Preface.

The so-called Chaldean Oracles were first published in their entirety, scraped together from previous editions and manuscripts, by Francesco Patrizi, who attributed them to the name of Zoroaster 1) original: "Zoroaster et eius CCCXX oracula chaldaica," Ferrara 1591; this collection was repeated by all more recent scholars without exception original: "Fabricius bibl. I 310 s.", until Taylor undertook the labor anew. Taylor, no less than Patrizi, believed that a secret and hidden wisdom was contained within them original: "classical journal XVI. XVII. 1818". Lobeck so thoroughly ridiculed Taylor's folly original: "Aglaoph. 93 ss." that it is no longer necessary to add anything further, though he did state—after many excellent observations—that a new edition of these remains was needed page 107, note 1. Thilo provided a precursor to such a work, treating many matters with no small amount of insight...

1) I first detect this error in the works of Plethon A 15th-century Byzantine philosopher who revived Platonism; the ancients never associated the founder of the Magi with these Oracles, although many "Zoroastrian" works were circulated: see Hermippus in Pliny 30, 4; Colotes in Proclus' commentary on the Republic 59, 31 S.; Porphyry's Life of Plotinus 16; the Leiden Papyrus W 202, 29 D. Freudenthal points out to me a fragment of Nicomachus in The Theology of Arithmetic (42 f.): "Minerva is called Ageleia An epithet of Athena/Minerva, or more in the Pythagorean fashion, since the most esteemed Babylonians, as well as Ostanes and Zoroaster, properly call the stellar spheres 'herds' Greek: agelas; either because they alone are driven Greek: agontai perfectly read: smoothly around the center (moving?), or because of their bodily magnitudes, or because they are declared to be, as it were, bonds and gatherings by the laws of nature themselves. These they call 'herds' Greek: agelous in the same way in the sacred discourses, but by the corruption of inserting a 'g' the letter gamma, they are called 'angels' Greek: angelous; wherefore the stars and spirits that lead each of these 'angels' read: herds are likewise addressed as angels and archangels, which are seven in number, so that according to this, the number seven is most truly called Ageleia." Cf. page 9 f. Regarding Pico Pico della Mirandola, who boasted that he had found these in Chaldean books Works I 367, Basel: "The oracles of the magi Zoroaster and Melchiar, in which those which are circulated among the Greeks as faulty and mutilated may be read whole and complete," posterity believed that he possessed those oracles in full Patrizi, folio 4va. Ficino reports Pico's Works I 406 that Pico left "expositions on the sacred utterances" unfinished, written in such a way "that they could scarcely be read by him." It is worth mentioning that to Patrizi, Zoroaster seemed "to have laid the very first foundations of the Catholic faith, even if they were somewhat unrefined."