The Solyman name has suggested to some critics a connection with the Salem of the Hebrews. But the name is much more likely to be derived from the Soliman Koh, a ridge of mountains running to the south-west from Caubul, and sometimes defined as extending into Persia. The liberality in sacrifice ill accords with the early Persian religion, but finds a probable original in that of the Medes with their order of Magians. But upon the whole, it would seem that Homer must have had a reason for the peculiar prominence he has given to these South-eastern Ethiopians, in connection with the gods of Olympus; for the association, unless suggested by a reason, is neither natural, nor in the manner of the Poet. Could it have been any other than this, that he regarded their country, however indeterminate its place in his imagination, as the original seat of the religion of his own, and that he therefore referred it thither bodily without notice of details? Now this would mean as the original seat, also, of the ancestors of the Hellenic tribes. We are not, in the event of accepting such a supposition, to imagine that he intended to make the assertion that the Olympian system had been derived from Persia and Media as it stood, but only to imply that there, according to national tradition, lay its root. The Trojans, it will be remembered, have their not Olympian but Idæan Jove: and the Ethiopians are the only foreign race, with whom he associates Olympus and its band of Immortals.

I have already stated elsewhere grounds for supposing that the Achæans, as they were immediately an Hellenic, were also primarily, as well as the other Hellenes, a Persian race. We have seen the existence of the Persian name in Greece, and its connection, according to Homer, with what Homer thought the remotest East, by the shore of Ocean. We have also seen its connection with the Sun, the prime deity of the Persians. This visible head of creation, standing next to the Supreme Being, we find that the Greeks speedily identify with their Apollo, who is so prominent as the son of Jupiter, in dignity, in obedience, and in his father’s favour, as to stand in a class entirely distinct from that of his other sons.

On the one hand, we seem to find here matter confirmatory of the Persian origin of the Hellenic tribes; and on the other, a general indication of the derivation of the earliest Greek religion from a certain part of the East. But still we must beware of any over-broad inference. The religion, it is likely, grew largely as it travelled, and was developed freely after it had reached its home in the Greek peninsula. And it would be contrary to all reason to suppose that Homer was in a condition to refer back to each of the Eastern races their proper contribution towards the aggregate, though we may justly suppose him able to draw some kind of line between the system as it was flourishing in Greece, with all its additions, elaborations and refinements, and the crude undigested materials as they had been imported from abroad; perhaps we might say, between the system as he found it, and the same system as he left it.

Considering, however, that Homer had a quasi-geographical knowledge of Egypt, I do not suppose that that country enters at all into his conception of the Ethiopians. If so, then the representation of an unity of religion with the Ethiopians, affords a presumption, conformable undoubtedly to such other presumptions as we have been able to gather from the poems, that Homer did not regard Egypt as the principal source of the religious system of Greece.

Herodotus on the Scythian religion.

I do not pretend to find, in any ancient system handed down to us, even a skeleton of the Olympian scheme; and I conclude it to be most probable, that the Greeks had to form, or to reform, various members of it, as well as merely to clothe and embellish them. Yet it appears well worth while to refer to the account of the Scythian religion given by Herodotus, whose works form the great depository of knowledge of this kind beyond the borders of Greece.

The ordinary Scythians, it will be remembered, seem to be of the same race with the Medes, and to form the stock from which the Pelasgians separated to turn towards the south of Europe for settlements. They lived in that pastoral state, anterior to tillage, which Mommsen observes, through the forms of the Latin language, to have marked the point before the severance[770]. From the sign of feeding on milk, the Glactophagi and Hippemolgi of Il. xiii. 5, 6, would appear to belong to them, and the peaceful habits of the Pelasgians are also represented in the character that Homer gives, in the same passage, to their neighbours the Abians.

The gods of the Scythians, according to Herodotus[771], were: