Magi

===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.

{{anchor|MatthewMagi}}