“On these principles Zoroaster built his laws for the improvement of the soil by means of agriculture, by tending of cattle and gardening, which he perpetually inculcates, as if he could not sufficiently impress his disciples with a sense of their importance. “According to his own professions he was only the restorer of the doctrine which Ormuzd himself had promulgated in the days of Jemshid: this doctrine, however, had been misrepresented, a false and delusive magia, the work of Deevs, had crept in, which was first to be extinguished, in order to restore the pure laws of Ormuzd. “Even Plato, the first Grecian writer who mentions Zoroaster, speaks of him as _a sage of remote antiquity_; and the same is established by the evidence of Hermippus and Eudoxus, which Pliny has preserved. The second Zoroaster, supposed by Toucher to have flourished under Darius Hystaspes, is the mere figment of some later Grecian authors of little credit. “On the whole, we _are compelled_ to carry back Zoroaster to the period when Bactriana was an independent monarchy, _a period anterior to the very commencement of the Median empire_, as related by Herodotus, ascending _beyond the eighth century_ before the Christian era. Whether we must refer him to a _still more ancient epoch_, prior to the Assyrian monarchy, the chronological notices we have already given are all that can be afforded, except we be prepared to transport the sage beyond the _utmost limits of recorded_ history.” As I have no longer occasion, however, for the _sage_ than to show that he was a _reformer_; and though at least “eight (more likely _eighteen_) hundred years before the Christian era,”--yet was he even then, comparatively, a _modern_,--I shall now turn to other sources to ascend to the dynasties that had preceded him.