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Nehushta had listened with varying attention to the queen's account of the religious difficulties in the kingdom, and she laughed at the Megoeric puzzle by which Darius justified the death of the Magians. But in her heart she longed to see Zoroaster, and was weary of entertaining her royal guest.

John, in the territory of Bassora. The altars of Babylon were overturned by the Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were revenged by the sword of Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years under a foreign yoke; and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the desert.

He turned away with a thought of pity, leaving the body to that strange burial which the Magians deemed most fitting the funeral of the desert, from which the kites and vultures rise on dark wings, and the beasts of prey slink furtively away. When they are gone there is only a heap of white bones on the sand. But, as he turned, a long, faint, ghostly sigh came from the man's lips.

As soon as the Magians saw the young Child, with Mary his mother, they "fell down and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way."

"Know, O handmaid of God, that this city was the capital of my father, who is the king thou sawest on the throne, changed to a black stone, and as for the queen on the bed, she was my mother; and they and all the people of the city were Magians, worshipping the fire, instead of the All-powerful King, and swearing by the fire and the light and the shade and the heat and the revolving sphere.

A superior smile parted the Magian's lips; he stepped back into the room, followed by Annianus, and replied: "You know how many who call themselves Magians will crowd round Caesar, and the fame of Sosibius, Hananja, and Kaimis, is not much behind mine. Each plies his art by his own formulas, though he may call himself a Pythagorean or what not.

In Porphyrius' house, meanwhile, all was gloom and anxiety. In spite of the terrific heat Damia would not be persuaded to come down from the turret-room where she had collected all the instruments, manuals and formulas used by astrologers and Magians.

The visit of the shepherds to Mary, already recited, was succeeded by another, perhaps equally remarkable. A company of Magi, or Magians, probably from Arabia, having seen a remarkable light, resembling a star, suspended over Bethlehem, hastened to pay suitable homage to the illustrious personage whose birth it indicated.

His followers called the Bihafridians still keep the institutes of their founder and strongly resemble the Zam-Zamis among the Magians." Shaharastani adds that they were the most hostile of God's creatures to the Zamzami Magians. The entire chapter on the Iranian sects in Shaharastani is worthy of careful and deep study.

Together with this elemental worship was introduced into the religion a profound regard for an order of priests called Magians, who interposed themselves between the deity and the worshipper, and claimed to possess prophetic powers.