r gods by their mediation. The classical writers maintain that
the Magi often cloaked monstrous vices under their apparent strictness,
and it is possible that this was the case in later days, but even then
moral depravity was probably rather the exception than the rule among
them:*** the majority of the Magi faithfully observed the rules of
honest living and ceremonial purity enjoined on them in the books handed
down by their ancestors.

* Clement of Alexandria assures us that they were strictly
celibate, but besides the fact that married Magi are
mentioned several times, celibacy is still considered by
Zoroastrians an inferior state to that of marriage.

** In the Greek period, a spurious epitaph of Darius, son of
Hystaspes, was quoted, in which the king says of himself, "I
was the pupil of the Magi."

*** These accusations are nearly all directed against their
incestuous marriages: it seems that the classical writers
took for a refinement of debauchery what really was before
all things a religious practice.

There is reason to believe that the Magi were all-powerful among the
Medes, and that the reign of Astyages was virtually the reign of the
priestly caste; but all the Iranian states did not submit so patiently
to their authority, and the Persians at last proved openly refractory.
Their kings, lords of Susa as well as of Pasargadse, wielded all the
resources of Elam, and their military power must have equalled, if it
did not already surpass, that of their suzerain lords. Their tribes,
less devoted to the manner of living of the Assyrians and Chaldaeans,
had preserved a vigour and power of endurance which the Medes no longer
possessed; and they needed but an ambitious and capable leader, to rise
rapidly from the rank of subjects to that of rulers of Iran, and to
become in a short time masters of Asia. Such a chief they found in
Cyrus,* son of Cambyses; but although no more illustrious name than his
occurs in the list of the founders of mighty empires, the history of no
other has suffered more disfigurement from the imagination of his own
subjects or from the rancour of the nations he had conquered.**

* The original form of the name is Kuru, Kurush, with a long
_o_, which forces us to reject the proposed connection with
the name of the Indian hero Kuru, in which the _u_ is short.
Numerous etymologies of the name Cyrus have been proposed.