Well, the Sacæa was such a period of licence. Each household was then ruled by a slave, the Zoganes, as Athenæus quotes Berosus. The royal household was not an exception. Now to rule the royal household, in the royal robes, and above all to take liberties with the royal harem (compare Fijian and Australian licence), is treason; one of the two crimes excepted from the Saturnalian amnesty in Tonquin. To overlook treason would be, for a Persian monarch, to set a dangerous precedent. Therefore the royal Zoganes, or slave-king of the five days' revel, unlike the Zoganes of private houses, would deserve death, technically speaking. At this point let me adopt Mr. Frazer's theory of a substitute. A criminal already condemned to death is employed instead of a harmless slave, as Zoganes of the royal household, and is then hanged. In dozens of cases of summer gambols, in European folklore, 'the Whitsuntide representatives of the tree spirit' are put to a mock death.[26] These are in one or two instances called 'kings.' The regular May Kings and May Queens seem to escape: the Grass King merely 'hands his crown to the mayor.'[27] These mock slayings of folklore actors may (I think), like handing the crown to the mayor, merely mean that the actor's reign is over. This is not Mr. Frazer's opinion: the summer monarchs when killed in sport are killed, he thinks, as their precursors were really slain, for the god of vegetation. O vegetation, what crimes are wrought in thy name! In any case the royal Zoganes, or criminal substitute for the slave-king of the royal household in Babylon, deserved a hanging, to discourage the precedent of treason set by him in the period of licence. Only in the king's house was the reign of the Zoganes high treason. Now, before hanging him, it was actually necessary to demonstrate by symbolic action that he was no real king, but a common slave or criminal. He was reduced to his true level by being stripped of his royal robes, and by being whipped, a specially servile punishment. He was then hanged. But to treat a real slave thus merely because, as in every other household, he played the Zoganes or slave as master, would be a shame. The man's only fault was the accident, thrust on him by custom, of playing lord in the royal household of a jealous monarch. So a criminal already condemned took the part, and, as the slave would have been, he was finally reduced to his level by being stripped of his royal robes and scourged, before suffering death; technically for treason, really for the crime on which he was originally condemned.