Note 1344 — Chapter VII · INCARNATE HUMAN GODS

Plutarch, De defect. oracul. 46, 49, 51. The Greeks themselves seem commonly to have interpreted the shaking or nodding of the victim’s head as a token that the animal consented to be sacrificed. See Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. viii. 8. 7; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Peace, 960; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. i. 425; and this explanation has been adopted by modern interpreters. See A. Willems, Notes sur la Paix d’Aristophane (Brussels, 1899), pp. 30–33; E. Monseur, in Bulletin de Folklore, 1903, pp. 216–229. But this interpretation can hardly be extended to the case of the Delphic victim which was expected to shake all over. The theory of possession applies equally to that and to the other cases, and is therefore preferable. The theory of consent may have been invented when the older view had ceased to be held and was forgotten.