صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic][graphic][graphic][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small]

ZOPISSA (OTOGα, Gr.), a fine sort of pitch, anciently prepared with wax and salt.

ZORILLE, in zoology, a species of viverra, or weasel, having the back and sides marked with short stripes of black and white, the last tinged with yellow; the tail long and bushy, partly white and partly black; the legs and belly black. This animal inhabits Peru, and other parts of South America: its pestilential vapor overcomes even the panther of America, and stupifies that formidable enemy.

ZOROASTER, ZOROASTRES, or ZERDUSHT, a celebrated ancient philosopher, said to have been the reformer or the founder of the religion of the magi. It is wholly uncertain to how many eminent men the name of Zoroaster belonged. Some have maintained that there was but one Zoroaster, and that he was a Persian; others have said that there were six eminent founders of philosophy of this name. Ham the son of Noah, Moses, Osiris, Mithras, and others, both gods and men, have by different writers been asserted to have been the same with Zoroaster. Many different opinions have been advanced concerning the time in which he flourished. Aristotle and Pliny fix his date at so remote a period as 6000 years before the death of Plato. According to Laertius he flourished 600 years before the Trojan war: according to Suidas 500. If, in the midst of so much uncertainty, any thing can be advanced with the appearance of probability, it seems to be this:-that there was a Zoroaster, a Perso-Median, who flourished about the time of Darius Hystaspes; and that besides him there was another Zoroaster, who lived in a much more remote period among the Babylonians, and taught them astronomy. The Greek and Arabian writers are agreed concerning the existence of the Persian Zoroaster; and the ancients unanimously ascribe to a philosopher, whom they call Zoroaster, the origin of the Chaldean astronomy, which is certainly of much earlier date than the time of Hystaspes; it seems therefore necessary to suppose a Chaldean Zoroaster distinct from the Persian. Concerning this Zoroaster, however, nothing more is known than that he flourished towards the beginning of the Babylonish empire, and was the father of the Chaldean astrology and magic. All the writings that have been ascribed to Zoroaster are spurious. See MYSTERIES, MYTHOLOGY, and Po

LYTHEISM.

Dr. Hyde and Dr. Prideaux think that Zoroaster was the same with the Zerdusht of the Persians, who was a great patriarch of the Magians, and that he lived between the beginning of the reign of Cyrus and the latter end of that of Darius Hystaspes. Warburton (Divine Legation, vol. ii. part i. p. 8) censures these writers for making an early Bactrian law-giver a late Persian false prophet, and says the whole story of him is mere fable, contradicting all learned antiquity, and supported only by the romantic relations of later Persian writers under the caliphs. Baumgarten likewise (see the Ancient Universal History, Supplement, vol. ii. 365, &c.) represents it as doubtful whether the Persian Zoroaster ever existed, calls in question the credibility of the oriental writers who gave his history, and makes the whole to be a forgery in later times by the fire-worshippers of Persia.

p.

The title Zoroaster, according to Mr. Bryant, originally belonged to the sun, and was metaphorically bestowed on sacred and enlightened perVOL. XXII.

sonages. Some have thought that the first among men to whom this title was applied was Ham; others have taken him for Chus, for Mizraim, and for Nimrod, and Huetius for Moses: but Mr. Bryant, after examining the primitive characters given of him by different writers, supposes that they concur only in Noah, who was the first deified mortal and the prototype in the Magian worship. This writer supposes that, as the object of the Persic and Chaldaic worship was the sun, and most of their titles were derived thence, Zoroaster denoted Sol Asterius; Zor being the sun, and Aster signifying star. The abbé Fouche, in a series of memoirs, inserted in the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th, and 31st vols. of the Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, &c., Paris, has given an ample account of the religion of the Persians. This author maintains, on the authority of Pliny, that the most celebrated Zoroaster was an ancient sage, who lived under Cyaxares, king of the Medes, restored the worship of fire, and was revered by the Persians as a celestial prophet.

ZOROBABEL. See ZERUBBABEL.

ZOSIMUS, a Roman historian, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries. Six books of his History are extant; in the first he runs over the Roman affairs very succinctly from Augustus to Dioclesian; the other five are more diffuse. Zosimus was a zealous Pagan; whence he often inveighs bitterly against the Christian princes, Constantine the Great, and Theodosius I. His History was published with the Latin version of Leunclavius at Frankfort, 1590, with the other minor historians of Rome, in folio; and at Oxford in 8vo. 1679.

ZOSIMUS (Pope) was a native of Greece, and elevated to the pontificial throne in March 417, as successor to Innocent I. Cælestius, the chief disciple of Pelagius, presented his confession of faith to this pope, who approved it, and admitted him to communion. That of Pelagius was likewise approved. The African bishops, however, who were hostile to the Pelagian doctrine, interested the emperor Honorius in their favor, and obtained from the pope an anathema of the doctrine of Pelagius and Cælestius, with a sentence of excommunication if they refused to abjure their tenets. A council was assembled, in which other bishops, who concurred in the Pelagian creed, were degraded. The fluctuations and inconsistencies of Zosimus's conduct much depreciated his character and office, and furnished abundant reason for questioning his infallibility. This pope died in December 418, leaving the character of an able, but hasty, tenacious, and imperious, man of business. His thirteen epistles, that are extant, are written with elegance. He was canonised, as Bower says, by a mistake of cardinal Baronius, who supposed him to be a saint Zosimus in the martyrology of Bede.

ZOSITERPUM, in ancient geography, a town of Thrace, in the province of Rhodope.-Procopius. ZOSINE, the wife of Tigranes, king of Armenia, who was led in triumph by Pompey.-Plut. ZOSTER, a town, harbour, and promontory, of Attica.-Cic. ad Atticum.

ZOSTERA, grass wrack, in botany, a genus of plants in the class gynandria, order polyandria, and in the natural system arranged under the second order, piperitæ. The spadix is linear, and fertile only on one side; there is no calyx nor corolla; the stamina are alternate; the seeds solitary and alternate. There are two species, viz. 1. Z. marina, 3 E

« السابقةمتابعة »