“Who has directed the rapid course of the wind and of the clouds? What skilful artist has made the light and the darkness?
“What skilful workman has made sleep and wakefulness? Through whom have we dawn, noon, and night? From whom do they learn the law which is traced out for them? Who endeared the son to his father so that he should train him? Those are the things that I wish to ask Thee, O Mazda, O beneficent Spirit, O Creator of all things!”
In his omniscience are embraced all human actions. He watches over all things, and is far-seeing, and never sleeping. He is the infallible one; “it is impossible to deceive him, the Ahura, who knows all things.” He sees man, and judges and chastises him, if he has not followed his law, for from him comes the law of man, as well as the law of the world; from him comes the science supreme among all other sciences, that of duty, the knowledge of those things we ought to think, say, and do, and of those things we ought neither to think, nor say, nor do. To the man who has prayed well, thought, spoken, and acted well, he opens his resplendent paradise; he opens hell to him who has not prayed and who has thought, spoken, and done evil.
The Supreme God, the God of Heaven.
Thus the Aryans of Greece, of Italy, of India, and of Persia agree in giving the highest place in their Pantheon to a supreme God who rules the world and who has founded order, a God sovereign, omniscient, and moral. Has this identical conception been formed in each of these cases by four independent creations, or is it a common inheritance from the Indo-European religion, and did the Aryan ancestors of the Greeks, of the Latins, of the Hindoos, and of the Persians already know a supreme God, an organizing, a sovereign, an omniscient, a moral God?
Although the latter hypothesis is more simple and more probable than the former, it cannot, however, be taken at once as certain; because an abstract and logical conception of this kind may very well have developed itself at the same time among several nations, in an identical and independent manner. To whomsoever looks upon it at any time and in any place, the world can reveal the existence of a Supreme maker: Socrates is not the disciple of the psalmist; yet the heavens reveal to him, as to the Hebrew poet, the glory of the Lord. But if it be found that the abstract conception is closely connected with a naturalistic and material conception, and that the latter is identical in the four religions, as it is known, on the other hand, that these four religions have a common past, the hypothesis that this abstract conception is a heritage of this past, and not a creation of the present, may rise to a certainty.
Now, these Gods who organize the world, rule it and watch over it; this Zeus, this Jupiter, this Varuna, this Ahura Mazda are not the personifications of a simple abstract conception; they emerge from a former naturalism, from which they are not yet quite detached; they commenced by being gods of the heavens.
Zeus and Jupiter have never ceased to be gods of the heavens, and to be conscious of it. When the world was shared among the gods, “Zeus received the boundless sky in the ether and the clouds for his share.” It is as the God of heaven that sometimes he shines luminous, calm, and pure, enthroned in the ethereal splendour, and that sometimes he becomes gloomy and gathers clouds (νεφεληγερέτης), causing the rain to fall from heaven (ὄμβριος, ὑέτιος), hurling upon the earth the eddy of fierce winds, drawing forth the hurricane from the summit of the ether, brandishing the lightning and the thunderbolt (κεραύνιος, ἀστραπαῖος). This is why the thunderbolt is his weapon, his attribute, “the thunderbolt with its never-tiring foot,” which he hurls in the heights; why he rolls on a resounding chariot, brandishing in his hand the fiery trident, or dashing it on the wings of the eagle, or on Pegasus, the aërial steed of the lightning. This is why he is the husband of Dêmêter, “the mother Earth,” whom he impregnates with his torrents of rain; this is why he sent forth, from his brow according to some, from his belly according to others, from the clouds according to the Cretan legend, Athênê, the resplendent goddess with the penetrating glance, who came forth, shaking golden weapons, with a cry which made heaven and earth resound, as she is the incarnation of the stormy light which breaks forth from the brow of heaven, from the belly of heaven, from the bosom of the cloud, filling space with its splendour and with the crash of its stormy birth. Lastly, the very name of Zeus (genitive Dios, formerly Divos) is, in conformity with the laws of Greek phonetics, the literal representative of the Sanscrit Dyaus, heaven (genitive Divas), and the union of Ζεὺς πατήρ with Δημήτηρ is the exact counterpart of the Vedic union of Dyaus pitar with Prithivî mâtar, of the Heaven-Father with Earth-Mother. The word Ζεύς is an ancient synonym of Οὐρανός, which became obsolete as a common noun; still, in a certain number of expressions, it retains something of its former meaning. Thus it is, when the Earth prays Zeus to let rain fall upon her; when the Athenian in praying exclaims: “O dear Zeus, rain thou on the field of the Athenians and on the plains”—“Zeus has rained the whole night,” says Homer: ὕε Ζεὺς πάννυχος. In all these expressions Zeus may be literally translated as a common noun, sky.
Jupiter, identical with Zeus in his functions, is identical with him in his material attributes.
The word Jûpiter, or better Jup-piter, is for Jus-piter, composed of pater and of Jus, the Latin contraction of the Sanscrit Dyaus, of the Greek Ζεύς: Juppiter is then the exact equivalent of Ζεὺς πατήρ, and the word has even preserved more strongly than Zeus the sense of its early meaning; sub Jove signifies “under the heavens;” the hunter awaits the marsian boar, heedless of the cold or snow, sub Jove frigido, “under the cold Jupiter, under the cold sky.” Dyaus is also in Latin, as it is in Sanscrit, the name of the brilliant sky: “Behold,” exclaims old Ennius, “above thy head this luminous space which all invoke under the name of Jupiter:”