rites of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, or of interpreting all these rites as sun-worship. No modern scholar has fairly faced and accepted either side of this alternative. To accept the former would be to affirm that we know the rites of these deities better than the men who practised, or at least who witnessed them. To accept the latter would involve a wrenching, clipping, mangling, and distorting of myth and ritual from which even Macrobius shrank.(1028) On the other hand, the view that the essence of all these rites was the mimic death and revival of vegetation, explains them separately and collectively in an easy and natural way, and harmonises with the general testimony borne by antiquity to their substantial similarity. The evidence for thus explaining Adonis, Attis, and Osiris has now been presented to the reader; it remains to do the same for Dionysus and Demeter. § 7.—Dionysus. The Greek god Dionysus or Bacchus(1029) is best known as the god of the vine, but he was also a god of trees in general. Thus we are told that almost all the Greeks sacrificed to “Dionysus of the tree.”(1030) In Boeotia one of his titles was “Dionysus in the tree.”(1031) His image was often merely an upright post, without arms, but draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent the head, and with leafy boughs projecting from the head or body to show the nature of the deity.(1032) On a vase his rude effigy is depicted appearing out of a low tree or bush.(1033) He was the patron of cultivated trees;(1034) prayers were offered to him that he would make the trees grow;(1035) and he was especially honoured by husbandmen, chiefly fruit-growers, who set up an image of him, in the shape of a natural tree-stump, in their orchards.(1036) He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned;(1037) and he was himself spoken of as doing a husbandman’s work.(1038) He was referred to as “well-fruited,” “he of the green fruit,” and “making the fruit to grow.”(1039) One of his titles was “teeming” or “bursting” (as of sap or blossoms);(1040) and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaea.(1041) Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree.(1042) The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree “equally with the god,” so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies.(1043) In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers.(1044) Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a Dionysus Ivy;(1045) at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos, where figs were called _meilicha_, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the face of whose image was made of fig-wood.(1046)