the south-west.[1] In this region Mani flourished and was enabled to spread his doctrines, but as soon as he threatened to pervert the loyal Zoroastrians his downfall was brought about by the resentment of the Magi.[2] Here also Christianity essayed to penetrate into Persia, but with the same result, and we possess some details of the cruel persecution to which Christians were subjected whenever they came into collision with the established religion of the state.[3] In some instances, however, Roman heretics, such as the Nestorians who fled before the face of an orthodox Emperor, were accorded an asylum in Persia by a politic Shah.[4]
Towards the end of the fifth century a serious ferment in the ranks of the Zoroastrians themselves was occasioned by the preaching of a fanatical demagogue named Mazdak. This reformer aimed at nothing less than a subversion of the existing sociological status by the induction of a communistic partage of women and property. All practical class distinctions were thus to be swept away, so that a level affluence should prevail throughout the land. It appears that
- ↑ See Sayce's Babylonians, etc., Lond., 1900, and other works of that class which condense the results of the excavations in progress on that site.
- ↑ See p. 267. Fragments of the Manichaean Bible recently discovered in Central Asia show that Mani was a native of Babylon.
- ↑ Sozomen, ii, 9; Theodoret, v, 39. Some were partly flayed, on the face and the hands, or the back. Others were thrown bound into pits with mice, etc. The first of these persecutions seems to have sprung from the religious fervour caused by Sapor's zeal for the faith; the second was originated by a fanatical Christian bishop, who attacked and destroyed a Pyreum or Fire-temple. See Hoffmann's Akt. Pers. Märt., Leipsic, 1880.
- ↑ Asseman, Bibl. Orient., iii, 2. They had the ear of the Shah as against any of the Orthodox in Persia; John Eph. Com. (Land, etc.), p. 52.
