Nomenclature
Greek Name: Μάγος
Latin Name: Magi
Toponyms:
Cultural Notes
Median Tribe. Magian customs are very different from everyone else's, and especially those of the priests in Egypt
Geographical Notes
Citations in Herodotos
1.101, 1.131
Key Passages in English Translation
English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920. Retreived from <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu>
Key Passages in Greek
Other Testimonia
Other Commentary
Perseus Encyclopedia:
W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotos: For the position of the Magi cf. App. VIII, § 3. The Median tribes seem to have been originally local; H. uses the same word, γένεα, of the Persian tribes (125. 3) which certainly were so (cf. for the situation of the Παρητακηνοί iii. 92. 1 n.). Ammianus (xxiii. 6. 32 seq.), in the fourth century A. D., gives a full account of the Magi, and speaks of them (§ 35) as ‘inhabiting towns without walls’ in Media, where they live ‘protected by religious awe’. But the local tribe had an especially religious development (cf. the tribe of Levi in Palestine), and the priesthood was confined to its members; so among the Parsees to this day only the son of a Dastur can be a Dastur (Darmstetter, S. B. E. iv. p. xlvii). Perhaps some of the tribes were non-Aryan.
Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898):
Disambiguation
No information available at this time.