Notes from Ralph Cudworth on Plutarch and the 'Persian or Zoroastrian trinity'

Author: Isaac Newton

Source: R.16.38. 436A, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, UK

Published online: August 2009

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  - 3 August 2009
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<436Ar>

The first supreme God was acknowledged by Artabanus the Persian in his conference with Themistocles, in these words. Ἡμιν δὲ πολλων νόμων καὶ καλων ὄντων, κάλλιστος οὑτός ἐστι, τὸ τεμαν βασιλέκ, καὶ προσκυνειν ἑικόνα θεου του τὰ πάντα σώζοντο{ς}. Amongst those many excellent Laws of ours the best is this, to honour & worship the King as the Image of that God who conserveth all things. Plutarch Themistocles apud Cudworth. p 287.

In the Persian or Zoroastrian trinity viz^t Oromasdes, Mithras & Arimanius the third person Arimanius signifies the same with Hades or Pluto. So Hesychius: Αρειμάνης ὁ Ἀίδης παρὰ Πέρσαις Arimanius among the Persians is Hades (that is Orcus or Pluto:) wherein he did but follow Theopompus who in Plutarch calls Arimanius likewise Hades or Pluto: which it seems was as well the third in the Persian Trinity as it was in the Homerican. Cudworth p 290.

The Egyptians are confessed in Plato to have had so much ancienter records of time then the Greeks that the Greeks were but infants compared with them.

Strabo (lib 15 p 715) testifies of the Indian Brachmans that they did agree with the greeks in many things & particularly in this, ὅτι γενητὸς ὁ κόσμος καὶ φθαρτὸς that the world was both made & should be destroyed.