the year with the goddess of death, and the other half only with the goddess of love, while according to others, who divided the year into three parts, Adonis was condemned to dwell four months in Hades, four months he was free to dwell where he might choose, and the remaining four were passed in the companionship of Ashtoreth, to whom he devoted also his four months of freedom.

Here then we see how a custom, though it begins with the simplest events which mark the ordinary course of the year, may be modified by local and other influences, and how after a time it may produce sacred ceremonies, a myth to explain them, and in the end a new religious faith.

This becomes particularly clear when we can watch a custom transferred from one country to another and the concomitant myth translated, as it were, from one language into another.

We are told (p. 229) that after the rovolt of Egypt from the Assyrian king and the rise of the 26th Dynasty, Egyptian beliefs found their way into Phenicia, where the story of Osiris was mixed up with that of Adonis. Osiris too was a Sun-god, who had been slain and had risen again from the dead, so that the festival of Adonis at Gebal could easily be assimilated to that of Osiris in Egypt. It was owing to this amalgamation that the days of mourning for Adonis were succeeded by days of rejoicing at the revival of Osiris and his counterpart Adonis.

Still more curious is the way in which in Cyprus the legends of Istar and Tammuz, or Ashtoreth and Adonis, were grafted on the Greek legends of Aphrodite. The idea that the Greeks had no conception

and name of the goddess Aphrodite, before they were indoctrinated by the Phenicians, can hardly be held any longer. What happened in Egypt, happened in Greece, but while in Egypt the chief points of similarity were seen between Osiris and Adonis, in Cyprus and afterwards in Greece it was Ashtoreth, the female element of the legend, that was attracted by Aphrodite. We shall leave it undecided whether the name of Theias or Thoas, the king of Lemnos, the husband of Myrina, and the father of Adonis, is or is not a corruption of Tammuz, as Professor Sayce suggests. Adonis is represented in some Greek legends as the son of the Assyrian king Theias and of Myrrha (or Smyrna), also of Kinyras1, the founder of Paphos in Cyprus and of Kenchreis (or Metharme). This shows that the Greeks were never in doubt that Adonis came to them from Assyria and Cyprus, and that his festival, the ada coμós, the death, as well as the cupeσis, the finding of Adonis, was of Oriental origin. That they substituted Aphrodite for his beloved was as natural to them as that they made him stay four months in Hades with Persephone. But to suppose that the Greek Aphrodite, and all the legends told of her, owed their origin to the Phenicians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or Accadians, is flying in the face of all the facts, so far as known to us at present, and of all analogies.

Zeus Xenios.

Another instance of an Eastern custom modifying

Kinyras is derived by Professor Sayce from Gingira, the Accadian equivalent of Istar. Adonis also is called Gingras. Kinyras was formed through a play on the Phenician word Kinner, the 'zither.' His wife's name Kenchreis is likewise traced back by Professor Sayce (p. 264) to Gingiras, meaning goddess, the feminine of dingir, creator.

the character of an ancient Greek god we have in Zeus Xenios. Zeus had originally no connection whatever with the custom of hospitality, whether in the sense of protection granted to strangers, or of actual hospitality offered to them. That custom was not of Greek origin, but came to the Greeks, as Professor Ihering has shown, from the Phenicians. Ideas of humanity, such as we find in the Old Testament, are foreign to the ancient Aryan nations. A sentiment such as Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country; for I am the Lord your God 2,' would have sounded strange to the poets of the Veda and even to Homer. The one idea among the Aryas, as among most ancient people, seems to have been that whoever was not a friend, whether through relationship or citizenship, was an enemy. If he was dangerous, he could be killed, and there was no law to punish the murderer. In Latin, the stranger and the enemy had the same name, hostis, that is to say, they were the same thing in the eyes of the Romans.

It was by the Phenicians, the traders of the ancient world, that the necessity was felt for the first time of acquiring some kind of protection from strangers with whom they trafficked. Unless that protection was granted, they would not establish landing-places and depots for their merchandise. They could neither sell nor buy. But if they suffered, the people also suffered who wished to exchange their own produce for the merchandise brought by the Phenicians. Thus some kind of international comity sprang up between the

1 Die Gastfreundschaft im Alterthum, von Rudolf von Ihering, 1887. Leviticus xxiv. 22.

Phenicians and their clients. Professor Ihering has made it very clear that the Phenicians were the inventors of the original passport, the tessera hospitalis, a token of mutual hospitality which was broken into two parts, each party retaining one half in order that if either of them or their descendants should meet, they might recognise one another, and remember their ancient family obligations1. These tesserae were called in Greek σύμβολα, from συμβάλλειν, used in the sense of throwing the two broken pieces together to see whether they fit 2.

When the Greeks had accepted from the Phenicians the principle of international law in its most primitive form, they would have found it difficult to invest it with any binding sanction. Some families might bind themselves to protect the free trade of the world, but to others, to whole communities, particularly to the Vikings of old, the temptation to plunder the vessels and to kill the merchants must have been great. They therefore had recourse to religion, and placed the law of hospitality under the protection of their supreme deity, Zeus, making him the protector of the stranger, and soon also of their guest, and calling him Zeus Xenios, a name unknown among the other Aryan nations. All this must have taken place before the days of Homer, and it is all the more important as showing us at how early a period a custom, first established by Phenician merchants, was able to modify, or at all events to expand, the character of the principal deity of the Greeks, and give rise in 1 Poenulus, 1047 seq., 'Conferre tesseram si vis hospitalem, ecc' eam attuli.'

This is Ihering's explanation, based on Plato, Symposion 191, and Schol. in Eurip. Medea, 613. Mommsen differs.

time to the first recognition of the rights of man as such, placed under the protection of the highest god.

How customs should be studied.

This is the spirit in which the study of customs and laws can be made subservient to the study of Natural Religion, showing how Natural Religion, indeed, may give rise to certain customs, but how, in the majority of cases, customs come first, simply as usages of proved utility, and are afterwards invested with a sacred character, simply and solely because they have been found useful for many generations. Human nature is so made, that what is old is regarded as venerable and, after a time, as sacred, so that even when it has to be changed or abolished, it is treated with reverent hands.

Nowhere can we study this growth of custom and its gradual assumption of a sacred character better than in India. In that country custom is everything, while the idea of law, in our sense of the word, hardly exists. To speak, for instance, of the Laws of Manu is a complete misnomer. Who was Manu, and what power had he to give or to enforce laws? The true meaning of the title of that book, Mânavadharma-sâstra, is 'the teaching of what is considered right among the Mânavas,' these Mânavas not being meant originally for men in general, but for a Brahmanic family, known by the name of Mânava, and claiming Manu among their ancestors. It cannot be called a code of laws, in our sense of the word, because laws, in order to be laws, must have the sanction of some authority able to enforce them. But who is to enforce such laws as we find in Manu, or in the