Such is the view of the case derivable from Herodotos, who remains the main authority; but recent critics have raised some difficulties. That the Magians were originally a non-Median tribe seems clear; Dr. Tiele (Outlines, pp. 163, 165) even decides that they were certainly non-Aryan. Compare Ed. Meyer (Gesch. des Alt., i, 530, note, 531, §§ 439, 440), who holds that the Mazdean system was in its nature not national but abstract, and could therefore take in any race. Several modern writers, however (Canon Rawlinson, ed. of Herodotos, i, 426-31; Five Great Monarchies, 2nd ed. ii, 345-55, iii, 402-404; Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, Eng. tr. pp. 197, 218-39; Sayce, Anc. Emp. of the East, p. 248), represent the Magians as not only anti-Aryan (= anti-Persian), but opposed to the very worship of Ormazd, which is specially associated with their name. It seems difficult to reconcile this view with the facts; at least it involves the assumption of two opposed sets of Magi. The main basis for the theory seems to be the allusion in the Behistun inscription of Dareios to some acts of temple-destruction by the usurping Magian Gomates, brother and controller of the pretender Smerdis. (See the inscription translated in Records of the Past, i, 111-15.) This Meyer sets aside as an unsettled problem, without inferring that the Magians were anti-Mazdean (cp. § 449 and § 511, note). As to the massacre, however, Meyer decides (i, 613) that Herodotos blundered, magnifying the killing of "the Magus" into a slaughter of "the Magi." But this is one of the few points at which Herodotos is corroborated by Ktesias (cp. Grote, iii, 440, note). A clue to a solution may perhaps be found in the facts that, while the priestly system remained opposed to all image-worship, Dareios made emblematic images of the Supreme God (Meyer, i, 213, 617) and of Mithra; and that Artaxerxes Mnemon later put an image of Mithra in the royal temple of Susa, besides erecting many images to Anaitis. (Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, iii, 320-21, 360-61.) There may have been opposing tendencies; the conquest of Babylon being likely to have introduced new elements. The Persian art now arising shows the most marked Assyrian influences.