Note 48.2 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD
Reading edition
It is true that the records which tell us about these things are all of a period much later than Homer’s, and that he is almost silent about such matters.48.2 But we know now how to appreciate Homer’s silences. And general anthropology compels us to believe that some of those records reveal facts of immemorial antiquity in Greece. The Thesmophoria, one of the most ancient of the Hellenic services, was partly magical; that is, it included rites that had a direct efficacy, apart from the appeal to any divinity, such as the strewing the fields with the decaying remains of the pigs that had been consecrated to the earth-Goddesses and thrown down into their vault.48.3 So also in the Thargelia of Attica and other Greek communities, the ceremonies connected with the scapegoat, the ritualistic whipping and transference of sin, belong to the domain of magic rather than to religion.49.1