As all Greeks admired the Spartans—­what we call a ‘sneaking’ admiration—­so too they admired the Persians; who were gentleman in a great sense, and in most moral qualities their betters.  Who was Ho Basileus, The King par excellence?  Always ’the Great King, the King of the Persians.’  Others were mere kings of Sparta, or where it might be.  And this Great King was a far-way, tremendous, golden figure, moving in a splendor as of fairy tales; palaced marvelously, so travelers told, in cities compared with which even Athens seemed mean.  Greek drama sought its subjects naturally in the remote and grandiose; always in the myths of prehistory, save once—­when Aeschylus found a kindred atmosphere, and the material he wanted, in the palace of the Great King.  To whom, as a matter of history, not unrecorded by Herodotus, his great chivalrous barons accorded a splendid loyalty,—­and loyalty is always a thing that lies very near the heart of Bushido.  Most Greeks would cheerfully sell their native city upon an impulse of chagrin, revenge, or the like.  Xerxes’ ships were overladen, and there was a storm; the Persian lords gaily jumped into the sea to lighten them.  Such Samurai action might not have been impossible to Greeks,—­Spartans especially; but in the main their eyes did not wander far from the main chance.  You will think of many exceptions; but this comes as near truth, probably, as a generalization may.  We should understand their temperament; quick and sensitive, capable of inspiration to high deeds; but, en masse, rarely founded on enduring principles.  That jumping into the seas was nothing to the Persians; they were not sung to it; it was not done in defense of home, or upon a motive of sudden passion, as hate or the like; but permanent elements in their character moved them to it quietly, as to the natural thing to do.  But if Greeks had done it, with what kudos, like Thermopylae, it would have come down!

They were great magnificoes, very lordly gentlemen, those Persian nobles; hijosdalgo, as they say in Spain; men of large lives, splendor and leisure, scorning trade; mighty huntsmen before the Lord.  Of the Greeks, only the Spartans were sportsmen; but where the Spartans hunted foxes and such-like small fry, The Persians followed your true dangerous wild-fowl:  lions, leopards, and tigers.  A great satrap could buy up Greece almost at any time; could put the Greeks to war amongst themselves, and finance his favorite side out of his own pocket.  On such a scale they lived; and travelers and mercenaries brought home news of it to Greece; and Greeks whose wealth might be fabulous strove to emulate the splendor they heard of.  The Greeks made better heavy armor—­one cause of the victories; but for the most part the Persian crafts and manufactures outshone the Greek by far.  All these things I take from Mahaffy, who speaks of their culture as “an ancestral dignity for superior to, and different from, the somewhat mercantile refinement of the Greeks.”