s time in the vicinity of Ennea Hodoi, had given Mardonius
a severe defeat on a former occasion; and the Persians were apt to
treasure up such wrongs, and visit them, when occasion offered, with
extreme severity.

When the Persians had once yielded to the syncretic spirit so far as to
unite the Magian tenets and practices with their primitive belief, they
were naturally led on to adopt into their system such portions of the
other religions, with which they were brought into close contact, as
possessed an attraction for them. Before the date of Herodotus they had
borrowed from the Babylonians the worship of a Nature-Goddess, whom the
Greeks identified at one time with Aphrodite, at another with Artemis,
at another (probably) with Here, and had thus made a compromise with one
of the grossest of the idolatries which, theoretically, they despised
and detested. The Babylonian Venus, called in the original dialect of
her native country Nana, was taken into the Pantheon of the Persians,
under the name of Nansea, Anaea, Anaitis, or Tanata, and became in a
little while one of the principal objects of Persian worship. At first
idolatry, in the literal sense, was avoided; but Artaxerxes Mnemon, the
conqueror of Cunaxa, an ardent devotee of the goddess, not content with
the mutilated worship which he found established, resolved to show his
zeal by introducing into all the chief cities of the Empire the image
of his patroness. At Susa, at Persepolis, at Babylon, at Ecbatana, at
Damascus, at Sardis, at Bactra, images of Anaitis were set up by his
authority for the adoration of worshippers. It is to be feared that at
this time, if not before, the lascivious rites were also adopted, which
throughout the East constituted the chief attraction of the cult of
Venus.

With the idolatry thus introduced, another came soon to be joined.
Mithra, so long an object of reverence, if not of actual worship, to
the Zoroastrians, was in the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, honored, like
Anaitis, with a statue, and advanced into the foremost rank of deities.
The exact form which the image took is uncertain; but probability is in
favor of the well-known type of a human figure slaying a prostrate bull,
which was to the Greeks and Romans the essential symbol of the Mithraic
worship. The intention of this oft-repeated group has been well
explained by Hyde, who regards it as a representation of the Sun
quitting the constellation of Taurus, the time when in the