44 Rafael Karsten. [N:o 1 



or stakes were really worshipped as fetishes, which the owner 

 had placed at his bouadaries to protect them^). But this opinion 

 is obviously erroneous. A passage in Plato's Laws, which 

 indeed Dr. de Visser seems to know although he does not 

 understand what it implies, clearly explains the real nature of 

 the boundary-stoues and of the ceremonies with which they were 

 connected. In discussing that class of laws which he calls the laws 

 of husbandmen, Plato says that the first of them is to be the law 

 of Zeus, the god of boundaries. „Let no one shift the boundary- 

 line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or ifhedwells 

 on the frontier, of any stranger whose land is conterminous 

 with his, considering that this is truly to move the immo- 

 vable; and every one should be more williug to move the largest 

 rock which is not a land-mark, than the least stone which is 

 the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours; 

 for Zeus, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and 

 Zeus, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused 

 terrible are the wars which they stir up. . . . For let no one 

 wilfully remove the boundaries of his neighbour's land" '^), etc. 

 With this statement of Plato we may compare another 

 by Siculus Flaccus, which more closely describes the ceremonies 

 connected with these boundary-marks. According to this 

 writer the ancients, when they determined the boundaries, used 

 to place stonas upright near the spöts where they were going 

 to fix them in the ground and where holes were dug for them. 

 Över these holes sacrifices were made and the blood of the 

 victim was poured down; iucense, fruits of the field, honey- 

 cakes, wine and similar thiugs were also thrown into the same. 

 After all had been consumed by fire they placed the stone on 

 the burning remains of the ofiferings whereupon a solemn com- 

 pact was made. „These were the sacrifices", the writer ends, 

 „which lords used to perform when they determined the 

 boundaries between themselves" ^). 



') de Visser, Die nicht menschengestaltigen Götter der Griechen, pp. 6, 7. 



-) Plato, Legg. VIII, 842. 



') Sic. Flacc. De condition. agr. I, 141 : „Antiqui cum terrainos 

 disponerent, ipsos quideni lapides in solidara terram rectos coUocabant proxime 

 eai loca, n quibus fossis factis defixuri eos erant, et nnguentis velaminibusque 



