"Which are the highest virtues then according to you Persians?"

"Truth is the first of all; courage the second, and the third is
obedience; these three, joined with veneration for the gods, have made us
Persians great."

"But I thought you worshipped no gods?"

"Foolish child! who could live without a god, without a higher ruler?
True, they do not dwell in houses and pictures like the gods of the
Egyptians, for the whole creation is their dwelling. The Divinity, who
must be in every place, and must see and hear everything, cannot be
confined within walls."

"Where do you pray then and offer sacrifice, if you have no temples?"

"On the grandest of all altars, nature herself; our favorite altar is the
summit of a mountain. There we are nearest to our own god, Mithras, the
mighty sun, and to Auramazda, the pure creative light; for there the
light lingers latest and returns earliest."

[From Herodotus (I. 131 and 132.), and from many other sources, we
see clearly that at the time of the Achaemenidae the Persians had
neither temples nor images of their gods. Auramazda and
Angramainjus, the principles of good and evil, were invisible
existences filling all creation with their countless train of good
and evil spirits. Eternity created fire and water. From these
Ormusd (Auramazda), the good spirit, took his origin. He was
brilliant as the light, pure and good. After having, in the course