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magi

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magi

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This painting by the Italian painter Giotto di Bondone depicts the three magi, or ‘wise men’, visiting the baby Jesus. It also shows Halley's Comet, which may have given rise to the story of the star in the east that came to rest over Bethlehem. The European space probe that studied the comet on its most recent appearance in 1986 was named Giotto.
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The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1476) by Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, depicting the arrival of the three kings at Christ's birthplace.

Priests of the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia, noted for their knowledge of astrology. The term is used in the New Testament of the Latin Vulgate Bible where the Authorized Version gives ‘wise men’. The magi who came to visit the infant Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (the Adoration of the Magi) were in later tradition described as ‘the three kings’ - Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar.

Over the centuries, the title of magus came to be applied to individuals believed to possess occult powers. Archimagus, or archimage, was used to denote a chief magician.
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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.
The Four Million by Henry, O. View in context
Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year.
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade by Poe, Edgar Allan View in context
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi.
Mosses From An Old Manse and other stories by Hawthorne, Nathaniel View in context
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