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Updated: June 15, 2025
By the day after to-morrow there will be no more earth, no more sky; and I will tell you this, child: If, when Serapis falls, the universe does not crumble to pieces like a ruinous hovel, then the wisdom of the Magians is a lie, the course of the stars has nothing to do with the destinies of the earth and its inhabitants, the planets are mere lamps, the sun is no more than a luminous furnace, the old gods are marsh-fires, emanations from the dark bog of men's minds and the great Serapis.... But why be angry with him?
He mingled a draught of one of those simple but potent remedies which he carried always in his girdle for the Magians were physicians as well as astrologers and poured it slowly between the colourless lips. Hour after hour he laboured as only a skilful healer of disease can do. At last the man's strength returned; he sat up and looked about him.
They summoned the Persian soldiers to arms, and announced every where that they had ascertained that the king was a priest and an impostor, and not their legitimate sovereign, and that they had consequently killed him. They called upon the people to kill the magians wherever they could find them, as if the whole class were implicated in the guilt of the usurping brothers.
The merry feast soon became a wild orgy; loud cries of Evoe, and tumultuous singing reached the ears of the Magians, who had once more settled down to calculations and discussions over their rolls and tablets. The mother of the youth that had been killed still sat huddled at the foot of the statue of justice, enduring the anguish of listening to these drunken revels with dull resignation.
Having first consulted the priests and scribes respecting the birthplace of Christ, he procured a private interview with the Magians, for the purpose of ascertaining the time of the meteoric appearance; and, with all the policy of all experienced statesman, requested them to go and find out the extraordinary Child, then return to bring him word, that he might come and worship him.
Though Maziyar outwardly embraced Islam he was probably in secret a Zoroastrian inasmuch as he continued to have a large Magian following and "conferred various offices and distinctions on Babak, Mazdak, and other Magians who ordered the Muhammadan mosque to be destroyed and all trace of Islam to be removed."
These authors further cite as appertaining to this religion propositions which the Magians themselves have always rejected. I believe that they must have heard these particulars from ordinary people and that they have recorded them as the authentic expression of the followers of the religion of Zoroaster.
Convinced of the truth of Christianity, but unhappily an alien from its spirit, he commenced a persecution of the Magians and their most powerful adherents, which caused him to be held in detestation by his subjects, and has helped to attach to his name the epithets of "Al-Khasha," "the Harsh," and "Al-Athim," "the Wicked." But the' persecution did not continue long.
The companies of the imperial body-guard, who were placed about the amphitheatre, found no great difference, so long as it was daylight, between the crowd round the Circus of Alexandria and that by the Tiber. What chiefly struck them was the larger number of dusky faces, and the fanciful garb of the Magians.
In the same place he makes mention of a numerous settlement of the Magians. "Here are," he says, "a goodly number of Magians in the neighbourhood of Istakhr. There is a large stone building with carvings and pillars about which the Persians relate that it is the mosque of Solomon; the son of David, and that it is the work of genii.
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