for himself, that he seeks forewarning. But the same instrument of divination supplies the answers.
My own knowledge of its use is obtained entirely from Acarnania and Aetolia; but the practice is also recorded from Zagorion in Epirus[1], and prevails too, I have been told, among the shepherds of Elis. The opportunity for it is, as I have said, offered only by certain feast-days, when the peasants indulge in meat. On other occasions, when the shepherds kill only in order to sell in the towns, divination cannot be undertaken; for it is only after cooking that the meat can be properly removed from the bone so as to leave it clean and legible. There is therefore no doubt an economical reason for confining this practice to certain religious festivals; but this consideration must not be allowed to obscure the genuinely religious character of the rite itself. In Zagorion, at the festivals in honour of the patron-saint of each village or monastery, sheep are brought and slain in the enclosure of the particular sanctuary, and are called [Greek: kourmpan[i(]a][2], a plural evidently of the Hebrew word 'corban,' a thing devoted to the service of God; thus both name and ceremony proclaim this custom a genuine survival of sacrifice; and it is apparently from the shoulder-blades of these victims that omens are drawn[3]. A similar case of divination by sacrifice came to my knowledge in Boeotia, though whether the shoulder-blade or some other part of the victim furnished the predictions, I could not ascertain. While looking round a small museum at Skimitári I had happened to stop before a relief representing a man leading some animal to sacrifice, and heard the custodian, a peasant of the place, remark to another peasant, evidently a stranger to the district, who had followed me in, 'That is just like what we do'; and he then explained that at a church of St George, somewhere in the neighbourhood, there was an annual festival at which a similar scene took place. The villagers of the country-side congregate early on the morning of St George's day round the church,, p. 210. No details are given.], p. 176.]
- ↑ [Greek: Lampridês, Zagoriaka
- ↑ [Greek: Lampridês, Zagoriaka
- ↑ The writer does not actually mention the two things in connexion. He belongs to that class of modern Greek writers who exhibit their own intellectual emancipation by deploring or deriding popular superstitions, and wastes so much energy therein that he fails to note such points of interest. But, since it is not probable that the peasants of Epirus eat meat more often than other Greek peasants, the connexion of the sacrifice and the divination may, I think, be assumed.
