Sagesigma Unbound: Virbius and Octagonal: A Potential Tribute to Rex Nemorensis

ON OCTOBER 17, 2016 BY SAGESIGMA

One of this past weekend’s news items included the following story:  Octagonal dies Aged 24.  Octagonal, known a the ‘Big O,’ was a champion, New Zealand-brew thoroughbred stallion that won multiple races during the 1990’s.  Born on October 8, 1992, Octagonal’s career included a “second placing in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes, his 28th start, with 14 wins, seven second placings and one third for in $5,892,231 stakes.”  Octagonal became Australian Horse of the Year in 1996, earned and retiring to stud status in 1997, went on to sire a number of other thoroughbred horses.  On October 15, 2016, Octagonal was euthanized due to poor physical health at the age of 24; as many articles of the day stated, “although still bright and alert mentally, the horse was struggling physically in recent weeks and was euthanised on Saturday morning.”  The intent is to bury Octagonal at the Australian Woodlands Stud reserve, where Octagonal spent the better part of the past 16 years of his life.  (more info can be found here)

What’s in A Date?

Or jumping tracks to Sir Frazer’s The Golden Bough, and the  Potential Tribute to Virbius and the Killing the Corn God

The deity Virbius, as Frazer states, is the “first of the divine Kings of the Wood at Aricia.” Viribius was the male companion of the Goddess Diana, and assisted as a companion to Diana’s supreme reign in the sacred wood.  Virbius was alleged to manifest into this plane of existence as Hippolytus, and kept Diana’s Greek counterpart, Artemis, company in the sacred wood of Aricia.  Forgoing any interest in other women’s love or attention, Hippolytus spurned Aphrodite; Aphrodite in turn enthused Hippolytus’ stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with Hippolytus.  Hippolytus turned away the “wicked approaches” of Phaedra; Phaedra, now also upset with a lack of acceptance from Hippolytus, forged a false story to her husband and Hippolytus’s father, Theseus, and accused Hippolytus of having made inappropriate advances on to her.  Theseus believed his wife, and in anger summoned his sire Poseidon to destroy and kill Hippolytus in revenge for the false wrong. The execution eventually occurred; Poseidon summoned a fierce bull from the ocean and attacked Hippolytus and his horse drawn chariot on the shores of the Saronic Gulf. The horses, terrified at the Poseidon creation, bolted and threw Hippolytus from chariot, eventually dragging him to his death.

This myth was utilized by members of his and Diana’s worship to preclude the allowance of horses into the sacred grove of worship; horses were not allowed access to the grounds of sanctuary due to the injury they inflicted upon their dead deity. However, Frazer states, there was the possibility of an annual exception;  a once a year ritual wherein the horse was allowed access into the sacred grove for use of death and sacrifice, similar to the sacrifice of the goat once a year in Athens to praise Athena.  Frazer argues that the common thought of horse sacrifice, ie that being of the slaughter and death of an enemy of the deity, is incorrect.   Frazer states that the horse was not slaughtered as “an enemy to the deity of the grove,” but rather as being representative of the deity of the Arician grove.  At a unique time in the calendar of the ancients, wherein the fall harvest was to soon begin, the horse represented the fructifying sprit of the both the deity of the tree and the deity of the corn.  The horse’s sacrifice of said spirit was in fact representative of the killing of the god that they adored, who in turn would resurrect the following spring and bring with it a new, successful yield of crops for the adoring populace.

The Roman Sacrifice of the October Horse

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