unt of Zoroaster[112] and his precepts, is very
remarkable. It is as follows:--

"Some believe that there are two Gods,--as it were, two rival workmen; the
one whereof they make to be the maker of good things, and the other bad.
And some call the better of these God, and the other Daemon; as doth
Zoroastres, the Magee, whom they report to be five thousand years elder
than the Trojan times. This Zoroastres therefore called the one of these
Oromazes, and the other Arimanius; and affirmed, moreover, that the one of
them did, of anything sensible, the most resemble light, and the other
darkness and ignorance; but that Mithras was in the middle betwixt them.
For which cause, the Persians called Mithras the mediator. And they tell
us that he first taught mankind to make vows and offerings of thanksgiving
to the one, and to offer averting and feral sacrifice to the other. For
they beat a certain plant called homomy[113] in a mortar, and call upon
Pluto and the dark; and then mix it with the blood of a sacrificed wolf,
and convey it to a certain place where the sun never shines, and there
cast it away. For of plants they believe, that some pertain to the good
God, and others again to the evil Daemon; and likewise they think that
such animals as dogs, fowls, and urchins belong to the good; but water
animals to the bad, for which reason they account him happy that kills
most of them. These men, moreover, tell us a great many romantic things
about these gods, whereof these are some: They say that Oromazes,
springing from purest light, and Arimanius, on the other hand, from pitchy
darkness, these two are therefore at war with one another. And that
Oromazes made six gods[114], whereof the first was the author of
benevolence, the second of truth, the third of justice, and the rest, one
of wisdom, one of wealth, and a third of that pleasure which accrues from
good actions; and that Arimanius likewise made the like number of contrary
operations to confront them. After this, Oromazes, having first trebled
his own magnitude, mounted up aloft, so far above the sun as the sun
itself above the earth, and so bespangled the heavens with stars. But one
star (called Sirius or the Dog) he set as a kind of sentinel or scout
before all the rest. And after he had made four-and-twenty gods more, he
placed them all in an egg-shell. But those that were made by Arimanius
(being themselves also of the like number) breaking a hole in this
beauteous and gl