of
the whole year was held sacred to him; the four winter months were
the months of Dionysus; and in the shrine of Apollo itself he was
worshipped with almost equal devotion.

The religion of Dionysus takes us back, then, into that old Greek
life of the vineyards, as we see it on many painted vases, with much
there as we should find it now, as we see it in Bennozzo Gozzoli's
mediaeval fresco of the Invention of Wine in the Campo Santo at Pisa-
-the family of Noah presented among all the circumstances of a Tuscan
vineyard, around the press from which the first wine is flowing, a
painted idyll, with its vintage colours still opulent in decay, and
not without its solemn touch of biblical symbolism.  For differences,
we detect in that primitive life, and under thatand so far, her
attributes are to some degree confused with those of the Thessalian
Gaia and the Phrygian Cybele.  Afterwards, and it is now that her
most characteristic attributes begin to concentrate themselves, [103]
she separates herself from these confused relationships, as specially
the goddess of agriculture, of the fertility of the earth when
furthered by human skill.  She is the preserver of the seed sown in
hope, under many epithets derived from the incidents of vegetation,
as the simple countryman names her, out of a mind full of the various
experiences of his little garden or farm.  She is the most definite
embodiment of all those fluctuating mystical instincts, of which
Gaia,* the mother of the earth's gloomier offspring, is a vaguer and
mistier one.  There is nothing of the confused outline, the mere
shadowiness