union with the Mother Goddess, an act which ensured the plentifulness of the country, but was also indispensable for him to obtain royal power. The hierogamy scene of the Letnitsa Treasure thus represented the Hero (with whom the king was identified and an earthly substitute for) explicitly entering in a hierogamy with the Great Goddess. This has its origin in the role of as the goddess of the hearth, who therefore presided over the centre of things, the home, the proper, the familiar, and wealth. In this role, possessed the attributes common to the hearth goddess throughout various Indo-European religions: she was bound to the circle of the hearth and never left the home, thus always being a maid but never a wife, and was associated to the snake, and, since 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 he 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