CHAPTER IV
GENII OF FATE
INTERESTING evidence of fatalism is recorded by the Greek historian Procopius,11 who asserts that the Slavs knew nothing about fate and denied that it had any sort of influence on man; when threatened by death or overcome by illness, or when preparing for war, they vowed to offer a sacrifice to the gods, should the peril be luckily passed.
This evidence may be considered as proof that the Slavs were not blind fatalists, but believed in a higher being who dealt out life and death, and whose favour might be won by sacrifices. Many reports about these beings have been preserved.
Among the ancient Russian deities written tradition makes mention of Rod and Rožanice,12 to whom the ancient Slavs offered bread, cheese, and honey. This worship of Rod and Rožanice points to the fact that, in the belief of the ancient Slavs, the fate of man depended, first of all, on his descent, viz. his male forefathers and ancestors and on his mother (rožanice). The function of the ancestors as the dispensers of fate having gradually disappeared from the belief of the people, the Rožanices alone kept their place, this being easily explained by the fact that the connexion between a new-born child and its mother is much more intimate and apparent than that with the whole line of ancestors. Similarly the Roman Junones (protectors of women) were originally souls of the dead,13 while the Dísirs of Scandinavian mythology are spirits of deceased mothers that have become dispensers of fate.
Among the Croatians and Slovenians the original appellations
