Zaratas[1] the Chaldæan, and that he explained to him that there are two original causes of things, father and mother, and that father is light, but mother darkness; and that of the light the parts are hot, dry, not heavy, light, swift; but of darkness, cold, moist, weighty, slow; and that out of all these, from female and male, the world consists. But the world, he says, is a musical harmony;[2] wherefore, also, that the sun performs a circuit in accordance with harmony. And as regards the things that are produced from earth and the cosmical system, they maintain that Zaratas[3] makes the following statements: that there are two demons, the one celestial and the other terrestrial; and that the terrestrial sends up a production from earth, and that this is water; and that the celestial is a fire, partaking of the nature of air, hot and cold.[4] And he therefore affirms that none of these destroys or sullies the soul, for these constitute the substance of all things. And he is reported to have ordered his followers not to eat beans, because that Zaratas said that, at the origin and concretion of all things, when the earth was still undergoing its process of solidification,[5] and that of putrefaction had set in, the bean was produced. And of
- ↑ Zaratas is another form of the name Zoroaster.
- ↑ Or, "is a nature according to musical harmony" (preceding note); or, "The cosmical system is nature and a musical harmony."
- ↑ Zaratas, or Zoroaster, is employed as a sort of generic denomination for philosopher by the Orientals, who, whatever portions of Asia they inhabit, mostly ascribe their speculative systems to a Zoroaster. No less than six individuals bearing this name are spoken of. Arnobius (Contr. Gentes. i. 52) mentions four—(1) a Chaldæan, (2) Bactrian, (3) Pamphylian, (4) Armenian. Pliny mentions a fifth as a native of Proconnesus (Nat. Hist. xxx. 1), while Apuleius (Florida, ii. 15) a sixth Zoroaster, a native of Babylon, and contemporary with Pythagoras, the one evidently alluded to by Hippolytus. (See translator's Treatise on Metaphysics, chap, ii.)
- ↑ Or, "that it was hot and cold," or "hot of moist."
- ↑ Or it might be rendered, "a process of arrangement." The Abbe Cruice (in his edition of Hippolytus, Paris 1860) suggests a different
sensation being the result of nerval vibrations. Cicero says of Aristoxenus, "that he was so charmed with his own harmonies, that he sought to transfer them into investigations concerning our corporeal and spiritual nature."
