The Magus

Let me quote this again -- Herodotus describing the Persian method of sacrifice to their gods:

To pray for blessings for himself alone is not lawful for the sacrificer; rather, he prays that the king and all the Persians be well; for he reckons himself among them. He then cuts the victim limb from limb into portions, and, after boiling the flesh, spreads the softest grass, trefoil usually, and places all of it on this. When he has so arranged it, a Magus comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods, as the Persian tradition relates it; for no sacrifice can be offered without a Magus. Then after a little while the sacrificer carries away the flesh and uses it as he pleases.

The Magus is interesting. Magus, plural Magi. Now that's a name I have not heard in a long time. Oxford Languages says a Magus is "a member of a priestly caste of ancient Persia." Sounds about right.

But note that "no sacrifice can be offered without a Magus". Then, after the ceremony, "the sacrificer carries away the flesh and uses it as he pleases." I take this as meaning that to make a sacrifice, you must have a Magus present, and the Magus must be paid for his services. After the Magus is paid, you can take your boiled mutton home and have a nice dinner. Or you can put it where the sun don't shine. The priestly class doesn't really care.

The alternate translation doesn't say "no sacrifice can be offered without a Magus". The alternate says:

It is not lawful to offer sacrifice unless there is a Magus present.

It is not lawful to do so. The law required a Magus at every ceremony of sacrifice. Doesn't that seem a little strange? What could be the reason for such a law? 

The reason for the Persian law that made sacrifice without a Magus illegal was to assure a stream of income to the Magi.

 

The Persian empire was part of Mesopotamian civilization. According to Carroll Quigley:

The first civilization, known to us as the Sumerian or Mesopotamian civilization, began after 6000 B.C., reached a peak of achievement about 1700 B.C., and ended in a series of empires of which the last was the Persian.

In The Evolution of Civilizations Quigley says every civilization has to have a "surplus-creating instrument". It has to have something like capital accumulation. However,

This surplus-creating instrument does not have to be an economic organization. In fact, it can be any kind of organization, military, political, social, religious, and so forth. In Mesopotamian civilization it was a religious organization, the Sumerian priesthood to which all members of the society paid tribute. [p.137-138]

In Mesopotamian civilization, including the Persian empire, the surplus-creating instrument was a religious organization, the priestly class. If you wanted to offer sacrifice to the gods, the Magus had to be paid.

According to Quigley, in a civilization you need a "surplus-creating instrument" so you will have a "surplus" that can be "invested" in the development of "inventions" that keep the civilization growing. In the Persian empire, the Magi and the laws that assured their participation were the source of the surplus.

To tweak a line from The Usual Suspects: The greatest magic the Magi ever pulled was convincing the Persians that the Magus must participate and must be paid.

Quigley again:

In Mesopotamian civilization it was a religious organization, the Sumerian priesthood to which all members of the society paid tribute... In the later period of Western civilization the surplus-creating instrument was an economic organization (the price-profit system, or capitalism, if you wish) that permitted entrepreneurs who organized the factors of production to obtain from society in return for the goods produced by this organization a surplus (called profit) beyond what these factors of production had cost these entrepreneurs.

When the surplus-creating instrument falters, civilization is at risk. But this does not mean boosting the surplus is the answer. It means we must figure out why the instrument falters. This is the step that was skipped in the later period of Western civilization.