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 Religious Architecture. 241 ceive that in the banning the supreme god of the Persians was no other than the blue canopy of heaven ; * he understood that their religion, ere it got corrupted by contact with alien cults, was a pure naturalism (nature-worship), when their homage was addressed to the stars and the elements. "The Persians/' he writes, '* sacrifice to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds, and originally sacrificed to these alone." ' He even had an inkling of the sacred character fire had in the belief of the Magi ; for he has recorded the horror they felt in bringing in contact with it mortal remains,* and even victims offered to the gods.* Then, too, he gauged aright the part played by the Magi, who alone could prepare the victim and slay it by the altar.* It is self- evident, however, that in some respects his account is tinged with exaggeration. Thus he twice repeats that " the Persians erect no altars ; " ' but on the fagade of the rock-tombs we have seen the king in the act of prayer, standing before an altar upon which the celestial fire is burnint; (Plate Land Figs. [o6, 112). The steps on which the altar is raised, the pyramidal shape of its middle compartment, the three fillets by which the slab is terminated, make up a whole utterly distinct from any we have met in Egypt, Assyria, and Phcenicia (see tail-piece, end of chapter). It is the same with the temples. Strabo, who at first confines himself to almost reproducing word by word the account of Herodotus,* leaves his guide to describe the ceremonies of which he had been an eye-witness in Cappadocia, where at that time the Medo- Persian religion was widely diffused, when he quaintly remarks tliat his personal experience differs from the recital of historians.' In this country, he writes, are seen what are called wpalBtM, some of which arc truly imposing sanctuaries, with an altar in the mitldle, on which, amidst accumulated ashes, burns the ever- lasting fire, watched over by the Magi.* Strabo, it is true, wrote four or five centuries after the golden age of the Achrc- menida; ; but the inscription bears witness that in the day of Darius there already was something that resembled those places of worship where the Greek geographer had beheld the Magi at • Dakmesteter, Introduction to the VendiJad, Plate LVIIl. ■ Herodotus, i. 131. • JHd., Hi. t6. < JUiL, i. 133. • JUd, • 131, 132. ' Strabo, XV. iii 13. ' TaSra fiiv rifji(U Itapatfaftmif, ImtMk Shf rats lorajptoif A^ycnu «ai ra ^^c^. • Strabo, XV. iii. 15. Digitizeu l> ^oogle