year, whether with the spring or the autumn ploughing we do not know.  The dedication of the Bull was a high solemnity.  He was led in procession, at the head of which went the chief priest and priestess of the city.  With them went a herald and the sacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens.  So holy was the Bull that nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must have both their parents alive, they must not have been under the taboo, the infection, of death.  The herald pronounced aloud a prayer for “the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of grain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle.”  All this longing for fertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose holiness is his strength and fruitfulness.

The Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of the whole people, is fed at the public cost.  The official charged with his keep has to drive him into the market-place, and “it is good for those corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift,” good for them because they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is their own luck.  So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but early in April the end comes.  Again a great procession is led forth, the senate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of each class of the State—­children and young boys, and youths just come to manhood, epheboi, as the Greeks called them.  The Bull is sacrificed, and why?  Why must a thing so holy die?  Why not live out the term of his life?  He dies because he is so holy, that he may give his holiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to his people.

     “When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up
     among those who took part in the procession.”

The mandate is clear.  The procession included representatives of the whole State.  The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten—­to every man his portion—­by each and every citizen, that he may get his share of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State.

* * * * *

Now at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we hear no more.  Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin again.  But at Athens at the annual “Ox-murder,” the Bouphonia, as it was called, the scene did not so close.  The ox was slain with all solemnity, and all those present partook of the flesh, and then—­the hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing.  The Death is followed by a Resurrection.  Now this is all-important.  We are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the renouncing of something.  But sacrifice does not mean “death”