ABSTRACT
In the immense empire which Cyrus had founded and Darius I had re-established in its unity, every subject people kept its own religion. The Great Kings were eclectics, who did not proselytize; on the contrary, we find them being initiated into the worship of foreign deities and taking them for their protectors. What, then, were the inmost beliefs of these autocrats, which were sufficiently elastic to allow of such dealings with the patron gods of the conquered peoples? Unfortunately the evidence at our disposal is too scanty to enable us to obtain more than an outline of an interesting subject, which affects the policy of these rulers, and would, if fully known, considerably affect our reading of history.
