though supposed to be a god of vegetation, was confessedly in appearance no Adonis![14]