The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism [1911] - Get a Free Blog

138 THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.
Oriental formulary
in Europe. 6
before it became a familiar custom
It is very difficult to trace the hidden paths by which
pure ideas travel from one people to another. But
certain it is that at the beginning of our era certain
Mazdean conceptions had already spread outside of
Asia. The extent of the influence of Parseeism upon
the beliefs of Israel under the Achemenides cannot
be determined, but its existence is undeniable.? Some
of its doctrines, as for instance those relating to angels
and demons, the end of the world and the final resur
rection, were propagated everywhere in the basin of
the Mediterranean as a consequence of the diffusion
of Jewish colonies.
On the other hand, ever since the conquests of Cyrus
and Darius, the active attention of the Greeks had
been drawn toward the doctrines and religious prac
tices of the new masters of the Orient. 8 A number
of legends representing Pythagoras, Democritus and
other philosophers as disciples of the magi prove the
prestige of that powerful sacerdotal class. The Mace
donian conquest, which placed the Greeks in direct
relations with numerous votaries of Mazdaism, gave
a new impetus to w rorks treating that religion, and the
great scientific movement inaugurated by Aristotle
caused many scholars to look into the doctrines taught
by the Persian subjects of the Seleucides. We know
from a reliable source that the works catalogued under
the name of Zoroaster in the library of Alexandria
contained two million lines. This immense body of
sacred literature was bound to attract the attention of
scholars and to call forth the reflections of philos
ophers. The dim and dubious science that reached