Now pass the conjecture that in just one known place, Babylon, the stripes and death for the conduct usually punished with these penalties _were_ inflicted, after the period of licence, on just one person, and you get Dio's case of the mock-king of the Babylonian Sacæa.
Meanwhile observe that there was a Zoganes, or slave-lord, ruling in every Babylonian household, including that of the king. Each Zoganes was royally attired, and bore sway in the dwelling where, except in the five days of licence, he served. But for all that was done in these five days only one man was punished, and he was the king's Zoganes. Athenæus does not mention this; Hesychius is silent; Strabo does not even speak of the lordship of slaves. Our only evidence for the slaying of the king's Zoganes is Dio Chrysostom, putting the anecdote into a feigned discourse of Diogenes. The slaying occurs only in one place, as the Persians had only one king.
Meanwhile let us study in various regions the periods of licence. It seems as if human nature needed an annual 'burst.' Mr. Frazer suggests, as a magical motive, that the farmers thought by swilling and guzzling just before they proceeded to sow the fields that they thereby imparted additional vigour to the seed.[4] In fact, whether men fasted or feasted, were chaste or amorous, in all cases they acted for the benefit of the crops. Be it so, but why should non-agricultural savages have periods of licence? I venture to suggest that the agricultural motive in religion and ritual is at present rather over-worked. It is becoming as common an explanation of custom and belief as the recognition of the sun and the dawn everywhere used to be in mythology. To show that a period of licence with express and purposeful breach of the most sacred laws may exist without an agricultural motive, I shall prove later that it occurs among a non-agricultural set of savages, and, consequently, when found among agricultural peoples, may descend from some non-agricultural motive. Mr. Frazer himself elsewhere assigns a motive, not necessarily agricultural, for these chartered explosions of unlaw.
1. On the Gold Coast the period of licence precedes the annual ceremony of 'banishing the devil.' The season of the year is not given.