When we compare this comic
monarch of the gay, the civilised metropolis with his grim
counterpart of the rude camp on the Danube, and when we remember the
long array of similar figures, ludicrous yet tragic, who in other
ages and in other lands, wearing mock crowns and wrapped in sceptred
palls, have played their little pranks for a few brief hours or
days, then passed before their time to a violent death, we can
hardly doubt that in the King of the Saturnalia at Rome, as he is
depicted by classical writers, we see only a feeble emasculated copy
of that original, whose strong features have been fortunately
preserved for us by the obscure author of the _Martyrdom of St.
Dasius._ In other words, the martyrologist's account of the
Saturnalia agrees so closely with the accounts of similar rites
elsewhere which could not possibly have been known to him, that the
substantial accuracy of his description may be regarded as
established; and further, since the custom of putting a mock king to
death as a representative of a god cannot have grown out of a
practice of appointing him to preside over a holiday revel, whereas
the reverse may very well have happened, we are justified in
assuming that in an earlier and more barbarous age it was the
universal practice in ancient Italy, wherever the worship of Saturn
prevailed, to choose a man who played the part and enjoyed all the
traditionary privileges of Saturn for a season, and then died,
whether by his own or another's hand, whether by the knife or the
fire or on the gallows-tree, in the character of the good god who
gave his life for the world.
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