Sec. 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 Parsis, 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."[110] “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."[111]

Plutarch’s account of Zoroaster[112] 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 Daemon; 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[113] 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 Daemon; and likewise they think that such animals as dogs, fowls, and urchins belong to the good;