According to Mr. Farnell, the latest writer on the subject, the chief gods of the Greeks were in their origin deities of vegetation, the special attributes which we associate with them being subsequent accretions. The pre-Hellenic Cronos gave his name to an Attic harvest-festival held in July, and his ancient emblem was the sickle.[55] Zeus, besides being the oak-god of Dodona, was worshipped in Attica as a god of agriculture and honoured with cereal offerings.[56] Artemis was not primarily a goddess of chastity, nor a moon-goddess, nor the twin-sister of Apollo, but an independent divinity, closely related to the wood-nymphs, and connected with water and with wild vegetation and forest beasts. She was worshipped in Arcadia as the goddess of the nut-tree and the cedar, and in Laconia as the goddess of the laurel and the myrtle. Her idol at Sparta was said to have been found in a willow brake, bound round with withies. At Teuthea in Achaea she was worshipped as the goddess of the woodland pasture, and at Cnidus as the nurturer of the hyacinth.[57] In the legend of the colonisation of Boiae she was represented as embodied in a hare which suddenly disappeared in a myrtle-tree.[58] But her character as a tree-goddess comes out still more clearly in the cult of the “hanging Artemis” at Kaphyae in Arcadia,[59] which no doubt grew out of the primitive custom of suspending a mask or image of the vegetation spirit to the sacred tree. The association of Hera with tree-worship is less pronounced. She was said to have been born under a willow-tree at Samos, and her worship in that island was characterised by a yearly ceremony in which her priestess secreted her idol in a willow brake, where it was subsequently rediscovered and honoured with an oblation of cakes.[60] In Argos she was worshipped as the deity who gave the fruits of the earth, and as such was represented with a pomegranate in her hand. It is also worthy of note that the familiar symbol of a conventionalised tree between two griffins appears on the stephanos or coronet of the goddess on coins of Croton of the fourth century, and of certain South Italian cities, as well as on a colossal bust now at Venice, which, like the head on the coins, was presumably copied from the temple-image at Croton.[61] Aphrodite was not a primitive Greek deity, but her connection with vegetative life is abundantly clear. She was, in fact, but a Hellenised variant of the great Oriental goddess, worshipped in different parts as Istar, Astarte, Cybele, etc., who was essentially a divinity of vegetation.[62]