one of which is thus given by another German Orientalist, Benfey:-*

Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd) is a mighty God; who has created the earth, the heaven, and men; who has given glory to men; who has made Xerxes king, the ruler of many. I, Xerxes, King of Kings, king of the earth near and far, son of Darius, an Achæmenid. What I have done here, and what I have done elsewhere, I have done by the grace of Ahura-Mazda.”

"Artaxerxes the King has declared that this great work is done by me. May Ahura-Mazda and Mithra protect me, my building, and my people." †

Here, then, was the palace of Darius and his successors, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, famous for their conquests,

some of which are recorded on these walls, — who carried their victorious arms into India on the east, Syria and Asia Minor on the west, but even more famous for being defeated at Marathon and Thermopylæ. By the side of these columns sat the great kings of Persia, giving audience to ambassadors from distant lands. Here, perhaps, sat Cyrus himself, the founder of the Persian monarchy, and issued orders to rebuild Jerusalem. Here the son of Xerxes, the Ahasuerus of Scripture, may have brought from Susa the fair Esther. For this is the famous Persepolis, and on those loftier platforms, where only ruinous heaps of stones now remain, stood that other palace, which Alexander burned in his intoxication three hundred and thirty years before Christ. "Solitary in their situation, peculiar in their character," says Heeren, these ruins rise above the deluge of years which has overwhelmed all the records of human grandeur around

* Die Persischen Keilinscriften. (Leipzig, 1847.) See also the account of the inscription at Behistun, in Lenormant's "Manual of Ancient History."

+ Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies. - Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, B. II. — Heeren, The Persians. - Fergusson, Illustrated HandBook of Architecture. Creuzer, Schriften. See also the works of Oppert, Hinks, Menant, and Lassen.

them, and buried all traces of Susa and Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic proportions do not more command our reverence, than the mystery which involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls, all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and wavering light."

Diodorus Siculus says that at Persepolis, on the face of the mountain, were the tombs of the kings of Persia, and that the coffins had to be lifted up to them along the wall of rock by cords. And Ctesias tells us that "Darius, the son of Hystaspes, had a tomb prepared for himself in the double mountain during his lifetime, and that his parents were drawn up with cords to see it, but fell and were killed." These very tombs are still to be seen on the face of the mountain behind the ruins. The figures of the kings are carved over them. One stands before an altar on which a fire is burning. A ball representing the sun is above the altar. Over the effigy of the king hangs in the air a winged half-length figure in fainter lines, and resembling him. In other places he is seen contending with a winged animal like a griffin.

All this points at the great Iranic religion, the religion of Persia and its monarchs for many centuries, the religion of which Zoroaster was the great prophet, and the Avesta the sacred book. The king, as servant of Ormazd, is worshipping the fire and the sun, symbols of the god; he resists the impure griffin, the creature of Ahriman; and the half-length figure over his head is the surest evidence of the religion of Zoroaster. For, according to the Avesta, every created being has its archetype or Fereuer (Ferver, Fravashis), which is its ideal essence, first created by the thought of Ormazd. Even Ormazd himself has his Fravashis, and these angelic

*

* Vendidad, Fargard, XIX. - XLVI. Spiegel, translated into English by Bleek.

essences are everywhere objects of worship to the disciple of Zoroaster. We have thus found in Persepolis, not only the palace of the great kings of Persia, but the home of that most ancient system of Dualism, the system of Zoroaster.

§ 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch's Description of his Religion.

But who was Zoroaster, and what do we know of him? He is mentioned by Plato, about four hundred years before Christ. In speaking of the education of a Persian prince he says that one teacher instructs him in the magic of Zoroaster, the son (or priest) of Ormazd (or Oromazes), in which is comprehended all the worship of the gods." He is also spoken of by Diodorus, Plutarch, the elder Pliny, and many writers of the first centuries after Christ. The worship of the Magians is described by Herodotus before Plato. Herodotus gives very minute accounts of the ritual, priests, sacrifices, purifications, and mode of burial used by the Persian Magi in his time, four hundred and fifty years before Christ; and his account closely corresponds with the practices of the Pârsîs, or fire-worshippers, still remaining in one or two places in Persia and India at the present day. "The Persians," he says, "have no altars, no temples nor images; they worship on the tops of the mountains. They adore the heavens, and sacrifice to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds." "'* "They do not erect altars, nor use libations, fillets, or cakes. One of the Magi sings an ode concerning the origin of the gods, over the sacrifice, which is laid on a bed of tender grass." They pay great reverence to all rivers, and must do nothing to defile them; in burying they never put the body in the ground till it has been torn by some bird or dog; they cover the body with wax, and then put it in the ground." "The Magi think they do a meritorious act when they kill ants, snakes, reptiles." +

* Herodotus, I. 131.

+ Herodotus, in various parts of his history.

Plutarch's account of Zoroaster* and his precepts. is very remarkable. It is as follows: :

"Some believe that there are two Gods, as it were, two rival workmen; the one whereof they make to be the maker of good things, and the other bad. And some call the better of these God, and the other Dæmon; as doth Zoroastres, the Magee, whom they report to be five thousand years elder than the Trojan times. This Zoroastres therefore called the one of these Oromazes, and the other Arimanius; and affirmed, moreover, that the one of them did, of anything sensible, the most resemble light, and the other darkness and ignorance; but that Mithras was in the middle betwixt them. For which cause, the Persians called Mithras the mediator. And they tell us that he first taught mankind to make vows and offerings of thanksgiving to the one, and to offer averting and feral sacrifice to the other. For they beat a certain plant called homomy † in a mortar, and call upon Pluto and the dark; and then mix it with the blood of a sacrificed wolf, and convey it to a certain place where the sun never shines, and there cast it away. For of plants they believe, that some pertain to the good God, and others again to the evil Dæmon; and likewise they think that such animals as dogs, fowls, and urchins belong to the good; but water animals to the bad, for which reason they account him happy that kills most of them. These men, moreover, tell us a great many romantic things about these gods, whereof these are some: They say that Oromazes, springing from purest light, and Arimanius, on the other hand, from pitchy darkness, these two are therefore at war with one another. And that Oromazes made six gods, whereof the first was the author of benevolence, the second of truth, the third of justice, and the rest, one of wisdom,

"Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. London. Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship in Pater-noster Row. 1718." This passage concerning Zoroaster is from the "Isis and Osiris" in Vol. IV. of this old translation, We have retained the antique terminology and spelling. (See also the new American edition of this translation. Boston, Little and Brown, 1871.)

+ This is the Haoma spoken of on page 202.

These, with Ormazd, are the seven Amshaspands enumerated on

page 197.

one of wealth, and a third of that pleasure which accrues from good actions; and that Arimanius likewise made. the like number of contrary operations to confront them. After this, Oromazes, having first trebled his own magnitude, mounted up aloft, so far above the sun as the sun itself above the earth, and so bespangled the heavens with stars. But one star (called Sirius or the Dog) he set as a kind of sentinel or scout before all the rest. And after he had made four-and-twenty gods more, he placed them all in an egg-shell. But those that were made by Arimanius (being themselves also of the like number) breaking a hole in this beauteous and glazed egg-shell, bad things came by this means to be intermixed with good. But the fatal time is now approaching, in which Arimanius, who by means of this brings plagues and famines upon the earth, must of necessity be himself utterly extinguished and destroyed; at which time, the earth, being made plain and level, there will be one life, and one society of mankind, made all happy, and one speech. But Theopompus saith, that, according to the opinion of the Magees, each of these gods subdues, and is subdued by turns, for the space of three thousand years apiece, and that for three thousand years more they quarrel and fight and destroy each other's works; but that at last Pluto shall fail, and mankind shall be happy, and neither need food, nor yield a shadow. And that the god who projects these things doth, for some time, take his repose and rest; but yet this time is not so much to him although it seems so to man, whose sleep is but short. Such, then, is the mythology of the Magees."

We shall see presently how nearly this account corresponds with the religion of the Pârsîs, as it was developed out of the primitive doctrine of Zoroaster.t

Besides what was known through the Greeks, and some

* See the account, on page 195, of these four periods of three thousand years each.

+ Kleuker (Anhang zum Zend-Avesta) has given a full résumé of the references to Zoroaster and his religion in the Greek and Roman writers. More recently, Professor Rapp of Tübingen has gone over the same ground in a very instructive essay in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlândischen Gesellschaft. (Leipzig, 1865.)