Chapter 5 — THE PERSIAN PERIOD: 539–331 b.c.
I. Ethical Dualism
It was in November 1754 that a young Frenchman, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805), enlisted as a private in the French army to sail for India, where he hoped to find — and where he did find — what remained in the world of the works of the fabled Persian prophet Zoroaster. In 1771 his publication of the Zend Avesta appeared; and the progress that Oriental scholarship has since made toward an understanding of the relationship of those texts to the doctrines of both Christianity and Islam has been — though extremely slow — secure and convincing.
The Persian prophet’s words have come down preserved like gems in the setting of a later liturgical work known as the Yasna, “Book of the Offering,” which is a priestly compilation of prayers, confessions, invocations, and the like, arranged according to the rituals in which they were employed. The chapters are in three divisions: Chapters 1–27, priestly invocations; Chapters 28–34, 43–51, and 53, the Gathas of the Prophet (sermons, songs, and revelations, in a dialect considerably earlier than that of the remainder of the work); and Chapters 35–42, 52, and 54–72, again priestly invocations, revealing a more highly systematized theology than that of the basic Gathas themselves.
Professor L. H. Mills, in the introduction of his translation of the Yasna, suggests for the Gathas a period roughly between c. 1500 and 900 b.c.Note 1 Professor Eduard Meyer dates the prophet c. 1000 b.c.Note 2 And Professor Hans Heinrich Schaeder, observing that the social order represented in the Gathas sets the prophet in a world of “petty regional princes, who are obviously not subject to a common overlord,” assigns to him a date preceding the rise of the Median Empire in the seventh century b.c.Note 3 But, on the other hand, there is an influential school that would equate a certain King Vishtaspa named in the GathasNote 4 with King Darius’s father, Hystaspes, and so place the prophet as late as c. 550 b.c.Note 5 The problem is extremely complicated, with arguments and arguers on every side. However, the evidence for the antiquity of the language, social order, and religious atmosphere cannot be lightly — or even ponderously — brushed aside. There it stands. And, as the masterful Professor Meyer, in learned amazement, remarks: “That scholars still should exist who believe it possible, or even discussable, that King Vishtaspa [of the Gathas] should be identified with Darius’s father Hystaspes, is one of those incomprehensible anomalies that have been particularly prominent and bothersome in this field, and which only prove how remote from many of our leading philologists all understanding must be of history and historical thinking.”Note 6
Meyer has termed Zoroaster “the first personality to have worked creatively and formatively upon the course of religious history.”Note 7 The pharaoh Ikhnaton was, of course, earlier, but “his solar monotheism did not endure”;Note 8 whereas, throughout the entire history of Occidental ethical religiosity — in contrast to the metaphysical religiosity of the Orient — the great themes first sounded in the Gathic dialogues of the God of Truth, Ahura Mazda, with his prophet, Zoroaster, can be heard echoed and re-echoed, in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaean, Arabic, and every tongue of the West.
The first novelty of this radically new teaching lay in its treatment in purely ethical terms of the ultimate nature and destiny of both mankind and the world. In the Orient of India no attempt was ever made to bring into play in the religious field any principle of fundamental world reform or renovation. The cosmic order of eons, ever cycling in a mighty round of ineluctably returning ages — from eternity, through eternity — would never, by any act of man, be changed from its majestic way. The sun, the moon, the stars in their courses, the various animal species, and the orders of the castes of the orthodox Indian social system would remain forever established in their modes; and truth, virtue, rapture, and true being lay in doing, as before, whatever had been traditionally done — without protest, without ego, without judgment — precisely as taught. The individual had, therefore, but two courses: one, to accept the entire system and strive to play his part as an actor in the play, competently, without hope or fear; and the other, to resign, disengage himself, and let the play of fools run on. The ultimate Being of beings (or, in Buddhist terms, the Void of the phantasmagoria of appearance) lay beyond the reach of ethical judgment — indeed, beyond all pairs-of-opposites: good and evil, true and false, being and non-being, life and death. So that the wise (as those were termed who had at last arrived, through many lives, at the point of recognizing the futility of hope), “scorched,” as we read, “with the fire of an endless round of birth, death, and the rest — like one whose head is on fire rushing to a lake —”Note 9 either retired to the forest, there to plunge beyond the non-being of being, or else remained in the fire, to be burned willingly to nought through an unremitting giving of themselves, without hope, but with compassion, to futility.
The orientation of such an order of thought was metaphysical; not ethical or rational, but trans-ethical, trans-rational. And in the Far East, as well as in India, whether in the mythic fields of Shinto, Taoism, and Confucianism, or in the Mahāyāna, the world was not to be reformed, but only known, revered, and its laws obeyed. Personal and social disorder stemmed from departure from those cosmic laws, and reform could be achieved only by a return to the unchanging root.
In Zoroaster’s new mythic view, on the other hand, the world, as it was, was corrupt — not by nature but by accident — and to be reformed by human action. Wisdom, virtue, and truth lay, therefore, in engagement, not in disengagement. And the crucial line of decision between ultimate being and non-being was ethical. For the primal character of creation had been light, wisdom, and truth, into which, however, darkness, deception, and the lie had entered, which it was now man’s duty to eradicate through his own virtue in thought, word, and deed.
Specifically, according to this teaching, two contrary powers made and maintain the world in which men live: first, Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Life, Wisdom, and Light, Creator of the Righteous Order; but then, too, his antagonist, Angra Mainyu, the Demon of the Lie, who, when the world had been made, corrupted every particle of its being. These two powers are coeval; for they have existed from all eternity. However, not both are eternal, for the Demon of the Lie is to be undone at the end of time, when truth alone will prevail. Thus we note, beside the primary novelty of the ethical posture of the Zoroastrian system, a second novelty in its progressive view of cosmic history. This is not the old, ever-revolving cycle of the archaic Bronze Age mythologies, but a sequence, once and for all, of creation, fall, and progressive redemption, to culminate in a final, decisive, irrefragable victory of the One Eternal God of Righteousness and Truth.
“Yea,” we read, in the words of the prophet,
of the world’s two primary powers, I will proclaim; of whom the more bountiful thus addressed the hurtful: “We are at one neither in our thoughts nor in our commands, understandings nor beliefs, deeds, consciences, nor souls.”
I will declare, thus, the world’s first teaching, which the all-wise Ahura Mazda has proclaimed to me. And those of you who will not fulfill and obey this holy word, as I now conceive and proclaim it, the issue of life will be in woe.Note 10
A third teaching is of certain powers proceeding from the Creator, which awaken their counterparts in man. Foremost of these are the archangels Good Mind and Righteous Order, to whom Perfect Sovereignty and Divine Piety bring support, accompanied by Excellence and Immortality. Opposed to these are the powers of the Lie, known as Evil Mind and False Appearance, Cowardice, Hypocrisy, Misery, and Extinction. These were later systematized as opposed hierarchies of beneficent Amesha Spentas and malignant Daevas — whence the Christian orders of angels and devils were derived. However, in the Gathas there is no sign yet of any such systematized angelology; the various powers are named and called upon almost without distinction, to activate the spirit of the devotee. Furthermore, they are both “god” and “of God”; and they are matched in the “Better Mind” of each man.
O Great Creator, Living Lord! Inspired by Thy Kindly Mind, I approach You Powers, and beseech of Thee* to grant me as a bountiful gift — furthering the worlds both of body and of mind — those attainments derived of Divine Righteousness, by means of which that personified Righteousness within us may conduct those who receive it to Glorious Beatitude.Note 11
Of high importance throughout is the idea of individual free will and decision. One is not to follow rote and command, like a herding beast, but to act as a man with a mind. We read the celebrated verse:
Hear ye then with your ears; see the bright flames with the eyes of the Better Mind. It is for a decision as to religions, man and man, each individually for himself. Before the great effort of the cause, awake ye to our teaching.Note 12
Each having chosen his cause, he must cleave to it, not in thought alone, but in word and deed as well. “He who would bend his mind till it attains to the better and more holy,” wrote the prophet, “must pursue the Good Religion closely in word and act. His will and wish must be consistent with his chosen creed and fealty.”Note 13 And when the course of life is run, the soul at the Chinvat Bridge, the Bridge of Judgment, learns the nature of its earned reward.
There is a memorable representation of this bridge in a late Zoroastrian work known as “The Vision of Arda Viraf,” composed at some undetermined date during the late Sassanian period of post-Alexandrian, Zoroastrian restoration (226–641 a.d.). The document gives an account of an ardent visionary’s Dantean visit in trance, while yet alive, to the other world.
Taking the first footstep with the Good Thought, the second footstep with the Good Word, and the third footstep with the Good Deed, I came [wrote the visionary at the beginning of his account] to the Chinvat Bridge, the very wide and strong, created by Ahura Mazda. And when I came up there, I saw a soul of the departed, which in the first three nights remained seated upon its body, uttering these words of the Gatha: “Well is he who has caused his own benefit to become the benefit of another.”
And in those three nights there came to that soul as much benefit, comfort, and enjoyment as it had beheld in the world, which was in proportion to the comfort, happiness, and joy it had caused. Whereupon, when the third dawn arrived, that pious soul departed into the sweet scent of trees, the scent that had graced his nose among the living, and that wind of fragrance came to him from the south, the quarter of God.
And there stood before him his own Religion and Deeds, in the form of a damsel, a beautiful appearance, matured in virtue, with prominent breasts; that is to say, her breasts swelled downward, which is charming to heart and soul. And her form was as brilliant as the sight of it delightful and the observation of it desirable. The soul at the bridge asked the damsel, “Who art thou? What person art thou? Never in the world of the living did I see any damsel of more elegant form and more beautiful body than thine.” To which she answered,
“O Youth of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, and good religion, I am your own actions. It is because of your own good will and acts that I am as great and good, sweet scented, triumphant and undistressed as what you see. For in the world you intoned the Gathas, consecrated the good water, tended the fire, and proffered honor to the pious who came to you from far and from near. Though buxom in the beginning, I was made more so by yourself; though virtuous, more virtuous, though seated on a resplendent throne, I am enthroned more resplendently through you; and though exalted, I am made more exalted through you — through your good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.”Note 14
When he had observed this beautiful meeting of the soul with its Fravashi (its unearthly alter-ego, poetically called its “Spirit of the Road”) the visiting Arda Viraf was taken by the hand by two angels, Divine Obedience and the Flaming Fire of Thought; the bridge widened; and he went across, to where other angels, also, gave protection. Moreover, numerous Spirits of the Road of the Just, who were there waiting for their living counterparts, bowed to him in greeting. And there was an angel, Justice, who bore in his hand a yellow golden balance, wherewith to weigh the pious and the wicked. His two guardians said to Arda Viraf, “Come, let us show you heaven and hell: the place of the true and the place of the false: the reality of God and the archangels, the non-reality of Angra Mainyu and his demons: the resurrection of the dead, and the future body.”
The two guardians, Divine Obedience and the Flaming Fire of Thought, led the visionary first to a place where he saw the souls of people who renlained ever in the same position. “Who are these?” he asked. “And why do they so remain?” To which his two guardians answered: “They call this place the Ever Stationary. The souls here will remain till the resurrection of the future body. They are the souls of those in whom good works and sin were equal. Their punishment is cold or heat from the revolution of the atmosphere; and they have no other pain.”
The visionary and his guides advanced a first step, to the Star Tract, the place where good thoughts receive their reward. The radiance of the souls there ever increased, like the glittering of stars; and their throne and seat, beneath the radiance, were splendorous, full of glory. “What place,” asked the voyager, “is this? What people, these?” And he was told: “These are the souls of those who, in the world, offered no prayers, intoned no Gathas, failed to contract next-of-kin marriages, and exercised no sovereignty, rulership, or chieftainship, but through other good works became pious.”
The Zoroastrian Dante passed a second step, to the Moon Tract, where good works find their reward. “These are the souls,” he was told, “who, in the world, offered no prayers, intoned no Gathas, failed to contract next-of-kin marriages, but through other works came hither; and their brightness matches the moon.”
His third step was to the Sun Tract, where good deeds find their reward; and there was there the radiance called the Highest of the Highest, where he saw the pious on thrones and carpets made of gold. They were as bright as the brightness of the sun. “These are the souls,” he was told, “who, in the world, exercised good sovereignty, rulership, and chieftainship.”
He passed on, a fourth step, to the place of radiance called All Glorious, where there came to meet him souls of the departed who asked blessing, offering praise, and said, “How is it, O pious one, that you come to us? You have come from that perishable, evil world to this imperishable, untroubled world. Taste, therefore, immortality; for here you see bliss eternal.”
From a throne of gold the archangel Good Mind arose. He took the visitor’s hand, and with the words, “Good thought, good word, good deed,” brought him into the midst of God, the archangels, and the blessed, besides the Spirits of the Road of Zoroaster and his sons, as well as other leaders and upholders of religion, brilliant and excellent beyond any he had ever seen.
“Behold! Ahura Mazda!” said the archangel Good Mind; and Arda Viraf offered worship. But when Ahura Mazda spoke, he was amazed; for though he saw a light and heard a voice and understood, “This is Ahura Mazda,” he saw no body. “Arda Viraf, salutation!” said the voice. “And welcome! You have come from that perishable world to this pure place of illumination.” Ahura Mazda addressed the two guides. “Take Arda Viraf. Show him the place of reward of the pious and the punishment of the wicked.”
He was taken, therefore, to the place of the liberal, who walk adorned, and of those who had intoned the Gathas. They were in gold-embroidered and silver-embroidered raiment. He saw the souls of those who had married their next of kin; those of the good rulers and monarchs; the great and truthful speakers; women of excellent thoughts, words, and deeds, submissive to control, who had considered their husbands lords, had honored water, fire, earth, trees, cattle, sheep, and all other good creations of God, performing the rituals of religion, practicing without doubt. These were in clothing of gold and silver, set with gems. There were the souls, also, of those who had known the scriptures by heart, who had solemnized the rites; warriors and kings whose excellent arms were of gold, set with gems, beautifully embossed. He saw the souls of those who had killed many noxious creatures in the world; agriculturalists in thick, majestic clothing, offering praise before the spirits of water and earth, trees and cattle; artisans who, in the world, had well served their rulers and chieftains; shepherds who had preserved their flocks from the wolf, thief, and tyrant; householders and justices, heads of village families, teachers and inquirers, interceders and peace seekers, and those pre-eminent for piety: all seated upon thrones, great, splendid, and embellished, in a glorious light of space, much perfumed with sweet basil, full of glory and every joy, without satiation.
Then I came [wrote the voyager in his account of his great vision] to a great and gloomy stream, dreadful as hell, on which there were many souls and Spirits of the Road; and some of these were not able to cross, some crossed only with difficulty, others, however, with ease. And I inquired: “What stream is this? And who are these people so distressed?” Divine Obedience and the Flaming Fire of Thought said to me, “This stream is the river of tears that men shed in lamentation for their dead. They shed those tears unlawfully, which swell into this stream. Those unable to cross are those for whom there was much weeping; those who cross more easily are those for whom less was made. Speak, when you return to the world, and say, ‘When in the world, do not make unlawful lamentation; for of it may come much harm and difficulty to your departed.’ ”
And Arda Viraf then returned to the Chinvat Bridge.
But now [he tells] I saw a soul of one of the wicked, to whom, in those three nights of sitting above his corpse, there was shown so much distress as never had been seen by him in the world. And I asked, “Whose soul is this?” A cold, stinking wind came to meet him from the quarter of the demons, the north, and he saw coming therein his own Religion and Deeds in the form of a profligate woman, naked, decayed, gaping, bandy-legged, lean-hipped and infinitely blotchy, so that blotch was joined to blotch; and indeed, she was the most hideous, noxious, filthy creature, and stinking.
The wicked soul spoke thus: “Who art thou, than whom I have never seen creation of the God of Truth and Demon of the Lie uglier, filthier, and more stinking?”
“I,” she said, “am your own bad actions, O youth of evil thoughts, words, deeds, and religion. It is because of your will and actions that I am hideous and vile, iniquitous, diseased, rotten, foul-smelling, miserable and distressed, as you see. For when you saw anyone performing rites, in the praise, prayer, and service of God, preserving and protecting water, fire, cattle, trees, and the other good creations, you, on the other hand, did the will of the Lie and his demons, with improper acts. And when you saw one who provided hospitable reception, with deserved gifts and charity, for the good and worthy who came from far and near, you, on the contrary, were avaricious and shut up your door. So that though I have been unholy, I have been made by you more unholy; though I have been frightful, I have been made by you more frightful; though I have been tremulous, I have been made by you more tremulous; and though I am settled in the northern region of the demons, I have been settled by you farther north: as a consequence of those evil thoughts, words, and deeds that you have practiced.”
Then that wicked soul advanced the first step, to the tract of Evil Thoughts; second, to the tract of Evil Words; and third, to the tract of Evil Deeds. But the angels took my hand and I went along, through all, unhurt, beholding cold, heat, drought and stench, to such a degree as I had never seen or heard of in the world.
I saw the greedy jaws of hell: the most frightful pit, descending, in a very narrow, fearful crevice and in darkness so murky that I was forced to feel my way, amid such a stench that all whose nose inhaled that air, struggled, staggered, and fell, and in such confinement that existence seemed impossible. Each one thought, “I am alone”; and when a mere three days had elapsed supposed that the end of the nine thousand years of time had come, when time would cease and the resurrection of the body occur. “The nine thousand years are run,” he would think, “yet, I am not released.” In that place even the lesser noxious creatures are as high as mountains, and these so tear, seize, and worry the souls of the wicked as would be unworthy of a dog. But I passed easily thereby in the guidance of Obedience and Thought.
I saw the soul of a man through whose fundament a snake went in, like a beam, and came forth out of the mouth; and many other snakes ever seized his limbs. “What sin,” I inquired, “was committed by this body whose soul suffers so severe a punishment?” “This,” I was told, “is the soul of a man who, in the world, committed sodomy.”
A woman’s soul I saw, to whom they gave to drink one cupful after another of the impurity and filth of men, I asked, “What sin was committed by the body whose soul thus suffers?” “Having failed to abstain,” they replied, “this wicked woman approached water and fire during menstruation.” I saw, also, the soul of a man, the skin of whose head was being flayed … who, in the world, had slain a pious man. I saw the soul of a man into whose mouth they poured continually the menstrual discharge of women, while he cooked and ate his own child. … “While in the world,” I was told, “that wicked man had intercourse with a menstruating woman.”
The sights of this terrible pit of pain continued. A woman hung by her breasts, who, in the world, had been adulterous, gnawed from below by noxious beasts; there were men and women, variously gnawed, who, in the world had walked without shoes, gone without proper clothing, or had urinated standing; one whose tongue was out upon his jaw, being consumed by noxious creatures, who, in the world, had been a slanderer; then a miser, stretched upon a rack, upon whose whole body a thousand brutal demons trampled, smiting him with violence; women digging into hills with their breasts, who had denied milk to their infants; others gashing their breasts with iron combs, who had been untrue to their husbands; one who continually licked a hot stove with her tongue, who, in the world, had been abusive to her lord; many who hung by one leg, through all the apertures of whose bodies frogs, scorpions, snakes, ants, flies, worms, and other noxious creatures went and came, who, in life, had been untrue; and then a man who stood up in the form of a serpent, as a column, but with human head, who had committed apostasy. …
There is unpleasant food for thought in the consideration that both in this vision of Arda Viraf and in Dante’s Divine Comedy the agonies of hell are far more vividly described, with infinitely more imagination, than the bliss of paradise, where all that we ever see are various amplitudes of light, and mild companies, sitting, standing, or strolling, very beautifully clothed. The really horrible chronicle of torment continues for pages; and when the whole course of the vile and stinking pit has been viewed: “Then,” writes the visionary, “then I saw that Evil Spirit, the deadly world destroyer, whose religion is wickedness, ever ridiculing and mocking those in hell, to whom he called, ‘Why did you ever do my work and, thinking not of your Creator, practice only my will?’ ”
After which [as he then relates] my two angelic guides, Divine Obedience and the Flaming Fire of Thought, brought me out of that dark and terrible, awful place to Eternal Light and the place of assembly of Ahura Mazda and his angels. And when I wished to offer homage, Ahura Mazda said to me graciously, “A perfect servant you have been, O pious Arda Viraf. You have come as a messenger from my worshipers on earth. Go back to them now, and as you have seen and understood, so speak truly to the world. Say to my worshipers, Arda Viraf, ‘There is but one way of piety, the way of the prime religion; the other ways are no ways. Take the one way that is piety and turn not from it in prosperity, or in adversity, or in any wise; but practice good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. And be aware, also, of this: that cattle are dust, the horse is dust, silver and gold are dust, and the body of man is dust. He alone mingles not with dust who, in the world, gives praise to piety and performs duties and good works.’ You are perfect, Arda Viraf, go and prosper: for every purity and purification that you perform and keep, being mindful of God, I know, I know them all.”
“And when I had heard these words,” the marvelous work concludes, “I made a profound bow to the Creator, Ahura Mazda; after which those two great angels, Divine Obedience and the Flaming Fire of Thought, conveyed me bravely and successfully to this carpeted place where I now write.
“May the glory of the good religion of the Mazdayasnians triumph!
“Completed in health, pleasure, and joy.”Note 15
II. The Cosmic Fall and Renovation
The Persian myth of Creation, Fall, and World Renovation, which has influenced fundamentally not only the Messianic ideas of Judaism and Christianity, but also their parody in the Marxian proletariat apocalypse of the closing chapter of the first volume of Das Kapital, is itself preserved only in a late Pahlavi (Middle Persian) work, the Bundahish, “The Book of Creation,” which, like “The Book of Arda Viraf,” was a production of the late Sassanian restoration, 226–641 a.d. It was not completed in its present form until c. 881 a.d.Note 16 Consequently it includes much that is both of later date and of a more popular order of belief than the prophecies from which its main theme of the resolution of the cosmic conflict of good and evil has been derived. However, as the old master of Persian scholarship, James Darmesteter, has observed of the Zoroastrian tradition: “There has been no other great belief in the world that ever left such poor and meager monuments of its past splendor.”Note 17 The ravages, first of Alexander the Great (331 b.c.), and then, after painful reconstruction, of the zealots of Islam (641 a.d.), have left for later centuries pitifully little, even of ruins, of the once great structure of imperial Persian religion.
According, then, to the Bundahish:
The two Creators through whose dialectic everything in this world has been wrought, so that it shows in every part a nature that is both good and evil, in conflict with itself and characterized by disorder, were existent from all eternity: but they are not both to remain for all eternity. In the end, which is inevitable, the dark and evil power, Angra Mainyu, with all his brood, is to be destroyed forever in a crisis of world renovation to which all history tends — and to the realization of which every individual is categorically summoned.
For thus [in the words of the prophet Zoroaster himself] are the two primeval spirits who, as a pair, yet each independent in his action, have been known from of old. They are a Better and a Worse, as to thought, to word, to deed. And between these two let the wisely choosing choose aright. So, choose, then, not as evil doers! And may we thus be such as those who bring about the great renovation and make this world progressive, till its perfection shall have been achieved.Note 18
Ahura Mazda, through omniscience (we read in the Bundahish), knew a priori, from all eternity, that Angra Mainyu existed; but the latter, because of his backward, a posteriori, knowledge, was not aware of the existence of the light. Creation commenced when Ahura Mazda produced spiritually certain spiritual beings who remained for three thousand years in a perfectly spiritual state: motionless, without thought, and with intangible bodies. At the close of that time, the power of darkness, rising, perceived the glory and, because of the malice of his nature desirous only of destruction, he rushed to annihilate the light. Its power he found greater than his own, however, and, returning chagrined to his abyss, he created fiends there, who, in concert, rose against the light.
Then the Lord of Light and Truth, through omniscience knowing what the end would be, went to meet the monster of the Lie, proposing peace. The latter thought: “Ahura Mazda, being powerless, offers peace.” But Ahura Mazda said: “You are neither omniscient nor omnipotent; hence, can neither undo me nor cause my creatures to defect. However, let us appoint a period of nine thousand years of intermingling conflict.” For he knew that for three thousand years all would be according to his own will; for three there would be an intermingling of the two wills; and in the last three thousand years, following the birth of Zoroaster, the will of the other would be broken. Together with the first three thousand of the stationary state, these nine would compose in all twelve thousand years. And Angra Mainyu, not knowing, because of his backward knowledge, was content with this arrangement. He returned to his abyss, and the play commenced.
Ahura Mazda, as a first step, produced Good Mind and Sky; the other, Evil Mind and the Lie. Good Mind yielded the Light of the World, the Good Religion, Righteous Order, Perfect Sovereignty, Divine Piety, Excellence, and Immortality. Whereafter, as second step, the lord Mazda produced the army of the constellations with four captains in the quarters, the moon, the sun, and then water, earth, plants, animals, and man.
Angra Mainyu, meanwhile, had returned to sleep. But at the end of those three thousand years a female fiend, Jahi (Menstruation), appeared, and she shouted at him: “Arise, O father of us all! For I shall now cause in the world that contention from which the misery and injury of Ahura Mazda and his Archangels are to proceed. I shall empoison the righteous man, the laboring ox, the water, plants, fire, and all creation.” Whereupon Angra Mainyu, starting up, kissed her on the forehead, and the pollution called menstruation appeared on the demoness. “What is your wish,” he asked, “that I may give it to you?” “A man is my wish,” she answered; “give it to me.” The form of Angra Mainyu, which had been of a loglike lizard, thereupon changed to that of a young man of fifteen years; and this brought to him Jahi’s zeal.
Angra Mainyu, then raging with malice, sprang up like a snake at the constellations, against which he flung the moving planets, so that the fixed order of the sky was destroyed. His second venture was against water, upon which drought descended. Next, into the earth he poured the serpent, scorpion, frog, and lizard, so that not so much as the point of a needle remained free of noxious things. The earth shook and mountain ranges rose. Angra Mainyu pierced it, entering to its center, which passage now is the road to hell. And fourth, he desiccated the plants. But the Angel of Vegetation, pounding these small, mixed them with water that the Angel of Rain poured down. Then over the whole world plants sprang up like hairs on the heads of men. And from the germs of all these plants the Tree of All Seeds arose in the middle of the world ocean, which is of a single root, without branches, without bark, juicy and sweet. And the griffon bird rests upon it, which, when he flies forth from it, scatters seed into the water, which then is rained back to earth with the rain.
Moreover, in the vicinity of this first tree a second, the Gaokerena, White Haoma (Sanskrit, Soma) Tree arose, which counteracts old age, revives the dead, and bestows immortality. At its root Angra Mainyu formed a lizard for its injury; but to keep away that lizard ten kar-fish were created, which at all times circle round its root in such a way that the head of one is turned continually toward the lizard. And between those two trees there rose a mountain with 9,999,000 myriads of caves, to which is given the function of protecting the waters; so that water streams from its caves in channels to all lands.
And as to the nature of plants: before the coining of Angra Mainyu none had thorn or bark upon it, but, like the Tree of All Seeds, they were sweet and smooth.
Now the fifth of Angra Mainyu’s sallies was against the Sole-Created Ox, the primal beast, which, on the bank of the river Daiti, in Eran Vej, the central land of the seven lands of earth, was grazing in the form of a cow, white and brilliant as the moon, when the enemy came rushing like a fly. Avarice, want, pain, hunger, disease, lust, and lethargy were diffused into the beast; and when that Sole-Created Ox passed away, it fell to the right. Its soul came out, stood before it, and cried to Ahura Mazda, as loudly as ten thousand men when all cry out at once. “In whom, then, has the guardianship of creatures been confided, since ruin has broken upon the earth? Where is the man of whom you once declared: ‘I will produce him, that he may teach the doctrine of Care’?”
The Lord of Light replied: “You are ill, O Soul of the Ox, of the illness caused by Angra Mainyu. If the time had come to have produced that man upon the earth, Angra Mainyu would have had no effect.”
The Soul of the Ox proceeded to the Star Tract and cried in the same manner; to the Moon Tract; to the Sun Tract. But there the Spirit of the Road of the Prophet Zoroaster was shown to her, and she was appeased. She said: “I will nourish the creatures of the earth.” She had renewed her consent to an earthly creation in the world.
Meanwhile, when the body of the Sole-Created Ox had fallen to the right, its seed, delivered to the moon, had become purified in moonlight. From that purified seed a male and a female animal then arose, after which pairs appeared on earth of two hundred and eighty-two species: birds in the air, quadrupeds on land, fish in the waters. And where the marrow of the Ox came out, fifty-five kinds of grain grew and twelve kinds of healing plant. From its horns grew peas, from its nose the leek, from its blood the vine of which wine is made; from its lungs the rue-like herbs, and from the midst of its heart thyme.
The sixth attack of Angra Mainyu, then, was against the first-created man, Gayomart, who, in his spiritual form, had been living with the Sole-Created Ox in Eran Vej, the central land of the seven lands of the earth. Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Light, had previously brought forth a sweat on Gayomart, for the length of time required for the recitation of one stanza of a prayer. He formed of that sweat the youthful body of a man of fifteen years, tall and radiant; and this body of Gayomart had issued from that sweat, with eyes that looked out for the Great One. It saw, however, the world as dark as night, and the earth as though not a needle’s point were free of vermin. The great sphere of heaven was in revolution; the sun and moon were in motion; the planets were in battle with the stars.
Angra Mainyu let forth upon Gayomart the Demon of Death; but his appointed time had not come: his life was to endure for thirty years. Avarice, want, pain, hunger, disease, lust, and lethargy then were diffused into Gayomart. And when he passed away, he fell to the left and gave forth seed. That of the Ox had been purified by the moon; that of Gayomart was purified by the sun. Moreover, when he passed away there rose eight kinds of precious metal from his members: gold, silver, iron, brass, tin, lead, quicksilver, and adamant.
The gold remained in the earth forty years, preserved by the Angel of Perfect Meditation, when there grew from it, in the form of a plant of one stem with fifteen leaves — each leaf a year — the first human couple, wrapped in each other’s arms and their bodies so close together that it could not be seen which was the male, which the female, or whether, as yet, they had separate living souls. From the form of a plant, they became two human beings, Mashya and Mashyoi; the breath entered them, which is the soul, and Ahura Mazda said: “You are Man, the ancestry of the world, created perfect in devotion. Perform the duties of the law, think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds, and do not worship demons.”
The first thought of each was, to please the other. The first deed was, to go and thoroughly wash. Their first words were, that Ahura Mazda had created water and earth, plants, animals, stars, the moon and sun, and all prosperity. But then the enemy, Antagonism, rushed into their minds, and they declared that Angra Mainyu had created all.
They had gone thirty days without food, garbed with a raiment of leaves, when they came upon a goat and milked the milk from the udder with their mouths. Mashya said: “Before drinking that milk I was happy. But now that my vile body has drunk, my delight is more delightful.” The second part of that evil speech enhanced the power of the demons, who thereupon reduced the taste of food, so that of one hundred parts, only one remained.
After thirty more days they chanced upon a sheep, fat and white-jawed, which they slaughtered. Angels taught them to produce fire from wood and they made a roast of the meat. They dropped three handfuls in the fire, saying, “This is Fire’s share,” and tossed one piece to the sky, saying, “This share is of the angels.” A vulture carried some away from before them, and a dog consumed the first bite. They donned now a clothing of skins, dug a pit in the earth from which they procured iron, and when they had beaten this out with stones to a cutting edge, they chopped wood with it and built a wooden shelter from the sun.
Angra Mainyu caused the couple to quarrel, however, tearing at each other’s hair and cheeks. Demons shouted, “You are men! Worship the demon, so that your demon of malice may be quelled.” Mashya killed a cow and poured the milk toward the northern quarter, and the demons gained so much power thereby that for the next fifty years the couple had no desire for intercourse. Then, however, the source of desire rose first in Mashya, next Mashyoi: for he said to her: “When I see your sex my desires rise.” She said: “When I see your great desire rise, I too am agitated.” So it became their mutual wish, and they reflected: “This, even for those fifty years, was our duty.”
There were born to them a male and female, and, owing to their tenderness for offspring, the mother devoured one, the father the other. Ahura Mazda therefore took such tenderness away, so that the child should be cherished alive. And there were born to them, then, seven sets of twins, each a brother and sister-wife. …Note 19
Like the second chapter of Genesis, this Zoroastrian myth betrays its derivation from the planting complex discussed in Primitive Mythology.Note 20 However, in the mythologies of primitives there is no such moral criticism of life and the world as in these Levantine doctrines of the Fall; nor any theme, consequently, of Restoration.
Both the Bible and the Bundahish represent the Fall as the answer to the moral enigma of evil in the world; yet their two views of the mythic incident differ absolutely, as do their views, also, of the Restoration. For in the Persian myth evil is regarded from a cosmic point of view, as antecedent to the Fall of man, which indeed was but its culminating episode; whereas in the Bible the Fall proceeds from man, whose acts of disobedience entail calamity in the natural world as well as to himself. As the late Professor Joseph Klausner of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, states in his important work on The Messianic Idea in Israel:
Natural evil (catastrophe) was in the eyes of the prophets the result of human evil. God, the creator of nature, cannot be the source of evil: if this were not so, two forces, good and evil, would be used by Him in mixed confusion and His character would not be complete, harmonious, essentially great. The deeds of man are, therefore, the source of evil both in society and in nature.Note 21
And again (the italics are Professor Klausner’s):
The wise men of Israel, contrary to those of Greece, saw natural evil (disaster) not as an independent entity, but as the result of human evil (wrongdoing). Since the prophets believed in a one and only God, not in many gods which embody the powers of nature, good and evil, they were forced to conclude that both good and evil proceed from the one and only God. And if good and evil proceed from the one Supreme Being, whose nature must be absolutely perfect and harmonious (otherwise he would not be one and only, and therefore there would be a place for belief in dualism), then the Supreme Being of necessity creates evil because of evil persons and for evil persons. Thus, if the evil of evil persons, that is, human evil, should come to an end, all evil would cease, even natural evil in general.Note 22
How evil can have had its source in God and yet not in God but in evil persons, I shall not attempt to argue; but the contrast of this tangle of thought with the Zoroastrian system warrants a moment of consideration. For in the Persian myth the cause indicated for the corruption of creation is not a personage, but a principle, the Lie, which is, philosophically, a counterpart of the Indian principle of māyā, the world-creating power of illusion; whereas the sin of Adam and Eve was disobedience, which is a matter rather of pedagogical than of ontological, or even properly ethical, interest — particularly since the ethics of the command itself may be open to question. A great deal of the stress of Old Testament thought rests on obedience to a multitude of apparently arbitrary orders of this kind (food taboos, sabbath laws, aniconic worship, circumcision, endogamy, and the rest). In Zoroastrianism, too, a great deal of stress is placed on such concerns: next-of-kin marriage, disposal of clipped hair and fingernails, dry wood for the fire, menstrual impurity, etc. But when the serious, deeper aspects of the two traditions are compared — beyond the sphere of their elevation of tribal custom into cosmic law — it is seen that they offer two contrasting orders of possible development.
The biblical view, placing the Fall within the frame of human history as an offense against its god, cuts out the wider reach of a challenge to the character of that god, denigrates the character of man, and fosters, furthermore, an increasingly untenable insistence on the historicity of its myth; while the other, cosmic view of the problem is actually symbolized philosophy, and, as later centuries would show, was to become one of the leading inspirations of every major spiritual threat to the hegemony of biblical literalism in the West.
The Messianic idea in Israel, as Professor Klausner well shows, was in essence not cosmological, but political. Its central concern was the elevation of Israel to leadership in the world. “In the belief in the Messiah of the people of Israel,” Klausner writes (and again the italics following are his), “the political part goes arm in arm with the ethical part, and the nationalistic with the universalistic.”Note 23 In the period before the fall of Jerusalem (586 b.c.), the stress of prophetic teaching had been on the requirement to adhere to the statutes of the Lord; that is to say, to live as Jews, not as gentiles. The Messiah exalted by the First Isaiah (c. 740-700 b.c.) had been specifically the young king of Judah of that time, King Hezekiah (r. 727–698 b.c.); and Professor Klausner, to this point, cites the following Talmudic saying: “The Holy One, blessed be He, wished to appoint Hezekiah as the Messiah and Sennacherib as Gog and Magog” (Sanhedrin 94a); also the saying of the Amora R. Hillel: “There shall be no Messiah for Israel, because they have already enjoyed him in the days of Hezekiah” (ib., 98b and 99a).Note 24 The term “the Day of the Lord” in that period had no reference to the world end or the end of time, with the resurrection of the dead, and all the rest. Those ideas had not yet entered the biblical stream of belief from their Zoroastrian source.
But in that source the idea of the redemption was cosmological, not political, and to occur at the end of the world span of twelve thousand years, foreknown by Ahura Mazda, when he would appear and judge the living and the dead. The ultimate aim of the prophet Zoroaster, therefore, had been, seriously and entirely, to bring about through his teaching the transfiguration of the earth, following which the world would be again as it was in the beginning, uncovered of darkness, sorrow, and death. “And it will thenceforth,” as we read in a late Avestan text, “never age and never die, never decay and never rot, ever living and ever increasing, being master of its own wish: when the dead will rise, life and immortality come, and the world be restored to its wish.”Note 25
As an actual character on the plane of earth in the first millennium b.c., Zoroaster may not be accurately represented in the meager notices of his life that have come down to us. But on the plane of symbol, as representing the Zoroastrian perfect man, he appears in these in clearest light, in what is obviously not the chronicle but the myth of his career — like the lives of the Buddha and Christ; that is to say, as a revelation or symbolization of the truth in which he lived, whose glory cleaved to him, and which he taught. For, as we read:
He thought according to the Law, spoke according to the Law, and did according to the Law; so that he was the holiest in holiness in all the living world, the best ruling in exercising rule, the brightest in brightness, and most glorious in glory, the most victorious in victory. And at his sight the demons rushed away.Note 26
His birth and teaching in the world marked the opening of the final three thousand of the world span of twelve thousand years — at the end of which term his spiritual son Saoshyant, “the Coming Savior,” the World Messiah, would appear, to culminate the victory of Truth over the Lie and establish forever the restoration of the pristine creation of God.
As the legend tells, the birthplace of Zoroaster, like that of the first man Gayomart and the Sole-Created Ox, was beside the river Daiti, in the central land of the seven lands of the earth, Eran Vej. He laughed when he was born. As we read: “In his birth, in his growth, the waters and trees rejoiced. In his birth, in his growth, the waters and trees increased. In his birth, in his growth, the waters and trees exclaimed with joy.”Note 27
The demons, however, were of a different disposition. Angra Mainyu rushed from the regions of the north, crying to his horde, “Annihilate him!” But the holy babe chanted aloud the prayer known as the Ashi Vanguhi, and the demons were dispersed. “The will of the Lord is the Law of Holiness,” he prayed. “The riches of Good Mind are his who labors in this world for Ahura Mazda, wielding the power — according to His Law — bestowed of Him, to relieve the poor.”Note 28
It is recounted that the prophet’s wives were three. But that in these we are to recognize rather mythology than history is shown by the further notice that, “He went to his first and privileged wife, named Hvov, three times, and each time, the seed entered the ground.” That is to say, she was the goddess Earth herself. “And the angel who had received the seed of the first-created man Gayomart received the strength and brilliance of this seed as well.”Note 29 For there were to be born of that seed three sons, at the time of the cosmic Renovation: Ukhshyat-ereta, Ukhshyat-nemangh, and, finally, the Messiah Saoshyant.Note 30
For a maid, Eredad-ereta, bathing in Lake Kansava, was to conceive by that seed at the end of the world span of twelve thousand years, and bring forth the savior Saoshyant; his two forerunners having been born in the same manner, by two other virgins, Srutad-fedhri and Vanghu-fedhri.Note 31
But concerning the nature of the Renovation to come, it is revealed that:
Whereas Mashya and Mashyoi, who had grown as a plant from the earth, fed first upon water, then upon plants, then milk, then meat, and when their time of death arrived, desisted first from meat, then milk, then bread, till, when about to die, they fed upon water; so, likewise, in the millennium of the final years, the strength of appetite will diminish. One taste of consecrated food will be more than enough for three days and nights. People then will desist from flesh food and eat vegetables and milk. Next they will abstain from milk, and after that, from vegetable food and feed on water. And for ten years before the coming of Saoshyant, they will remain without food altogether, and not die.Note 32
According to the Bundahish, the resurrection of the dead is to follow the coming of Saoshyant. First the bones of Gayomart will be roused, next Mashya and Mashyoi, and then the remainder of mankind. When all have resumed their bodies, each will know his father, mother, brother, wife, and the others of his kind.
Then [we read] there will be the assembly where all mankind will stand, and each will see his own good deeds and evil deeds. And there in that assembly, a wicked man will stand out as conspicuously as a white sheep among black. Moreover, in that assembly, the wicked man will complain to the righteous one who was his friend in the world, saying, “Why did you not acquaint me, while in the world, with the good deeds that you yourself were practising?” And if the righteous man had not informed him, then in that assembly he would suffer shame.
Next they set the righteous apart from the wicked, and the righteous then is for heaven, but the wicked they cast back to hell. Three days and nights they inflict bodily punishment in hell, and then the wicked beholds for three days and nights the happiness of heaven. It is said that on the day when the righteous man is parted from the wicked, the people’s tears run down their legs. And when they set apart a father from his spouse, brother from brother, friend from friend, they suffer, each for his own deeds, and they weep, the righteous for the wicked and the wicked for themselves. For there may be a father who is righteous and a son wicked, one brother who is righteous and one wicked. …
And when a great meteor then falls the distress of the earth will become as of a sheep fallen upon by a wolf. Fire and the angel of Fire will melt the metal in the hells and mountains, which then will flow upon the earth as a river. All men then pass into that metal and become pure: when one is righteous it seems to him like walking in warm milk, but when wicked, then it seems to him that he is walking in molten metal.
And in the end, with the greatest affection, all come together, father and son, brother and friend, and they ask each other thus: “Where have you been these many years and what was the judgment on your soul? Were you righteous, or were you wicked?” The first soul the body sees, it inquires with these words. All men become then of one voice in praise lifted loud to Ahura Mazda and his angels. Saoshyant with his assistants slaughter ceremonially an ox, from whose fat and the white Haoma a drink of immortality is prepared, which is given to all men, who become thereby immortal for ever.
And this, too, it says: whoever had been full grown when on earth, they give the age of forty years; whoever less, they give an age of fifteen; and they give to every one his wife and show him his children with his wife; and so they behave now as in the world, but there is no begetting of children any more. And this, too: that whoever performed no worship in the world and bestowed no clothes as a righteous gift is naked there; but he performs worship and the angels then provide him with the use of clothes.
And then, in the end, Ahura Mazda seizes Angra Mainyu, and each archangel his opposite. The fallen meteor incinerates the serpent in the melted metal and the stench and pollution of hell are burned in that metal too, until hell becomes quite pure. Ahura Mazda brings the land of hell back for the enlargement of the world, the renovation of the universe occurs, and all is immortal for ever.
And this too it says: that the earth becomes an iceless, slopeless plain. Even the mountain whose summit is the support of the Chinvat Bridge, they draw down, so that it disappears.Note 33
III. The King of Kings
The mighty Assyrian monarch Tiglath Pilesar III (r. 745–727 b.c.) was the inventor of a new method of breaking the will of conquered populations. It was a device continued through this dynasty by Shalmaneser V (726–722), Sargon II (721–705), Sennacherib (704–681), Asarhaddon (680-669), and Ashurbanipal (668–626) — from the shattered cuneiform library of the last of whom most of our knowledge of the old Semitic world has been derived. One of the favored earlier customs of such conquerors had been simply to massacre all living things within a city — as we are , told, for example, of Joshua’s warriors in Jericho: “They utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword,”Note 34 and so again at Ai,Note 35 Gibeon, Makkedah, Libnah, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and the whole land of the Negeb, “in order,” as it is written, “that they should be utterly destroyed, and should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as Yahweh commanded Moses.”Note 36 Or, on the other hand, the victor might reduce whole cities to servitude and tribute, as Manasseh reduced Megiddo, and Zebulun reduced Kitron.Note 37 But the former custom had the disadvantage of depriving the victor of subjects, and the latter, of leaving populations intact, ready for revolt.
Tiglath Pilesar’s genial idea, therefore, was to sever the primary lifelines of attachment to the soil by transferring conquered populations to lands distant from their own. Babylonia was conquered in 745, and a large part of its people was removed: inscriptions name no less than thirty-five separate populations of that country thus broken and transferred.Note 38 In the year 739 Armenia was crushed, and about that time thirty thousand miserable persons from the province of Hamath were herded by the king to the province Tushan of the upper Tigris. A like number were taken from Syrian Calneh, and in their place Aramaeans were transferred from Elam.Note 39 The prophet Amos, crying in Israel, held up as warnings to the people these neighboring national catastrophes. “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion,” he cried, “and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria. … Pass over to Calneh, and see; and thence go to Hamath the great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines.”Note 40 Populations were being tossed from east to west, west to east, north to south, and south to north, until not a vestige of the earlier, ground-rooted sense of a national continuity remained.
The world historic role of the Kings of Assyria can be described, therefore, as the erasure of the past and creation of a thoroughly mixed, internationalized, interracialized Near Eastern population that has remained essentially thus ever since. For themselves, meanwhile, however, they were accumulating an extremely dangerous karma. In the year 616 b.c. an alliance of King Nabopolassar of a revived Babylon with the Aryan King Kyaxares of the Medes, who were coming down now from the northeast, rose against the Assyrian, whose capital, Nineveh, was taken in 612; and the outraged populations of the empire then did their work with such effect that, as Eduard Meyer describes the result: “It was a catastrophe of the mightiest kind. Not only did an empire go to pieces that but a moment before had controlled all of Hither Asia, but practically the entire people who for centuries had been the scourge and horror of the nations was annihilated. … No people has ever been more completely wiped out than the Assyrians.”Note 41
For seventy-five years thereafter the mastery of the Near East was shared by the Medes, controlling the north, and the Babylonian Chaldean kings in the south. Of the latter the most notable was Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604–562 b.c.), whom the prophet Jeremiah characterized as the servant of Yahweh, chastising the people of Judah for their sins of disobedience.Note 42 The northern kingdom, Israel, had succumbed, in 721, to an alliance of Judah and Assyria, and Judah itself then fell, in 586, to Nebuchadnezzar, “Yahweh’s servant.” Both populations were removed. However, during the middle of the sixth century a new type of master appeared in the Near Eastern political theater, with a new idea of the state. In four masterful strokes, the Persian Cyrus the Great first overthrew King Astyges of the Medes in the year 550, and instead of putting his eyes out, flaying him alive, or otherwise mishandling him in the manner of all kings before, assigned to him a residence in his capital; next, when threatened with an alliance of Nabonidus of Babylon, Amasis of Egypt, the powerful Croesus of Lydia, and the Greek city state of Sparta, he advanced directly against the chief antagonist, Croesus, and by the end of the year 546 was the ruler of Anatolia — whereupon he bestowed on his defeated enemy the government of the city of Barene, near Ecbatana; third, in the year 539, on his march south to Babylon, he was met by an open invitation, from the priesthood of the god Marduk of the chief temple of that city, to enter and take possession, which he did; and fourth, having become master of all of Hither Asia, he paid worship in the city of Babylon to Marduk, the god of that city, removed from the temple the captured images of the deities of numerous leading cities of the Near East, which he returned to their proper sites, and, finally, gave order that the people of Judah should be returned to their place and the temple of Jerusalem rebuilt. “The nobility of his character shines forth to us equally,” Professor Meyer writes, “from the writings of the Persians whom he led to world mastery, the Jews whom he freed, and the Greeks whom he overthrew.”Note 43
“Cyrus the king,” we read in Ezra,
brought out the vessels of the house of Yahweh which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods. Cyrus the king of Persia brought these out in charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah. And this was the number of them: a thousand basins of gold, a thousand basins of silver, twenty-nine censers, thirty bowls of gold, two thousand four hundred and ten bowls of silver, and a thousand other vessels; all the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand four hundred and sixty-nine. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.Note 44
The Second Isaiah, writing c. 539 b.c., in the period of the return from exile, termed the noble king Cyrus of Persia “the anointed of Yahweh,” whom Yahweh himself had grasped by his right hand, “to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed”;Note 45 and whereas Cyrus himself had supposed Ahura Mazda to have been his guide, the Hebrew prophet knew, on the contrary, that the voice of the god he had heard had been of Yahweh, saying:
I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut asunder the bars of iron, I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places, that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.
I am Yahweh, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I gird you though you do not know me, that men may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.
On top of which, in direct argument against the dualism of Zoroastrian doctrine, Yahweh is supposed to have said to Cyrus: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am Yahweh, who do all these things.”Note 46 The prophet then goes on to disparage all the other local gods whom the King of Kings, anointed of the Lord, had been at pains to restore to their temples; and he exults then, with eloquent song, in the miracle of restoration which the Lord had brought about through an alien king.
But the priests of the god Marduk of Babylon also were exuberant in praise; for the last Chaldean king, Nabonidus, had been a devotee of the moon-god Sin of Harran, whose cult he had favored and restored, to the embarrassment of the clergy of Marduk.Note 47 Cyrus, in his noble way, had assigned a residence to Nabonidus in Carmania, while in the city of Marduk the temple scribes, in their religious way, gave praise to the redeeming king. Their eulogy is preserved on a cylinder of clay — the Cylinder of Cyrus — which after seven or eight mutilated lines at the start, complaining of the heresy of Nabonidus, yields the following interesting text:
… the daily offerings were neglected … the service of Marduk, King of the Gods. … The people were crushed to earth by an unrelenting yoke. …
And the Lord of Gods, giving heed to their cries, was moved mightily to wrath. … He turned to them in mercy. He passed the nations in review, searching, to find a righteous prince, after His heart, to take him by his hand.
Cyrus, King of Anshan, whose name He uttered, He summoned to universal lordship. The land of Gutium, the whole realm of the Kings of the Medes, He bowed beneath his feet. The black-haired people, who were delivered into his hands, the king received in righteousness and justice; and Marduk, the great Lord, protector of mankind, looked with joy upon his good deeds and righteous heart.
Marduk commanded him to march to Babylon, His city; advanced him on the road to Babylon, while He walked, as friend and fellow, at his side. And his troops, mighty in extent, innumerable as river waters, were at his side with weapons. Without battle, without slaughter, He caused him to enter Babylon, His city. Babylon He protected from affliction. Nabonidus the King, by whom Marduk had not been revered, Marduk delivered into Cyrus’ power. And the people of Babylon, altogether, all of Sumer and Akkad, the mighty and the governors, bowed before him, kissed his feet, rejoiced in his lordship, and their faces shone. The lord who, in his majesty, had restored the dead to life, redeeming all from extinction and wrong, they blessed with joy, in celebration of his name.
The text then attributes the following to the new King of Kings:
I am Cyrus, King of the Universe, the great king, the mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters of the world … whose dynasty Bel [Marduk] and Nabu [the messenger of Bel] love, and for whose kingdom they rejoice in their hearts. When I made my gracious entry into Babylon and, amid rejoicing and delight established myself in the seat of lordship, the palace of die kings, Marduk, the great Lord, turned the noble heart of the Babylonians toward me, and I gave daily thought to His worship. My widely spread out troops moved peacefully throughout Babylon. In all Sumer and Akkad I permitted no enemy to rise. I respected gladly the interior of the city and all its holy sites. I released the inhabitants from their dishonoring yoke. I restored their fallen dwellings and had the ruins cleared.
And Marduk, the mighty lord, rejoicing in my pious deeds, showed Himself gracious both to me, Cyrus the King, who revered him, and to my beloved son Cambyses, and to all my troops, while we, in turn, gave praise sincerely and in joy to His exalted godhead. All the kings dwelling in palaces of all quarters of the world, from the Upper to the Lower Sea, and all the kings of the West, who dwell in tents, brought their heavy gifts and in Babylon kissed my feet. And I returned to their places the gods who dwelt in the cities of Assur and Susa, Agade, Eshnua, Zamban, Me-Turnu, Deri, the land of Gutium, and the cities of the Tigris, settled from of old. And I had built for them eternal dwellings. I restored the communities to their people, whose habitations I rebuilt. On the command of Marduk, the mighty lord, I allowed the gods to find, unmolested, a dwelling in their sanctuaries for the pleasure of their hearts: the gods of Sumer and Akkad, whom Nabonidus — to the anger of the gods — had caused to be brought to Babylon.
May all the gods whom I have thus brought into their cities pray daily before Bel and Nabu for long life for me and say to Marduk my lord: “May Cyrus, the king, who worships you, and Cambyses, his son, be blessed. …”Note 48
It is not known how many of the priesthoods of the other folk- and city-gods were as eager as those of Jerusalem and Babylon to claim the credit of the general victory, overreading the course of history in terms of their own system of supernatural causality; but we do know that at least one considerable party of Cyrus’s own Zoroastrian religion was incensed by this entire development — much as the Yah wist party of the Jews had been by the whoring of their kings after alien gods. For when, in the year 529 b.c., Cyrus fell in battle in a war being waged against the raiding tribes of the northeast Iranian border, a dangerous cloak-and-dagger intrigue of the Persian priesthood — the Magians — threatened for a moment to undo everything he had accomplished and to break up the Persian state from within, as the blood baths of the Yahwists had undone the Hebrew state.
Cyrus’s son, Cambyses, following the pattern of his father, had in the year 525 conquered Egypt and so completed the work of uniting in a single mighty intercultural, interracial empire the entire domain of antiquity, from the Aegean to the Indus, and from the Caspian Sea to the Nubian Sudan.* And as Cyrus had in Babylon, so Cambyses in Egypt paid reverence to the local gods, bowed before them, and assumed the mantle of their blessing. Cambyses became pharaoh. And he remained in Egypt three years. But he had had a younger brother, Smerdis by name, whom his father had made governor of Bactria, Chorasmia, Parthia, and Carmania; and to protect himself against possible intrigue from that quarter, Cambyses had had his brother murdered before departing for the Nile.
The murder had been held secret. But a Magian priest named Gaumata, who resembled the murdered brother, stepped into his role and incited dissident elements to revolt. There is considerable evidence that the revolt was, in part at least, religious; for numerous temples were demolished by the priestly usurper. And in the summer of the year 522 this false Smerdis claimed the Persian throne. Cambyses, rushing from Egypt, fell in battle in March 522, confessing before his death, however, the murder of his brother. Yet no one dared to rise against the pretender until a young, fairly distant cousin of the Achaemenid house, Darius by name, took destiny into his thought, and in October 522 slew the usurper and the whole number of his court. By the end of February 521 the insurrection had been suppressed, and the young King of Kings, Darius I, was the ruler of the world.Note 49
At Behistun there is a famous rock inscription in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, announcing this victory and describing it in detail, with the recognition, many times repeated, of the guidance — neither of Yahweh nor of Marduk, but of the Persian god.
I am Darius, the great king, King of Kings, king of Persia, king of the Lands, son of Hystaspes, grandson of Arsames, the Achaemenid. …
King Darius speaks: Eight of my family have been kings, I am the ninth. Nine of us, in two lines, have been kings. … By the will of Ahura Mazda, I am king. Ahura Mazda conveyed to me the Lordship. … In these lands, the man who was circumspect, I have treated well; him who was inimical, I have sternly punished. By the will of Ahura Mazda, these lands have obeyed my laws. What I have commanded, they have done.
King Darius speaks: And this, by the will of Ahura Mazda is what I did, on becoming king:
One by name Cambyses, Cyrus’ son, of our dynasty, here was king. That Cambyses had a brother, Smerdis, of the same mother and the same father as Cambyses. Cambyses murdered that Smerdis. And when Cambyses murdered Smerdis, it was not known to the people that Smerdis had been slain. Thereafter, Cambyses went to Egypt. When Cambyses had gone to Egypt, the people became his enemy and the Lie became great in the land, as well in Persia as in Media and the other lands.
King Darius speaks: There was a man, a certain Magian, Gaumata by name, who rose in rebellion from Pishijau-uada, from the mountain called Arakadrish. It was the 14th of Addaru [March 11, 522 b.c.] when he rebelled. He lied to the people, as follows: “I am Smerdis, Cyrus’ son, Cambyses’ brother.” Whereupon the whole people deserted Cambyses and went over to that other, as well the Persians as the Medes and the other lands. He seized the mastery. It was the 9th of Garmapada [April 2, 522] when he seized the mastery. Then Cambyses died by his hand.
King Darius speaks: This mastery, which Gaumata the Magian seized from Cambyses, had belonged to our family from of old. Then Gaumata took from Cambyses, Persia as well as Media and the other lands, appropriated them, made them his own, and became king.
King Darius speaks: There was no one — neither Persian, nor Mede, nor any one of our line — who recovered the mastery from that Gaumata the Magian. The people greatly feared him: he would have killed many who had formerly known Smerdis: he would have killed many of the people, [thinking:] “so that the people should not know that I am not Smerdis, Cyrus’ son.” No one dared speak a word with reference to Gaumata the Magian till I came.
Then I prayed to Ahura Mazda: Ahura Mazda brought me aid. On the 10th day of Bagajadish [September 29, 522], I slew with a few men that Gaumata the Magian and those who had been his foremost followers. There is a fortress called Sikajau-uatish in a region called Nisaja in Media: there I slew him, tore from him the mastery. By the will of Ahura Mazda I became king. Ahura Mazda conferred upon me the lordship.
King Darius speaks: The mastery that had been taken from our line I recovered and established in its place, as before. I built again the temples that Gaumata had destroyed. I returned to the people the pasturelands, the cattle herds, and the dwellings and buildings that Gaumata the Magian had taken from them. I placed the people in their places, as before, in Persia, Media, and the other lands. I gave back what had been taken, as before. I took pains in accord with the will of Ahura Mazda, until it was just as though Gaumata the Magian never had carried off our house.
King Darius speaks: And I did as follows. …Note 50
The text goes on at considerable length, recounting for all centuries to come the wonders of the reign of one of the greatest creative rulers in the history of the world, Darius I, the master of the whole Near East from 521 to 486 b.c. He was a contemporary of the Buddha (563–483 b.c.) and Confucius (551–478 b.c.), and can properly be named in the same breath as representing with them the image of supreme spiritual authority by which each mythological province thereafter was to be hallmarked: respectively, the Levantine Despot under God, the Indian Yogi, and the Chinese Sage. In his own words Darius had been king by the will of Ahura Mazda. His reign, therefore, had been the vehicle of that will and, as such, the sole measure of moral right; and every enemy of such a king is an agent of the enemy of God — Angra Mainyu, the Demon of the Lie.
IV. The Remnant
Oswald Spengler seems to have been the first to point out that, from the time of the Persians onward, the cultural development of the Near East has taken place in terms not of nations but of churches, not of post-neolithic, earth-rooted, primary communities, but of freely floating sects without geographical bounds. The terrible plowing, pulverizing, and tossing about of peoples that the whole culture province had suffered during the centuries had wiped out the earlier continuities. The first world age of the birth and primary flowering of civilization in the Near East was ended, and in the making was a new birth — of unprecedented kind.
The empire of Darius extended from the Greek Ionian isles to the Indus Valley, and from the Caspian Sea to the upper cataracts of the Nile; and during two millenniums to come there would germinate and flower in this united field a new and brilliant civilization of contending, mutually disparaging sects, related closely in spirit, yet in doctrines set wide apart. And as it would be impossible to know anything of Europe without recognizing, on the one hand, that France, Germany, and England are in spirit different, yet, as components of the European order, of one spirit, so to understand the force and interplay of the differing yet related burgeoning sects of the Near East, from the period of Cyrus the Great to Mohammed and the Crusades, we shall have to consider, on one hand, the affinities, and, on the other, the differences, first, of the Persian, Jewish, and Chaldean myths of the earliest phase of this development, next of the Primitive Christian, Byzantine, and Gnostic, of the age of the flowering of the culture, and finally, of the rise and total victory of Islam.
Spengler, with his eye for the symbolically significant, saw the architectural interior created by the dome (Hadrian’s Tomb in Rome, Sancta Sophia in Constantinople, and the mosques throughout Islam) as exemplifying the new Levantine sense of space and, therein, the wonder-world of creation. The dome of the sky, as seen from a desert or plain, supplies the model for the bounded, yet soaring, cavern-like interior created by the architectural dome. And in the myths of the new Levant — as in the Zoroastrian myth of the world span of twelve thousand years — time as well as space had symmetrically measured bounds, a beginning, middle, and end, within which everything, every happening, had both its time and its meaning or reason.
There is, in fact, a certain fairy-tale quality of wonder about everything in this bounded cavern world of the mythologies of the Levant, as though one pervading spirit dwelt within all. We are everywhere caught in the measured spell of one space, one span of time, one all-pervading spirit — and the idea of one true teaching. Each such teaching, furthermore, in a magical, fairy-tale way, has been revealed, once and for all, to be the permanent treasure of a certain group; and so, there is one authorized group as well.
Such a group, as I have already said, is not a geographical nation but a church, a sect, the company in possession of a magical treasure; and the functioning of its treasure is conditioned by certain fairy-tale laws, which are the statutes of the group. Membership, therefore, is not a matter of either time or place, but of the knowledge and execution of the statutes, which are at once secular and religious; revealed, not invented by man; and categorical, not subject to review. When obeyed, they produce boons beyond anything the world has ever known — fairy-tale boons; however, when violated, even accidentally, they produce a magical catastrophe against which the force and will of the individual — or even of the now unfortunate group of which he is an organ — are as nought. Hence, finally, the weal and woe, virtue and value of all and each lie not in creative individual thought and effort but in participation in the customs of the group; so that as far as the principle of free will is concerned, which is generally argued for in this culture, its effect is only to make the individual responsible for his decision either to obey or to disobey. It is not his province to decide what is good and what bad.
As Spengler defines the character of the moral order of this new Levantine, or, as he terms it, Magian world-feeling:
The Magian man is but part of a pneumatic “We” which, descending from above, is one and the same in all members. As body and soul he belongs to himself alone, but something else, something alien and higher, dwells in him, making him with all his glimpses and convictions just a member of a consensus, which, as the emanation of God, excludes error, but excludes also all possibility of the self-asserting Ego. Truth is for him something other than for us [i.e., for us of specifically European mentality]. All our epistemological methods, resting upon the individual judgment, are for him madness and infatuation, and its scientific results a work of the Evil One, who has confused and deceived the spirit as to its true dispositions and purposes. Herein lies the ultimate, for us unapproachable, secret of Magian thought in its cavern-world — the impossibility of a thinking, believing, and knowing Ego is the presupposition in all the fundamentals of all these religions.Note 51
The first Isaiah (c. 740-700 b.c.) had supposed the young King Hezekiah to be the Messiah. Two centuries later a second Isaiah (c. 545–518 b.c.) all but applied the concept to Cyrus. The first had foreseen that after Yahweh’s day of wrath a “remnant,” purged as it were by fire, would remain to renew and bear the promise. As he wrote in a famous prophecy:
In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean upon him that smote them, but will lean upon Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel in truth. A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord, Yahweh of Hosts, will make a full end, as decreed, in the midst of all the earth.Note 52
To the second Isaiah, and to the priest Ezra, who followed him by a century, the decree of Cyrus the Great, renewing Jerusalem and the temple, had seemed a fulfillment of that prophecy. Its words, according to Ezra, were these:
Yahweh, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild, the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel — he is the god who is in Jerusalem; and let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house which is in Jerusalem.Note 53
The response was not immediately encouraging. The number of those who returned to the shattered city is given as “forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty, besides menservants and maidservants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred and thirty-seven; and they had two hundred male and female singers.”Note 54 It is supposed that this group arrived in 537 or 536 b.c. The rebuilding of the temple was begun in the reign of Darius, 520. Its dedication took place 516. After that, however, we have little news until the reign of Artaxerxes I (465–424 b.c.), when Nehemiah, who declares himself to have been “cupbearer to the king,”Note 55 was sent, on his own request, to Jerusalem, to be its governor, and he found the city still largely in ruins.Note 56 He began the rebuilding of its walls. But the great day that is marked as the day of the proper founding of modern Judaism arrived only in the reign of Artaxerxes II (404–358 b.c.), when, in the year 397 b.c., Ezra the Scribe, with a large company of the faithful and authority from the king, came from Babylon to Jerusalem and was scandalized by what he found.
The officials [he wrote] approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons; so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.” And when I heard this, I rent my garments and my mantle, and pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled.Note 57
Ezra prayed and apologized for his people to God and cast himself down before the house of God, and a very great assembly of the people gathered, men, women, and children, who joined him in his pain and wept. After which, as we read,
a proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the returned exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem and that if any one did not come within three days, by order of the officials and the elders all his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from the congregation of the exiles.
Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. And all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. And Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have trespassed and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now then make confession to the Lord the God of your fathers, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.”
Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, “It is so; we must do as you have said. But the people are many, and it is a time of heavy rain; we cannot stand in the open. Nor is this a work for one day or for two; for we have greatly transgressed in this matter. Let our officials stand for the whole assembly; let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come at appointed times, and with them the elders and judges of every city, till the fierce wrath of our God over this matter be averted from us.” Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahzeiah the son of Tikvah opposed this, and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite supported them.
Then the returned exiles did so. Ezra the priest selected men, heads of fathers’ houses, according to their fathers’ houses, each of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter; and by the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women. … And they put them away with their children.Note 58
Thus, for a while at least, peace had again been made with their god by the remnant of the people of his trust.
V. The God of Love
The King of Kings of Persia illuminated with the radiance of his justice, on one hand the Greek Ionian city states of westernmost Asia Minor, as Satrapy I of his unprecedented domain, and, on the other, the most ancient centers of Indian civilization, in the Punjab, as Satrapy XX. Moreover, the image of his grandiose lordship, as symbolized in the glory of his throne and palace in Persepolis, and the methods of despotism that in his hands became the nerves and sinews of the most powerful social organization the world had up to then seen, were in his time so prodigiously impressive that, though they endured for hardly two centuries, they have remained, through all centuries since, the ultimate figure and symbol of kingly majesty and rule. In India, in the court and theory of government of Candragupta Maurya (c. 322–293 b.c.), whose art of despotism is epitomized in Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra, “Textbook of the Art of Gaining Ends,” and in China, in the reign of Shih Huang Ti (221–206 b.c.), whose counterpart of Kautilya’s work is the Shang Tzu, “Book of the Lord Shang,” the model of the Persian King of Kings was copied and made definitive for all Oriental ideals of political method and achievement to this day. Furthermore, in the Old Testament prophetic visions of the majesty of God, the imprint of the King of Kings of Persia can be recognized as finally the source. We read of his reign and the methods of his reign in the work of his Greek subject Herodotus. His radiance was of Ahura Mazda; but the instrument of his majesty was the whip.
In the luminous little Greek peninsula beyond the benevolence of that divine Levantine government, however, in the polis eulogized by Pericles in his celebrated oration, a quite different notion was developing of majesty and rule, and of the deity whose presence was the best support of law as well as of life. For it was inevitable that where individual excellence was to such an extent revered as in Greece, the force and principle of Love — Eros — should have been recognized not merely as a god but as the informing god of all things. For no one achieves excellence in his life task without love for it, in himself without love for himself, or in his family without love for his home. Love brings everything to flower, each in terms of its own potential, and so is the true pedagogue of the open, free society. “For,” as Agathon declared in his banquet speech, immortalized in Plato’s account of the grandest drinking party in the history of the world, “all serve him of their own free will, and where there is love as well as obedience, there, as the laws which are the lords of the city say, is justice.”Note 59
Professor Warner Fite of Princeton years ago pricked the bubble of a late Victorian version of Plato’s ideal of love by pointing out to a generation ignorant of Greek that Professor Jowett’s translation (which was the one that all were then reading in school) renders orthos paiderastein, “the right kind of pederasty,” as “true love.”Note 60 So that all then knew — as most had already guessed — that boy-love, pederasty or sodomy, which in most of the published moral codes of the world counts as a heinous offense against nature, was for Plato’s model company the one true way to spirituality and the sublimation of mere nature into fine discourse, poetry, science, excellence, and the perfect city state.
In such primitive rites of initiation as those of the natives of Australia, pederasty plays a role in the translation of boys away from Mother to the secret knowledges of manhood: but they are then led by way of further rites back to the village and to marriage.Note 61 Also, in the pedagogical sphere and atmosphere of the Orphic wilderness singers above described, the participation of youths, for a time, in a purely masculine society was, in the way of a preparatory school, preparatory for life. But in the high circle of the lions of Athens, during a great period of late fifth- and early fourth-century Greece, 450-350 b.c., the pedagogical atmosphere became, as it were, embalmed. Everything that we read of it has a wonderful adolescent atmosphere of opalescent, timeless skies — untouched by the vulgar seriousness of a heterosexual commitment to mere life. The art, too, of the lovely standing nude, for all its grace and charm, is finally neuter — like the voice of a singing boy — as appears immediately when the eye turns for comparison to the art of Gupta, Chalukya, and Rashtrakuta India. To quote an observation of Heinrich Zimmer:
Greek sculpture developed to its acme of perfection through a portrayal of the handsome athletic bodies of the attractive boys and youths who won prizes for wrestling and racing at the national religious contests at Olympia and elsewhere; Hindu, on the other hand, in its great period, rested on those intimate experiences of the living organism and mysteries of the life-process that derive from the inward awareness gained through yogic experiences — and simultaneously had a definitely heterosexual flavor, distilled and refined to a subtle enchanting fragrance. Greek art was derived from experiences of the eye; Hindu from those of the circulation of the blood.Note 62
There is a telling line of the Roman satirist and poet Juvenal (60-140 a.d.), where he speaks with disapproval of what went on in one of the secret women’s cults:
nil ibi per ludum simulabitur, omnia fient ad verum. …
“Nothing will there be imitated as in play, everything will be done in earnest. …”Note 63
As in adolescence it is fortunate for a youth if he can live and think and play for some time in a world exclusively of males, where the mind, unassaulted by the female system of seriousness, can develop in its own playful way toward science and aesthetics, philosophy and athletics, the world, in short, of the Logos, where even Eros appears with an exhalation of inorganic scent; so also for the West and the world it was a moment of great good fortune that bestowed upon us — for a certain time — the boys’ singing school of the Greeks: of which the great banquet scene of the young and old lions at the home of the poet Agathon was the apogee.
The reader recalls the magical moment. Socrates arose to tell of love — as he had learned of it from the wise woman Diotima, of whom we know nothing more than what he tells.
“I want to talk about some lessons I was given, once upon a time, by a Mantinean woman called Diotima,” he said: “a woman who was deeply versed in this and many other fields of knowledge. It was she who brought about a ten years’ postponement of the great plague of Athens on the occasion of a certain sacrifice, and it was she who taught me the philosophy of Love.”Note 64
Like Zeus with Metis in his belly, so was Socrates with Diotima. In his celebration of love we may recognize the percolation upward of an earlier, pre-Hellenic wisdom, from the world of the serpent queens of Crete, of Circe also, and Calypso. But in the male womb of his brow the lore has been transmuted to accord with the inorganic atmosphere of the perfume of the banquet. We can only guess what it might have been from Diotima herself. As it comes to us from Socrates, thus alone do we know it. And so:
Well then, she began [declared the old satyr to his company], the candidate for this initiation cannot, if his efforts are to be rewarded, begin too early to devote himself to the beauties of the body. First of all, if his preceptor instructs him as he should, he will fall in love with the beauty of one individual body, so that his passion may give life to noble discourse. Next he must consider how nearly related the beauty of any one body is to the beauty of any other, when he will see that if he is to devote himself to loveliness of form it will be absurd to deny that the beauty of each and every body is the same. Having reached this point, he must set himself to be the lover of every lovely body, and bring his passion for the one in due proportion by deeming it of little or of no importance.
Next he must grasp that the beauties of the body are as nothing to the beauties of the soul, so that wherever he meets with spiritual loveliness, even in the husk of an unlovely body, he will find it beautiful enough to fall in love with and to cherish — and beautiful enough to quicken in his heart a longing for such discourse as tends toward the building of a noble nature. And from this he will be led to contemplate the beauty of laws and institutions. And when he discovers how nearly every kind of beauty is akin to every other he will conclude that the beauty of the body is not, after all, of so great moment.
And next, his attention should be diverted from institutions to the sciences, so that he may know the beauty of every kind of knowledge. And thus, by scanning beauty’s wide horizon, he will be saved from a slavish and illiberal devotion to the individual loveliness of a single boy, a single man, or a single institution. And, turning his eyes toward the open sea of beauty, he will find in such contemplation the seed of the most fruitful discourse and the loftiest thought, and reap a golden harvest of philosophy, until, confirmed and strengthened, he will come upon one single form of knowledge, the knowledge of the beauty I am to speak of.
And here, Diotima said to me, you must follow me as closely as you can.
Whoever has been initiated so far in the mysteries of Love and has viewed all these aspects of the beautiful in due succession, is at last drawing near the final revelation. And now, Socrates [she said], there bursts upon him that wondrous vision which is the very soul of the beauty he has toiled so long for. It is an everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which neither flowers nor fades, for such beauty is the same on every hand, the same then as now, here as there, this way as that way, the same to every worshiper as it is to every other.
Nor will his vision of the beautiful take the form of a face, or of hands, or of anything that is of the flesh. It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is — but subsisting of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every lovely thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more nor less, but still the same inviolable whole.
And so, when his prescribed devotion to boyish beauties has carried our candidate so far that the universal beauty dawns upon his inward sight, he is almost within reach of the final revelation. And this is the way, the only way, he must approach, or be led toward, the sanctuary of Love. Starting from individual beauties, the quest for the universal beauty must find him ever mounting the heavenly ladder, stepping from rung to rung — that is, from one to two, and from two to every lovely body, from bodily beauty to the beauty of institutions, from institutions to learning, and from learning in general to the special lore that pertains to nothing but the beautiful itself — until at last he comes to know what beauty is.
And if, my dear Socrates, Diotima went on, man’s life is ever worth the living, it is when he has attained this vision of the very soul of beauty. And once you have seen it, you will never be seduced again by the charm of gold, of dress, of comely boys, or lads just ripening to manhood; you will care nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away and kindle such a longing in you, and many others like you, Socrates, to be always at the side of the beloved and feasting your eyes upon him, so that you would be content, if it were possible, to deny yourself the grosser necessities of meat and drink, so long as you were with him.
But if it were given to man to gaze on beauty’s very self — unsullied, unalloyed, and freed from the mortal taint that haunts the frailer loveliness of flesh and blood — if, I say, it were given to man to see the heavenly beauty face to face, would you call his, she asked me, an unenviable life, whose eyes had been opened to the vision, and who had gazed upon it in true contemplation until it had become his own forever?
And remember, she said, that it is when he looks upon beauty’s visible presentment, and only then, that a man will be quickened with the true, and not the seeming, virtue — for it is virtue’s self that quickens him, not virtue’s semblance. And when he has brought forth and reared this perfect virtue, he shall be called the friend of God, and if ever it is given to man to put on immortality, it shall be given to him.Note 65
We have ascended now to such an Elysian height as to have transcended words. However, libraries are filled with the words that have been devoted to this immortal discourse of the wise Diotima. And, of all that might be remarked concerning her exposition of the Way of Beauty and Love, I shall take notice only of two outstanding points, which apply to the metamorphosis of mythology in the fifth century b.c. And these are, namely:
1. The accent on the body: Spengler has made what seems to me to be an extremely important point in his designation of the body (soma), the beautiful, standing nude, as the signature and high symbol of the Classical — or, as he terms it, Apollonian — order of experience. In contrast, on one hand, to the Magian sense of the World Cavern, with its one space, one span of time, one all-inhabiting spirit, and, on the other hand, to the later, north European, Gothic — or, as Spengler terms it, Faustian — sense and yearning for infinitude, the Greek mind was focused almost exclusively on what is present to the senses. And this concentration was expressed as well in the stone body of the Classical temple as in the art of the sculptured nude. It was the inspiration, furthermore, of Euclidean mathematics (a mathematic of static bodies) and of the politics of the polis (the area of land visible from its acropolis). Or, in Spengler’s own words:
The Classical statue in its splendid bodiliness — all structure and expressive surfaces and no incorporeal arrière-pensée whatsoever — contains without remainder all that Actuality is for the Classical eye. The material, the optically definite, the comprehensible, the immediately present — this list exhausts the characteristics of this kind of extension. The Classical universe, the Cosmos or well-ordered aggregate of all near and completely viewable things, is concluded by the corporeal vault of heaven. More there is not. The need that is in us to think of “space” as being behind as well as before this shell was wholly absent from the Classical world-feeling. The Stoics went so far as to treat even properties and relations of things as “bodies.” For Chrysippus, the Divine Pneuma is a “body,” for Democritus seeing consists in our being penetrated by material particles of the things seen. The State is a body which is made up of all the bodies of its citizens, the law knows only corporeal persons and material things. And the feeling finds it last and noblest expression in the stone body of the Classical temple. The windowless interior is carefully concealed by the array of columns; but outside there is not one truly straight line to be found. Every flight of steps has a slight sweep outward, every step relatively to the next. The pediment, the roof-ridge, the sides are all curved. Every column has a slight swell and none stands truly vertical, or truly equidistant from the others. But swell and inclination and distance vary from the corners to the centers of the sides in a carefully toned-off ratio, and so the whole corpus is given a something that swings mysterious about a center. The curvatures are so fine that to a certain extent they are invisible to the eye and only to be “sensed.” But it is just by these means that direction in depth is eliminated. While the Gothic style soars, the Ionic hovers. The interior of the cathedral pulls up with primeval force, but the temple is laid down in majestic rest.Note 66
The Greek concept and experience of Eros, then, is locked firmly to the body and, as the wise woman Diotima tells, all penetration beyond, to “beauty’s very self,” not only must begin with bodily specificity but also must remain in the end with “beauty’s visible presentment.” The leap is not taken by the Greek spirit to any such sphere of dis- or pre-embodiment as becomes typical of certain strains of post-Classical Neoplatonic thought. And yet there is a penetration — which brings us to our second point.
2. The idea of beauty everywhere: Thales, we have seen, believed that “water” was the ultimate ground (ἀρχή) of all perceptible things; Anaximander, the “unlimited”; Anaximenes, “air”; the Pythagoreans, “number”: and we have now entered a world of thought, a century or so later, where love — of and as beauty — has become the ἀρχή, or prime substance of all things. As every sophomore in philosophy knows, Plato and his school identified this principle, in a very interesting way, with the earlier principle of number, harmony, and the music of the spheres, which, as we have also seen, had already been linked to the mystery of the magic of the music of the Orphic lyre and song that quelled even the heart of Hades and the animals of the wild. Moreover and finally, it has been shown that the figure of Dionysus looms behind the Orphic, who is ultimately that same mighty lord of death and resurrection whom we have recognized in Osiris, Tammuz, and the beautifully bearded golden bull of the graceful harp of the royal tombs of Ur. So that there is now breaking into the scene a really tremendous torrent of earlier mythic themes, figures, and motifs, bearing fragments, variously assorted, of the whole deep, dark, and turbid well of the serpent lord and his bride: the symbolism of the lunar bull, the dead and resurrected godly king, those fascinating harps of the moon king of the royal tombs of Ur, and the great names of Osiris, Tammuz, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and the rest.
In Hesiod’s Theogony (c. 750 b.c.) the god of love, Eros, had been one of four separate deities named as original. One was Chaos; another, Gaea, Mother Earth; Tartarus, the dark pit of Hades beneath the earth, was given as third; while the fourth was Eros — “who is love, handsomest among all immortals, who breaks the limbs’ strength: who, in all gods, in all human beings, overpowers the intelligence in the breast and all their shrewd planning.”Note 67 Hesiod tells no more of this god. Eros does not appear at all in Homer. He derives from the old pre-Hellenic Aegean stratum of mythological thought. He is linked definitely and firmly to Aphrodite as her child, and in the later, allegorical mythologies appears (as Cupid, child of Venus) with his bow and poisoned arrow, piercing brutal as well as gentle hearts, to their death or to their healing in delight. The allegory is apt and appealing, denoting in a literary way the impact of love upon the individual. But, as our whole survey of the prehistory of the Aegean has shown, the goddess Aphrodite and her son are exactly the great cosmic mother and her son, the ever-dying, ever-living god. The variety of myths of Eros’s parentage point, without exception, to such a background. He is the issue of Chaos. He is hatched from the egg of Night. He is the son, now of Gaea and Uranus, now of Artemis and Hermes, now again of Iris and Zephyrus: all transformations of the same mythological background, pointing, without exception, to the timeless catalogue of themes with which we are now familiar: of that willing victim in whose death is our life, whose flesh is our meat and blood our drink; the victim present in the young embracing couple of the primitive ritual of the love-death, who at the moment of ecstasy are killed, to be sacramentally roasted and consumed;Note 68 the victim present in Attis or Adonis slain by a boar, Osiris slain by Seth, Dionysus tom apart, roasted, and consumed by the Titans. In the charming later allegories of Eros (Cupid) and his victim, the god is in the role of the dark enemy — the rushing boar, the dark brother Seth, the Titan band — and the lover is the incarnate dying god. But, as we know, in this mythology, based as it is on the mystery that in old Egypt was known as “the Secret of the Two Partners,”Note 69 the slayer and his victim, though on the stage apparently in conflict, are behind the scenes of one mind — as they are, too, it is well known, in the life-consuming, life-redeeming, -creating, and -justifying dark mystery of love.
In the old myths of the primitive and archaic worlds to which we have devoted so many pages, the accents in the rites and retellings of this theme were laid generally upon the godly, or mythic aspect of the mystery. The sentiments and disaster of the human victim were systematically and sublimely disregarded. The Indian rituals of suttee and of human sacrifice before Kālī not only were thoughtless of the individual but, in fact, were disciplines intended to inspire and consummate a spirituality of egoless devotion to the archetypes, mythologically based, of the social order.Note 70 But in Greece, with its Apollonian appreciation for and delight in the individual form, its beauty and its particular excellence, the accent of the same old basic mythic themes dramatically moved from the side of the ever-repeated archetype to that of the unique individuality of each particular victim: and not only to his particular individuality, but also to the entire order of values that may be termed properly personal, as opposed to the impersonal of the group, or of the species, or of the sheerly natural order. It is this dramatic, epochal, and — as far as our documentation tells — unprecedented shift of loyalty from the impersonal to the personal that I want to characterize here as the Greek — the European — miracle. It is comparable to an evolutionary psychological mutation. Elsewhere the particularities of the individual, novelties of his thought, and qualities of individual desire and delight were sternly wiped away in the name of the absolute norms of the group; but in Greece the particular excellencies of each were at least theoretically — though not always actually (as, for example, if the individual chanced to be a woman or a slave) — legally and pedagogically respected. Also, the human mind and its reasoning were honored. The norm for human conduct became not the nursery norm of obedience (“being good,” doing as taught and told), but a rational individual development (“the good life”) under laws that were not supposed to be from God, but were recognized to be the products of purely human judgment. And, indeed, as far as godhead was concerned, even Zeus could think, reason, learn, and improve morally through time.