When the sacred stone of Cybele and the cult of Attis were removed to Rome (under circumstances to which I shall refer in a later chapter) the festival consisted of a five days’ rite, like that of the Potraj. It took place at the spring equinox, as does our own equivalent festival of Easter. On the first day, a pine-tree was cut down in the woods, and the effigy of a young man was tied to it. This effigy no doubt represented the primitive human sacrifice, and its crucifixion answers exactly to the slaughter of the sacred buffalo in India. The second day yields nothing of importance; on the third day, the Attis-priest drew blood from his own arms and presented it as an offering; I would conjecture that this was a substitute for self-immolation, and that the self-immolation was originally performed by mutilation of the genitals. It was perhaps on this night that a mourning took place over the body of Attis, represented by an effigy, which was afterwards solemnly buried. On the fourth day came the Festival of Joy, on which, as Mr. Frazer believes, the resurrection of the god was celebrated. The fifth day closed with a procession to the brook Almo, in which the sacred stone of the goddess and her bullock-cart were bathed as a rain-charm. On the return, the cart was strewn with flowers. I think the close parallelism to the Indian usage is here fairly evident. Indeed, out of consideration for brevity, I have suppressed several other most curious resemblances. Attis was thus essentially a corn-god. His death and resurrection were annually celebrated at Rome and at Pessinus. An Attis of some sort died yearly. The Attis of Pessinus was both priest and king; it was perhaps at one time {315}his duty to die at the end of his yearly reign as a corn-god for his people. One epithet of Attis was “very fruitful”; he was addressed as “the reaped yellow ear of corn”; and when an effigy took the place of the annual slain priest-king, this effigy itself was kept for a year, and then burnt as the priest-king himself would have been at an earlier period. It seems to me impossible to resist the cumulative weight of this singular evidence.