39), appears in the Avesta merely as the messenger of the gods.[258] The form of Vayu, the more ancient conception of which still plainly breaks through (p. 116), becomes merely the air "whose operation is on high;" and Ashi vanguhi, whom the ancient sacrificers and heroes invoked, together with Ardviçura, for victory, bears traces which can hardly any longer be recognised. We merely perceive that she could once confer power, fertility, beauty, and wealth. We saw above how she called Zarathrustra to her chariot, and promised splendour to his body, and long prosperity to his soul (p. 130). If the luminaries of heaven, in spite of the creation described to Auramazda, are extolled as "having no beginning," we have in this fact a glimpse of the old position of the spirits of light. The struggles of Tistrya against the demons of drought were allowed to remain (p. 120). Plutarch observes that, according to the doctrine of the Magians, Oromazdes had placed Sirius (Tistrya) as a watchman and advanced guard. On the other hand, the worship of the sun-god appears but faintly in the Avesta--in our fragments at any rate. Yet Herodotus informs us that with the Persians the neighing of horses at sunrise was regarded as a favourable sign from the gods, and Xenophon states that the Magians offered bulls to Zeus, but horses to the sun-god, and that on the journeys of the Achæmenids the chariot of Zeus went first, then that of the sun-god; both were white and crowned; and these were followed by a third chariot covered with purple, which as it seems was the chariot of fire. In the march of Xerxes to Hellas, according to the account of Herodotus, a sacred car, yoked with eight white horses, went before him; and ten sacred horses were led, clothed in the most beautiful trappings. Curtius represents the emblem of the sun as glowing over the tent of the last Darius, who invokes "the sun, Mithra, and the sacred eternal fire;" and he tells us of the chariot of Zeus in the army, yoked with white horses, behind which was led a horse of remarkable size, the horse of the sun, with golden bridle and white covering, like those before the chariot. Dio Chrysostom tells us that the Magians reared a yoke of Nisaean horses for Zeus, _i.e._ for Mithra, which were the largest and most beautiful in all Asia, and a horse for Helius.[259] We can call to mind the battle-chariot of Mithra, "with golden wheels and silver spokes" (p. 110). These were imitations of the divine chariots of which the Greeks tell us, and if they were not in a position to distinguish accurately what belonged to Mithra (Auramazda does not come into the question), and what to Hvare Kshaeta (the sun-god)--Strabo is of opinion that the Persians called the sun Mithras[260]--we may still conclude with certainty from these statements, that the worship of Mithra and the sun-god remained more vigorous and effectual among the princes and nations of Iran than our fragments of the Avesta would allow us to