of ancestral idols, which formed the most cherished possession of each
family, and practically monopolized the religious sentiment. All the old
Zoroastrian practices were by degrees laid aside. In Armenia the Arsacid
monarchs allowed the sacred fire of Ormazd to become extinguished; and
in their own territories the Parthian Arsacidae introduced the practice,
hateful to Zoroastrians, of burning the dead. The ultimate religion of
these monarchs seems in fact to have been a syncretism wherein Sabaism,
Confucianism, Greco-Macedonian notions, and an inveterate primitive
idolatry were mixed together. It is not impossible that the very names
of Ormazd and Ahriman had ceased to be known at the Parthian Court, or
were regarded as those of exploded deities, whose dominion over men's
minds had passed away.

On the other hand, in Persia itself, and to some extent doubtless among
the neighboring countries, Zoroastrianism (or what went by the name)
had a firm hold on the religious sentiments of the multitude, who viewed
with disfavor the tolerant and eclectic spirit which animated the Court
of Ctesiphon. The perpetual fire, kindled, as it was, from heaven, was
carefully tended and preserved on the fire-altars of the Persian holy
places; the Magian hierarchy was held in the highest repute, the kings
themselves (as it would seem) not disdaining to be Magi; the ideas--even
perhaps the forms--of Ormazd and Ahriman were familiar to all;
image-worship was abhorred the sacred writings in the Zend or most
ancient Iranian language were diligently preserved and multiplied; a
pompous ritual was kept up; the old national religion, the religion of
the Achaemenians, of the glorious period of Persian ascendency in Asia,
was with the utmost strictness maintained, probably the more zealously
as it fell more and more into disfavor with the Parthians.

The consequence of this divergence of religious opinion between the