ries concerning, the tenets of the Magi, and
endeavored to collect in one the writings of Zoroaster. But the
later monarchs, and still more their subjects, had held the system
in contempt, and, as we have seen, Epiphanes had openly insulted the
religious feelings of his Asiatic subjects. The Parthians, on the other
hand, began at any rate with a treatment of the Persian religion which
was respectful and gratifying. Though perhaps at no time very sincere
Zoroastrians, they had conformed to the State religion under the
Achaemenian kings; and when the period came that they had themselves to
establish a system of government, they gave to the Magian hierarchy
a distinct and important place in their governmental machinery. The
council, which advised the monarch, and which helped to elect and (if
need were) depose him, was composed of two elements---the _Sophi_,
or wise men, who were civilians; and the _Magi_, or priests of the
Zoroastrian religion. The Magi had thus an important political status in
Parthia, during the early period of the Empire; but they seem gradually
to have declined in favor, and ultimately to have fallen into disrepute.
The Zoroastrian creed was, little by little, superseded among the
Parthians by a complex idolatry, which, beginning with an image-worship
of the Sun and Moon, proceeded to an association with those deities of
the deceased kings of the nation, and finally added to both a worship
of ancestral idols, which formed the most cherished possession of each
family, and practically monopolized the religious sentiment. All the old
Zoroastrian practices were by degrees laid aside. In Armenia the Arsacid
monarchs allowed the sacred fire of Ormazd to become extinguished; and
in their own territories the Parthian Arsacidae introduced the practice,
hateful to Zoroastrians, of burning the dead. The ultimate religion of
these monarchs seems in fact to have been a syncretism wherein Sabaism,
Confucianism, Greco-Macedonian notions, and an inveterate primitive
idolatry were mixed together. It is not impossible that the very names
of Ormazd and Ahriman had ceased to be known at the Parthian Court, or
were regarded as those of exploded deities, whose dominion over men's
minds had passed away.

On the other hand, in Persia itself, and to some extent doubtless among
the neighboring countries, Zoroastrianism (or what went by the name)
had a firm hold on the religious sentiments of the multitude, who viewed
with disf