Kitap 1
prol.7
They hold discourse of justice, and deem it impious to practise cremation; but they see no impiety in marriage with a mother or daughter, as Sotion relates in his twenty-third book. Further, they practise divination and forecast the future, declaring that the gods appear to them in visible form. Moreover, they say that the air is full of shapes which stream forth like vapour and enter the eyes of keen-sighted seers. They prohibit personal ornament and the wearing of gold. Their dress is white, they make their bed on the ground, and their food is vegetables, cheese,Compare Pliny, N.H. xx. 11. 242: Zoroaster lived in the wilderness on cheese (cf. Yasht, xxii. 18 Spring butter is the ambrosia of the blessed). For fuller comments on 7-9 see J. H. Moulton’s Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 410-418. and coarse bread; their staff is a reed and their custom is, so we are told, to stick it into the cheese and take up with it the part they eat.
