Ebook wait

At least this is the conclusion to
which the following evidence seems to point. According to the
historian Berosus, who as a Babylonian priest spoke with ample
knowledge, there was annually celebrated in Babylon a festival
called the Sacaea. It began on the sixteenth day of the month Lous,
and lasted for five days, during which masters and servants changed
places, the servants giving orders and the masters obeying them. A
prisoner condemned to death was dressed in the king's robes, seated
on the king's throne, allowed to issue whatever commands he pleased,
to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, and to lie with the king's
concubines. But at the end of the five days he was stripped of his
royal robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. During his brief term
of office he bore the title of Zoganes. This custom might perhaps
have been explained as merely a grim jest perpetrated in a season of
jollity at the expense of an unhappy criminal. But one
circumstance--the leave given to the mock king to enjoy the king's
concubines--is decisive against this interpretation.


Pages:
781 782 783 784 785 786 787 788 789 790 791 792 793 794 795 796 797 798 799 800 801 802 803 804 805