Note 103 — Chapter XIV

Hence, we may perceive at one view, as I have elsewhere observed, why the sun in the Orphic hymns is called Jupiter, why Apollo is called Pan, and Bacchus the Sun; and why the moon seems to be the same with Rhea, Ceres, Proserpine, Juno, Venus, &c. For from this theory it follows, that every sphere contains a Jupiter, Neptune, Vulcan, Vesta, Minerva, Mars, Ceres, Juno, Diana, Mercury, Venus, Apollo, and in short, every deity,—each sphere at the same time conferring on these Gods the peculiar characteristics of its nature; so that for instance, in the sun they possess a solar property; in the moon a lunar one; and so of the rest.

This theory too is one of the grand keys to the theology of the Greeks; as it shows why one God is so often celebrated by the appellations of another; an ignorance of the cause of which led Macrobius to think that all the Gods were nothing more than the different powers of the sun, and has been one great source of the idle conjectures of the moderns about the divinities of the ancients.