TROPHIES. 49 



executed felons on gibbets, or their heads on spikes, 

 originates from the bringing back of trophies taken from 

 slain enemies. Though usually a part only of the slain 

 enemy is fixed up, yet sometimes the whole body is; as 

 when the dead Saul, minus his head, was fastened by the 

 Philistines to the wall of Bethshan. And that fixing up a 

 felon s body is more frequent, probably arises from the fact 

 that it has not to be brought from a great distance, as 

 would usually have to be the body of an enemy. 



356. Though no direct connexion exists between 

 trophy-taking and ceremonial government, the foregoing 

 facts reveal such indirect connexions as to make it needful to 

 note the custom. It enters as a factor into the three forms 

 of control social, political, and religious. 



If, in primitive states, men are honoured according to 

 their prowess if their prowess is estimated here by the 

 number of heads they can show, there by the number of 

 jaw-bones, and elsewhere by the number of scalps, if such 

 trophies are treasured up for generations, and the pride of 

 families is proportioned to the number of them taken by 

 ancestors if of the Gauls in the time of Posidonius, we 

 read that &quot; the heads of their enemies that were the chief est 

 persons of quality, they carefully deposit in chests, em 

 balming them with the oil of cedars, showing them to 

 strangers, glory and boast &quot; that they or their forefathers 

 had refused great sums of money for them ; then, obviously, 

 a kind of class distinction is initiated by trophies. On 

 reading that in some places a man s rank varies with the 

 quantity of bones in or upon his dwelling, we cannot deny 

 that the display of these proofs of personal superiority, 

 originates a regulative influence in social intercourse. 



As political control evolves, trophy-taking becomes in 

 several ways instrumental to the maintenance of authority. 

 Beyond the awe felt for the chief whose many trophies 

 show his powers of destruction, there conies the greater 



