MAGI, the name of the priests among the Medea and Persians, whose religious doctrines and ceremonies are explained under Zotross TER, in Bloc. Div. The Magi formed one of the six tribes into which the Medea were originally divided (I ferodot. i. 101) ; but on the downfall of the eledian empire they continued to retain at the court of their conquerors a great degree of power and authority. It would appear however that they did not witness with indifference the sovereignty pass from the Medea to the Persians; and it was probably owing to the intrigues of the whole order that a conspiracy was formed to deprive Cambyses of the throne by representing one of their order as Sinerdie, the son of Cyrus, who had been previously put to death by his brother. Herodotus, who has given the history of this conspiracy at length, evidently regarded it as a plot on the part of the 51agi to restore the sovereignty to the Medea, since he represents Cambyses on his death-bed as conjuring the Persians to prevent the Merles from obtaining the supremacy again (Herodot., fie 65); and the Persians themselves must have looked upon it in the same light, since after the discovery of the conspiracy, and the murder of the pretended Sruerdia by Darius Ilystaspes and his companions, a general massacre of the Magi ensued ; the memory of which event was annually preserved by a festival, called the " Slaughter of the Magi " (MarOvia), in which none of the Magi were allowed to appear in public. (IJerald., iii. 79;
Ctesias, Pers.; c. 15.) This event does not appear to have much impaired their influence and authority, for they are represented by Herodetus, in his description of the Persian religion, as the only recognised ministers of the national religion (1 132).
The learning of the Magi was connected with astrology and en chantment, In which they were so celebrated that their name was Applied to all orders of magicians and enchanters. Thus the Septua gint translates the Chableo " enchanter," by the word Magus, teem. (Dan.,1. 20; ii. 2, 27; compare Acts, :Hi. 0, 8.) The word was also applied to designate any men celebrated for wisdom ; whence the wise man of the East who came to see Christ are called simply Magi. i1.1, 7, 16.) It would appear from a passage in Jeremiah (xxxix. 3), that the Babylonian priests were also called Magi, if at least the interpretation of Rab-Mog Otel-Xele "chief of the Magi," be correct. (Oesenius, ' I iebrew Lexicon,' under ate The etymology of this word is doubtful. In Persian the name for priest is and it is not improbable, as Oeseniurm has conjectured, that the word may be connected with the root meaningercat, which we have in the Greek id -s-as, the Latin mag-is and snag-nua, the Persian ma. and the Sanskrit mah-at. It is a curious fact that the Hindu grammarians derive mah-at from a verb mah, signifying " to worship." (Wilson's Sanskrit Dictionary, under mah-at.)