Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/263

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 239 and discovers a liberal concern for private and public CHAP, happiness, seldom to be found among the grovelling or '__ visionary schemes of superstition. Fasting and celibacy, the common means of purchasing the divine favour, he condemns with abhorrence, as a criminal rejection of the best gifts of providence. The saint, in the magian religion, is obliged to beget children, to plant useful trees, to destroy noxious animals, to convey water to the dry lands of Persia, and to work out his salvation by pursuing all the labours of agriculture. We may quote from the Zendavesta a wise and benevolent maxim, which compensates for many an absurdity. acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers p." In the spring of every year a festival was celebrated, destined to represent the primitive equality, and the present connection, of mankind. The stately kings of Persia, exchanging their vain pomp for more genuine greatness, freely mingled with the humblest but most useful of their subjects. On that day the husbandmen were admitted, without distinction, to the table of the king and his satraps. The monarch accepted their petitions, enquired into their grievances, and conversed with them on the most equal terms. ** From your la- bours," was he accustomed to say, (and to say with truth, if not with sincerity,) ** from your labours, we receive our subsistence ; you derive your tranquillity from our vigilance: since, therefore, we are mutually necessary to each other, let us live together like bro- thers in concord and love "i." Such a festival must in- deed have degenerated, in a wealthy and despotic em- pire, into a theatrical representation ; but it was at least a comedy well worthy of a royal audience, and which might sometimes imprint a salutary lesson on the mind of a young prince. Had Zoroaster, in all his institutions, invariably sup- thTmagi. P Zendavesta, torn. i. p. 224. and Precis du Systeme de Zoroastre, torn. iii. ^ Hyde de Religione Persarum, c. 19.
 * He who sows the ground with care and diligence,