the snake was the representation of the "below," therefore to the earth itself. The hearth-goddess also symbolised the continuity of the clan, which, by guaranteeing the legitimacy of the royal line and the continuity of power, was an important part of the Thracian royal customs. These various attributes together made of the goddess of the "autochthonic principle," that is the concept of a ruler's right to rule the land he inhabited deriving from him originating from that place, which held a very important place in archaic societies such as in Thrace, was attested there by the presence of snake-shaped hearth decorations in ancient Thrace. This importance of the hearth-goddess as the embodiment of the "autochthonic principle" is reflected across various Indo-European religions in the emphasis on the hearth-goddess in the rituals through which kings would take over new territory: according to legend, the Argive Perdiccas I used his knife to cut a circle on the floor around the hearth of the king of Lebaea before becoming king of Macedonia among the Scythians, a substitute ritual king would ride around a group of sacred objects believed to be gifts from (the Scythian hearth-goddess) to mark the boundaries of his kingdom whenever the Macedonian king Philip II conquered or sought to conquer a new country, he would marry its princess, that is he would ritually unite with its local personification of Hestia (the Greek hearth-goddess). This concept of the Thracian Hero (and the Thracian king who was his substitute on Earth) obtaining royal power through uniting with the great goddess was closely similar to the Scythian custom whereby the Scythian ancestral hero (and, by extension, his descendant the Scythian king) was believed to acquire royal power by uniting with the Scythian goddess Artimpasa, who was herself the Scythian equivalent of the Thracian Great Goddess . Therefore, another goal of the fight against the Chaos-dragon was the elevation of the Hero himself to the status of ruler, which was symbolised by the bow, which was similarly a symbol of kingship in Achaemenid Persia, and this insignia of power was given to the Hero by the Great Goddess herself as part of his investiture. The boar hunt Representations of the Hero aiming a spear at a boar in front of a tree, and following a motif attested from as early as the 4th century BCE on a silver belt from Lovets, had an analogous