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H.—ANTHROPOLOGY 161 
(14) Another feature of the traditional narrative is that prophecies 
always come true ; that advice, except in certain special circumstances, 
is always taken ; that people frequently embark on enterprises which they 
well know will prove disastrous ; and that, as Prof. Chadwick notes, the 
characters are always boasting of what they have done and what they 
are going to do. ‘The reason is that all present at the ritual drama are 
participants in the drama, and in order that they may add their share of 
luck to the drama and draw their share of luck from it, it is essential that 
they should fully realise what is going on. And this brings me to my 
last point. 
(15) In many forms of the traditional narrative there is a character who 
takes the parts of prompter and stage manager. It is his business to tell 
the actors what to do, and when necessary to tell the audience what is 
being done. The heathen ritual drama consisted largely of acts which 
were regarded by the Church as sinful, and in the gradual process of con- 
verting these dramas to Christianity we find the prompter coming to be 
identified with the Devil. It is clear in Faust, for example, that Mephis- 
topheles is nothing more than the prompter ; without him there would 
be no drama at all. Similarly, in that wonderful play The Miracle, in 
which we are shown many of the features of the ritual drama, the Spielmann 
plays the part of prompter and stage manager. 
In the Vélsunga Saga the part is taken by Odin, who speaks the pro- 
logue and epilogue, and intervenes at critical moments.to direct the action. 
Odin, we are told, was represented as an old man with one eye and a 
broad-brimmed hat ; where could he have been so represented except 
onthe stage? In the Arthurian legends it is Merlin who is the prompter. 
He is always telling the actors what to do and the audience what is going 
to happen. 
In the Homeric dramas there does not seem to have been an individual 
prompter. ‘The gods apparently sat, like the Trinity of the miracle plays, 
on a raised platform. ‘They announced what was going to be done, and 
descended, when necessary, to direct the actors. 
CONCLUSION. 
Ridgeway assures us that unless we are prepared to maintain that both 
Herodotus and Thucydides are utterly untrustworthy, we must ‘accept 
what they tell us of Greek prehistory ; but we are in reality faced with no 
such alternative. We may well believe that these writers, like Ridgeway 
himself, were genuine seekers after truth, but that, also like him, their 
methods were totally unscientific. He, and nearly all the other writers 
whom I have quoted, not merely start by assuming what they wish to 
prove—namely, that the I/iad is historical—but they rely almost entirely on 
internal evidence. It would be possible to prove by this method the 
historical truth of any novel. When Homer says that Ithaka is an island, 
they give him full marks for geography. When he says that it is rich in 
wheat, he does not lose any marks : they merely conclude—at least Dr. Leaf 
did—that in Homer’s time some other island was called Ithaka. This kind 
of thing is not science at all : it is merely a parlour game. Unfortunately, 
however, anthropologists have been taught to take it seriously, and are now 
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