the Greek form of les (Ir/e, or in capitals IHS). This Egyptian saviour 

 sun-god became later the popular god Bacchus of the Romans, just 

 as Apollo had been the popular Greek divinity, and was thus described 

 by Macrobius : " The images or statues of Bacchus represent him some- 

 times under the form of a child, sometimes under that of a young 

 man, at other times with a beard of a mature man, and, lastly, with 

 the wrinkles of old age, as the Greeks represent the god whom they 

 call Baccapee and Briseis, and as the Neapolitans in Campania paint 

 the god whom they honour under the name of Hebon. These 

 differences of age relate to the sun, who seems to be a tender child at 

 the winter solstice, such as the Egyptians represent him on a certain 

 day [December 25th], when they bring forth from an obscure nook of 

 their sanctuary his infantine image, because, the day being then at the 

 shortest, the god seems yet to be but a feeble infant : gradually growing 

 from this moment, he arrives, by degrees, at the vernal equinox, under 

 the form of a young man, of which his images at that time bear the 

 appearance then he arrives at his maturity, indicated by the tufted 

 beard with which the images which represent him at the summer solstice 

 are adorned, the day having then taken all the increase of which it is sus- 

 ceptible. Lastly, he decreases insensibly, and arrives at his old age, 

 pictured by the state of decrepitude in which he is portrayed in the 

 images." 



Yao, lao, or Adonis was of Semitic origin, although widely wor- 

 shipped in Greece, and generally identified with Zeus, whose Semitic 

 counterpart he really was, although himself a saviour sun-god. Yao, to 

 the Phoenicians and Chaldeans, was as Zeus and Prometheus to the 

 Greeks, and represented the whole annual circuit, though he was always 

 called by the Greeks specially the god of the autumn, on account of 

 his having, at that period, to part from his lover, Aphrodite (Venus), for 

 six months ; and thus there was usually a certain melancholy attached 

 to his worship, the oracle of the Klarion Apollon terming him the 

 darling or tender Yao ('law), god of the autumn. 



As the Greek power and civilisation declined and the Roman 

 advanced, the god Yao, like his counterpart les, became one of the 

 most popular of the Roman deities, being worshipped under the name 

 Adonis in every city of Italy ; and the mythological horizon became 

 crowded with gods and demi-gods of every description, until, at length, 

 it became a very difficult matter to determine who was a god and who 

 was not worthy of that distinction ; for the Roman Emperors were 

 invariably deified, as well as others of less degree. The old Aryan 

 drama, however,. was preserved throughout in the worship of the princi- 

 pal gods, and has even been perpetuated in the reformed religion of the 

 Semitic communistic enthusiast, Yahoshua, which became, soon after 



