According to
tradition, these woollen figures were substitutes for a former
custom of sacrificing human beings. Upon data so fragmentary and
uncertain, it is impossible to build with confidence; but it seems
worth suggesting that the loaves in human form, which appear to have
been baked at Aricia, were sacramental bread, and that in the old
days, when the divine King of the Wood was annually slain, loaves
were made in his image, like the paste figures of the gods in
Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally by his worshippers. The Mexican
sacraments in honour of Huitzilopochtli were also accompanied by the
sacrifice of human victims. The tradition that the founder of the
sacred grove at Aricia was a man named Manius, from whom many Manii
were descended, would thus be an etymological myth invented to
explain the name _maniae_ as applied to these sacramental loaves. A
dim recollection of the original connexion of the loaves with human
sacrifices may perhaps be traced in the story that the effigies
dedicated to Mania at the Compitalia were substitutes for human
victims.
Pages:
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380