f the Aryan mind with the Semitic, and thus opened the second
stage of Aryan thought.

Inquiries into the religion of ancient Persia began long ago, and it was
the old enemy of Persia, the Greek, who first studied it. Aristotle,
Hermippus, and many others wrote of it in books of which, unfortunately,
nothing more than a few fragments or merely the titles have come down to
us. We find much valuable information about it, scattered in the
accounts of historians and travellers, extending over ten centuries,
from Herodotos down to Agathias and Procopius (from B.C. 450 to A.D.
550). The clearest and most faithful account of the Dualist doctrine is
found in the treatise _De Iside et Osiride_, ascribed to Plutarch. But
Zoroastrianism was never more eagerly studied than in the first
centuries of the Christian era, though without anything of the
disinterested and almost scientific curiosity of the earlier times.
Religious and philosophic sects, in search of new dogmas, eagerly
received whatever came to them bearing the name of Zoroaster. As Xanthos
the Lydian, who is said to have lived before Herodotos, had mentioned
Zoroastrianism, there came to light, in those later times, scores of
oracles, styled "Oracula Chaldaica sive Magica," the work of
Neo-Platonists who were but very remote disciples of the Median sage. As
his name had become the very emblem of wisdom, they would cover with it
the latest inventions of their ever-deepening theosophy. Zoroaster and
Plato were treated as if they had been philosophers of the same school,
and Hierocles expounded their doctrines in the same book. Proclus
collected seventy Tetrads of Zoroaster and wrote commentaries on them;
but we need hardly say that Zoroaster commented on by Proclus was
nothing more or less than Proclus commented on by himself. Prodicus, the
Gnostic, possessed secret books of Zoroaster; and, upon the whole, it
may be said that in the first centuries of Christianity, the religion of
Persia was more studied and less understood than it had ever been
before. The real object aimed at, in studying the old religion, was to
form a new one.

Throughout the Middle Ages nothing was known of Mazdeism but the name of
its founder, who from a Magus was converted into a magician and master
of the hidden sciences. It was not until the Renaissance that real
inquiry was resumed. The first step was to collect all the information
that could be gathered from Greek and Roman writers. That task w