Book 23
6.32
In these parts are the fertile fields of the Magi, about whose sects and pursuits—since we have chanced on this point—it will be in place to give a few words of explanation. According to Plato, Ax. 371, D; Isoc. ii. 28, 227 A. the most eminent author of lofty ideas, magic, under the mystic name of hagistia, ἁγιστεία, (ritual, holy rites. is thepurest worship of the gods. To the science of this, derived from the secret lore of the Chaldaeans, in ages long past the Bactrian ZoroasterFor Zarathustra, the founder of the Perso-Iranian native religion, which prevailed from 559 B.C. to A.D. 636. The Greek and Roman writers assign his birth to various places, into which his religion was introduced; it was probably Bactria, or western Iran. His date is also uncertain; Aristotle put it 6000 years before the death of Plato (Pliny, N.H. xxx. 3), others 1000 B.C. made many contributions, and after him the wise king Hystaspes,Hystaspes was not king. Others regard a much earlier Hystaspes as the teacher of magic. the father of Darius.
