 In the Disputations that he did not live to finish, Pico now rejected this static mytho-history. Calling on new techniques of biblical and historical chronology, he relocated such cardinal figures as Zoroaster in the human landscape of historical time, thus making them subject to what would later be called ‘historical criticism.’ Pico’s critical sense was far from modern, however. When he attacked Chaldaean stargazers as ignorant and superstitious, part of what he found credulous was their obsession with mathematics. Although Pico’s attitude to mathematics was scarcely progressive, following the Aristotelian convention, his Disputations eventually attracted Kepler’s attention, as well as praise from the later historians and philologists who used his re-dating of the Eastern sages to greatly diminish—if not to eliminate—the allure of the ancient theology.