difficulty, made the admirable _mot_ that men were "mortal gods," gods were "immortal men."[4] In our literature, although the fact does not always appear distinctly, the Dagda, Angus Óg, Lugh the Long-handed, Ogma, and their fellows are the equivalents of the immortal gods, while certainly Cuchulain and Conor and probably Curigh Mac Daire, Conall Cearnach, and the other famous Red Branch chiefs, whatever they may have been in reality, are the equivalent of the Homeric heroes, that is to say, believed to have been epigoni of the gods, and therefore greater than ordinary human beings; while just as in Greek story there are the cycles of the war round Thebes, the voyage of the _Argo_ the fate of Œdipus, etc., so we have in Irish numerous smaller groups of epic stories--now unfortunately mostly lost or preserved in digests--which, leaving out the Cuchulain and Fenian cycles, centre round such minor characters as Macha, who founded Emania, Leary Lore, Labhraidh [Lowry] the Mariner, and others. That the Irish gods die in both saga and annals like so many human beings, in no wise militates against the supposition of their godhead. Even the Greek did not always consider his gods as eternal. A study of comparative mythology teaches that gods are in their original essence magnified men, and subject to all men's changes and chances. They are begotten and born like men. They eat, sleep, feel sickness, sorrow, pain, like men. "Like men," says Grimm, "they speak a language, feel passions, transact affairs, are clothed and armed, possess dwellings and utensils." Being man-like in these things, they are also man-like in their deaths. They are only on a greater scale than we. "This appears to me," says Grimm,[5] "a fundamental feature in the faith of the heathen, that they allowed to their gods not an unlimited and unconditional duration, but only a term of life far exceeding that of man." As their shape is like the shape of man only vaster, so are their lives like the lives of men only indefinitely longer. "With our ancestors [the Teutons]," said Grimm, "the thought of the gods being immortal retires into the background. The Edda never calls them 'eylifir' or 'ôdauðligir,' and their death is spoken of without disguise." So is it with us also. The Dagda dies, slain in the battle of North Moytura; the three "gods of the De Danann" die at the instigation of Lugh; and the great Lugh himself, from whom Lugdunum, now Lyons, takes its name, and to whom early Celtic inscriptions are found, shares the same fate. Manannán is slain, so is Ogma, and so are many more. And yet though recorded as slain they do not wholly disappear. Manannán came back to Bran riding in his chariot across the Ocean,[6] and Lugh makes his frequent appearances amongst the living. [1] These genealogies were in later times, like the Irish ones, extended to Noah. [2] Herod, iv. 94-96. [3] Numa, ch. xix.