The Vestal Circle

K. R. Prowse

doi:10.1017/S0017383500017228

The Vestal Circle

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009

K. R. Prowse

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In all parts of the world primitive men have always been aware that death and life are indissolubly linked, that the growth of the seed depends on the death of the fruit. Of course this conception is by no means limited to primitives, it is fundamental to a number of world religions, not least to the Christian faith. The evidence that ancient peoples regarded death as a necessary source of life is massive. It is contained in all those stories about dying gods and divine kings which Frazer collected in his monumental Golden Bough and in the more recent studies of Joseph Campbell. Similarly, human sacrifice, voluntary or otherwise, was usually performed to propitiate or gain the support of the gods, especially those of the underworld, and the spirits of the dead. The same is true of many animal sacrifices and offerings of fruits. Unless the needs of the nether powers were satisfied, Death would naturally claim perhaps even more than his due, the living would then suffer, animals and crops would perish—an everyday notion poetically expressed by Horace in his Ode to Faunus.

Type: Research Article
Information: Greece & Rome , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , October 1967 , pp. 174 - 187

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017383500017228 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Classical Association 1967

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^{page 187 note 5} Cic. pro Fonteio, 46.

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