was unequal to his duties used to be slain without mercy. Since old age is inevitable, it would appear that in remote times all priestly kings or human Zeuses must have been doomed to die a violent death. That this, however improbable it sounds to modern ears, was actually the case, is one of the main conclusions reached by Dr. Frazer in his Golden Bough.[1] He shows by a multitude of examples collected from widely separated lands that it has been the almost universal custom to kill the king as soon as he showed the first signs of advancing age, "in order that the divine spirit, incarnate in him, might be transferred in unabated vigour to his successor."[2] Of this barbaric custom traces can be detected even on Greek soil. In primis I would cite the valuable evidence of Macrobius. That writer is commenting on the passage in which Virgil describes the death of Halaesus:[3]
Halaesus' sire the future feared,
And 'mid the woods his darling reared:
When death had glazed the old man's eyes,
The ruthless Parcae claimed their prize,
Laid their cold finger on his heart,
And marked him for Evander's dart.
Now, poising long his lance in air,
To Tiber Pallas made his prayer:
'Grant, Tiber sire, the spear I throw
Through strong Halaesus' breast may go:
The spoils and armour of the foe
Shall deck thy sacred oak.'
'Tis heard; and while Halaesus shields
Imaon's breast, his own he yields
Unguarded to the stroke.
Virgil, it will be seen, relates the combat between Pallas and Halaesus in language appropriate to the monomachia of an ancient oak-king. Macrobius, concerned to prove
