the life is like that of this world, but there is no begetting of children.

Finally, Ahura Mazda seizes the Evil Spirit, and each of the archangelic Amesha Spentas lays hold of his antagonist among the arch-fiends, Sraosha grappling with Aeshma. The devil, Ahriman, flees back into gloom and darkness by the passage by which he first invaded the upper world; hell itself is purified by the molten metal, and is reclaimed for the enlargement of the world. Thus by God's will the restitution of all things is accomplished, and the world is immortal for ever and aye. The mountains, which were created by the evil one, are levelled, even the summit which served as abutment for the Cinvat bridge; the earth becomes an even plain, never again buried in ice.

The Zoroastrian dogmatic chronology1 counts twelve thousand years from the beginning of the spiritual creation to the renovation of the world, in four ages of three millenniums each. The revelation to Zoroaster and the founding of the true religion fall at the beginning of the last age, the appearance of Shaoshyant at its close. As in the preceding age each millennium has its salient figure, so the millenniums which lie between Zoroaster's appearance and the end are to have their heroes, bearing the significant names Increaser of Good and Increaser of Prayer, in the Bundahish, Hushedar and Hushedar-mah, who restore the good religion and deliver its oppressed people. Both these and the final deliverer, Shoshans (Shaoshyant), are sons of Zoroaster, conceived in a miraculous way of his seed.

These Messianic expectations, which are found in the Fravardin Yasht as well as in the Bundahish, are worked up in a remarkable apocalypse, the so-called Bahman Yasht, in which are revealed to Zoroaster the successive periods of history (four or seven) down to the close of his millennium, the iron age when the myriad demons with dishevelled hair of the race of Aeshma (Wrath) invade Iran from the east, and leather-belted Turks and Arabs and Christians make a reign of terror. In this dark time, Hushedar will be born, 1See above, p. 384.

and, with gods and heroes on his side, will destroy the heathen hordes and their demon allies in a veritable Armageddon.

Zoroastrianism is frequently described as a dualism. To the Gathas, as we have seen, the term is in any strict sense inapplicable; and for the religion of Achæmenian times it is not without significance that Aristotle,' though acquainted with the two principles, the good and the evil daimones, Oromasdes and Areimanios, yet in the Metaphysics classes the Magi with philosophers like Empedocles and Anaxagoras who made the supremely good the first principle and ground of being. The name dualism might seem more appropriate to the doctrine of later writings, such as the Bundahish, which make Ahriman the creator, not only of the demons, but of all that is bad in the natural world, from the wandering planets to the noisome insects. To Moslem controversialists, for whom creation was one of the chief attributes of deity, a creative devil was plainly an evil god; but this is only the logic of opponents, not Zoroastrian teaching or fair implication from it. The Bundahish itself contrasts in the strongest way the omniscience of Ahura Mazda with the limitations of the evil spirit's knowledge either of the present or of the future. It was through ignorance of the event that he accepted the conditions of the nine thousand years' conflict proposed by Ahura Mazda. He has no power to destroy the creatures of God or permanently to deprive God of them by drawing them to his side. However in the present age evil may seem to prevail, the outcome is certain: the works of the devil shall be destroyed, and he himself shall be for ever banished from the universe; the earth will be renewed, and hell itself purged by fire; men whom the evil spirit has seduced from their allegiance to God, after receiving the just retribution of their evil deeds, will be purified and restored to the eternal life of holiness, and all evil will be for ever done away. The triumph of God is in this respect more complete than in Christianity, which leaves hell, with 1 According to Diogenes Laertius.

the devil and his angels and the wicked in torment for ever, an unconquered realm of evil.

The "dualism" of Zoroastrianism, as has been said above, is an attempt to account for the evil of the present world, physical as well as moral, upon the premises of an ethical theism which cannot admit that God is the author of any kind of evil. But because God is almighty as well as perfectly good, it can as little admit that evil, even in hell, is a permanent factor in the universe. The Zoroastrian theologians were concerned with the solution of the ethical problem rather than with the remoter problems which their solution raised. The evil spirit appears on the scene like a diabolus ex machina; whether he was eternal they do not seem to have asked, nor would they probably have been much disturbed if their logic had carried them to that conclusion, for since they did not define God metaphysically as the infinite and the eternal, but as the good, an eternal devil would not thereby become God. Acquaintance with Greek philosophy or Christian polemics ultimately raised this question, however, and a school of Zoroastrian thinkers posited as the unitary first principle, Space or Time, from which were separated a good god and an evil demon. The one undivided nature being thus divided, these form the dual system of higher powers, one headed by Ormazd, the other by Ahriman. Theodore of Mopsuestia reports that Zervan (Time), whom he calls also Tyche, was the origin of all things, and that, in the act of making a libation to produce Ormazd, by some error in the rite, he produced both Ormazd and Satan. Shahrastani, in his History of Doctrines, describes a sect of Zervanites who held that Ahriman was born of a doubt in the mind of the great Zervan. This theory seems to be controverted in the Selections of Zad Sparam, I, 24, where it is declared that Ahura Mazda produced the "creature Zervan" (Time). There is no reason to think that the Zervanite metaphysics ever had any religious significance.

1 Damascius, ed. Kopp, p. 384,

CHAPTER XVII

THE GREEKS

RELIGION IN EARLY GREECE

The Egæan Civilisation-The Hellenic Migrations—Prehellenic and Greek Religion-The Land-The Gods-Zeus-Artemis-Apollo -Hermes-Athena-Aphrodite-Hera-Hephaistos-Ares-Other Gods-The Dead in Early Greece Homer-Influence of the Epics on Religion-Hesiod-Cosmogony and Theogony.

THE civilisation which is historically associated with the name of the Greeks was preceded in the peninsula, on the confronting coasts of Asia Minor, and on the islands, by a high civilisation of a distinct type and of great antiquity. The surprising wealth of this civilisation and the advanced stage of its artistic development were first revealed by Schliemann's discoveries at Mycenæ, and this, combined with the leading part which Agamemnon has in the Homeric poems as the head of the Greeks in the expedition against Troy, made the name Mycenæan seem an appropriate designation for the civilisation and its products. More recent excavations in other quarters have shown that the so-called Mycenæan civilisation not only embraced a wider area in the eastern Mediterranean basin than was imagined, but that it spread, not from the peninsula to the islands, but from the islands to the continental Greece. Later writers, therefore, prefer the more comprehensive and non-committal term "Egæan."

The discoveries in Crete since 1893 have made it year by year more apparent that the characteristic Ægæan art had its origin and highest development on that island. Egyptian objects found in the palaces of Crete and Cretan wares or representations of them in Egyptian tombs securely establish

certain fundamental synchronisms, and make it possible to assign dates to the principal epochs in Cretan art and architecture. The last of the three great periods into which this history is divided by archeologists—a period on the whole of decadence was contemporary with the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Egyptian Dynasties, that is, say about 1600-1200 B. C.; the preceding period, the culmination of the civilisation, includes the time of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties, so that its prime falls, at the latest, about 2000 B. C. Behind this lies the long period of evolution (Minoan I, of Evans); while beneath this stratum at Cnossus lies the debris of neolithic occupation to the depth in places of twenty feet, showing that the site had been continuously inhabited for many centuries. Disregarding this, the beginnings of Cretan civilisation as represented by Minoan I are probably as old as the pyramid age in Egypt or the Sumerian civilisation of southern Babylonia. Commerce with Egypt was early established; Egyptian decorative motives may be recognised in Cretan art at several stages, but they are developed in accordance with the native genius and tradition, never slavishly imitated. On the other hand, there is no trace of Babylonian influence. The Cretans were early in possession of a hieroglyphic writing whose symbols have no connection with the Egyptian characters; this was superseded toward the end of the second great period (contemporary with the Thirteenth Egyptian Dynasty) by a linear script, of which two distinct, but not necessarily independent, types are recognised.

From Crete this civilisation spread to the Cyclades, and to Greece, where its monuments have been discovered at many centres from Laconia to Thessaly, to western Asia Minor, and to Cyprus, where it found a cognate indigenous civilisation already considerably advanced, and whence, in turn, the products of Egæan art or domestic imitations of them reached seaboard Syria and Phoenicia. In Cyprus, too, the Mesopotamian and the Ægæan cultures met, and this contact and fusion gives their peculiar character to the Cypriote