ABSTRACT
Res Gestae 23.6 is a long digression on the Persian empire, which is functional inasmuch as it provides the reader with a description of the vast empire the protagonist Julian was now attacking and indeed invading. Within this extensive geographical and ethnographical survey which pictures the enemy’s moral and material resources, here and there shorter digressions in the second degree have been inserted.1 Sections 32-5 contain the most important of these, with a short appendix, so to speak a digression in the third degree, in § 36. A translation of the entire passage seems appropriate. It runs as follows:
(32) In these parts are the fertile fields of the Magi. Since I have happened on this topic, it will be in place to give a few words of explanation about their principles and activities. The most eminent author of excellent views, Plato, teaches about magia that it is hagistia, the most untainted worship of the divine. In ages long past many contributions deriving from the secret lore of the Chaldaeans were made to this expertise by the Bactrian Zoroaster and, after him, by the very wise king Hystaspes, the father of Darius. (33) When Hystaspes had confidently made his way into the unknown regions of Upper India, he reached a wooded wilderness, the calm silence of which was in the possession of the lofty intellects of the Brahmins. From their teaching he learned as much as he could gather of the laws governing the cosmic movement and the pure religious rites. He communicated some of what he had learned to the views of the Magi, which they, along with the art of divining the future, hand on to later generations, each by way of their own sons. (34) From that time on for many ages down to the present a large throng, sprung from one and the same lineage, devotes itself to the cult of the gods. They also say, if it is correct to believe them, that a fire fallen from heaven is guarded in their country on ever-burning braziers. According to them a small portion of it used to be carried as a good omen before the Asiatic kings. (35) In old times the number of this stock was small and the Persian authorities
regularly made use of their services in divine worship. It was taboo to approach an altar or to touch a sacrificial victim before one of the Magi poured the preliminary libations after a formal prayer. But they gradually increased in number and became a strong clan with a name of their own; they lived in country residences, which were not protected by strong walls, and were allowed to live in accordance with their own laws. They were honoured out of respect for their religion. (36) From this seed of the Magi, as the ancient records relate, seven men mounted the Persian throne after the death of Cambyses, but they were overthrown by the party of Darius, who had acquired the beginning of his kingship by the neighing of a horse.2
