She was the last phase of that West Asian manvantara which began in 1890 and was due to end in 590 B. C. As such a phase, a splendor-day of thirteen decades should have been hers; that, we find, being always the length of a national illumination.  She began under Cyrus in 558; flowed out under Cambyses and Darius to her maximum growth—­for half the thirteen decades expanding steadily.  Then she touched Greece, where a younger cycle was rising, and recoiled.  She should have been at high tide precisely three years before-Marathon—­a half-cycle after the accession of Cyrus, or in 493;—­and was.  Then the Law-pronounced its Thus far and no further; and enforced it with Homer’s songs, and Greek valor, and Darius’ death, and Xerxes’ fickle childishness (he smacked the Hellespont because it was naughty).  These things together brought to naught the might and ambition and bravery of Iran; but had they been lacking, the Law would have found other means.  Though Xerxes and Themistocles had both sat at home doing nothing, Alexander would still have marched east in his time, and Rome conquered the world.  So discount all talk of Greece’s having saved Europe, which was never in danger.  But you may say Persia saved Greece:  that her impact kindled the fires—­was used by the Law for that purpose—­which so brilliantly have illumined Europe since.

Persia rose in the evening of that West Asian manvantara; the empires of its morning and noon, as Assyria chiefly, had been slower of growth, longer of life, smaller of expanse; and for her one, had several periods of glory.  A long habit of empire -building had been formed there, which carried Persia rapidly and easily to her far limits.  Assyria, the piece de resistance of the whole manvantara, with huge and long effort had created, so to say, an astral mold; of which Persia availed herself, and overflowed its boundaries, conquering regions east and west Assyria never knew.  But if she found the mold and the habit there to aid her, she came too late for the initial energies of the morning, or the full forces of the manvantaric noon.  Those had been wielded by the great Tiglath Pilesers and Assurbanipals of earlier centuries; fierce conquerors, splendid builders, ruthless patrons of the arts.  What was left for the evening and Persia could not carry her outward her full thirteen decades, but only half of them:  sixty-five years her tides were rising, and then she touched Greece.  Thence-forward she remained stationary within her borders, not much troubled internally, until the four -twenties.  To a modern eye, she seems on the decline since Marathon; to a Persian of the time, probably, that failure on the Greek frontier looked a small matter enough.  A Pancho Villa to chase; if you failed to catch him, pooh, it was nothing!  Xerxes is no Darius, true:  Artaxerxes I, no Cyrus, nor nothing like.  But through both their reigns there is in the main good government in most of the provinces; excellent law and order;