Plutarch speaks of the Persians, in common with the Chaldeans and Egyptians, as worshipers of the sun under the name of Mithra, whom they regarded as standing between Ormuzd, "the author of good," and Ahriman, "the author of evil," occupied alternately in aiding the former and subduing the latter. So do the Parsees of our own day regard him; and their only hope for the ultimate triumph of Ormuzd is in constant sacrifices and prayers and propitiatory offerings to the sun as the fire that is to burn out and utterly consume all evil from our earth. Fire is to the Parsees now, as it has ever been, the holiest of all holy things, carried about by princes and great men for safety; by warriors, as that which is to give them the victory over their foes; and by all, as their sole and ever-present deity. Sir Jamsetjee assured me that the _intelligent_ Parsees regard the sun and fire as only the symbols that are to remind them of the God they worship. But there can be no doubt that the mass of the Parsees literally worship the sun and the "sacred fire;" and hence arise the utter repugnance many of them have to celebrating their religious rites within closed walls, and the decided preference ever shown for out-door worship. I have often heard them say that the Fire-god shows his aversion to confinement by drooping when he is shut up, and growing vigorous just in proportion as free scope is given him. The sun appears everywhere on the shields and armor of the ancient Persians, as on some of the old-time monuments that have come down to us; while occasionally Mithra is depicted as a youthful hero, with high Persian cap, his knee on a prostrate bull, into whose heart he seems plunging a dagger--symbolically, "the power of evil" in complete subjection to the victorious sun, and about to be for ever annihilated.