[62] Speaking of the effects which the conquest of Babylon by the Persians produced upon the religion of the latter, Professor Dill remarks: ‘The conquerors, as so often happens, were to some extent subdued by the vanquished. Syncretism set in; the deities of the two races were reconciled and identified. The magical arts and the astrolatry of the valley of the Euphrates imposed themselves on the purer Mazdean faith and never released their hold, although they failed to check its development as a moral system.’--_Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, 1904, p. 587, where the author cites Cumont, _Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra_, and Gasquet, _Le culte de Mithra_. [63] _Vendîdâd_, Introduction, sec. v. [64] The cult of Mithra, which, in the earlier ages of the Empire, extended not only over the Mediterranean littoral, but throughout all Europe so far as the Roman legions went, even to Yorkshire and the forests of Pannonia, was full of symbolism, the meaning and even the nomenclature of which are only to be explained by the Persian religion, in which the cult originated, although it came to receive an interpretation consonant with the Neo-Platonic theories. [65] He further suggests that the original notion of the Var as a place of refuge for the seeds of things from a coming destruction is borrowed from the Judaic account of Noah. This would seem to be a very strained inference from a slight analogy. The Biblical account finds much closer parallels not only in the Chaldæan traditions, but in the Vedic account of Manu and the Rishis being saved from the deluge in an ark containing the seeds of things, not to speak of deluge myths in the East and in the West, as the Thlinkeets, the Natchez, and other tribes of North America; the Muyscas and Orinoco Indians of South America; the Samoans, Tahitans, etc. [66] He assumes that Vohu Mano (Good Thought) is the Neo-Platonic Logos, and if so, that the other Amesha Spentas are of post-Alexandrian development, and he goes on to find parallels for them too in the rest of the seven emanations enumerated by Philo. However, even if the parallels are so close as to compel the conclusion that the character and functions ascribed to the Amesha Spentas in their latest form are due to Neo-Platonic influences--and even this is not shown very convincingly--it by no means follows that the very conception of the seven celestial powers is due to the same source. [67] We have here, in Persia, an anticipation of the Neo-Platonic æons before the time of Plato himself--a conception which can hardly be referred to the earlier theory of the kind propounded by Hesiod. [68] _Vendîdâd_, Introduction, p. liv, and see p. lxi. For the dead casting no shadow, cp. Plutarch’s Vision of Thespesios. [69] _Op. cit._, p. lxv. [70] Article ‘Chaldæa,’ in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. iii. [71] Revelation xv. 2, and cf. _Fis Adamnáin_, ch. II. [72] Herodotus, _Euterpe_, ii. 156. [73] Dill, _op. cit._, p. 561.