“I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns:  and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.”—­Dan. viii. 3.

The ethnic identity of the Persian people with the Medes, and the inclusion of both nations in that remarkable division of the human race which is known to ethnologers as the Ipanic or Arian, have been maintained in a former volume.  To the arguments there adduced it seems unnecessary to add anything in this place, since at the present day neither of the two positions appears to be controverted.  It is admitted generally, not only that the Persians were of the same stock with the Medes, but that they formed, together with the Medes and a few other tribes and peoples of less celebrity, a special branch of the Indo-European family—­a branch to which the name of Arian may be assigned, not merely for convenience sake, but on grounds of actual tradition and history.  Undistinguished in the earlier annals of their race, the Medes and Persians became towards the eighth or seventh century before our era, its leading and most important tribes.  Closely united together, with the superiority now inclining to one, now to the other, they claimed and exercised a lordship over all the other members of the stock, and not only over them, but over various alien races also.  They had qualities which raised them above their fellows, and a civilization, which was not, perhaps, very advanced, but was still not wholly contemptible.  Such details as could be collected, either from ancient authors, or from the extant remains, of the character, mode of life, customs, etc., of the Medes, have already found a place in this work.

The greater part of what was there said will apply also to the Persians.  The information, however, which we possess, with respect to this latter people, is so much more copious than that which has come down to us with regard to the Medes, that, without repeating anything from the former place, our materials will probably enable us to give to the present chapter considerable dimensions.

The woodcuts of the preceding volume will have made the reader sufficiently familiar with the physiognomy of the Persians, or, at any rate, with the representation of it which has come down to us upon the Persian monuments.  It may be remarked that the type of face and head is uniform upon all of them, and offers a remarkable contrast to the type assigned to themselves by the Assyrians, from whom the Arians evidently adopted the general idea of bas-reliefs, as well as their general mode of treating subjects upon them.  The novelty of the physiognomy is a strong argument in favor of its truthfulness; and this is further confirmed by the evidence which we have, that the Persian artists aimed at representing the varieties of the human race, and succeeded fairly in rendering them.  Varieties of, physiognomy are represented upon the bas-reliefs with much care, and sometimes with remarkable success, as the annexed head of a negro, taken from one of the royal tombs, will sufficiently indicate. [PLATE XXIX., Fig.1.]