The Persian love of truth was a favorite theme with the Greeks, who were, perhaps, the warmer in their praises from a latent consciousness of their own deficiency in the virtue.  According to Herodotus, the attention of educators was specially directed to the point, and each young Persian was taught by his preceptors three main things:—­“To ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth.”  We find that, in the Zendavesta, and more especially in its earliest and purest portions, truth is strenuously inculcated.  Ahura-Mazda himself is “true,” “the father of all truth,” and his worshippers are bound to conform themselves to his image.  Darius, in his inscriptions, protests frequently against “lies,” which he seems to regard as the embodiment of all evil.  A love of finesse and intrigue is congenital to Orientals; and, in the later period of their sway, the Persians appear to have yielded to this natural inclination, and to have used freely in their struggle with the Greeks the weapons of cunning and deception; but, in the earlier period, a different spirit prevailed; lying was then regarded as the most disgraceful act of which a man could possibly be guilty truth was both admired and practised; Persian kings, entrapped into a promise, stood to it firmly, however much they might wish it recalled; foreign powers had never to complain that the terms of a treaty were departed from; the Persians thus form an honorable exception to the ordinary Asiatic character, and for general truthfulness and a faithful performance of their engagements compare favorably with the Greeks and Romans.

The Persian, if we may trust Herodotus, was careful to avoid debt.  He had a keen sense of the difficulty with which a debtor escapes subterfuge and equivocation—­forms, slightly disguised, of lying.  To buy and sell wares in a market place, to chaffer and haggle over prices, was distasteful to him, as apt to involve falsity and unfairness.  He was free and open in speech, bold in act, generous, warm-hearted, hospitable.  His chief faults were an addiction to self-indulgence and luxury, a passionate abandon to the feeling of the hour, whatever that might happen to be; and a tameness and subservience in all his relations towards his prince, which seem to moderns almost incompatible with real self-respect and manliness.

The luxury of the Persians will be considered when we treat of their manners.  In illustration of the two other weak points of their character, it may be observed that, in joy and in sorrow, they were alike immoderate; in the one transported beyond all reasonable bounds, and exhibiting their transports with entire unreserve and openness; in the other proportionately depressed, and quite unrestrained in the expression of their anxiety or misery.  AEschylus’ tragedy of the “Persae” is, in this respect, true to nature, and represents with accuracy the real habits of the nation.  The Persian was a stranger to the dignified reserve which has commonly been affected by the more civilized among Western nations.  He laughed and wept, shouted and shrieked, with the unrestraint of a child, who is not ashamed to lay bare his inmost feelings to the eyes of those about him.  Lively and excitable, he loved to give vent to every passion that stirred his heart, and cared not how many witnessed his lamentations or his rejoicings.