They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because
they injured the vine. Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally
an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god had divested
himself of his animal character and had become essentially
anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be
regarded no longer as a slaying of the deity himself, but as a
sacrifice offered to him; and since some reason had to be assigned
why the goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that
this was a punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine,
the object of the god's especial care. Thus we have the strange
spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is
his own enemy. And as the deity is supposed to partake of the victim
offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god's old
self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is
represented as eating raw goat's blood; and the bull-god Dionysus is
called "eater of bulls." On the analogy of these instances we may
conjecture that wherever a deity is described as the eater of a
particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but
the deity himself.
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