their beds, and to perform for their wives the chores their wives had previously carried out for them, thus showing them that they had behaved "like women" in battle by subordinating them to the lower status of their women. This punishment remained in place until the Dacian warriors had wiped out this humiliation by valour in battle. Thus, after having failed the duties of manhood in war, each warrior had to undergo the social inversion of the roles of man and woman, and therefore assume the place and functions of a woman. Royal customs The Thracian king was assimilated to the Hero and was his substitute on Earth. Hence, he was considered to be responsible for order and abundance in the world, of which the most important rituals were the divine marriage with the Great Goddess and the hunt. However, there were more customs and rituals which were attached to kingship. The royal oracle The royal oracle of the temple of was especially renowned and had a reputation for giving reliable answers on dynastic issues, and it was believed that high flames would blaze when someone predestined to be king would pour libations on the altar: the approval or rejection of a person as a ruler were believed to have been given by the "Dionysian" himself and was in itself a form of investiture. This happened when the flames rose high over the roof of the sanctuary each time during Alexander the Great's and the father of the Roman emperor Augustus's respective visits to this temple (the latter was told by the priests that his son would become "lord of the world"). The importance of the royal oracle of the temple of was why who controlled the temple was of paramount importance to the Thracians. The temple itself initially did not belong to any single tribe, but it later became the object of inter-tribal disputes, and when the Romans took it away from the Satrae and gave it to the Odrysians, its Bessi high priest, Vologases, started a rebellion. The royal initiation Since the kings in archaic Indo-European societies such as the Thracians were from the warrior class, the royal customs originated from the customs of military initiation. However, kingship in Indo-European societies also united the functions of the threefold Indo-European class system: the priestly, military, and agricultural classes. Therefore, in addition to being military leaders, the Thracian kings were