The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

II. From his age to that of Alexander, king of the Macedonians, there were forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-three years. During this time, there were three hundred and seventy-three eclipses of the sun and eight hundred and thirty-two eclipses of the moon.

Again, from the time of the Magi, the first of whom was Zoroaster the Persian, to the fall of Troy, Hermodorus the Platonic philosopher, in his treatise on Mathematics, calculates that fifteen thousand years elapsed. But Xanthus the Lydian says that the passage of the Hellespont by Xerxes took place six thousand years after the time of Zoroaster,original: "The real time of Zoroaster is, as may be supposed, very uncertain... The first and original being, in whom, or by whom the universe exists, is denominated, in the writings of Zoroaster, Time without bounds. . . . . From either the blind or the intelligent operation of this infinite Time... the two secondary but active principles of the universe were from all eternity produced; Ormusd and Ahriman..." (See full text in original page annotations). and that after him there was a regular succession