Magi

==Greco-Roman sources==
===Classical Greek===
The oldest surviving Greek reference to the magi&nbsp;– from Greek μάγος (''mágos'', plural: ''magoi'') – might be from 6th century BC [[Heraclitus]] (apud [[Clemens of Alexandria|Clemens]] ''[[Protrepticus (Clement)|Protrepticus]]'' 2.22.2<ref>{{Cite book |last=Butterworth |first=G W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xHBBswW6_oYC&pg=PA45 |title=Clement of Alexandria |date=1919 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1919 |isbn=978-0-674-99103-3 |edition=Loeb Classical Library Volume 92 |location=Cambridge, MA. Harvard Universrity Press. |pages=45 |language=en}}</ref>), who curses the magi for their "impious" rites and rituals.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Bremmer |first1=Jan N. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y02I4FW3om4C&pg=PR18 |title=The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period |last2=Veenstra |first2=Jan R. |date=2002 |publisher=Peeters Publishers |isbn=978-90-429-1227-4 |pages=2 |language=en}}</ref> A description of the rituals that Heraclitus refers to has not survived, and there is nothing to suggest that Heraclitus was referring to foreigners.

Better preserved are the descriptions of the mid-5th century BC [[Herodotus]], who in his portrayal of the [[Iranian peoples|Iranian]] expatriates living in [[Asia Minor]] uses the term "magi" in two different senses. In the first sense (''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]'' 1.101<ref>{{Cite book |last=Herodotus |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QsIcxGrq6QAC&pg=PA41 |title=The Histories of Herodotus |date=1904 |publisher=D. Appleton |pages=41 |language=en}}</ref>), Herodotus speaks of the magi as one of the tribes/peoples (''ethnous'') of the [[Medes]]. In another sense (1.132<ref>{{Cite book |last=Herodotus |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QsIcxGrq6QAC&pg=PA54 |title=The Histories of Herodotus |date=1904 |publisher=D. Appleton |pages=54 |language=en}}</ref>), Herodotus uses the term "magi" to generically refer to a "[[sacerdotal]] caste", but "whose ethnic origin is never again so much as mentioned."<ref name="Zaehner_1961">{{cite book|last=Zaehner |first=Robert Charles |date=1961 |title=The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism |location=New York |publisher=MacMillan |page=163}}.</ref> According to [[Robert Charles Zaehner]], in other accounts, "we hear of Magi not only in [[Fars Province|Persia]], [[Parthia]], [[Bactria]], [[Chorasmia]], [[Aria (satrapy)|Aria]], [[Medes|Media]], and among the [[Sakas]], but also in non-Iranian lands like [[Samaria]], [[Ethiopia]], and [[Egypt]]. Their influence was also widespread throughout Asia Minor. It is, therefore, quite likely that the sacerdotal caste of the Magi was distinct from the Median tribe of the same name."<ref name="Zaehner_1961"/>

As early as the 5th century BC, Greek ''magos'' had spawned ''mageia'' and ''{{transl|grc|magike}}'' to describe the activity of a magus, that is, it was his or her art and practice.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Janowitz |first=Naomi |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b_Fnv5MSQ2gC&pg=PA9 |title=Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians |date=2002-09-11 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-63368-5 |pages=9 |language=en}}</ref> But almost from the outset the noun for the action and the noun for the actor parted company. Thereafter, ''mageia'' was used not for what actual magi did, but for something related to the word 'magic' in the modern sense, i.e. using supernatural means to achieve an effect in the natural world, or the appearance of achieving these effects through trickery or sleight of hand.<ref name=":0" /> The early Greek texts typically have the pejorative meaning, which in turn influenced the meaning of ''magos'' to denote a conjurer and a charlatan.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peters |first=Edward |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PoFV65rO59gC&pg=PA1 |title=The Magician, the Witch, and the Law |date=1978 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-0-8122-1101-6 |pages=1 |language=en}}</ref> Already in the mid-5th century BC, Herodotus identifies the ''magi'' as interpreters of omens and dreams (''Histories'' 7.19, 7.37, 1.107, 1.108, 1.120, 1.128<ref>{{Cite book |last=Herodotus |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QsIcxGrq6QAC |title=The Histories of Herodotus |date=1904 |publisher=D. Appleton |language=en}}</ref>).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bremmer |first=Jan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=id2wCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA240 |title=Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East |date=2008-04-30 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-474-3271-5 |pages=240 |language=en}}</ref>

Other Greek sources from before the [[Hellenistic period]] include the gentleman-soldier [[Xenophon]], who had first-hand experience at the Persian [[Achaemenid]] court. In his early 4th century BC ''[[Cyropaedia]]'', Xenophon depicts the magians as authorities for all religious matters (8.3.11),<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gera |first=Deborah Levine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uqTIHmg4LsoC&pg=PA56 |title=Xenophon's Cyropaedia: Style, Genre, and Literary Technique |date=1993 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-814477-9 |language=en}}</ref> and imagines the magians to be responsible for the education of the emperor-to-be. [[Apuleius]], a [[Numidian]] [[Platonist]] philosopher, describes magus to be considered as a "sage and philosopher-king" based on its [[Platonism|Platonic]] notion.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Too |first1=Yun Lee |title=The idea of the library in the ancient world |date=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780199577804 |page=96}}</ref>

===Roman period===
[[File:XV14 - Roma, Museo civiltà romana - Adorazione dei Magi - sec III dC - Foto Giovanni Dall'Orto 12-Apr-2008.jpg|thumb|Incised [[sarcophagus]] slab with the ''[[Adoration of the Magi]]'' from the [[Catacombs of Rome]], 3rd century]]

Once the magi had been associated with "magic" – Greek ''{{transl|grc|magikos}}'' – it was but a natural progression that the Greeks' image of Zoroaster would metamorphose into a magician too.<!-- para 7--><ref name="Beck_2003">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Beck |first=Roger |chapter=Zoroaster, as perceived by the Greeks |title=Encyclopaedia Iranica |location=New York |publisher=iranica.com |year=2003 |chapter-url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroaster-iv-as-perceived-by-the-greeks}}.</ref> The first century [[Pliny the Elder]] names <!--(pseudo-)-->"Zoroaster" as the inventor of magic (''[[Pliny's Natural History|Natural History]]'' xxx.2.3), but a "principle of the division of labor appears to have spared Zoroaster most of the responsibility for introducing the dark arts to the Greek and Roman worlds. That dubious honor went to another fabulous magus, [[Ostanes]], to whom most of the pseudepigraphic magical literature was attributed."<ref name="Beck_2003"/> For Pliny, this magic was a "monstrous craft" that gave the Greeks not only a "lust" (''aviditatem'') for magic, but a downright "madness" (''rabiem'') for it, and Pliny supposed that Greek philosophers – among them [[Pythagoras]], [[Empedocles]], [[Democritus]], and [[Plato]] – traveled abroad to study it, and then returned to teach it (xxx.2.8–10).

[[Pseudo-Zoroaster|"Zoroaster"]] – or rather what the Greeks supposed him to be – was for the Hellenists the figurehead of the 'magi', and the founder of that order (or what the Greeks considered to be an [[Religious order|order]]). He was further projected as the author of a vast compendium of "Zoroastrian" [[pseudepigrapha]], composed in the main to discredit the texts of rivals. "The Greeks considered the best wisdom to be exotic wisdom" and "what better and more convenient authority than the distant – temporally and geographically – Zoroaster?"<!--para 4--><ref name="Beck_2003"/> The subject of these texts, the authenticity of which was rarely challenged, ranged from treatises on nature to ones on [[necromancy]]. But the bulk of these texts dealt with astronomical speculations and magical lore.

One factor for the association with astrology was Zoroaster's name, or rather, what the Greeks made of it. His name was identified at first with star-worshiping (''{{transl|grc|astrothytes}}'' "star sacrificer") and, with the ''Zo-'', even as the ''living'' star.<!-- Beck 523 --> Later, an even more elaborate mytho-etymology evolved: Zoroaster died by the living (''zo-'') flux (''-ro-'') of fire from the star (''-astr-'') which he himself had invoked, and even that the stars killed him in revenge for having been restrained by him.<!-- Beck 523 --><ref name="Beck_1991"/> The second, and "more serious"<!--Beck 523--><ref name="Beck_1991">{{cite book |last=Beck |first=Roger |chapter=Thus Spake Not Zarathushtra: Zoroastrian Pseudepigrapha of the Graeco-Roman World |pages=491–565 |title=A History of Zoroastrianism |volume=3 |editor-last=Boyce |editor-first=Mary |editor2-last=Grenet |editor2-first=Frantz |series=Handbuch der Orientalistik |location=Leiden |publisher=Brill |date=1991}} Abteilung I, Band VIII, Abschnitt 1, p. 516</ref> factor for the association with astrology was the notion that Zoroaster was a [[Chaldea]]n. The alternate Greek name for Zoroaster was Zaratas / Zaradas / Zaratos (''cf.'' [[Agathias]] 2.23–5, [[Clement of Alexandria|Clement]] ''[[Stromata]]'' I.15), which – according to Bidez and Cumont – derived from a Semitic form of his name. <!--The [[Pythagoreanism|Pythagorean tradition]] considered the "founder" of their order to have studied with Zoroaster in Chaldea ([[Porphyry (philosopher)|Porphyry]] ''Life of Pythagoras'' 12, Alexander Polyhistor apud Clement's ''Stromata'' I.15, Diodorus of Eritrea, Aristoxenus apud Hippolitus VI32.2). [[Joannes Laurentius Lydus|Lydus]] (''On the Months'' II.4) attributes the creation of the seven-day week to "the Chaldeans in the circle of Zoroaster and Hystaspes", and who did so because there were seven planets.--> The [[Suda]]'s chapter on ''astronomia'' notes that the [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonians learned their astrology]] from Zoroaster. [[Lucian|Lucian of Samosata]] (''Mennipus'' 6) decides to journey to Babylon "to ask one of the magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors", for their opinion.

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