Helios vs Mithra

The Titan-born sun who drives his chariot across the sky each day and sees everything beneath it. Son of Hyperion and Theia, brother of Selene (Moon) and Eos (Dawn), Helios is the witness gods and mortals call on because nothing happens outside his gaze.

Helios was born to the Titans Hyperion and Theia, together with his sisters Selene and Eos. Hesiod lists the three light-bringers as a single brood; the Homeric Hymn to Helios names their mother Euryphaessa, 'far-shining', a title that may be another name for Theia.

Hesiod names Helios as a child of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, born with his sisters Selene and Eos. He is not an Olympian but an older power, and Greek poetry treats him less as a ruler than as a witness: because he crosses the whole sky every day, he sees what others miss.

The yazata of the covenant, 'lord of wide pastures', who watches with a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes over everyone who keeps or breaks their word, and whom Ahura Mazda created 'as worthy of sacrifice as myself'.

Created by Ahura Mazda as worthy of worship as himself (Yasht 10.1).

Yasht 10, one of the longest hymns of the Avesta, is devoted to Mithra. It opens with Ahura Mazda declaring that he created Mithra as worthy of sacrifice and prayer as himself, and it describes a watchful, terrible god of the covenant: the first of the heavenly beings to rise over Mount Hara before the sun, he drives a chariot across the sky, sees everything with his thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, and brings ruin on the 'Mithra-deceiver' who breaks a contract, while protecting those who keep faith. Before him runs Verethragna, victory, in the shape of a boar.