Being whom men could worship without degradation, till in the fullness of time the light of celestial Truth burst with clear effulgence on the heathen world. We can hardly imagine that the capricious elemental deity of the Iliad should have been metamorphosed into the venerable deity of the Oresteia by the slow process of spiritual development alone, without the action of external agency: if we consider the affinity between the Hellenic and the Persian races, and the close contact into which they were brought in Asia Minor, the modification of Grecian thought by the interfusion of Persian elements will not appear remarkable. In support of this hypothesis, I might appeal not only to the high spiritual character attributed to Ahura-Mazda, the Zeus of the Zend-Avesta, but also to the sharp contrast there exhibited between the principles of Good and Evil, a feature which strikingly distinguishes the theogony of Æschylus from that of Homer.
The relics of ancient sun-worship which are discovered in various localities of Greece bear witness to the vast influence exerted by the celestial luminary over the imaginations and the religious emotions of the primeval world, an influence which is also attested by the numerous divinities in whom the Sun-god reappears, mythically metamorphosed. Helios, in the Iliad, is characterized as "the Unweariable;""the Bringer of light;" like Mithra, who has a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, "He overseeth all, and hearkeneth to all things" (iii. 277). On the reconciliation of Agamemnon and Achilles, a boar is sacrificed to Helios
