or ZERDUSHT, a celebrated ancient philosopher, said to have been the reformer or the founder of the religion of the magi. It is wholly uncertain to how many eminent men the name of Zoroaster belonged. Some have maintained that there was but one Zoroaster, and that he was a Persian; others have said that there were six eminent founders of philosophy of this name. Ham the son of Noah, Moses, Osiris, Mithras, and others, both gods and men, have by different writers been asserted to have been the same with Zoroaster. Many different opinions have also been advanced concerning the time in which he flourished. Aristotle and Pliny fix his date at remote a period as 6000 years before the death of Plato. According to Laertius, he flourished 600 years before the Trojan war; according to Suidas, 500. If, in the midst of so much uncertainty, anything can be advanced with the appearance of probability, it seems to be this, that there was a Zoroaster, a Perse-Median, who flourished about the time of Darius Hystaspes; and that besides him there was another Zoroaster, who lived in a much more remote period among the Babylonians, and taught them astronomy. The Greek and Arabian writers are agreed concerning the existence of the Persian Zoroaster; and the ancients unanimously ascribe to a philosopher, whom they call Zoroaster, the origin of the Chaldean astronomy, which is certainly of much earlier date than the time of Hystaspes; it seems, therefore, necessary to suppose a Chaldean Zoroaster distinct from the Persian. Concerning this Zoroaster, however, nothing more is known, than that he flourished towards the beginning of the Babylonian empire, and was the father of the Chaldean astrology and magic. All the writings that have been ascribed to Zoroaster are unquestionably spurious.

ZOSTERA, in botany; a genus of plants of the class gymnospermae, order polymorphae; and in the natural system arranged under the second order, Piperite. The plant is linear, and fertile only on one side; there is no calyx nor corolla; the stamens are alternate; the seeds solitary and alternate. There are two species, the marina and oceanica; neither of which is a native of Britain.