Book 1
prol.7
They hold discourse of justice, and deem it impious to practise cremation; but they see no impiety in marriage with a mother or daughter, as Sotion relates in his twenty-third book. Further, they practise divination and forecast the future, declaring that the gods appear to them in visible form. Moreover, they say that the air is full of shapes which stream forth like vapour and enter the eyes of keen-sighted seers. They prohibit personal ornament and the wearing of gold. Their dress is white, they make their bed on the ground, and their food is vegetables, cheese,Compare Pliny, N.H. xx. 11. 242: Zoroaster lived in the wilderness on cheese (cf. Yasht, xxii. 18 Spring butter is the ambrosia of the blessed). For fuller comments on 7-9 see J. H. Moulton’s Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 410-418. and coarse bread; their staff is a reed and their custom is, so we are told, to stick it into the cheese and take up with it the part they eat.
prol.8
With the art of magic they were wholly unacquainted, according to Aristotle in his Magicus and Dinon in the fifth book of his History Dinon tells us that the name Zoroaster, literally interpreted, means star-worshipperThis popular etymology, though wide-spread, is erroneous, the true form of the prophet’s name being Zarathustra, almost certainly derived from zarath = old (a Zend stem, parallel to γέροντ-) and ustra= camel. Cf. J. H. Moulton, op. cit. p. 426, and, for star-lore in the Avesta, ib. p. 210.; and Hermodorus agrees with him in this. Aristotle in the first book of his dialogue On Philosophy declares that the Magi are more ancient than the Egyptians; and further, that they believe in two principles, the good spirit and the evil spirit, the one called Zeus or Oromasdes, the other Hades or Arimanius. This is confirmed by Hermippus in his first book about the Magi, Eudoxus in his Voyage round the World, and Theopompus in the eighth book of his Philippica.
