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In the list of festivals certainly Father Diovis a purer and more civil than military reflection of the character of the Roman community occupies a larger space than Mars, just as the priest of Jupiter has precedence over the two priests of the god of war; but the latter still plays a very prominent part in the list, and it is even quite likely that, when this arrangement of festivals was established, Jovis stood by the side of Mars like Ahuramazda by the side of Mithra, and that the worship of the warlike Roman community still really centred at this time in the martial god of death and his March festival, while it was not the "care-destroyer" afterwards introduced by the Greeks, but Father Jovis himself, who was regarded as the god of the heart-gladdening wine.

If a Hindu sits rapt in devotion to Krishna, the waves of feeling which pour forth from him stimulate devotional feeling in all those who come under their influence, though in the case of the Muhammadan that devotion is to Allah, while for the Zoroastrian it is to Ahuramazda, or for the Christian to Jesus.

That in the adoption of Oriental worships in the west such higher speculative and moral elements as they contained were generally allowed to drop, is strikingly evinced by the fact that Ahuramazda, the supreme god of the pure doctrine of Zarathustra, remained virtually unknown in the west, and adoration there was especially directed to that god who had occupied the first place in the old Persian national religion and had been transferred by Zarathustra to the second the sun-god Mithra.

The fiendish Panis are concentrated in Ahriman or Anro-mainyas, whose name signifies the "spirit of darkness," and who carries on a perpetual warfare against Ormuzd or Ahuramazda, who is described by his ordinary surname, Spentomainyas, as the "spirit of light."

The Parthian Empire Of still more importance in the sequel than this insurrection of the Israelites was the contemporary movement probably originating from the same cause in the eastern provinces, where Antiochus Epiphanes emptied the temples of the Persian gods just as he had emptied that at Jerusalem, and doubtless accorded no better treatment there to the adherents of Ahuramazda and Mithra than here to those of Jehovah.

In the list of festivals certainly Father Diovis a purer and more civil than military reflection of the character of the Roman community occupies a larger space than Mars, just as the priest of Jupiter has precedence over the two priests of the god of war; but the latter still plays a very prominent part in the list, and it is even quite likely that, when this arrangement of festivals was established, Jovis stood by the side of Mars like Ahuramazda by the side of Mithra, and that the worship of the warlike Roman community still really centred at this time in the martial god of death and his March festival, while it was not the "care-destroyer" afterwards introduced by the Greeks, but Father Jovis himself, who was regarded as the god of the heart-gladdening wine.

That in the adoption of Oriental worships in the west such higher speculative and moral elements as they contained were generally allowed to drop, is strikingly evinced by the fact that Ahuramazda, the supreme god of the pure doctrine of Zarathustra, remained virtually unknown in the west, and adoration there was especially directed to that god who had occupied the first place in the old Persian national religion and had been transferred by Zarathustra to the second the sun-god Mithra.

The Parthian Empire Of still more importance in the sequel than this insurrection of the Israelites was the contemporary movement probably originating from the same cause in the eastern provinces, where Antiochus Epiphanes emptied the temples of the Persian gods just as he had emptied that at Jerusalem, and doubtless accorded no better treatment there to the adherents of Ahuramazda and Mithra than here to those of Jehovah.

The Persians, by the strength of their own right arms and the blessing of Ahuramazda, the "All-bounteous," would triumph over their impious masters, and become once more a great and independent people. At the worst, if he had miscalculated, there would be the alternative of a glorious death upon the battle-field in one of the noblest of all causes, the assertion of a nation's freedom.

As for Islam, the Koran is looked upon as communicated to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel, even as Zoroaster in the Avesta claims to have received certain communications in conversation with Ahuramazda.