The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and ReligionFrazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
IN REGARD to the Roman king, whose priestly functions were inherited
by his successor the king of the Sacred Rites, the foregoing
discussion has led us to the following conclusions. He represented
and indeed personated Jupiter, the great god of the sky, the
thunder, and the oak, and in that character made rain, thunder, and
lightning for the good of his subjects, like many more kings of the
weather in other parts of the world. Further, he not only mimicked
the oak-god by wearing an oak wreath and other insignia of divinity,
but he was married to an oak-nymph Egeria, who appears to have been
merely a local form of Diana in her character of a goddess of woods,
of waters, and of child-birth. All these conclusions, which we have
reached mainly by a consideration of the Roman evidence, may with
great probability be applied to the other Latin communities. They
too probably had of old their divine or priestly kings, who
transmitted their religious functions, without their civil powers,
to their successors the Kings of the Sacred Rites.
But we have still to ask, What was the rule of succession to the
kingdom among the old Latin tribes? According to tradition, there
were in all eight kings of Rome, and with regard to the five last of
them, at all events, we can hardly doubt that they actually sat on
the throne, and that the traditional history of their reigns is, in
its main outlines, correct. Now it is very remarkable that though
the first king of Rome, Romulus, is said to have been descended from
the royal house of Alba, in which the kingship is represented as
hereditary in the male line, not one of the Roman kings was
immediately succeeded by his son on the throne. Yet several left
sons or grandsons behind them. On the other hand, one of them was
descended from a former king through his mother, not through his
father, and three of the kings, namely Tatius, the elder Tarquin,
and Servius Tullius, were succeeded by their sons-in-law, who were
all either foreigners or of foreign descent. This suggests that the
right to the kingship was transmitted in the female line, and was
actually exercised by foreigners who married the royal princesses.
To put it in technical language, the succession to the kingship at
Rome and probably in Latium generally would seem to have been
determined by certain rules which have moulded early society in many
parts of the world, namely exogamy, _beena_ marriage, and female
kinship or mother-kin. Exogamy is the rule which obliges a man to
marry a woman of a different clan from his own: _beena_ marriage is
the rule that he must leave the home of his birth and live with his
wife's people; and female kinship or mother-kin is the system of
tracing relationship and transmitting the family name through women
instead of through men. If these principles regulated descent of the
kingship among the ancient Latins, the state of things in this
respect would be somewhat as follows. The political and religious
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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