The Wicker Man

However, according to the anthropologist James Frazer, there was a darker side to the Saturnalia festival. In Durostorum on the Danube (modern Silistra), Roman soldiers would choose a man from among them to be the Lord of Misrule for thirty days. At the end of that thirty days, his throat was cut on the altar of Saturn. Similar origins of the British Lord of Misrule, as a sacrificial king (a temporary king, as Frazer puts it) who was later put to death for the benefit of all, have also been recorded[citation needed]. If such a practice were even play-acted at Amasea, we can be sure we would have heard about it from the bishop.