Marble relief of the Roman age (I century A.D.), copy of a Greek original, now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. It shows Dionysus leading a procession with the Horae (the Seasons). Daughters of Zeus and Themis, the goddess of the cosmic order, the Horae presided over the regular course of the seasons and the periodic renovation of nature. According to Homer, they had in their keeping the “gates of heaven” (Iliad, V, 749). They had a particular relationship with Aphrodite, the goddess of fecundity and love, whom they were credited having received, at the moment of her birth from the sea, on the shores of the island of Cyprus. Such relationship was justified by the fact that the term hora signified originally the springtime season, when all the vegetation is rejuvenated and flourishing (Stella 1956, p. 121).

[Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dionysos_Horai_Louvre_MR720.jpg]