functions who had been dedicated to them from infancy, and who, having received the necessary instruction, were duly consecrated.  These adepts were divided into several classes, of which three at least were never confounded in their functions—­the sorcerers, the interpreters of dreams, and the most venerated sages—­and from these three classes were chosen the ruling body of the order and its supreme head.  Their rule of life was strict and austere, and was encumbered with a thousand observances indispensable to the preservation of perfect purity in their persons, their altars, their victims, and their sacrificial vessels and implements.  The Magi of highest rank abstained from every form of living thing as food, and the rest only partook of meat under certain restrictions.  Their dress was unpretentious, they wore no jewels, and observed strict fidelity to the marriage vow;* and the virtues with which they were accredited obtained for them, from very early times, unbounded influence over the minds of the common people as well as over those of the nobles:  the king himself boasted of being their pupil, and took no serious step in state affairs without consulting Ahura-mazda or the other gods by their mediation.  The classical writers maintain that the Magi often cloaked monstrous vices under their apparent strictness, and it is possible that this was the case in later days, but even then moral depravity was probably rather the exception than the rule among them:*** the majority of the Magi faithfully observed the rules of honest living and ceremonial purity enjoined on them in the books handed down by their ancestors.

* Clement of Alexandria assures us that they were strictly celibate, but besides the fact that married Magi are mentioned several times, celibacy is still considered by Zoroastrians an inferior state to that of marriage.

     ** In the Greek period, a spurious epitaph of Darius, son of
     Hystaspes, was quoted, in which the king says of himself, “I
     was the pupil of the Magi.”

*** These accusations are nearly all directed against their incestuous marriages:  it seems that the classical writers took for a refinement of debauchery what really was before all things a religious practice.

There is reason to believe that the Magi were all-powerful among the Medes, and that the reign of Astyages was virtually the reign of the priestly caste; but all the Iranian states did not submit so patiently to their authority, and the Persians at last proved openly refractory.  Their kings, lords of Susa as well as of Pasargadse, wielded all the resources of Elam, and their military power must have equalled, if it did not already surpass, that of their suzerain lords.  Their tribes, less devoted to the manner of living of the Assyrians and Chaldaeans, had preserved a vigour and power of endurance which the Medes no longer possessed; and they needed but an ambitious and capable leader, to rise rapidly from the rank of subjects to that of rulers of Iran, and to become in a short time masters of Asia.  Such a chief they found in Cyrus,* son of Cambyses; but although no more illustrious name than his occurs in the list of the founders of mighty empires, the history of no other has suffered more disfigurement from the imagination of his own subjects or from the rancour of the nations he had conquered.**