Ostanes

Ostanes (from Greek Ὀστάνης), also spelled Hostanes and Osthanes, is a legendary Persian magus and alchemist. It was the pen-name used by several pseudo-anonymous authors of Greek and Latin works from Hellenistic period onwards. Together with Pseudo-Zoroaster and Pseudo-Hystaspes, Ostanes belongs to the group of pseudepigraphical "Hellenistic Magians", that is, a long line of Greek and other Hellenistic writers who wrote under the name of famous "Magians". While Pseudo-Zoroaster was identified as the "inventor" of astrology, and Pseudo-Hystaspes was stereotyped as an apocalyptic prophet, Ostanes was imagined to be a master sorcerer. Unlike "Zoroaster" and "Hystaspes", which have well attested Iranian language counterparts, for "Ostanes" there is "no evidence of a figure of a similar name in Iranian tradition." In the Encyclopædia Iranica entry for Ostanes, Morton Smith cites Justi's Namensbuch for instances of the name which refer to real persons. Smith: "Which [of these references to] Ostanes (...), if any, gave rise to the legend of the magus is uncertain." Smith goes on to reconstruct the Old Iranian name as *(H)uštāna. The Justi entries that Smith alludes to are: Diodorus 17.5.5 and Plutarch Artax. 1.1.5 (cit. Ktesias) for Ὀστάνης as the name of one of the sons of Darius Nothos, and a mention in Arrian (An. 4.22) of a certain Αὐστάνης of Paraetakene, north-east of Bactria, who was captured by Alexander's general Krateros and then taken to India. Arrian's Αὐστάνης is Haustanes in Curtius 8.5. Ktesias names 'Άρτόστης' as the son of Darius Nothus, and Justi suggests that Plutarch confused Artostes as Ostanes. The origins of the figure of "Ostanes", or rather, who the Greeks imagined him to be, lies within the framework of "alien wisdom" that the Greeks (and later Romans) ascribed to famous foreigners, many of whom were famous to the Greeks even before being co-opted as authors of arcana. One of these names was that of (pseudo-)Zoroaster, whom the Greeks perceived to be the founder of the magi and of their magical arts.