The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

104 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)[085]The reasons forbisecting theold octennialperiod into twoquadriennialperiods mayhave been partlyreligious, partlypolitical.octennial period; for according to Pindar, the souls of the deadwho had been purged of their guilt by an abode of eight yearsin the nether world were born again on earth in the ninth yearas glorious kings, athletes, and sages. 293 Now if this belief inthe reincarnation of the dead after eight years were primitive,it might certainly furnish an excellent reason for honouring theghosts of great men at their graves every eight years in order tofacilitate their rebirth into the world. Yet the period of eight yearsthus rigidly applied to the life of disembodied spirits appears tooarbitrary and conventional to be really primitive, and we maysuspect that in this application it was nothing but an inferencedrawn from the old octennial cycle, which had been institutedfor the purpose of reconciling solar and lunar time. If that wasso, it will follow that the quadriennial period of funeral gameswas, like the similar period of other religious festivals, obtainedthrough the bisection of the octennial cycle, and hence that it wasultimately derived from astronomical considerations rather thanfrom any beliefs touching a quadriennial revolution in the stateof the dead. Yet in historical times it may well have happenedthat these considerations were forgotten, and that games andfestivals were instituted at quadriennial intervals, for example atPlataea 294 in honour of the slain, at Actium to commemorate thegreat victory, and at Mantinea in honour of Antinous, 295 withoutany conscious reference to the sun and moon, and merely becausethat period had from time immemorial been regarded as the properand normal one for the celebration of certain solemn religiousrites.If we enquire why the Greeks so often bisected the oldoctennial period into two quadriennial periods for purposes ofreligion, the answer can only be conjectural, for no positive293 Plato, Meno, p. 81 A-C{FNS; Pindar, ed. Aug. Boeckh, vol. iii. pp. 623 sq.,Frag. 98. See further The Dying God, pp. 69 sq.294 Plutarch, Aristides, 21; Pausanias, ix. 2. 6.295 See above, p. 80.