e results are not apparent still. Brahma, Ormuzd,
Zeus, Jupiter, are but different conceptions of a primal idea. They
are four great gods diversely represented yet originally identical,
and whose attributes Jahveh, in his ascensions, perhaps absorbed.

Ormuzd represented purity and light. For his worship no temple was
necessary, barely a shrine, never an image. In his celestial court
were parikas, the glittering bayaderes of love that a later faith
called peris, but his sole consorts were Prayers. About him and them
gathered amshaspands and izeds, angels and seraphs, the winged host of
loveliness that in Babylon enthralled the Jews who returned from
captivity escorted by them. The allurement of their charm, enchanting
then, enchants the world to-day. There has been little that is more
poetic, except perhaps Ormuzd himself, who symbolized whatever is
blinding in beauty, particularly the sun's effulgence, the radiance of
light.

The light endures, though the god has gone. Yet at the time, aloof in
clear ether and aloft, he resplended in a sovereignty that only
Ahriman disputed.

Ahriman has been more steadfast than Ormuzd. He too captivated the
captive Hebrews. The latter adopted him and called him Satan, as they
also adopted one of his minor legates, Ashmodai--transformed by the
Vulgate into Asmodeus--a little jealous devil who, in the apocryphal
_Tobit_, strangled husbands on their bridal nights. Ahriman, his
master, represented everything that was the opposite of Ormuzd.
Ahriman dwelt in darkness, Ormuzd in light. Ormuzd was primate of
purity; Ahriman, prince of whatever is base. One had angels and
archangels for aids, the other fiends and demons. Between their forces
war was constant. Each strove for the soul of man. But after death,
when, in the balance, the deeds of the defunct were weighed, there
appeared a golden-eyed redeemer, Mithra, who so closely resembled the
Christ that the world hesitated, for a moment, between them.

It was because of these conceptions that Persia dreamed of conquering
the West. At Marathon and at Salamis that illusion was looted. History
tells of the cohorts that descended there. It relates further what
they did. But of what they thought there is no record. It was,
perhaps, too obvious. Ormuzd, god of light and, in the Orient, god of
the day, was, in the darker and duller Occident, menaced there also by
Ahriman. Politically the expedition is not very explicable. Considered
from a rel