ined to
the old elemental worship of nature, which they learned from the Turanian
or Scythic population.

(M183) The great man among the Persians was Zoroaster--or Zerdusht, born,
probably, B.C. 589. He is immortal, not from his personal history, the
details of which we are ignorant, but from his ideas, which became the
basis of the faith of the Persians. He stamped his mind on the nation, as
Mohammed subsequently did upon Arabia. His central principle was
"dualism"--the two powers of good and evil--the former of which was destined
ultimately to conquer. But with this dualistic creed of the old Persian,
he also blended a reformed Magian worship of the elements, which had
gained a footing among the Chaldean priests, and which originally came
from the Scythic invaders. Magism could not have come from the Semitic
races, whose original religion was theism, like that of Melchisedek and
Abraham; nor from the Japhetic races, or Indo-European, whose worship was
polytheism--that of personal gods under distinct names, like Jupiter, Juno,
and Minerva. The first to yield to this Magism were the Medes, who adopted
the religion of older settlers,--the Scythic tribes, their subjects,--and
which faith superseded the old Aryan religion.

(M184) The Persians, the flower of the Aryan races, were peculiarly
military in all their habits and aspirations. Their nobles, mounted on a
famous breed of horses, composed the finest cavalry in the world. Nor was
their infantry inferior, armed with lances, shields, and bows. Their
military spirit was kept alive by their mountain life and simple habits
and strict discipline.

(M185) Astyages, we have seen, was the last of the Median kings. He
married his daughter, according to Herodotus, to Cambyses, a Persian
noble, preferring him to a higher alliance among the Median princes, in
order that a dream might not be fulfilled that her offspring should
conquer Asia. On the return of the dream he sought to destroy the child
she was about to bear, but it was preserved by a herdsman; and when the
child was ten years of age he was chosen by his playfellows on the
mountains to be their king. As such he caused the son of a noble Median to
be scourged for disobedience, who carried his complaint to Astyages. The
Median monarch finds out his pedigree from the herdsman, and his officer,
Harpagns, to whom he had intrusted the commission for his destruction. He
invites, in suppressed anger, this noble to a feast, at