'According to him Mars was a god of vegetation, Saturn was a god of vegetation (of sowing), so was Zeus, also Hera, and so on through a great part of the Pantheon. It was natural, therefore, that he should identify Osiris with a god of vegetation--and Mr. Frazer does so.' Far be it from me to say that Mr. Frazer is wrong, when his gods are gods of vegetation, or even that Macrobius is wrong, when his gods are gods of the sun. It appears to me that when a god had obtained a firm hold of public favour, the public might accept him as a god of this, that, and the other aspect or phenomenon of nature. Still, the new school of mythology does work the vegetable element in mythology hard; nearly as hard as the solar element used to be worked. Aphrodite, as the female mate of Adonis, gets mixed up with plant life.[2] So does Attis with Cybele, so does Balder,[3] so does Death,[4] so does Dionysus[5] with undoubted propriety; so does Eabani, so does Gilgamesh, so does Haman, so does Hera,[6] so does Iasion with Demeter,[7] so does Isis,[8] so does Jack-in-the-Green, so does Kupalo,[9] so do Linus and Lityerses,[10] so does Mamurius Veturius,[11] so does Merodach or Marduk (if he represents Eabani or Gilgamesh), so does Mars,[12] so does Osiris,[13] so, I think, does Semiramis,[14] so does Tammuz, so does Virbius,[15] so does Zeus, probably;[16] so does a great multitude of cattle, cats, horses, bulls, goats, cocks, with plenty of other beasts. The solar mythologists did not spare heroes like Achilles; they, too, were the sun. But the vegetable school, the Covent Garden school of mythologists, mixes up real human beings with vegetation. Jesus Christ derives his divinity, or some of it, as we have seen, from a long array of criminals who were hanged partly as kings, partly as gods of vegetation. I do not feel absolutely assured that Judas Iscariot, at his annual burnings in effigy, escapes the universal doom any more than the ugly deformed person who was whipped and killed in old Attica. But an unexpected man to be a representative of a god of vegetation is the priest of the grove of Diana near Aricia. He is known to all from the familiar verse of Macaulay-- These trees in whose dark shadow The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain.