the Thracian _Deos_ or _Dios
nysos_, "Zeus-Young" or "Zeus-the-son." And in the Orphic tradition it
is laid down that Zeus yields up his power to Dionysus and bids all the
gods of the Cosmos obey him. The mother of Dionysus was Semele, a name
which, like Gaia and Rhea, means "Earth." The series is not only
continuous but infinite; for on one side Uranus (Sky) was himself the
son of Gaia the eternal, and on the other, every year a Zeus was
succeeded by a "Young Zeus."

The Young King, bearer of spring and the new summer, is the Saviour of
the Earth, made cold and lifeless by winter and doomed to barrenness by
all the pollutions of the past; the Saviour also of mankind from all
kinds of evils, and bringer of a new _Aion_, or Age, to the world.
Innumerable different figures in Greek mythology are personifications of
him, from Dionysus and Heracles to the Dioscuri and many heroes of myth.
He bears certain distinguishing marks. He is always the son of a God and
a mortal princess. The mother is always persecuted, a _mater dolorosa_,
and rescued by her son. The Son is always a Saviour; very often a
champion who saves his people from enemies or monsters; but sometimes a
Healer of the Sick, like Asclepius; sometimes, like Dionysus, a priest
or hierophant with a _thiasos_, or band of worshippers; sometimes a
King's Son who is sacrificed to save his people, and mystically
identified with some sacrificial animal, a lamb, a young bull, a horse
or a fawn, whose blood has supernatural power. Sometimes again he is a
divine or miraculous Babe, for whose birth the whole world has been
waiting, who will bring his own Age or Kingdom and "make all things
new." His life is almost always threatened by a cruel king, like Herod,
but he always escapes. The popularity of the Divine Babe is probably due
to the very widespread worship of the Egyptian Child-God, Harpocrates.
Egyptian also is the Virgin-Mother, impregnated by the holy _Pneuma_ or
_Spiritus_ of the god, or sometimes by the laying on of his hand.

Besides the ordinary death and rebirth of the vegetation year god, the
general conclusion to which these considerations point has many
parallels elsewhere. Our own religious ideas are subject to the same
tendencies as those of other civilizations. Men and women, when
converted to a new religion or instructed in some new and unaccustomed
knowledge, are extremely unwilling, and sometimes absolutely unable, to
give up their old magical or reli