Μάγος

Etymology
From an Old language presumably akin to 🇨🇬/🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬. Both attested Old Iranian words are hapaxes, and of indeterminable meaning. Perhaps from. Probably unrelated to (cognate with ). Attestation in Greek predates attestation in Old Iranian. See also,.

Compare also 🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬.

Noun

 * 1)  magician, and derogatorily sorcerer, trickster, conjurer, charlatan
 * 2)  a Zoroastrian priest. Compare e.g. Herodotus Hist. 1.132f, Xenophon Cyropedia 8.3.11, Porphyry Life of Pythagoras 12, Heraclitus apud Clemens Protrepticus 12, etc.
 * 3)  name of one of the tribes of the Medes. This usage is only attested once; Herodotus Histories 1.101.

Usage notes

 * Meanings #1 and #2 overlap in classical usage&mdash; both derive from the Greek (and generally Hellenistic) identification of "Zoroaster" as the "inventor" of astrology and magic. The first meaning ('magician') derives from the sense of "practitioner of the Zoroaster's craft", and the second meaning ('priest') from the sense of "practitioner of Zoroaster's religion".
 * Meanings #2 and #3 were frequently conflated as one in 18th/19th/early 20th-century usage, giving "name of a Median priestly tribe" or similar. This combined meaning is no longer used in current scholarship.