The comparison as to religious belief.
The Persians, says Herodotus[924], have no temples, altars, nor statues of the gods. Tacitus[925] gives a like account of the Germans. Of these Homer only enables us to trace altars with clearness as having been adopted by the Hellenic races at the period of the Troica. But the tendency to sacerdotal development among the Pelasgi may have had its counterpart in ‘the symbolism and complicated ceremonial of Media[926].’
They worship Jupiter from high places. So did Hector. We have no reason to make the same assertion of the Trojans generally: but the place given to Jupiter on Ida, and the whole Olympian fabric, probably also the plan of scaling heaven by heaping mountains one on another, all belong to the same train of thought.
They, if we are to adopt the statement, call the whole circuit of the heaven by the name of Jupiter. This same is the share of the universe, which, in the Homeric mythology, falls to the lot of Jupiter, and the name Ζεὺς is said to be identical with the Sanscrit Dyaus, meaning ‘the sky[927]:’ a sense which we find in the sub dio and sub Jove of the Latin writers, belonging to the Augustan age. This elemental conception of him, however, is probably more Median than Persian.
They did not originally worship Venus (ἀρχῆθεν); but they learned the worship of her from others, apparently the Medes or Assyrians. This remarkably accords with the case of the Hellenes of Homer, who seem only to have been drawing towards, rather than to have accepted fully, the worship of Venus in his time[928].
They considered fire to be a god[929]: differing in this from the Egyptians, who held it to be an animal.
So we find that the worship of Vulcan appears to be Hellic more than Pelasgian, and that the fable of his origin distinctly points to what was for Homer the farthest east[930].
They paid a particular reverence to rivers[931]. Of this we have the amplest evidence in Homer among the Greeks as to Alpheus, Spercheus, and the River of Scheria: rivers, too, were honoured by a more distinct personification than was attributed to other natural objects. The Scamander is, indeed, similarly treated. But this is an exception to the general mode of representation: and no other Trojan River is actively personified[932]. Simois is addressed (Il. xxi. 308) by Scamander; but is himself a mute.
These, however, are particular points: let us also consider more at large the general outline which Herodotus has given us of the Persian religion.