Herodotus
Herodotus writes about Zalmoxis in book 4 of his Histories:
93. ...the Getae are the bravest of the Thracians and the most just. 94. They believe they are immortal in the following sense: they think they do not die and that the one who dies joins Zalmoxis, a divine being; some call this same divine being Gebeleizis. Every four years, they send a messenger to Zalmoxis, who is chosen by chance. They ask him to tell Zalmoxis what they want on that occasion. The mission is performed in the following way: men standing there for that purpose hold three spears; other people take the one who is sent to Zalmoxis by his hands and feet and fling him in the air on the spears. If he dies pierced, they think that the divinity is going to help them; if he does not die, it is he who is accused and they declare that he is a bad person. And, after he has been charged, they send another one. The messenger is told the requests while he is still alive. The same Thracians, on other occasions, when he thunders and lightens, shoot with arrows up in the air against the sky and menace the divinity because they think there is no god other than their own.
According to Herodotus the Greeks of the Hellespont and the Black Sea tell that Zalmoxis was a slave on Samos of Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos. After being liberated, he gathered huge wealth and, once rich, went back to his homeland. Thracians lived simple hard lives. Zalmoxis having lived amongst the wisest of Greeks - Pythagoras and had been initiated to the Ionian life and Eleusinian Mysteries. Building a banquet hall, he received the chiefs and his fellow countrymen at a banquet, he taught that neither his guests nor their descendants would ever die, but instead they would go to a place where they would live forever in a complete happiness. He then dug an underground residence and, once finished, he disappeared from the Thracians going down to his underground residence, where he lived for three years. The Thracians missed him and wept fearing him dead. The fourth year, he came back amongst them and thus they believed what Zalmoxis had told them.
Zalmoxis may have lived much earlier than Pythagoras and was rumored either to be a divine being or from the country of the Getae.
There are different theories about the disappearance and return of Zalmoxis:
- Some authors believe that Herodotus is mocking the Getae's barbarian beliefs;
- Some take the passage seriously, and consider Zalmoxis to have created a ritual of passage; this theory is mainly supported by Mircea Eliade, who was the first to write a coherent interpretation of the Zalmoxis myth;
- Some authors insist on Zalmoxis' relation with Pythagoras, stating that he has founded a mystical cult; partly this theory may be found in Eliade's work;
- Some see in Zalmoxis a Christ figure who dies and resurrects; this position was also defended by Jean (Ioan) Coman, a professor of patristics and an orthodox priest, who was a friend of Eliade and published in Eliade's journal "Zalmoxis", which appeared in the 1930s.
This belief precisely parallels the belief about the universal king Frode given in both Ynglingsaga and Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, however. Particularly, Ynglingsaga 12 and Saxo 5.16.3, in which Frode disappears into the earth for three years after his death.
It is difficult to define the time when a cult to Zalmoxis may have existed. It is just sure that it must be anterior to Herodotus' work. It seems that some people have considered that the archaism of Zalmoxis's doctrine points out to an heritage from before the times of Indo-Europeans, which is nevertheless quite difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate.
Plato says in the Charmides dialogue 156 D - 157 B that Zalmoxis was also a great physician who took a holistic approach to healing body and soul (psyche), being thus used by Platon for his one philosophical conceptions.
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