or sickly,
the flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the fields
yield an abundant or a scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can
conceive of is the natural death of their ruler, whether he succumb to
sickness or old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death
would entail the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their
possessions; fatal epidemics would sweep away man and beast, the earth
would refuse her increase, nay the very frame of nature itself might be
dissolved. To guard against these catastrophes it is necessary to put
the king to death while he is still in the full bloom of his divine
manhood, in order that his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to
his successor, may renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions
through a perpetual line of vigorous incarnations may remain eternally
fresh and young, a pledge and security that men and animals shall in
like manner renew their youth by a perpetual succession of generations,
and that seedtime and harvest, and summer and winter, and rain and
sunshine shall never fail. That, if my conjecture is right, was why the
priest of Aricia, the King of the Wood at Nemi, had regularly to perish
by the sword of his successor.

[What was the Golden Bough?]

But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each
candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay
the priest? These questions I will now try to answer.

[Sacred kings and priests forbidden to touch the ground with their
feet.]

It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by
which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is
regulated. The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader's
attention is that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his
foot. This rule was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in
Mexico; he profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground
with his foot.[2] Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the
ground; he was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he
lighted anywhere they laid rich tapestry for him to walk upon.[3] For
the Mikado of Japan to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful
degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive
him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's shoulders;
within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats.[4] The king and queen
of