The Account of Zoroastrianism Given by the Byzantine Historian Agathias

Although Sasanian Persia and the Roman Empire were neighbouring powers for four hundred years, their political relations, uncertain at best and often actually hostile, were not such as to promote a mutual appreciation of cultural attainment and of spiritual life. Hence it has come about that the Greek and Latin historians of the period, who narrate at length the wars and negotiations between Rome and Persia, make in general but little mention of the religion of their opponents. All the more interest attaches, therefore, to the few descriptions they have given of Zoroastrianism in Sasanian times, and among these the account that the Byzantine historian Agathias (about 536—582 A.D.) has left us is both the fullest and, on the whole, the most intelligent. ¹ This versatile author, a lawyer by profession, was by preference a poet in his earlier years, but in his maturity he undertook to continue the celebrated history that Procopius had written of the wars of the Emperor Justinian. His work, in five books, records the events of the years 552 to 558 only, death having apparently interrupted the completion of the task.