or Soma), which was to be pounded in a mortar and mixed with the blood of a sacrificed wolf. The substance was then carried to a place "where the sun never shines" and cast therein. He adds that "water-rats" belong to this god, and therefore proficient rat-killers are fortunate men. Plutarch then gives a cosmogonical myth: Oromazes, born from the purest light, and Areimanius, born from darkness, are constantly at war with each other; and Oromazes created six gods, the first of Good Thought, the second of Truth, the third of Order, and, of the rest, one of Wisdom, one of Wealth, and one the Artificer of Pleasure in what is Honourable. But Areimanius created rivals, as it were, equal to these in number. Then Oromazes enlarged himself to thrice his former size, and removed himself as far distant from the Sun as the Sun is distant from the Earth, and adorned the heavens with stars. One star he set there before all others as a guardian and watchman, the Dog-star. Twenty-four other gods he created and placed in an egg. But those created by Areimanius, who were equal in number to the others, pierced through the egg and made their way inside; hence evils are now combined with good. But a destined time shall come when it is decreed that Areimanius, engaged in bringing on pestilence and famine, shall by these be utterly annihilated and shall disappear; and then shall the earth become a level plain, and there shall be one manner of life and one form of government for a blessed people who shall all speak one tongue. — Plutarch Scholar Mary Boyce asserted that the passage shows a "fairly accurate" knowledge of basic Zoroastrianism. In his Life of Themistocles, Plutarch has the Persian king invoke Areimanios by name, asking the god to cause the king's enemies to behave in such a way as to drive away their own best men; de Jong (1997) doubted that a Persian king would pray to his own national religion’s god of evil, particularly in public. According to Plutarch, the king then made a sacrifice and got drunk – essentially a running gag on Persian kings in Plutarch’s writing, and thus dubious evidence for actual behavior. As a Mithraic god Franz Cumont believed that Greco-Roman Mithraism had been influenced by some beliefs of ancient Mazdaism, including ethical dualism. However, no evidence has