We are still trying to find an historical case of a man who is
sacrificed in the character of a god and a king. The argument next
introduces us to the Sacæa at Babylon, when the mock-king was hanged,
the Persian feast, which, as we saw, M. Parmentier, following Herr
Meissner, is inclined to identify with the ancient Babylonian Zagmuk,
or Zakmuk, and with the Jewish Purim.
This identification, this theory that Zakmuk, Sacæa, and the Jewish
Purim are all the same feast, is essential to Mr. Frazer's theory.
But, before his theory was published, Meyer, in the new volume of
his 'History of Antiquity,' had declared that the identification is
impossible, philologically and as a matter of fact (_Geschichte des
Alterthums_). It would be interesting to know the meaning of the
word Sacæa, or _Sacea_, or _Sakia_, which Hyde translates 'convivial
drinking, drinking healths' (_compotatio, propinatio_).[77] We remember
the Persian butler, called a _Sáki_, in Omar Khayyam:
The eternal _Sáki_ from the bowl has poured
Myriads of other bubbles, and will pour.
If the wine-pourer, the _Sáki_, of Omar is etymologically connected
with the Sakæa, or Sacæa, then the feast means a wine-party. The
Greeks, however, connected the Sacæa with the Sacæ, an Oriental tribe
of the great race stretching from the Black Sea to Dacia. Indeed, in
Strabo's time, the feasters at the Sacæa dressed as Scythians (Sacæ)
and drank, as Horace tells us that the Scythians were used to drink.
This occurred at Zela, a town of Pontus, where a love goddess, in
Persian Anaitis, of the type of the Babylonian Ishtar, was adored. Mr.
Frazer even conjectures that her high priest, or a substitute, 'who
played the King of the Sacæa,' was yearly sacrificed here, perhaps as
Tammuz.[78] No record of the fact has reached us.
The interesting point about this derivation of Sacæa from the tribe of
the Sacæ is that the festival was believed, says Strabo, to commemorate
a great victory of the Persians over the Sacæ. In precisely the same
way the Persian feast of the Magophonia was supposed to commemorate
a victory over and massacre of the Magi.[79] Purim, again, was held
to commemorate a triumph of the Jews over the Persians and a massacre
of the Persians. In three cases, then, Sacæa, Magophonia, and Purim,
a feast which was a secular drinking bout, preserve the memory of
a bloody victory. I do not observe that Mr. Frazer notices this
coincidence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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