many sources from antiquity often point to the Persian origins of magic. It is appropriate then to discuss this briefly. Persian priests, the magoi, were supposed to have inherited the lore of the Chaldeans. Chaldea was the name of a country (according to Genesis it was the home of Abraham), but a Chaldean could also be an astrologer or an interpreter of dreams, originally perhaps a member of a priestly caste that studied occult rituals and handed them down. Zoraster (sixth century BCE) was the greatest teacher, priest and magician (a figure comparable to Orpheus in some ways) in the early Persian Empire. He lived during the reign of the Achaemenids and wrote many works on magic, astrology, divination and religion. He is considered the creator of a system of daemonology that was adopted at various stages and in various forms by Jews, Greeks, and Christians. At the time of Plato, the Greeks already associated magic with Zoraster whom they considered to be a demigod, he was called "the son of Ahura Mazda." Another great Persian magus, Ostanes, accompanied Xerxes on his campaign against Greece (480 BCE), no doubt as an advisor to the monarch. After his defeat at Salamis, the monarch left Ostanes behind, and Ostanes became the teacher of Democritus (born c 470 BCE), apparently encouraging his pupil to travel to Egypt and Persia. Democritus is chiefly known as a great scientist to the modern reader; however, he may have transmitted Persian magic in one of his many lost works.[29]
The word magus, magicus and mageia were used with a variety of connotations - from the religion of te Magi of Persia to scurrilous, harmful magic or witchcraft. While the Magi were members of the priestly caste of the Persians and therefore could be considered honest religionists, the Greeks and Romans who viewed the Persian Empire tended to bring their own intellectual prejudices to bear against religion when they described it. Herodotus, Pliny and Plutarch tended at their hardest to view the religion as little more than fraud.[30] Furthermore, since Persia remained Rome's most potent enemy throughout the Imperial era, any religion practiced there was bound to be viewed as subversive and dangerous.
Then too many people in the Hellenistic world called themselves magoi when they had no real connection with Persia. These people always courted the epithet , a less ambiguous term usually meaning "quack." Though in the Symposium (202e) Plato grants magic a measure of efficacy as a function of Eros, almost all the other uses of the term are derogatory.[31] The problems of candidates for the title "divine man" was to convince the world that they were not magic and certainly not ; as detractors might have called them.[32]
The three magi, who came to Palestine from a distant oriental country to offer their adoration to the new-born child in Bethlehem, are represented as monarchs and as wise men.
Zoraster, Ostanes, and the three magi mark half a millennium. During that time and for centuries to come, the Western World associated Persia with magic and secret lore.
