Nero and the magi, religious initiation or initiation into royalty?
Keywords:
Nero, Tiridates, magi, mystery ritualsAbstract
In a passage from his Naturalis Historia (30.6.17), Pliny the Elder tells us that the magi who accompanied Tiridates of Armenia on his trip to Rome in the year 66 a.D. initiated Nero at special banquets; Pliny does not specify the content of these mysteric initiations. This brief information is of interest to us for two different reasons: the first is to study the extent to which the perception that the Greeks and Romans could have of Zoroastrianism as a religion of initiation was accurate; the second is to analyze whether this initiation was a properly religious initiation, or an initiation into royalty: several specialists in ancient Zoroastrianism have consolidated the idea that magi are, above all, specialists in royalty. In this sense, we propose that the most significant textual parallel to Nero’s initiation would be that of Artaxerxes II, as transmitted to us by Ctesias.
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