Note 53.1 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

The purpose and significance of the rite differed probably in the different cult-centres. In most cases we may interpret it as piacular, the dedication to an offended deity of a valued life, the life of the king’s son or daughter, as a substitute for the life of the people, such vicarious sacrifice being a common human institution; in some few cases we may discern an agricultural motive, the blood being shed as a magic charm to secure fertility.53.1 At certain cult-centres and at certain times the human victim may have been regarded as the incarnation of the deity or the ‘daimon’; and this idea might explain the legends concerning the slaying of Iphigeneia the priestess of Artemis, or of the priests of Dionysos. Finally, in the ritual of Zeus Lykaios, we may detect a cannibal-sacrament, in which the holy flesh of the victim, whose life was mystically one with the God’s and the people’s, was sacramentally devoured. This ghastly practice is only doubtfully disclosed by legends and by interpretation of later records; a faint reminiscence of it may also have survived in the Argive story of Harpalyke and Klymenos.53.2 But a close parallel to it will be noted in the Thracian Dionysiac ritual.