The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires 231 Both Ardashir I who founded the Sassanid dynasty in the third century a.d., and Constantine the Great who reconstructed the Roman Empire in the fourth, turned to religious organizations for help, because in these organizations they saw a new means of using and controlling the wills of men. And already before the end of the fourth century both empires were persecuting free talk and religious inno- A'ation. In Persia Ardashir found the ancient Persian religion of Zoroaster (or Zarathushtra) with its priests and temples and a saered fire that burnt upon its altars, ready for his purpose as a state reli- gion. Before the end of the third century Zoroastrianism was per- secuting Christianit}', and in 277 Mani, the founder of a new faith, the Manichseans, was crucified and his body flayed. Constantinople, on its side, was busy hunting out Christian heresies. Manichsean ideas infected Christianity and had to be fought with the fiercest methods ; in return ideas from Christianity affected the purity of the Zoroastrian doctrine. All ideas became suspect. Science, which demands before all things the free action of an untroubled Photo: Alinari. THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS COURT
