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 
