Secondly, my guess is thought to disregard Mr. Frazer's many other analogies from folklore. Which analogies? Where else do we find a priestly fugitive slave, who held his sacred office by the _coir na glaive_, the Eight of Sword? I am acquainted with no other example. As I have shown already, the kings who are killed (admitting the Arician fugitive to be a _rex_) are killed for a considerable variety of reasons, and are never shown to be killed that a sturdier vehicle may be provided for a vegetable deity; while the kings said to incarnate a deity are never said to be killed for religious reasons. If the reverse were the case, then the Arician fugitive, the ghastly priest, might take the benefit of the analogies. I hope that my bald prosaic theory, abjectly Philistine as it is, has the characteristics of a scientific hypothesis. But, like my guess as to the real reason for the death of the Sacæan victim, this attempt to explain the office of the ghastly priest is but a conjecture. The affair is so singular that it may have an isolated cause in some forgotten occurrence. I remember no other classical instance of a priest whose duty was to be always watching a single sacred tree, a thing requiring a vigilance of attention not compatible with much other priestly work: a post so unenviable that only a fugitive slave would be likely to care for the duties and perquisites. Naturally he would not know that he was 'an incarnation of the supreme Aryan god, whose life was in the mistletoe or golden bough.' And, as he did not know, he would not be 'proud of the title.' [1] _G. B_. ii. 147. [2] _G. B_. iii. 166. [3] _G. B_. iii. 346. [4] _G. B_. ii. 95. [5] _G. B_. ii. 160. [6] _G. B_. i. 227. [7] _G. B_. ii. 217. [8] _G. B_. ii. 145. [9] _G. B_. ii. 129. [10] _G. B_. ii. 253; ii. 250. [11] _G. B_. ii. 123. [12] _G. B_. iii. 122. [13] _G. B_. iii. 127. [14] _G. B_. iii. 163. [15] _G. B_. iii. 456. [16] _G. B_. iii. 456, 457. [17] Pausanias, ii. xxvii. 4. [18] _Sylvæ_, iii. i. 55. [19] _Caligula_, 35. [20] _G. B_. iii. 457. [21] _G. B_. i. 231. [22] _G. B_. i. 231. [23] Who, or what, can escape being a tree-spirit, if Zeus is one? Mr. Frazer thinks that the savage must regard all trees used in fire-making as sources of hidden fire. 'May not this,' he asks, 'have been the origin of the name "the Bright or Shining One" (Zeus, Jove [Dyaus]), by which the ancient Greeks and Italians designated their supreme God? It is, at least, highly significant that, amongst both Greeks and Italians, the oak should have been the tree of the supreme God....'--iii. 457. Zeus, like Num, and countless others, was also a sky god. The sky is bright and shining, an oak is the reverse. We do not think that a savage would call an oak or a match-box 'bright,' even if they do hold seeds of fire. [24] _G. B_. iii. 449; _Æn_. vi. 203, _et seq._