ABSTRACT
According to Xanthus of Lydia, who wrote in the fifth century b.c., the Magi considered it right to have intercourse with their mothers, daughters, and sisters and also to hold women in common. 1 The first half of this claim is perfectly correct: Xanthus is here referring to the Zoroastrian institution of close-kin marriage (khwēdōdāh), the existence of which is not (or no longer) in doubt. 2 But his belief that the Magi held women in common undoubtedly rests on a misunderstanding, possibly of easy divorce laws and more probably of the institution of wife lending. 3 In the fifth century a.d., however, we once more hear of Persians who deemed it right to have women in common; and this time the claim is less easy to brush aside. The Persians in question were heretics, not orthodox Zoroastrians or their priests; their heresy was to the effect that both land and women should be held in common, not just women (though the first attempt to implement it did apparently concern itself with women alone); and the heretics are described, not just by Greeks, let alone a single observer, but also by Syriac authors and the Persians themselves as preserved in Zoroastrian sources and the Islamic tradition. What then are we to make of the claim the second time round? 4
