On the whole, then, while we are not justified in
regarding Lityerses as the prototype of Attis, the two may be
regarded as parallel products of the same religious idea, and may
have stood to each other as in Europe the Old Man of harvest stands
to the Wild Man, the Leaf Man, and so forth, of spring. Both were
spirits or deities of vegetation, and the personal representatives
of both were annually slain. But whereas the Attis worship became
elevated into the dignity of a state religion and spread to Italy,
the rites of Lityerses seem never to have passed the limits of their
native Phrygia, and always retained their character of rustic
ceremonies performed by peasants on the harvest-field. At most a few
villages may have clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds, to
procure a human victim to be slain as representative of the
corn-spirit for their common benefit. Such victims may have been
drawn from the families of priestly kings or kinglets, which would
account for the legendary character of Lityerses as the son of a
Phrygian king or as himself a king.
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