messengers developed a great activity in the dissemination of his views, especially among Christians. This led to the disputation of Archelaus above referred to, in which Manes suffered utter defeat. He was soon thereafter seized by order of the Persian king, flayed alive, and his stuffed skin publicly exhibited as a warning. The reports in Persian documents of the ninth and tenth centuries though later seem much more credible, and the dates derivable from Manes’ own writings and those of his disciples quoted in Arabic documents of the tenth and eleventh centuries, are quite worthy of acceptance.[50] According to them Fatak the father of Manes, called Πατέκιος in a Greek oath formula still extant, was descended from a noble Persian family in Hamadan or Ecbatana, married a princess of the Parthian Asarcidae, not long before this, in A.D. 226, driven out by the Persian Sassanidæ, and settled down with her at Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital. Here he met with the Mogtasilah, Mandeans or Elkesaites (§ 28, 2), then removed to Southern Chaldea, and trained his son, born in A.D. 216, with great care in this faith. But even in his twelfth year Manes received a divine revelation, which ordained him to be the founder of a new religion, and in his twenty-fourth year he was commissioned to preach this religion publicly. On his first appearance in Persia, on the coronation day of king Sapor I., in A.D. 242, he met with so little support that he found it necessary to keep away from the Persian empire for several decades, which he spent in foreign lands developing his system and successfully prosecuting missionary work. It was only about the end of Sapor’s reign († A.D. 272) that he ventured again to return. He won over to his views the king’s brother Peroz and through him found favour temporarily with Sapor, which, however, soon again turned into dislike. Sapor’s successor, Hormuz or Hormisdas I., seemed inclined to be tolerant toward him. For this very reason Bahram or Baranes I. showed himself all the more hostile, and had him crucified in A.D. 276, his body flayed, and the skin stuffed with straw thrown out at the gate of the city.