Osthanes

:"Ostanes" is also a spider genus (Thomisidae).

Ostanes was the name used by several pseudo-anonymous authors of Greek and Latin works from classical antiquity onwards.

The origins of the figure of "Ostanes," or rather, who the Greeks imagined him to be, lies within the framework of "alien wisdom" that the Greeks (and later Romans) ascribed to famous foreigners, many of whom were famous to the Greeks even before being co-opted as authors of arcanum. One of these names was that of (pseudo-)Zoroaster, whom the Greeks perceived to be the founder of the magi and of their "magi"cal arts. Another name was that of (pseudo-)Hystaspes, Zoroaster's patron. The third of "les Mages hellénisés"ref_label|c|c|none was Ostanes,harvnb|Bidez|Cumont|1938|pp=I.168-212] mentioned by the 4th century BCE Hermodorus (apud Diogenes Laertius "Prooemium" 2) as being a magus in the long line of magi descending from Zoroaster. In contrast to the figures of "Zoroaster" and "Hystaspes," there is as yet "no evidence of [an Ostanes] figure of a similar name in Iranian tradition."harvnb|Colpe|1983|p=828.] "cf." harvnb|Smith|2003.]

Once the magi had been associated with "magic"—Greek "magikos"—it was but a natural progression that the Greek's image of Zoroaster would metamorphose into a magician too.harvnb|Beck|2003|loc=para. 7.] The first century Pliny the elder names "Zoroaster" as the inventor of magic ("Natural History" XXX.2.3), but a "principle of the division of labor appears to have spared Zoroaster most of the responsibility for introducing the dark arts to the Greek and Roman worlds. That dubious honor went to another fabulous magus, Ostanes, to whom most of the pseudepigraphic magical literature was attributed."harvnb|Beck|2003|loc=para. 7.] Thus, while "universal consensus"—so the skeptical Pliny—was that magic began with (pseudo-)Zoroaster (xxx.2.3), as far as Pliny says he could determine, "Ostanes" was the first extant writer of it (xxx.2.8).

This 'Ostanes', so Pliny, was a "Persian"ref_label|a|a|none magus who had accompanied Xerxes in his invasion of Greece, and who had then introduced "magicis"ref_label|b|b|none, the "most fraudulent of the arts," to that country. But the figure of Ostanes was such that Pliny felt "it necessary to supplement his history with doppelgangers"; so, not only does Ostanes appear as a contemporary of the early 5th century BCE Xerxes, but he is also contemporary with—and companion of—the late 4th century BCE Alexander. [harvnb|Beck|1991|p=516, n. 55.] Pliny goes on to note that Ostanes's introduction of the "monstrous craft" to the Greeks gave those people not only a "lust" ("aviditatem") for magic, but a downright "madness" ("rabiem") for it, and many of their philosophers, such as Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato traveled abroad to study it, and then returned to teach it.(xxx.2.8-10). [harvnb|Beck|1991|p=516.] harvnb|Smith|2003.]

Pliny also transmits Ostanes's definition of magic: "As Ostanes said, there are several different kinds of it; he professes to divine ("divina promittit") from water, globes, air, stars, lamps, basins and axes, and by many other methods, and besides to converse with ghosts and those in the underworld" (xxx.2.8-10). [harvnb|Beck|1991|pp=516-517.] By the end of the first century, "Ostanes" is cited as an authority on alchemy, necromancy, divination, and on the mystical properties of plants and stones.harvnb|Smith|2003.] Both his legend and literary output attributed to him increased with time, and by the fourth century "he had become one of the great authorities in alchemy" and "much medieval alchemical material circulated under his name."harvnb|Smith|2003.]

This "authority" continued in Arabic and Persian alchemical literature, such as an Arabic treatise titled "Kitab al-Fusul al-ithnay ‘ashar fi 'ilm al-hajar al-mukarram" ("The Book of the Twelve Chapters on the Honourable Stone"). [harvnb|Ullmann|1972|p=184.] [harvnb|Anawati|1996|p=862.]

Notes

* The Greco-Roman-Byzantine notion of the "Persaí" was as indistinctly Persian as the Iranian version of the "Ru mi"s was Roman. Both represent the indiscriminate application of the name of the dominant "ethnous" to all peoples under their dominion.
* To Pliny "magicis" was both magical and magian; for the Roman they were one and the same.
* "Les Mages hellénisés" ("The Hellenistic Magians") is the title of Bidez and Cumont's monumental collection of Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha.

References and bibliography