During the domination of the Achemenides eastern {144} Asia Minor was colonized by the Persians. The uplands of Anatolia resembled those of Persia in climate and soil, and were especially adapted to the raising of horses.[17] In Cappadocia and even in Pontus the aristocracy who owned the soil belonged to the conquering nation. Under the various governments which followed after the death of Alexander, those landlords remained the real masters of the country, chieftains of clans governing the canton where they had their domains, and, on the outskirts of Armenia at least, they retained the hereditary title of satraps through all political vicissitudes until the time of Justinian, thus recalling their Persian origin.[18] This military and feudal aristocracy furnished Mithradates Eupator a considerable number of the officers who helped him in his long defiance of Rome, and later it defended the threatened independence of Armenia against the enterprises of the Caesars. These warriors worshiped Mithra as the protecting genius of their arms, and this is the reason why Mithra always, even in the Latin world, remained the "invincible" god, the tutelary deity of armies, held in special honor by warriors. Besides the Persian nobility a Persian clergy had also become established in the peninsula. It officiated in famous temples, at Zela in Pontus and Hierocaesarea in Lydia. Magi, called _magousaioi_ or _pyrethes_ (firelighters) were scattered over the Levant. Like the Jews, they retained their national customs and traditional rites with such scrupulous loyalty that Bardesanes of Edessa cited them as an example in his attempt to refute the doctrines of astrology and to show that a nation can retain the same customs in different climates.[19] We know their religion sufficiently to be {145} certain that the Syrian author had good grounds for attributing that conservative spirit to them. The sacrifices of the _pyrethes_ which Strabo observed in Cappadocia recall all the peculiarities of the Avestan liturgy. The same prayers were recited before the altar of the fire while the priest held the sacred fasces (_barecman_); the same offerings were made of milk, oil and honey; and the same precautions were taken to prevent the priest's breath from polluting the divine flame. Their gods were practically those of orthodox Mazdaism. They worshiped Ahura Mazda, who had to them remained a divinity of the sky as Zeus and Jupiter had been originally. Below him they venerated deified abstractions (such as Vohumano, "good mind," and Ameretat, "immortality") from which the religion of Zoroaster made its Amshaspends, the archangels surrounding the Most High.[20] Finally they sacrificed to the spirits of nature, the Yazatas: for instance, Anahita or Anaites the goddess of the waters--that made fertile the fields; Atar, the personification of fire; and especially Mithra, the pure genius of light.