The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890) written by Sir James George Frazer (1884-1941) compares and contrasts scientific and religious thoughts with events such as fertility rates and human sacrifice being compared both religiously, and scientifically. The book was originally published in two volumes in 1890 with the subtitle A Study in Comparative Religion and was enlarged and republished with the subtitle A Study in Magic and Religion (12 volumes, 1911–15). Aftermath, a Supplement appeared in 1936. This massive work surveys the spiritual beliefs, practices, and institutions of cultures worldwide and theorises a natural progression from magic to religion to science.
His overall theory is that the human race has evolved from believing in magic, going to religious belief, and now in transition to scientific thought, Frazer discusses how old cultures acted in both scientific in religious manners. Human sacrifice, as one example, was a way to show appreciation to gods, but it may have scientifically been a way to kill someone without them questioning it, or to promote survival of the fittest.
The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece is an extract from The Golden Bough (1890). The custom of sacrificing scapegoat seems to be originated as a precaution against possible calamity, crisis and danger but the scapegoat was likely to come from the poorer class. Modes of sacrificing scapegoats differ from culture to culture. But the underline objective/purpose of sacrificing in every culture is the same i.e. purification of sin. Other objectives of scapegoating were to prevent calamity, disasters, starvation, suffering, tragedy and so on. During periods of famine, plague, pestilence, or some other hardship, the ancient Greeks responded by choosing a person from within their community, ritually transferring the communal afflictions onto him, and then driving him beyond the boundaries of the state. This was a curious process, and one marked by contradictions.
It was believed that scapegoating helped regain the fertility of the soil and vegetation (crops) yielded as expected by husbandmen (farmers). Similarly practitioners of scapegoating believed that their offering of scapegoats would herald (to bring something surprisingly) good fortunes and happiness. Besides, the tradition of human scapegoating was widely practised in different parts of ancient Greece with an aim of averting evil spirits and malignant forces. Though the rationale behind the offspring scapegoat cannot be justified, it is deeply rooted in various cultures as an essential part of the culture.
Sir Frazer concludes that scapegoating, is practised with a specific mission, ultimately it is nothing but a search for power or search for the support of a superpower. He also concludes that tradition of scapegoating shows that there is abundant use of power. It is the fact that the one who is made a scapegoat comes from a socially outcast group or from a powerful class of people. At the same time, it is noticeable that powerful ones offered the powerless as scapegoats with the expectation of having good fortune and success.
In psychological terms, the scapegoat is the person or group of people that is singled out, often unwittingly, and the unwanted or undesirable feeling of that person or group is projected upon the “other”. As is the ancient custom, this other person or group becomes then the carrier of the unwanted ills for the entire tribe, country, cultural group etc.
The term scapegoat refers to the ways in which blame is shifted onto another for mistakes and behaviours one cannot or will not accept in oneself. Again psychologically speaking, the danger of this for the developing ego is that the personality does not learn to accept its own part in things that go wrong. This in turn can lead to serious passive aggression and other isolating behaviours.
As in any community, country or individual developing ego, short-term solace is gained, but the consequences for the perpetrators of scapegoating will always be a retarded development for both individual and community. As history and psychology teach, scapegoating seems not to achieve its desired end after all. The sins of the father, fortunately, or not, remain with the father.
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THE ANCIENT Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat. In Plutarch’s native town of Chaeronea a ceremony of this kind was performed by the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by each householder at his own home. It was called the “expulsion of hunger.” A slave was beaten with rods of the agnus castus, and turned out of doors with the words, “Out with hunger, and in with wealth and health.” When Plutarch held the office of chief magistrate of his native town he performed this ceremony at the Town Hall, and he recorded the discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise.
But in civilized Greece, the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided. Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used to offer himself as a scapegoat. For a whole year, he was maintained at the public expense, being fed on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the year, he was dressed in sacred garments, decked with holy branches, and led through the whole city, while prayers were uttered that all the evils of the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the city or stoned to death by the people outside of the walls. The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcast scapegoats. One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The former wore round his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white figs. Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on behalf of the woman was a woman. They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently by being stoned to death outside the city. But such sacrifices were not confined to extraordinary occasions of public calamity; it appears that every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death. The city of Abdera in Thrace was publicly purified once a year, and one of the burghers, set apart for the purpose, was stoned to death as a scapegoat or vicarious sacrifice for the life of all the others; six days before his execution he was excommunicated, “in order that he alone might bear the sins of all the people.”
Bibliography
Frazer, S. J. (2008). The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece. In S. Lohani, K. C. Sharma, A. Gupto, & A. Sharma, Essays on Western Intellectual Tradition (pp. 127-138). Bhotahity, Kathmandu: M.K. Publishers and Distributors.
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