XI

OF THE BABYLONIANS BECOME PERSIANS

THE PERSIANS were situated to the East of Babylon. They carried their arms and religion to Babylon, when Koresh, whom we call Cyrus, took that city, with the assistance of the Medes, who were established to the northward of Persia. We have two capital fables relating to Cyrus, that of Herodotus and that of Xenophon, which are in every respect contradictory, and which, nevertheless, a thousand different writers have copied.

Herodotus supposes a king of the Medes, that is to say, a king of Hyrcania, whom he calls Astyagus, a name derived from the Greek. This Hyrcanian Astyagus orders his grandson Cyrus to be drowned in his cradle, because he saw in his dream his daughter Mandane, mother to Cyrus, urinate so copiously, that she inundated all Asia. The rest of this adventure is nearly in the same style; this is a history of Gargantua, seriously written.

Xenophon makes the life of Cyrus a moral romance, nearly resembling our Telemachus. He begins by supposing, in order to recommend the masculine and robust education of his hero, that the Medes were voluptuaries sunk in effeminacy. Some inhabitants of Hyrcania, whom the Tartars then called the Scythians, had committed ravages for thirty years —were these Sybarites?

All that can be positively averred with respect to Cyrus, is that he was a great conqueror, and consequently a scourge of the earth. The basis of his history is very true: the episodes are fabulous: all histories are the same.

Rome existed in the time of Cyrus: her territories extended between four and five leagues, and she pillaged, as much as possible, her neighbors; but I would not support the battle of three Horatius’s, the adventure of Lucretia, the bucklers descending from Heaven, nor the stone being cut with a razor. There were Jewish slaves in Babylon and elsewhere; but, humanly speaking, one might doubt that the angel Raphael had come down from Heaven to conduct young Tobit on foot towards Hyrcania, in order to receive some money, and to drive away the devil Asmodeus with the smoke of a pipe.

I shall take care not to touch upon the romance of Herodotus, or that of Xenophon, with respect to the life of Cyrus; but I shall observe that the Parsis, or Persians, pretended to have among them, for 6,000 years, an ancient zerdust, a prophet who had taught them to be just, and to revere the sun, as the ancient Chaldeans had revered the stars whilst they gazed upon them.

I shall take care not to affirm that these Persians and these Chaldeans were so just, or that I know so precisely at what time came their second zerdust, who rectified the worship of the sun, and taught them to adore only the God, author of the sun and the stars. He wrote, or rather commented upon, as it is said, the book of the Zend, which the Persians dispersed over Asia, now revered as their Bible: this book is, perhaps, the oldest in the world, after that of the five kings of the Chinese; it is written in the ancient sacred language of the Chaldeans; and Mr. Hyde, who has given us a translation of the Sadder, would have procured us that of the Zend, had he been able to have defrayed the expense of such a search. I mean at least the Sadder, that extract of the Zend which is the catechism of the Persians. I there find that these Persians believed, for a long series of time, in a god, a devil, a resurrection, a paradise, a hell. They were, without contradiction, the first who framed these ideas: this was the most antique system, and which was not adopted by other nations, till after many ages; since the Pharisees among the Jews did not strongly maintain the immortality of the soul, and the dogma of rewards and punishments after death, till about the time of Herod.

This, perhaps, is the most important circumstance in the ancient history of the world. Here is an useful religion established upon the dogma of the immortality of the soul, and upon a knowledge of the creative being. Let us continue to observe how many degrees are necessary for the human understanding to pass through, in order to conceive such a system. Observe again that baptism and immersion into water, to purify the soul by the body, is one of the precepts of the Zend.

The origin of all rites is, perhaps, derived from the Persians and Chaldeans, and extended to the extremities of the west.

I shall not enter into an enquiry here, why and how the Babylonians had their secondary gods in acknowledging a sovereign god. This system, or rather this chaos, was that of all nations, except the tribunals of China. We every where find extreme folly united to a little wisdom in the laws, the worships, and customs; mankind is led more by instinct than reason; the divinity is every where adored and dishonored. The Persians revered statues as soon as they could procure sculptors: but even in these figures the symbols of immortality are discovered; we see heads soaring with wings to heaven, symbols of the emigration of a transitory life to that of immortality.

Let us now observe those customs, which are entirely human. I am astonished that Herodotus should say before all Greece, in his first book, that all the Babylonian women were compelled by the law to prostitute themselves once at least in their life to strangers, in the temple of Militia, or Venus. I am still more astonished that in all the histories which are compiled for the instruction of youth, this same tale is constantly preserved. This certainly must have been an elegant festival, a curious devotion, to see the dealers in camels, horses, oxen, and asses, repairing to church, and there descend to lie before the altar with the principal ladies of the city. Could such enormities be really practiced by a people who were esteemed polished? Is it possible that the magistrates of one of the greatest cities of the world should frame such a police? that the husbands should consent to prostitute their wives? that the fathers should abandon their daughters to the grooms of Asia? What is not in nature can never be true; I would as soon believe Dion. Cassius, who avers that the grave senators of Rome debated upon a decree, whereby Caesar, at the age of 57 years, should be allowed the privilege of enjoying all the women he chose.

Should not those who are at present employed in compiling ancient history, and copy so many authors without examining any of them, have perceived that either Herodotus related fables, or rather that his text was corrupted, and that he only meant those courtesans who are settled in all great cities, and who even waited for passengers upon the roads.

I shall give no more credit to Sextus Empiricus, who pretends that pederasty was ordered among the Persians. What a pity! How can it be suggested that a law was enacted by men, the execution of which would have destroyed the human race? Pederasty was, on the contrary, expressly forbidden in the book of Zend, which may be seen in the abridgment of the Sadder, where it is said, (port 9) “That there is no greater sin.”

Strabo says that the Persians married their mothers—but what vouchers does he produce? hearsays and idle reports: these may furnish an epigram for Catullus. Num magus ex matre & nato nascatur aportet. Every magus is to be born from the incestuous intercourse of a mother and her son. Such a law is incredible; an epigram is no proof. If there had been no mothers inclinable to lie with their sons, there would consequently have been no priests among the Persians. The religion of the magi, the great object of which was population, should rather have allowed fathers to cohabit with their daughters, than for mothers to have laid with their sons, as an old man might have begot something, but an old woman was debarred this advantage.

In a word, when we read history, we should constantly be upon our guard not to adopt fables.