The earlier Sun-worship of Europe, upon which this new
Oriental variety was intruded, in certain of its developments
shows the same clear personality. The Greek Helios, to
whom horses were sacrificed on the mountain-top of Tau-
getos, was that same personal Sun to whom Sokrates, when
he had staid rapt in thought till daybreak, offered a prayer
before he departed ((
Greek characters)).[1]
Cæsar devotes to the German theology of his time three
lines of his Commentaries. They reckon in the number
of the gods, he says, those only whom they perceive and
whose benefits they openly enjoy, Sun and Vulcan and Moon,
the rest they know not even by report.[2] It is true that
Cæsar's short summary does no justice to the real number
and quality of the deities of the German pantheon, yet his
forcible description of nature-worship in its most primitive
stage may probably be true of the direct adoration of the
sun and moon, and possibly of fire. On the other hand,
European sun-worship leads into the most perplexing pro-
blems of mythology. Well might Cicero exclaim, 'How
many suns are set forth by the theologians!'[3] The
modern student who shall undertake to discriminate among
the Sun-gods of European lands, to separate the solar and
non-solar elements of the Greek Apollo and Herakles, or
of the Slavonic Swatowit, has a task before him complicate
with that all but hopeless difficulty which besets the study
of myth, the moment that the clue of direct comparison
with nature falls away.
The religion of ancient Egypt is one of which we know much, yet little — much of its temples, rites, names of deities, liturgical formulas, but little of the esoteric religious ideas which lay hidden within these outer manifestations. Yet it is clear that central solar conceptions as it
1 Plat. Sympos. xxxvi. See Welcker, 'Griech. Götterlehre,' vol. i. pp. 400, 412.
2 Cæsar de Bello Gallico, vi. 21: 'Deorum numero cos solos ducunt, quos cernunt et quorum aperte opibus juvantur, Solem et Vulcanum et Lunam, reliquos ne fama quidem acceperunt.'
3 Cicero de Natura Deorum, iii. 21.
