Note 184 — Chapter II · PRIESTLY KINGS

J. Rendel Harris, The Dioscuri in the Christian Legends (London, 1903); id., The Cult of the Heavenly Twins (Cambridge, 1906). See also below, pp. 262 sqq. With the Spartan custom we may compare the use which the Zulus made of twins in war. See Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood, a Study of Kafir Children (London, 1906), p. 47 sq.: “In war time a twin used to be hunted out and made to go right in front of the attacking army, some few paces in front of the others. He was supposed to be fearless and wild. His twin, if a sister, and if surviving, was compelled to tie a cord very tightly round her loins during the fight, and had to starve herself; she was also expected to place the twin brother’s sleeping-mat in that part of the hut which the itongo [ancestral spirits] loved to haunt. This brought success in war. But the great chief Tshaka stopped this practice, for he said that the wild twin did foolhardy things and brought the army into needless danger.”