Roman Stoicism / being lectures on the history of the Stoic philosophy with special reference to its development within the Roman Empire

by Edward Vernon Arnold

Persism.

7. The popular expression ‘magic’ still recalls to us the system of which the Magi of Persia were the professed exponents, and of which the Romans had a knowledge which is to a large extent confirmed from other sources. This system we shall here call ‘Persism,’ in order to free ourselves of the popular associations still connected with such terms as Magism, Parsee-ism, and so forth; meaning by ‘Persism’ the teaching of Zarathustra (the Latin Zoroastres) as it affected the Greek and Latin world. Persism has its roots in the older nationalism, inasmuch as its deity is one who takes sides with his believer and brings him victory in war; but on the other hand it grows into a world-religion because that which begins as a conflict between races gradually changes into a struggle between right and wrong. It is based also on the Chaldaean system, in so far as it looks up to the heaven as the object of human reverence and to the sun, moon and planets as at least the symbols of human destiny; but here again the outlook is transformed, for in the place of impersonal and inexorable forces we find a company of celestial beings, intimately concerned in the affairs of men, and engaged in an ardent struggle for the victory of the better side. The meaning of Persism and its immense influence on the Greco-Roman world are still so little realized that it is necessary here to deal with the subject with some fulness.

Zarathustra.

8. The Greeks and Romans refer to the teachings of Zarathustra as of immemorial antiquity[14]; whilst on the other hand the direct Persian tradition (existing in a written form from about the year 800 A.D.) ascribes them to a date 258 years before the era of Alexander’s invasion of Persia[15]. The best modern authorities incline to the Persian view, thus giving the date of about 600 B.C. to Zarathustra, and making him roughly a contemporary of the Buddha and Confucius[16]. On the other hand considerations, partly of the general history of religion, partly of the linguistic and metrical character of such fragments of Zarathustra’s writings as still remain, indicate a date earlier than this by many hundred years[17]. Zarathustra belonged to the tribe of the Magi, who maintained religious practices of which the nature can only be inferred from such of them as survived the prophet’s reforms[18]; in their general character they cannot have differed widely from those recorded in the Rigveda. In the midst of this system Zarathustra came forward as a reformer. He was deeply learned in the doctrines of the Chaldaeans[19], and was an ardent student of astronomy[20]. In a period of solitary contemplation in the desert[21], it was revealed to him that a great and wise being, named Ahura Mazdā, was the creator and ruler of heaven and earth[22]. Upon him attend Angels who do him service; whilst the spirit of Mischief and his attendants ceaselessly work to oppose his purposes. Ahura is the light, his enemy is the darkness[23]. The struggle between them is that between right and wrong, and in it every man must take one or the other side. His soul will survive what men call death, and receive an everlasting reward according to his deeds. After quitting the mortal body, the soul will pass over the Bridge of Judgment, and will there be turned aside to the right or to the left; if it has been virtuous, to enter Paradise, but if vicious, the House of Falsehood. Full of this doctrine, Zarathustra enters the court of King Vishtāspa, and converts him and his court. The monarch in turn sets out to convert the unbelieving world by the sword, and the War of Religion begins.

Spread of Persism.

9. We cannot trace the long history of the War of Religion through its whole course, but in the end we find that the Religion has welded together the great kingdom of Persia, and its warlike zeal is directed towards establishing throughout the world the worship of the ‘God of heaven,’ and the destruction of all images, whether in the shape of men or of beasts, as dishonouring to the divine nature. In the sixth century B.C. Babylon opposed the Religion in the east, and Lydia in the west; both fell before Cyrus the Great. The fall of Babylon set free the Jews, who accepted the king’s commission to establish the Religion in Jerusalem[24], and (at a rather later date) in Egypt[25]; on the other hand that of Lydia exposed the Hellenes, a people devoted to idol-worship, to the fury of the image-breakers[26]. The battles of Marathon and Salamis checked the warlike advance of Persism, and the victories of Alexander suppressed its outward observance and destroyed its literature and its priesthood. But in this period of apparent depression some at least of its doctrines were winning still wider acceptance than before.

Persism invades Greece.

10. The departure of the Persians from Europe was the signal for an outburst of enthusiasm in Greece for the old gods and their worship with the aid of images. Yet, unfavourable as the time might seem, a monotheistic sentiment developed apace in Hellas, which we shall follow more closely in the next chapter[27]. Even Herodotus, writing as a fair-minded historian, no longer regards the Persians as impious, but realizes that they are actuated by conviction[28]. Socrates was an outspoken defender of all the main articles of the Religion, to the horror of nationalists like Aristophanes, who not unjustly accused him of corrupting the loyalty of the youth of Athens to the institutions of their mother city. Xenophon, the most intimate of his disciples, translated this bias into action, and joined with the 10,000 Greeks in a vain effort to re-establish the strength of Persia: he did not even hesitate to engage in war against his native land. To him Cyrus the Persian was a greater hero than any Homeric warrior or Greek sage; and from Cyrus he drew the belief in the immortality of the soul which from this time on is one of the chief subjects of philosophic speculation.

Persism welcomed in Rome.

11. The Romans had not the same national motives as the Greeks to feel an antipathy to Persism. For the doctrine of monotheism they had probably been prepared by their Etruscan sovereigns, and the temple of Capitoline Jove kept before their eyes a symbol of this sentiment. But in the Roman period Persian sovereignty had receded to the far distance, and the doctrines of Persism only reached Rome through the Greek language and in Greek form. Thus of the doctrines of the Evil Spirit, the war between Good and Evil, and the future punishment of the wicked, only faint echoes ever reached the Roman ear. On the other hand the doctrines of the divine government of the world and of the immortality of the soul made a deep impression; and Cicero in a well-known passage repeats and amplifies the account Xenophon gives in his Cyropaedia of the dying words of Cyrus, which is doubtless to some extent coloured by recollections of the death of Socrates: