BABYLON AND PERSIA

72 " MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.His chariot, too, is a well-supplied armory :thereare a thousand bows with their arrows, vulturefeathered,with golden points; a thousand spearsand as many steel hammers ;a thousand two-edgedswords and as many maces of iron. All theseweapons are described as " well-made," and as " go¬ing through the heavenly spaces and falling on theskulls of the daevas." It would seem, from the wayit is put, that they fly of their own accord, self-sped,to do havoc on the fiends.Such self-acting divineweapons are very plentiful in the Aryan mythologyof India. Wefl may the worshipper exclaim : " Oh 1may we never fall across the rush of Mithra, thelord of wide pastures, in his anger ! "13. This picture of a god riding to battle, with afull description of his armor, his chariot, his bandof followers, etc., is a thoroughly Aryan one.Each Aryan god has his own "turn-out," and notone is passed over in the Rig-Veda. The anthropo¬morphism of the conception is rank. But in thecase of the Eranian Mithra, it presents a featurecharacteristic of the race, and which, in its develop¬ment, caused a complete revolution. It will havebeen observed that the followers of Mithra are nomythical persons, i. c., no phenomena of natureturned into persons ; but, consistently with the spirit¬ual transformation of the myth, they are abstractideas, or moral qualities personified : Holiness, Up¬rightness, Obedience to the religious Law ; lastly,the " Curse of the Wise." This is not Myth it isAllegory, and one such instance is sufficient toillustrate the difference between the two notions and