HISTORICAL REMARKS. 
701 
their writings, do not allow that temples or altars were in use 
with the Persians, yet, in other places, they so completely 
contradict themselves in this assertion, I can have no doubt 
that what is received as a general remark, was intended by them 
to represent only a very distant anterior period. Strabo, in 
particular, gives the details of a sacrifice performed by the 
Pyrethi (the Magi) in Cappadocia, then a province of Persia, 
where both an altar and a temple are described; and the ques¬ 
tion is, whence would they derive such rites, if not from the 
Sovereign Pontiff of the empire ? Indeed, it seems altogether 
absurd to ascribe the first temples in Persia to the introduction 
of Zoroaster; the situation of the country, between nations 
which, even now, shew the remains of religious structures, built 
from the earliest records of mankind, makes the proposition 
absolutely untenable. That he altered, and improved, may easily 
be credited; but it does not appear reasonably possible that 
three successive princes, who had reigned over the whole of 
known Asia, and were men of enterprise and ambitious taste 
besides, should not have appreciated the use and grandeur of 
a temple, till a religious recluse from the caves of Alborz 
brought forth plans to rival Greece and Egypt. That there 
was a progress in the style of these erections, is not to be 
doubted; but, according to circumstances, the customs of every 
age might be retained, and at times exhibited; whether to 
sacrifice on the high platform of the unsheltered mountain, like 
Cyrus at Pasargadse, when the empire was his temple, and 
a whole people its congregation ; or on the pillared altars of the 
Magi, where sometimes a sculptured wall veiled the sacred 
element from profane gaze, or a beamed roof guarded it from 
the casualties of the weather. All may fairly be supposed to 
