Again Herodotus says of this custom, in his day[113]: “Now the Arabians reverence in a very high degree pledges between man and man. They make these pledges in the following way. When they wish to make pledges to one another, a third man, standing in the midst of the two, cuts with a sharp stone the inside of the hands along the thumbs of the two making the pledges. After that, plucking some woolen floss from the garments of each of the two, he anoints with the blood seven stones [as the “heap of witness”[114]] which are set in the midst. While he is doing this he invokes Dionysus and Urania. When this rite is completed, he that has made the pledges [to one from without] introduces the [former] stranger to his friends[115]--or the fellow citizen [to his fellows] if the rite was performed with a fellow-citizen.”
Thus it is clear, that the rite of blood-brotherhood, or of blood-friendship, which is to-day a revered form of sacred covenanting in the unchangeable East, was recognized as an established custom among Oriental peoples twenty-three centuries ago. Its beginning must certainly have been prior to that time; if not indeed long prior.
An indication of the extreme antiquity of this rite would seem to be shown in a term employed in its designation by the Romans, early in our Christian era; when both the meaning and the origin of the term itself were already lost in the dim past. Festus,[116] a writer, of fifteen centuries or more ago, concerning Latin antiquities, is reported[117] as saying, of this drink of the covenant of blood: “A certain kind of drink, of mingled wine and blood, was called _assiratum_ by the ancients; for the ancient Latins called blood, _assir_.” Our modern lexicons give this isolated claim, made by Festus, of the existence of any such word as “assir” signifying “blood,” in “the ancient Latin language;”[118] and some of them try to show the possibilities of its origin;[119] but no convincing proof of any such word and meaning in the Latin can be found.
Turning, however, to the languages of the East, where the binding vow of blood-friendship was pledged in the drink of wine and blood, or of blood alone, from time immemorial, we have no difficulty in finding the meaning of “assir.” _Asar_ (אָסַר) is a common Hebrew word, signifying “to bind together”--as in a mutual covenant. _Issar_ (אִסָּר), again, is a vow of self-renunciation. Thus we have _Asar issar ’al nephesh_ (נֶפֶשׁ עַל אִסָּר אָסַר) “To bind a self-devoting vow upon one’s life”[120]--upon one’s blood; “for the blood is the life.”[121] In the Arabic, also, _asara_ (اسر) means “to bind,” or “to tie”; while _asar_ (اسر) is “a covenant,” or “a compact”; and _aswâr_ (اسوار) is “a bracelet”; which in itself is “a band,” and may be “a fetter.”[122] So, again, in the Assyrian, _esiru_ ([Illustration]) is in its root form “to bind”; and as a substantive it is “a bracelet,” or “a fetter.”[123] The Syriac gives _esar_ ([Illustration]), “a bond,” or “a belt.”[124] All these, with the root idea, “to bind”--as a covenant binds. In the light of these disclosures, it is easy to see how the “issar” or the “assar,” when it was a covenant of blood, came to be counted by the Latins the blood which was a covenant.