trial of initiation, but also one of consecration, and if they failed it they would die and never become king, and their dynasty would end. Therefore, by slaying the boar in front of the Tree of Life, protected the continuation of the cycle of life, and was therefore the god of renascent nature and the guardian of the worldly order. In some versions of the iconography of the Hero's boar hunt, an altar stands between the god and the boar, and a snake is always coiled on the Tree of Life: since snakes wake up from hibernation in spring, and sleep symbolised death while awakening symbolised rebirth, the snake represented the awakening of nature in spring the shedding of skins by snakes in Spring was also a symbol of rebirth, and therefore of immortality Therefore, in these scenes it was by destroying the boar, that is the enemy of life, and saving the Tree of Life, that the Hero won immortality. The doubling of the Hero and the boar on each side of the Tree of Life on some of the depictions of the boar hunt represented the dual essence of the god, but was also connected to the myth of the twin horsemen. Since the Thracians did not perceive the world in terms of linear time, and therefore conceptualised their religion and myths not as histories of ancient pasts, but as occurring in the present, and there was no difference between the mythical and heroic past and the present in Thracian religion, the Hero was believed to still be performing his valorous deeds in the present on another plane of existence in heaven which was not necessarily separate from the world of the living necessarily in an abrupt way. The wolf fight The "Arean" fitted the motif of the Indo-European war-god's struggle with a monstrous wolf or dog as his principal deed, a theme also present in the Celtic and Greek myths of Cú Chulainn and Heracles. Consequently, the "Arean" or "Heroic" is depicted in the Letnitsa Treasure as a mounted hero preparing to fight a bear after having already defeated a wolf, lying dead and upside down beneath the horse's hooves (both the wolf and the bear were symbols of warriors); this scene also represented the Hero as a protector against evil, but was also another representation of the test of valour through which the god, and the