ilt or sin also. For the life of the Year-Daemon, as it seems to be
reflected in Tragedy, is generally a story of Pride and Punishment. Each
Year arrives, waxes great, commits the sin of Hubris, and then is slain.
The death is deserved; but the slaying is a sin: hence comes the next
Year as Avenger, or as the Wronged One re-risen. 'All things pay
retribution for their injustice one to another according to the
ordinance of time.'[33:1] It is this range of ideas, half suppressed
during the classical period, but evidently still current among the ruder
and less Hellenized peoples, which supplied St. Paul with some of his
most famous and deep-reaching metaphors. 'Thou fool, that which thou
sowest is not quickened except it die.'[33:2] 'As He was raised from the
dead we may walk with Him in newness of life.' And this renovation must
be preceded by a casting out and killing of the old polluted life--'the
old man in us must first be crucified'.

'The old man must be crucified.' We observed that in all the three
Festivals there was a pervasive element of vague fear. Hitherto we have
been dealing with early Greek religion chiefly from the point of view of
_mana_, the positive power or force that man tries to acquire from his
totem-animal or his god. But there is also a negative side to be
considered: there is not only the _mana_, but the _tabu_, the Forbidden,
the Thing Feared. We must cast away the old year; we must put our sins
on to a +pharmakos+ or scapegoat and drive it out. When the ghosts have
returned and feasted with us at the Anthesteria we must, with tar and
branches of buckthorn, purge them out of every corner of the rooms till
the air is pure from the infection of death. We must avoid speaking
dangerous words; in great moments we must avoid speaking any words at
all, lest there should be even in the most innocent of them some unknown
danger; for we are surrounded above and below by Keres, or Spirits,
winged influences, shapeless or of unknown shape, sometimes the spirits
of death, sometimes of disease, madness, calamity; thousands and
thousands of them, as Sarpedon says, from whom man can never escape nor
hide;[34:1] 'all the air so crowded with them', says an unknown ancient
poet, 'that there is not one empty chink into which you could push the
spike of a blade of corn.'[34:2]

The extraordinary security of our modern life in times of peace makes it
hard for us to realize, except by a definite effort of the imaginat