Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Those who assert that philosophy began from the barbarians also set forth the manner of it among each people. They say that the Gymnosophists and the Druids philosophized by uttering riddles, holding that one should revere the gods, do no evil, and practice fortitude. At any rate, Cleitarchus in his twelfth book says that the Gymnosophists even despise death; that the Chaldaeans occupy themselves with astronomy and prediction; and that the Magi spend their time in the worship of the gods, sacrifices, and prayers, in the belief that they alone are heard. They also make declarations concerning the essence and origin of the gods, whom they hold to be fire, earth, and water; and they condemn wooden statues, especially those who say that gods are male and female.

​They also discourse on justice, and consider it unholy to bury the dead by fire; and they deem it lawful to have intercourse with mother or daughter, as Sotion says in his twenty-third book; they practice divination and prediction, claiming that the gods appear to them. Moreover, they say that the air is full of phantoms, which enter into the sight of the sharp-sighted by an emanation produced by exhalation; and they forbid ornaments and the wearing of gold. Their clothing is white, their bed a pallet of straw, their food vegetables, cheese, and coarse bread, and their staff a reed, with which, as they say, pricking the cheese, they would pick it up and eat it.

​Sorcerous magic they did not even know, says Aristotle in the Magicus and Deinon in the fifth book of his Histories; the latter also says that Zoroaster, translated, means 'star-worshipper'; and Hermodorus also says this. Aristotle in the first book of On Philosophy says that they are even older than the Egyptians; and that according to them there are two principles, a good spirit and an evil spirit; and to the one the name is Zeus and Oromasdes, to the other Hades and Areimanios. Hermippus also says this in his first book On the Magi, as do Eudoxus in his Circuit of the Earth and Theopompus in the eighth book of his Philippica;

​and Theopompus also says that, according to the Magi, men will come to life again and be immortal, and that existing things will endure through their invocations. Eudemus of Rhodes also records these things. And Hecataeus says that according to them the gods are also generated. Clearchus of Soli in his On Education says that the Gymnosophists too are descendants of the Magi; and some say that the Jews also are derived from them. In addition to these things, those who have written about the Magi condemn Herodotus; for Xerxes would not have shot arrows at the sun, nor cast fetters into the sea, since these were handed down as gods by the Magi. They say, however, that he reasonably tore down the images.

​The philosophy of the Egyptians concerning the gods and on behalf of justice is of the following sort: they assert that matter is the principle, then that the four elements were separated out from it, and that all kinds of animals were produced; and that the gods are the sun and the moon, the former being called Osiris, and the latter Isis; and they enigmatically represent them by means of a beetle, a serpent, a hawk, and other creatures, as Manetho says in his Epitome of Natural Science and Hecataeus in the first book of On the Egyptian Philosophy. And they construct statues and sacred precincts because of not knowing the form of the god.