This is quaintly shown in the two reliefs placed side by side in fig. 109[919]. The larger one to the left shows a seated god holding a cornucopia; beneath his chair is an eagle. In deference to this characteristically Olympian bird we should expect the dedication to be to Zeus. We find it is to the ‘Good Spirit.’ In the smaller relief a similar bird is perched below the chair, and a humble pig is the sacrifice, as it is to Zeus Meilichios; the inscription tells us that ‘the Club-men dedicated it to Zeus Philios in the archonship of Hegesios.’ The relief is dated by this archonship as set up in the year 324/3 B.C. The Friendly Zeus was the god of good fellowship and was of wide popularity[920]. To cheerful, hilarious souls it was comforting to think that there was another Zeus, less remote, more of the cornucopia and less of the thunderbolt, and that he was ready to join a human feast. The diner-out needs and finds a god in his own image, and Zeus—Zeus with his title of Philios, accustomed as he was to Homeric banquets, was ready for the post. So the comic parasite reasons[921]: ‘I wish to explain clearly What a holy orthodox business this dining-out is— An invention of the gods; the other arts Were invented by men of talent, not by the gods. But dining-out was invented by Zeus the Friendly, By common consent the greatest of all the gods. Now good old Zeus comes straight into people’s houses In his free and easy way, rich and poor alike. Wherever he sees a comfortable couch set out And by its side a table properly laid, Down he sits to a regular dinner with courses, Wine and dessert and all, and then off he goes Straight back home, and he never pays his shot.’ The fooling is obviously based on ritual practice in the ‘Hero-Feast’ that developed into the Feasts of the Gods, the Theoxenia. * * * * * Our argument ends where it began—with Zeus Meilichios, an early chthonic stratum of worship, a later Olympian supersession. The two religions, alien in ritual, alien in significance, never more than mechanically fused. We have also seen that the new religion was powerless to alter the old save in name; the Diasia becomes the festival of Zeus, the ritual is a holocaust offered to a snake; Apollo and Artemis take over the Thargelia, but it remains a savage ceremony of magical purification. It might seem that we had reached the end. In reality, for religion in any deep and mystical sense, we have yet to watch the beginning; we have yet to see the coming of a god, who came from the North and yet was no Achaean, no Olympian, who belonging to the ancient stock revived the ancient ritual, the sacrifice that was in its inner content a sacrifice of purification, but revived it with a significance all his own, the god who took over the ritual of the Anthesteria, Dionysos. DIONYSOS ON HERO-RELIEFS.