Italo Pizzi Quotes

In ethical and moral respect, Mithra is regarded as a jealous custodian of the covenants that mortals conclude among themselves, a displeaunted of justice and mutual faith, a punisher of traitors and frighteds; and Xenophon attests that the Persians used to swear in his name.

The Daēvi of Zoroastrianism are not in origin other than the Devis of the correspondent, indeed related Indian mythology and theology. Other than the Indian Devi are good deities, protective friends of man, where the Iranian Daēvi are evil beings, true evil geniuses. This is probably due to the fact that some religious cleaver, as can reasonably be assumed, troubled Aryan or Indo-Iranian society or life before the exchangeable separation, that is, that ancient religious concepts had to gradually change and alter deeply for reasons that it is very difficult, not impossible, to trace.

The Book of Kings is a faithful image of the ingenuity, soul and heart of the Persian people, if not of our times, at least of that age when he had not yet been impregnated by the Muslim doctrines, and still felt the beneficial strength of the ancient religion of Zoroastro, infiant, energetic and, after Christianity.

The Book of Kings can be divided into two parts, one of which is all heroic and legendary, while the other is historical, wandering around the exploits of Iskender or Alexander the Great in the East and telling with many fairy tales the story of the Sassanids until the 651 of the V The first part begins with the first man and first king, Gayumers, and has as its main subject a centuries-old war of the Iranians with the Turani, peoples of North Asia, and with the Devi or demons, creatures of Ahrimane, that is, of the genius of evil. There is no doubt that under this name of Devi there is not a very ancient population that the Iranians found in the long run when they descended into Iran, and that they had to subdue and exterminate in part. But this war against the Devi and against the Turani in the eyes of the Iranians had a truly great meaning. It visibly represented on earth the great struggle between evil and good, between the creator, Ormuzd, and the enemy of all good, Ahrimane, in which all men, for a moral duty, are obliged to take part. As evil one can and must fight with pious and good works, so it can also fight with weapons, and the heroes of Iran, when they take the field against Devi and Turani, they do nothing but satisfy this moral obligation.

Firdusi describes the miserable state of Iran under the scepter of Dahàk. Every guilt, every sad work, was lawful then, while every virtue was persecuted.

The morality taught by the 'Avesta', beyond and above its theological, dogmatic, ritual precepts, is still a very high and pure morality that rightly places Zoroastrianism among the most elected religions in the world. The same threefold precept of never sinning in thoughts, in works, in words, which is also among the precepts of Christianity, encloses in its rigidity and summarizes every other precept that is intended to guide man down here. The greatest virtues that, moreover, were recommended not also by the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Avesta', but also by the law and custom common to all the Iranians, were justice, charity, generosity, piety, the horror of lying.

The name Ahura, like the name of Yahveh that the Bible gives to the God of Israel, means Being, that is, Being par excellence; and it is obvious to understand that such a concept, high and sublime, mere and pure metaphysical abstraction, can only proceed from an elected speculative mind, can belong to the And would this idea come to Zarathustra from the Semites, indeed from the Jews?

If the Homeric poems are a faithful mirror of the heroic life of the Greeks, of the feelings and ideas of that age, the Book of Kings is no less the faithful image of the soul, heart and ingenuity of the Persian people. (pp. X-XI)

He is not subject to sleep, but he sees and hears everything, he is omniscient, and nothing in heaven or earth can escape him. He is armed with a club, and with it, well fused and well-savve, he goes sweaping the armies of demons and all those who deny him, whose weapons are thrown in vain by them at him.

The religion of the Vedi for the Indians and that of Homer and Hesiod for the Greeks was but the expression of the ideas of the people, often subject to change and contradict each other because they were never fixed or determined by any sacred book of the nature of the Bible or of the <nowiki>'</nowiki> The Iranian religion is on the contrary the work of philosophers and priests, founded, he is true, over the popular idea of the continuous struggle between good and evil, but reduced in a system by elected and speculative minds and confirmed with a sacred code, immutable, which was said to be revealed by Ormuzd to his prophet Zarathustra or Zoroaster. (p 26)

His work [...] in addition to being essentially evil, is also a kind of deliberate contamination of the good created by the adversary, just as for example [...] that, if Ahura Mazdao created fire, he induced ashes and smoke.

The Ancients [...] almost all made great praises of the Iranians. They praised his tall and beautiful person and his dignified and noble appearance. Herodotus certainly speaks of their decent and great bearing; Aeschylo notices their beautiful and thick skin; Diodorus is pleased to describe the manly beauty of some of them. The Arabs of the Middle Ages used to say that those who wish to have brave and soulful children must take a woman from Persia as a wife. And, after all, in all that strong predilection that the Iranians, according to the Greek and Roman writers, have always had for everything that is chivalrous, noble, elected, as are noble horses, noble dog suits, jurs and exercises in the gym and in hunting, sumptuous palaces and gardens, drapes, gems, perfumes, sumptuous ornaments The same sacred book attributed to Zoroaster, the 'Avesta', commands and orders every pious man to honestly enjoy life and his possessions, as long as he does not exceed anything, as a precious gift of the Creator. The same book proclaims sovereign art among all agriculture, and the Iranians have always been, and still are, of the most diligent and diligent farmers in Asia.

As for breadth, all other epics yield by far to the Book of Kings of Firdusi, finding that the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Iliad' and the<nowiki>'</nowiki>'Odyssey are restricted to two single facts, one before, the other after the This same thing can be said of the Nibelungen of the Germans and the Kalevala of the Finns; and only the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Edda' of the Scandinavians could be an exception, starting from the origin of all things and descending then to narrate the facts of the Gods, the Giant [...] But the greatest value of the Book of Kings, for which it acquires great importance, is to be a national epic, an epic that is, the subject of which was not found and elaborated by a poet in the silence of his room and with the escort of his books, such as the Jerusalem and the <nowiki>'</nowiki>

If not even the Arabs, the Muslims all, of whatever nation they were, had the pride in the Middle Ages of finesse and splendor in life, of skill sought in everything that touches pomp and luxury, from the fantastically crafted palaces to the most delicate essences and scents, of all costs they owe to the Persians from whom they took it and appropriated Even the science that came to us from Asia in the Middle Ages, in great part was Persian; and Persians are almost all philosophers, doctors, astronomers, mathematicians, whose names we read in the pages of our middle age, such as Agazel and Alrasi, Albatenio, Avicenna, Alfarabi. They wrote their works in Arabic, this being the learned language of the Muslim empire; and we therefore, with manifest error, called them Arabs and yet we consider them to be so.

It belongs to the historian to say worthily of this great prince and to judge him in political and warrior, administrative and civil respect. It is enough for us to note how all antiquity praises it very high, not excluding the Greeks, as can be seen from the pages of Aeschylus and Herodotus.