ZOROASTRO, ORACOLI di. — Under this name the so-called Chaldaean Oracles (γαλδαϊκά λόγια) are presented by cod. Vat. gr. 1416 (sixteenth century); and the attribution is Gemisto Pletone (v.), who, in his ambitious dream of religious reform, appealed, in his Exegesis of the Chaldaean Oracles, to the authority of Z. (cf. J. Bidez, Les Mages hellénisés, I, Paris 1938); from him the false attribution passed to Renaissance writers (e.g., in Marsilio Ficino, Theol. plat., IV, 2; De christ. rel., 22; cf. Pico della Mirandola’s letter to Ficino, in Pici Opera, I, ed. Basel 1601, p. 367). In reality, ancient writers never speak of Oracles of Z., but generically of λόγια and, more rarely, of γαλδαϊκά λόγια: not even Porphyry (Vita Plot., 16), in his brief survey of the apocryphal works circulating in his time.
Of the Chaldaean Oracles, which apparently constituted a kind of Greek poem in hexameters, some fragments remain, preserved by Proclus (In Tim., 128 b; 137 c; 157 a; 267 a; Theol. plat., 333, 29; 365, 1; In Parm., 800, II; 1091, 6), Syrianus (In Met., 883 b 16), Simplicius (In Arist. Phys., 616, 33), Olympiodorus (In Phaed., 195, 21), Damascius (De princ., I, 154, 16; II, 16, 20; II, 89, 31; II, 157, 15), Synesius (De ins., 135 a; 138 c; 140 c; 151 c), Lydus (De mens., 20, 7; 4, 13; 4, 20), etc.; the oracle cited by Plotinus, I, 9 (which would therefore be the oldest source) seems problematic (cf. W. Kroll, De oraculis chaldaicis, Breslau 1894). Noteworthy is the Exposition of the Chaldaean Oracles by Michael Psellus (in PG 122, 1115–22; subsequently edited by Opsopaeus under the title Oracula magica Zoroastris, Paris 1589), as well as the aforementioned Exegesis by Pletone, published by Tiletanus in Paris in 1538 under the title Μαγιὰ λόγια τῶν τοῦ Ζωροάστρου Μάγων. PATRIARCHI (v.) attempted a complete collection in the work Zoroaster et eius CCC.XX oracula chaldaica, published at Ferrara in 1591, with the Latin version (the text was subsequently republished by L. H. Gray in an appendix to A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroaster the prophet of anc. Iran, New York 1901).
The author is unknown: Lambecius even thought that the Chaldaean Oracles were an invention of Julian, the Chaldaean theurgist who lived in the time of Marcus Aurelius (to whom the «Suda» attributes certain λόγια. Cf. E. R. Dodds, Theurgy and its relationship to neoplatonism, in Journ. of Roman stud., 1947, p. 55 ff.). Their origin goes back to the second century A.D.: thus they were contemporary with the emergence of the Corpus Hermeticum, to which they are akin in their strange mixture of soteriological and metaphysical interests and in their taste for abstractions and exoticism. Emerging in an age when the various philosophical currents were seeking their own reconciliation in ancient religious traditions, they seem to have been the product of the activity of certain Platonists, who took pleasure in shadowing forth already mature philosophical concepts under exotic symbols and divinities. As such, the Chaldaean Oracles were celebrated or commented upon by Porphyry, Iamblichus, Jeroele, Proclus, Damascius, Julian the Apostate, Pico della Mirandola, Mars. Ficino, Fr. Patrizi, A. Steuco Eugubino, G. Gemisto Pletone, C. Agrippa... But they remain one of the most significant testimonies to the syncretistic tendencies of the age, a profession of faith very close to Gnosticism and, apparently, the sacred book of a religious community: the concepts of monad and dyad reveal clear affinities with Neopythagoreanism; the metaphysics and cult of fire betray influences not only of Stoic-Heraclitean thought, but also of the East; the theory of intermediary demons, while on the one hand sharing conceptions already dear to Middle Platonism, on the other accepts Jewish elements. The cosmotheological system, which still shines through the scanty fragments and which a οποτύπωσις κεφαλαιώδης by Psellus (published by Kroll, op. cit. in the bibliography, pp. 73–76) permits us approximately to reconstruct—with its extraordinarily complicated triadic series, intended progressively to minimize the infinite distance separating the «paternal abyss» (πατριάκς βυθάς) from visible reality, with the concept of the mediating «second mind», and with the theory of the pilgrim soul destined to return to the Principle by means of gnosis and theurgic art—fits readily within that metaphysical framework which in Plotinus would assume profound human and religious meanings.
The Chaldaean Oracles collected by Psellus were translated into Latin by Opsopaeus (Paris 1589); those collected by Pletone by Marsilio Ficino (whose youthful translation is probably identical with that preserved on folio 26 of cod. Laurent. 36, 35) and by Giacomo Martano (Opsopaeus’s cited edition); those of the Patrizi collection also by Heurnius (Lyons 1600).