Thus M. Cumont did not at first accept the evidence for the annual sacrifice of a mock-king representing the god Saturn. But M. Parmentier suggested that an old cruel rite might have been introduced by Oriental soldiers into Mœsia (303 A.D.) thanks to the licensed ferocity of the persecutions under Diocletian. The victim, Dasius, was a Christian, and the author of his legend told the tale to illustrate the sin of revelry on New Year's Day. But what led to the revival of the cruelty? M. Parmentier quoted the story of our Babylonian festival, the Sacæa, in which a mock-king was scourged and slain. This or a similar rite the Roman legions finally confused with their own Saturnalia, both as to date and as to characteristics. The Oriental soldiers of the Roman Empire imported into the army this Oriental feast and sacrifice: just as they brought monuments of Mithra-worship into Mœsia. In an hour of military licence and of persecution, the cohorts in Mœsia may actually have tried to sacrifice a Christian private as a representative of King Saturn. So far the sacrifice is an Asiatic importation, not a Roman survival. But M. Cumont, after reading M. Parmentier, returned from his disbelief in the veracity of the Dasius legend. He thought that the extension of the Saturnalia from one day to five days, after Caligula, might be due to an imitation introduced by Eastern slaves in Rome (an influential class) of the five days' feast of the Babylonian Sacæa. But thirty days, as in Mœsia, are not five days. He also inclined to accept the recently proposed identification of the Sacæa with a really old Babylonian feast called _Zagmuk_, or Zakmuk, and with the Jewish Purim, an identification which we shall later criticise. As to the imperial edict forbidding human sacrifice, M. Cumont now suggested that it had become a dead letter and impotent. In the general decadence of 303 monstrous cruelties flourished, and the Saturnalia were marked by gladiatorial combats. Thus, in remote Mœsia, the half Oriental soldiery might really sacrifice a Christian 'for the safety of his comrades under arms.'