* A relic of this custom may be discerned in the expiatory sacrifice decreed in the Vendidad:  “He shall sacrifice a thousand head of small cattle, and he shall place their entrails devoutly on the fire, with libations.”

** The number 1000 seems to have had some ritualistic significance, for it often recurs in the penances imposed on the faithful as expiation for their sins:  thus it was enjoined to slay 1000 serpents, 1000 frogs, 1000 ants who steal the grain, 1000 head of small cattle, 1000 swift horses, 1000 camels, 1000 brown oxen.

The officiating priest covered his mouth with the bands which fell from his mitre, to prevent the god from being polluted by his breath; he held in his hand the baresman, or sacred bunch of tamarisk, and prepared the mysterious liquor from the haoma plant.* He was accustomed each morning to celebrate divine service before the sacred fire, not to speak of the periodic festivals in which he shared the offices with all the members of his tribe, such as the feast of Mithra, the feast of the Fravashis,** the feast commemorating the rout of Angro-mainyus,*** the feast of the Saksea, during which the slaves were masters of the house.****

* The drink mentioned by the author of the De Iside, which was extracted from the plant Omomi, and which the Magi offered to the god of the underworld, is certainly the haoma.  The rite mentioned by the Greek author, which appears to be an incantation against Ahriman, required, it seems, a potion in which the blood of a wolf was a necessary ingredient:  this questionable draught was then carried to a place where the sun’s rays never shone, and was there sprinkled on the ground as a libation.

** Menander speaks of this festival as conducted in his own times, and tells us that it was called Eurdigan; modern authorities usually admit that it goes back to the times of the Achaemenids or even beyond.

*** Agathias says that every worshipper of Ahura-mazda is enjoined to kill the greatest possible number of animals created by Angro-mainyus, and bring to the Magi the fruits of his hunting.  Herodotus had already spoken of this destruction of life as one of the duties incumbent on every Persian, and this gives probability to the view of modern writers that the festival went back to the Achaemenian epoch.

**** The festival of the Sakoa is mentioned by Ctesias.  It was also a Babylonian festival, and most modern authorities conclude from this double use of the name that the festival was borrowed from the Babylonians by the Persians, but this point is not so certain as it is made out to be, and at any rate the borrowing must have taken place very early, for the festival was already well established in the Achaemenian period.

All the Magi were not necessarily devoted to the priesthood; but those only became apt in the execution of their