Sucking pigs played an important part in Hellenic
purificatory rites; and everybody knows the significance of the Roman
suovetaurilia, depicted on so many bas-reliefs.
Under these circumstances, only the extreme need of a despairing
"reconciler" drowning in a sea of adverse facts, can explain the
catching at such a poor straw as the reckless guess that the
swineherds of the "country of the Gadarenes" were erring Jews, doing a
little clandestine business on their own account. The endeavour to
justify the asserted destruction of the swine by the analogy of
breaking open a cask of smuggled spirits, and wasting their contents
on the ground, is curiously unfortunate. Does Mr. Gladstone mean to
suggest that a Frenchman landing at Dover, and coming upon a cask of
smuggled brandy in the course of a stroll along the cliffs, has the
right to break it open and waste its contents on the ground? Yet the
party of Galileans who, according to the narrative, landed and took a
walk on the Gadarene territory, were as much foreigners in the
Decapolis as Frenchmen would be at Dover. Herod Antipas, their
sovereign, had no jurisdiction in the Decapolis--they were strangers
and aliens, with no more right to interfere with a pig-keeping Hebrew,
than I have a right to interfere with an English professor of the
Israelitic faith, if I see a slice of ham on his plate.
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