Among the Semitic races with whose goddess of love Aphrodite was thus connected the deity had many names. She was regarded as at once the patroness of the moon, and of fertility in plants beasts, and women. Among the Phoenicians her title is Astarte among the Assyrians she was Istar; among the Syrians, Aschera; in Babylon, Mylitta.** Common practices in the ritual of the Eastern and Western goddesses were the licence of the temple-girls, the sacrifices of animals supposed to be peculiarly amorous (sparrows, doves, he-goats), and, above all, the festivals and fasts for Adonis. * Paus., Hi. 28, 1. ** So Roscher, Ausfuhr. Lexik., pp. 391, 647. See also Astarte, p. 656. There can scarcely be a doubt that Adonis--the young hunter beloved by Aphrodite, slain by the boar, and mourned by his mistress--is a symbol of the young season, the _renouveau_, and of the spring vegetation, ruined by the extreme heats, and passing the rest of the year in the underworld. Adonis was already known to Hesiod, who called him, with obvious meaning, the son of _Phoenix_ and Alphesiboea, while Pausanias attributed to him, with equal significance, Assyrian descent.* The name of Adonis is manifestly a form of the Phoenician Adon, "Lord". The nature of his worship among the Greeks is most familiar from the fifteenth Idyll of Theocritus, with its lively picture of dead Adonis lying in state, of the wailing for him by Aphrodite, of the little "gardens" of quickly-growing flowers which personified him, and with the beautiful nuptial hymn for his resurrection and reunion to Aphrodite. Similar rites were customary at Athens.** Mannhardt gives the main points in the ritual of the Adonis-feast thus: The fresh vegetation is personified as a fair young man, who in ritual is represented by a kind of idol, and also by the plants of the "Adonis-gardens". The youth comes in spring, the bridegroom to the bride, the vernal year is their honeymoon. In the heat of summer the bridegroom perishes for the nonce, and passes the winter in the land of the dead. His burial is bewailed, his resurrection is rejoiced in. The occasions of the rite are spring and midsummer. The idol and the plants are finally cast into the sea, or into well-water. * Apollod., _Bibliothec_, iii. 14, 4. ** Aristoph., _Lysistrata_, 389; Mannhardt, _Feld und Wold Kultus_, ii. 276. The union of the divine lovers is represented by pairing of men and maidens in bonds of a kindly sentimental sort,--the flowery bonds of valentines.