212 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 



Efforts were made to cause the victim to go willingly to 

 his death uplifted by a truly religious ecstasy. It was 

 considered unlucky that he should grieve or falter. 



The religious calendar was given over to fixed and 

 movable feasts. The fixed feasts were eighteen in 

 number and each came on the last day of a twenty-day 

 period and gave its name to that period. These eight- 

 een periods correspond roughly with the Mayan uinals 

 or months, but since dates were rarely given in relation 

 to them, they do not have the same calendrical im- 

 portance. The five days that rounded out the 365-day 

 year were considered unlucky. 



Each of the eighteen feasts of the year was under the 

 patronage of a special divinity and each had a set of 

 ceremonies all its own. In some cases the ceremonies 

 were really culminations of long periods of preparation. 

 Thus, on the last day of the month Toxcatl there was 

 sacrificed a young man, chosen from captured chief- 

 tains for his beauty and accomplishments, who for an 

 entire year had been fitting himself for his one turn 

 on the stage of blood and death. This intended vic- 

 tim, gayly attired and accompanied by a retinue of 

 pages, was granted the freedom of the city. When the 

 month of Toxcatl entered he was given brides, whose 

 names were those of goddesses, and in his honor were 

 held a succession of brilliant festivals. On the last day 

 there was a parade of canoes across Lake Tezcoco and 

 when a certain piece of desert land was reached, the 

 brides and courtiers bade farewell to the victim. His 

 pages accompanied him by a little-used trail to the base 

 of an apparently ruined temple. Here he was stripped 

 of his splendid garments and of the jewels that were 

 symbols of divinity. With only a necklace of flutes 

 he mounted the steps of the pyramid. At each step he 

 broke one of the flutes and he arrived at the summit, 



