terms Ahuramazda “the god of the Aryans.” Thus the creed
became a powerful factor in the development of an united Iranian
nationality.
That a religion, which lays its chief stress upon moral precepts, may readily develop into casuistry and external formalism, with an infinity of minute prescriptions, injunctions on purity and the like, is well known. In the Avesta all these recur ad nauseam, so much so that the primitive spirit of the religion is stifled beneath them, as the doctrine of the ancient prophets was stifled in Judaism and the Talmud. The Sassanid Empire, indeed, is completely dominated by this formalism and ritualism; but the earlier testimony of Darius in his inscriptions and the statements in Herodotus enable us still to recognize the original healthy life of a religion capable of awakening the enthusiastic devotion of the inner man. Its formal character naturally germinated in the priesthood (Herod. i. 140; cf. Strabo xv. 733, &c.). The priests diligently practise all the precepts of their ritual—e.g. the extermination of noxious animals, and the exposure of corpses to the dogs and birds, that earth may not be polluted by their presence. They have advice for every contingency in life, and can say with precision when a man has been defiled and how he may be cleansed again; they possess an endless stock of formulae for prayer, and of sentences which serve for protection against evil spirits and may be turned to purposes of magic.
How the doctrine overspread the whole of Iran, we do not know. In the West, among the Medes and Persians, the guardianship and ministry of Zoroastrianism is vested in an exclusive priesthood—the Magians. Whence this name—unknown as already mentioned, to the Avesta—took its rise, we have no knowledge. Herodotus (i. 101) includes the Magians in his list of Median tribes; and it is probable that they and their The Magians. teaching reached the Persians from Media. At all events, they play here not merely the rôle of the “Fire-kindlers” (āthravan) in the Avesta, but are become an hereditary sacerdotal caste, acting an important part in the state—advisers and spiritual guides to the king, and so forth. With them the ritualism and magical character, above mentioned, are fully developed. In the narrations of Herodotus, they interpret dreams and predict the future; and in Greece, from the time of Herodotus and Sophocles (Oed. Tyr. 387) onward, the word Magian connotes a magician-priest.
See further, Zoroaster and works there quoted.
IV. Beginnings of History.—A connected chain of historical evidence begins with the time when under Shalmaneser (Salmanassar II.), the Assyrians in 836 B.C. began for the first time to penetrate farther into the mountains of the east; and there, in addition to several non-Iranian peoples, subdued a few Median tribes. These Assyrian Conquest of Media. wars were continued under successive kings, till the Assyrian power in these regions attained its zenith under Sargon (q.v.), who (715 B.C.) led into exile the Median chief Dayuku (see Deioces), a vassal of the Minni (Mannaeans), with all his family, and subjected the princes of Media as far as the mountain of Bikni (Elburz) and the border of the great desert. At that time twenty-eight Median “town-lords” paid tribute to Nineveh; two years later, (713 B.C.) no fewer than forty-six. Sargon’s successors, down to Assur-bani-pal (668–626 B.C.), maintained and even augmented their suzerainty over Media, in spite of repeated attempts to throw off the yoke in conjunction with the Mannaeans, the Saparda, the Cimmerians—who had penetrated into the Armenian mountains—and others. Not till the last years of Assur-bani-pal, on which the extant Assyrian annals are silent, can an independent Median Empire have arisen.
As to the history of this empire, we have an ancient account in Herodotus, which, with a large admixture of the legendary, still contains numerous historical elements, and a completely fanciful account from Ctesias, preserved in Diodorus (ii. 32 sqq.) and much used by later writers. In the latter Nineveh is destroyed by the Mede Arbaces The Median Empire. and the Babylonian Belesys about 880 B.C., a period when the Assyrians were just beginning to lay the foundations of their power. Arbaces is then followed by a long list of Median kings, all of them fabulous. On the other hand, according to Herodotus the Medes revolt from Assyria about 710 B.C., that is to say, at the exact time when they were subdued by Sargon. Deioces founds the monarchy; his son Phraortes begins the work of conquest; and his son Cyaxares is first overwhelmed by the Scythians, then captures Nineveh, and raises Media to a great power. A little supplementary information may be gleaned from the inscriptions of King Nabonidus of Babylon (555–539) and from a few allusions in the Old Testament. Of the Median Empire itself we do not possess a single monument. Consequently its history still lies in complete obscurity (cf. Media, Deioces; Phraortes, Cyaxares).
The beginnings of the Median monarchy can scarcely go farther back than 640 B.C. To all appearance, the insurrection against Assyria must have proceeded from the desert tribe of the Manda, mentioned by Sargon: for Nabonidus invariably describes the Median kings as “kings of the Manda.” According to the account of Herodotus, the dynasty was derived from Deioces, the captive of Sargon, whose descendants may have found refuge in the desert. The first historical king would seem to have been Phraortes, who probably succeeded in subduing the small local princes of Media and in rendering himself independent of Assyria. Further development was arrested by the Scythian invasion described by Herodotus. We know from Zephaniah and Jeremiah that these northern barbarians, in 626 B.C., overran and harried Syria and Palestine (cf. Cyaxares; Jews). With these inroads of the Cimmerians and Scythians (see Scythia), we must doubtless connect the great ethnographical revolution in the north of anterior Asia; the Indo-European Armenians (Hask), displacing the old Alarodians (Urartu, Ararat), in the country which has since borne their name; and the entry of the Cappadocians—first mentioned in the Persian period—into the east of Asia Minor. The Scythian invasion evidently contributed largely to the enfeeblement of the Assyrian Empire: for in the same year the Chaldaean Nabopolassar founded the New-Babylonian empire; and in 606 B.C. Cyaxares captured and destroyed Nineveh and the other Assyrian cities. Syria and the south he abandoned to Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadrezzar; while, on the other hand, Assyria proper, east of the Tigris, the north of Mesopotamia with the town of Harran (Carrhae) and the mountains of Armenia were annexed by the Medes. Cappadocia also fell before Cyaxares; in a war with the Lydian Empire the decisive battle was broken off by the celebrated eclipse of the sun on the 28th of May 585 B.C., foretold by Thales (Herod. i. 74). After this a peace was arranged by Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and Syennesis of Cilicia, recognizing the Halys as the borderline. To the east, the Median Empire extended far over Iran, even the Persians owning its sway. Ecbatana (q.v.) became the capital.
Of the states which arose out of the shattered Assyrian Empire (Media, Babylon, Egypt, Cilicia and Lydia), Media was by far the strongest. In Babylon the kings feared, and the exiled Jews hoped, an attack from the Medes (cf. Isa. xiii., xiv., xxi.; Jer. l., li.); and Nebuchadrezzar sought by every means—great fortifications, canals and so forth—to secure his empire against the menace from the north. He succeeded in maintaining the status quo practically unimpaired, additional security being found in intermarriage between the two dynasties. In this state of equilibrium the great powers of Anterior Asia remained during the first half of the 6th century.
V. The Persian Empire of the Achaemenids.—The balance, however, was disturbed in 553 B.C., when the Persian Cyrus, king of Anshan in Elam (Susiana), revolted against his suzerain Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, and three years later defeated him at Pasargadae (q.v.).[1] Shortly afterwards Astyages was taken prisoner, Conquests of Cyrus and Cambyses. Ecbatana reduced, and the Median Empire replaced by the Persian. The Persian tribes were welded by Cyrus into a single nation, and now became the foremost people in the world (see Persis and Cyrus). At first Nabonidus of Babylon hailed the fall of the Medes with delight and utilized the opportunity by occupying Harran (Carrhae). But before long he recognized the danger threatened from that quarter. Cyrus and his Persians paid little heed to the treaties which the Median king had concluded with the other powers; and the result was a great coalition against him, embracing Nabonidus of Babylon, Amasis of Egypt, Croesus of Lydia, and the Spartans, whose highly efficient army seemed to the Oriental states of great value. In the spring of 546 B.C., Croesus opened the attack. Cyrus
- ↑ See further, Babylonia and Assyria: § v. History.
