Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Persians: Deinon, Chrysippos, and Cicero on their character and customs (third century BCE / mid-first century BCE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified March 31, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=19035.
Ancient authors: Deinon of Kolophon (mid-fourth century BCE) and Chrysippos of Soloi (third century BCE), as cited by CIcero; Cicero (mid-first century BCE), On the Republic 3.14-15; On Laws 2.26-27 (link); Tusculan Disputations 1.108 (link); On Divination 1.23 (link).
Comments: Gathered here are various ethnographic comments by Cicero (who at points draws on Deinon and Chrysippos) regarding the practices of Persians and Magians. On the whole, Cicero’s evaluation of Persians is negative as they are characterized as impious, so he does not tend towards evaluating Magians as wise barbarians. However, his brother Quintus is imagined (in dialogue form) positively citing Magians’ prophetic abilities.
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[Persian impiety]
(On the Republic 3.14-15) But in actual fact, if one could visit many diverse descent groups (gentes) and cities and examine them, travelling around in Pacuvius’ famous “chariot of winged snakes,” he would see first of all, that among the famous and always changeless descent group of the Egyptians, which preserves written records of the events of countless ages, a bull that the Egyptians call Apis is considered a god. Also many other monsters and animals of every sort are held sacred as divine.
Then, too, he would see among the Greeks, just as with us Romans, magnificent shrines, adorned with sacred statues in human form. This is a custom which the Persians considered wicked. In fact, Xerxes is said to have ordered the Athenian temples to be burned for the sole reason that he thought it sacrilege to keep the gods whose home is the whole universe closed up within walls. But later Philip, who planned an attack on the Persians, and Alexander, who actually made one, gave as their excuse for war the desire to avenge the temples of the Greeks. The Greeks had thought it proper never to rebuild them, so that posterity might always have before its eyes a monument of Persian impiety.
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[Persian impiety towards temples and Greek and Roman superiority with respect to gods]
(On Laws 2.26-27) MARCUS [in dialogue with others]: . . . The worship of private gods, whether new or foreign, brings confusion into ritual obligation (religio) and introduces ceremonies unknown to our priests. For the gods handed down to us by our fathers should be worshipped only in case our fathers themselves obeyed this law.
I propose that there should be shrines in cities. On this point, I do not follow the Persian Magians (magi), in accordance with whose advice Xerxes is said to have burned the temples of Greece to the ground with the result that the Greeks closed up the gods within walls. All places consecrated to the gods should be open and free, seeing that this whole universe is their temple and home.
Greeks and Romans have done a better thing. With the aim of promoting piety toward the gods, it has been our wish that they should dwell in our cities with us. For this idea encourages a conscientious attitude that is useful to cities, if there is truth in the saying of Pythagoras, a most learned man, that piety and ritual obligation are most prominent in our minds while we are performing rites, and in the saying of Thales, the wisest of the Seven sages, that men should believe that everything they see is filled with the gods. If they did, all would then be purer, just as they feel the power of ritual obligation most deeply when they are in temples. For it is believed that perception of the gods is possible to our eyes as well as to our minds. The groves in the country have the same purpose. Nor is the worship of the Lares, handed down by our ancestors, established in sight of farm and homestead, and shared by slaves as well as masters, to be rejected.
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[Persian burial customs viewed negatively alongside those of Egyptians and Hyrkanians, perhaps drawing on Chrysippos of Soloi]
(Tusculan Disputations 1.108, speaking on the fear of death) But why should I notice the beliefs of individuals, since we may observe the varied deceptions under which all the peoples (nationes) labour? The Egyptians embalm their dead and keep them in the house. The Persians even smear them with wax before burial, so that the bodies may last for as long a time as possible. It is the custom of the Magians not to bury the bodies of their dead unless they have been first mangled by wild beasts. In Hyrkania [in Median territory] the populace support dogs for the benefit of the community, while the nobles keep them for family use: it is as we know a famous breed of dogs, but in spite of the cost, each householder procures animals in proportion to his means, to mangle him. They consider that the best mode of burial. Chrysippos [of the Stoic sect, third century BCE] collects a large number of other instances as suits his inquisitive way in making any investigation, but there are details so disgusting that language avoids them with abhorrence. This whole subject then must be treated with contempt as regards ourselves, but not ignored in the case of those connected with us. There is a caveat, however, in that we, the living, are conscious that the bodies of the dead have no consciousness. Let the living, however, attend to funeral observance to the extent to which they must make a compromise with custom and public opinion, but with the understanding that they realize that in no way does it concern the dead.
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[Quintus in the dialogue compares the prophetic abilities of Magian Persians and Kallanos among Indians, with a positive evaluation]
(On Divination 1.23) “Why do I need to bring forth from Deinon‘s Persian Matters the dreams of that famous prince, Cyrus, and their interpretations by the Magians? But take this instance: At one point Cyrus dreamed that the sun was at his feet. Three times, so Deinon writes, he pointlessly tried to grasp it and each time it turned away, escaped him, and finally disappeared. He was told by the Magians, who are classed as wise and learned men among the Persians, that his grasping for the sun three times portended that he would reign for thirty years. And so it happened, for he lived to his seventieth year, having begun to reign at forty.
“It certainly must be true that even barbarians have some power of foreknowledge and of prophecy, if the following story of Kalanos of India is true: As he was about to die and was ascending the funeral pyre, he said: ‘What a glorious death! The fate of Herakles is mine. For when this mortal frame is burned, the soul will find the light.’ When Alexander directed him to speak if he wished to say anything to him, he answered: ‘Thank you, nothing, except that I will see you very soon.’ So it turned out, for Alexander died in Babylon a few days later.
I am getting slightly away from dreams, but I will return to them in a moment. Everybody knows that on the same night in which Olympias was delivered of Alexander the temple of Diana [i.e. Artemis] at Ephesos was burned, and that the Magians began to cry out as day was breaking: ‘Asia’s deadly curse was born last night.’ But enough about Indians and Magians. . . [omitted many sections].
[Barbarians and divination: Celtic Druids, Persian Magians, Assyrian Chaldeans]
(1.41) “Nor is the practice of divination disregarded even among barbarians, if in fact there are Druids in Gaul, and there are, for I knew one of them myself, Divitiacus, the Aeduan, your guest and eulogist. He claimed to have that knowledge of nature which the Greeks call “physiologia,” and he used to make predictions, sometimes by means of divination and sometimes by means of conjecture. Among the Persians the seers and diviners are the Magians, who assemble regularly in a sacred place for practice and consultation, just as formerly you [Roman] diviners (augures) used to do on the nones of each month. In fact, no one can become king of the Persians until he has learned the theory and the practice of the Magians.
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Source of translations: C.W. Keyes, Cicero: De re publica. De legibus, LCL (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1928), public domain (passed away in 1943); J.E. King, Tusculan Disputations, LCL (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1927); William Armistead Falconer, Cicero: De senectute, De amicitia, De divinatione, LCL (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1923), public domain, adapted by Harland.