We may perhaps be found not to go beyond the limits of the modesty which the case requires, when we simply lay down this rule: that correspondences in religion or in language between Greece and ancient Italy raise a presumption, that those features of each country, in which the correspondence is observed, are of Pelasgic origin.
Something of such correspondence we may perceive in regard to religion. The religion of Homeric Greece differs from that of Rome, not only as to minor deities, but in the names given to many of the greater deities, and especially in the far more imaginative character of its traditions.
Those parts of the religion of Greece and Rome which were common to both were probably Pelasgian.
Let us take first the names which correspond, and then those which are different.
(I.) Names of deities that correspond in the Greek and Latin tongues:
1. Ζεύς Deus.
2. Ζεὺς-πάτηρ Jupiter.
3. Ἀπόλλων Apollo.
4. Ἱστιή Vesta.
5. Λήτω Latona.
6. Περσεφόνη Proserpina.
7. Ἄρης Mars or Mavors.
(II.) Names of deities which do not in any manner correspond in the Greek and Latin tongues:
1. Ἥρη Juno.
2. Ποσειδὼν Neptune.
3. Ἀιδώνευς Pluto.
4. Ἀθήνη Minerva.
5. Ἥφαιστος Vulcan.
6. Ἑρμῆς Mercury.
7. Ἀφροδίτη Venus.
8. Ἄρτεμις Diana.
9. Δημήτηρ Ceres.
10. Διόνυσος Bacchus.
Two remarks may be made on the deities of the first list.