a
similar ritual.[18] Mr. Frazer, following Mannhardt, contends that all
these deities were tree-gods, and that the ceremonial connected with
their worship was symbolical of the annual death and revival of
vegetation. It is certainly true that in Babylonia, Egypt, Phoenicia,
and above all in Phrygia, a peculiarly emotional form of worship, which
subsequently extended to Cyprus, Crete, Greece, and Italy, arose in
connection with deities who were closely associated with vegetable life.
Tammuz--

  Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
  The Syrian damsels to lament his fate,

and for whose resuscitation his bride, the goddess Istar, descended into
Hades--was represented as originally dwelling in a tree.[19] Adonis, who
was the beloved of Aphrodite--the Syrian Astarte--and is Tammuz under
another name, was born from a myrrh-tree. Attis, the favourite of
Cybele, who was worshipped with barbarous rites in Phrygia, was
represented in the form of a decorated pine-tree, to which his image was
attached. Dionysus, whose death and resurrection were celebrated in
Crete and elsewhere, was worshipped throughout Greece as "Dionysus of
the Tree." These facts are sufficient to warrant the inference that
tree-worship was very firmly rooted in those regions where the Semitic
races came into contact with the Aryans. In Phrygia it was peculiarly
prominent, as we know from classical references. The archaeological
evidence is vague and incomplete, but a characteristic device frequent
in Phrygian art, in which two animals, usually lions rampant, face one
another on either side of a pillar, or an archaic representation of the
mother-goddess Cybele,[20] recalls the sacred tree of Babylonia. The
device is familiar in connection with the lion-gate of Mycenae, which
was probably erected under Phrygian influence.

The Persians venerated trees as the dwelling-place of the deity, as the
haunts of good and evil spirits, and as the habitations in which the
souls of heroes and of the virtuous dead continued their existence.
According to Plutarch, 