Set as
well as Osiris is said to have been torn in pieces after a reign of
eighteen days, which was commemorated by an annual festival of the
same length. According to one story Romulus, the first king of Rome,
was cut in pieces by the senators, who buried the fragments of him
in the ground; and the traditional day of his death, the seventh of
July, was celebrated with certain curious rites, which were
apparently connected with the artificial fertilisation of the fig.
Again, Greek legend told how Pentheus, king of Thebes, and Lycurgus,
king of the Thracian Edonians, opposed the vine-god Dionysus, and
how the impious monarchs were rent in pieces, the one by the
frenzied Bacchanals, the other by horses. The Greek traditions may
well be distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing human
beings, and especially divine kings, in the character of Dionysus, a
god who resembled Osiris in many points and was said like him to
have been torn limb from limb. We are told that in Chios men were
rent in pieces as a sacrifice to Dionysus; and since they died the
same death as their god, it is reasonable to suppose that they
personated him.
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