The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

334 THE EVIL EYE chap.
also to her " daughter and double," Proserpine,
whom we have proved to be tmam eandenique. It
came at length to be "an embodiment of the corngoddess
herself" ; and at the Thesmophoria, a festival
confined to women, representing the descent of
Proserpine into the lower world, it was customary for
the women to eat swine's flesh, to throw pigs, cakes
of dough, and pine- branches into the mega^'a, or
chasms of Demeter and Proserpine. These appear
to have been sacred caverns or vaults. We are not
told where these caverns were, but we assume that
they were either at or near Eleusis, the centre of the
Demeter cult. The limestone rocks at the back of
the temple of Eleusis might well have many caves
in them. In Crete, also an ancient seat of Demeter
worship, the pig was esteemed very sacred and was
not eaten.
The Greeks could not decide whether the Jews
worshipped swine or abominated them, " for they
might neither eat nor kill them," so that if eating
was forbidden on account of uncleanness, the unlaw-
fulness of killing them tells still more strongly for
their sanctity. Frazer believes that swine were
rather sacred than unclean to the Jews, and that, in
general, so-called unclean animals were originally
sacred, and that they were not eaten because they
were divine.^^^
Wilkinson ^^" gives a full account of the Eleusinian
^51 Golden Bough, ii. 51. In England, where pork was the only meat in
general use, it came as a surprise when the Crusaders told their countrymen of
other people besides the Jews who held swine in abomination. The wild
stories current were believed and recorded even by so famous a historian as
Matthew Paris, who says that the Mahomedans despise pork because the
Prophet, having gorged himself till he was so insensible as to fall asleep on a
dunghill, was attacked there by a litter of pigs, and so suffocated. For this
story, and more of the same kind, see Buckle, Hist, of Civil, i. p. 314 et seq.
'"^'^ Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. p. 387 et seq.