Adonis, Attis, Osiris : studies in the history of oriental religion / by J.G. Frazer.
- James George Frazer
- Date:
- 1906
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Adonis, Attis, Osiris : studies in the history of oriental religion / by J.G. Frazer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![35 at Tyre and in the Tyrian colonies down to a late time, and the effigy may well have been a later substitute for a man. For Melcarth, the great god of Tyre, was identified by the Greeks with Hercules,1 who is said to have burned himself to death on a great pyre, ascending up to heaven in a cloud and a peal of thunder. The common Greek legend, immortalised by Sophocles, laid the scene of the fiery tragedy on the top of Mount Oeta, but another version transferred it significantly to Tyre itself.3 Combined with the other evidence which I shall adduce, this latter tradition raises a strong presumption that an effigy of Hercules, or rather of Melcarth, was regularly burned at a great festival 111 Tyre- That festival may have been the one known as the awakening of Hercules, which was held in the month of Peritius, answering nearly to January.4 The name of the festival suggests that the dramatic representation of the death of the god on the pyre was followed by a semblance of his resui rection. The mode in which the resurrection was supposed to be effected is perhaps indicated by the state¬ ment of a Greek writer that the Phoenicians used to sacrifice quails to Hercules, because Hercules on his journey to Libya had been slain by Typhon and brought to life again by Iolaus, who held a quail under his nose : the dead god snuffed at the biid and revived.5 Certainly a close connec¬ tion seems to have subsisted between quails and Melcarth for legend ran that Asteria, the mother of the Tyrian Heicules, that is, of Melcarth, was transformed into a quail.6 1 See above, pp. 11 sq. 1 Sophocles, Trachiniae, 1191 sqq. ; Apollodorus, ii. 7. 7 ; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 38 ; Hyginus, Fab. 36. 3 [S. Clementis Romani], Recogni- tiones, x. 24, p. 233, ed. E. G. Gersdorf (Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, i. 1434). 4 Josephus, Antiquit. viii. 5. 3, Contra Apionem, i. 18. Whether the quadriennial festival of Hercules at Tyre (2 Maccabees iv. 18-20) was a different celebration, or only “the awakening of Melcarth ’’ celebrated with unusual pomp once in four years, we do not know. :j Eudoxus of Cnidus, quoted by Athenaeus, ix. 47, p. 392 D e. That the death and resurrection of Melcarth were celebrated in an annual festival at Tyre has been recognised by scholars. See Raoul-Rochette, “ Sur l’Hercule Assyrien et Phenicien,” Memoires de’ VAcademie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres, xvii. Deuxieme Partie (Paris, 1848), pp. 25 sqq. • H. Hubert et M. Mauss, “ Essai sur le sacrifice, ” E Ann de Sociologique, ii. (1899) pp. 122, 124;. M. J. Lagrange, Etudes stir les Reli¬ gions Sdmitiques,2 pp. 308-311. 6 The Tyrian Hercules was said to- be a son of Zeus and Asteria (Eudoxus of Cnidus, quoted by Athenaeus, ix. 47, p. 392 D ; Cicero, De 7iatura deorum, iii. 16. 42). As to the transformation, of Asteria into a quail see Apollodorus,.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31346510_0055.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
