The Verdict of the Ancient World: The Antiquity of Zoroaster
A standalone piece For five centuries, the finest minds of Greece and Rome looked back toward Zoroaster and saw the same thing: a figure standing at the very dawn of the world, ancient almost beyond reckoning. And these were not credulous men. Xanthus of Lydia, the first Greek ever to write his name, placed him thousands of years before Xerxes. Eudoxus — among the greatest mathematicians antiquity produced — and Aristotle himself set him six thousand years before Plato.
What this resource contributes
A standalone piece For five centuries, the finest minds of Greece and Rome looked back toward Zoroaster and saw the same thing: a figure standing at the very dawn of the world, ancient almost beyond reckoning. And these were not credulous men. Xanthus of Lydia, the first Greek ever to write his name, placed him thousands of years before Xerxes. Eudoxus — among the greatest mathematicians antiquity produced — and Aristotle himself set him six thousand years before Plato. Hermippus, who claimed to have read the Magian books, and Plutarch, the master biographer, reckoned five thousand years before the fall of Troy. Pliny, charting the origins of human knowledge, placed Moses "many thousand years after Zoroaster." And Diogenes Laertius gathered their voices into one. They quarreled over the number. They never once quarreled over the verdict.
Topics and source signals
Primary sources detected
Gathas · Avesta · Bundahishn
Scholars detected
Albert de Jong