IX 



SOME PRIMITIVE THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN 

 OF MAN 



By J. G. Frazer. 



Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 



On a bright day in late autumn a good many years ago I had 

 ascended the hill of Panopeus in Phocis to examine the ancient Greek 

 fortifications which crest its brow. It was the first of November, but 

 the weather was very hot ; and when my work among the ruins was 

 done, I was glad to rest under the shade of a clump of fine holly-oaks, 

 to inhale the sweet refreshing perfume of the wild thyme which 

 scented all the air, and to enjoy the distant prospects, rich in natural 

 beauty, rich too in memories of the legendary and historic past. 

 To the south the finely-cut peak of Helicon peered over the low 

 intervening hills. In the west loomed the mighty mass of Parnassus, 

 its middle slopes darkened by pine-woods like shadows of clouds 

 brooding on the mountain-side ; while at its skirts nestled the ivy- 

 mantled walls of Daulis overhanging the deep glen, whose romantic 

 beauty accords so well with the loves and sorrows of Procne and 

 Philomela, which Greek tradition associated with the spot. North- 

 wards, across the broad plain to which the hill of Panopeus descends, 

 steep and bare, the eye rested on the gap in the hills through which 

 the Cephissus winds his tortuous way to flow under grey willows, at 

 the foot of barren stony hills, till his turbid waters lose themselves, no 

 longer in the vast reedy swamps of the now vanished Copaic Lake, 

 but in the darkness of a cavern in the limestone rock. Eastward, 

 clinging to the slopes of the bleak range of which the hill of Panopeus 

 forms part, were the ruins of Chaeronea, the birthplace of Plutarch ; 

 and out there in the plain was fought the disastrous battle which laid 

 Greece at the feet of Macedonia. There, too, in a later age East and 

 West met in deadly conflict, when the Roman armies under Sulla 

 defeated the Asiatic hosts of Mithridates. Such was the landscape 

 spread out before me on one of those farewell autumn days of almost 

 pathetic splendour, when the departing summer seems to linger 

 fondly, as if loth to resign to winter the enchanted mountains of 



