general voice of antiquity on the subject.  Coupled, however, with the reliefs to which they are appended, they do more.  They prove to us that the Persians of the earliest Sassanian times were not averse to exhibiting the great personages of their theology in sculptured forms; nay, they reveal to us the actual forms then considered appropriate to Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd) and Angro-Mainyus (Ahriman); for we can scarcely be mistaken in regarding the prostrate figure under the hoofs of Ahura-Mazda’s steed as the antagonist Spirit of Evil.  Finally, the inscriptions show that, from the commencement of their sovereignty, the Sassanian princes claimed for themselves a qualified divinity, assuming the title of BAG and ALHA, “god,” and taking, in the Greek version of their legends, the correspondent epithet of OEOE

CHAPTER IV.

Death of Artaxerxes I. and Accession of Sapor I. War of Sapor with Manizen.  His first War with Rome.  Invasion of Mesopotamia, A.D. 241.  Occupation of Antioch.  Expedition of Gordian to the East.  Recovery by Rome of her lost Territory.  Peace made between Rome and Persia.  Obscure Interval.  Second War with Rome.  Mesopotamia again invaded, A.D. 258.  Valerian takes the Command in the East.  Struggle between him and Sapor.  Defeat and Capture of Valerian, A.D. 260.  Sapor invests Miriades with the Purple.  He takes Syria and Southern Cappadocia, but is shortly afterwards attacked by Odenathus.  Successes of Odenathus.  Treatment of Valerian.  Further successes of Odenathus.  Period of Tranquillity.  Great Works of Sapor.  His Scriptures.  His Dyke.  His Inscriptions.  His Coins.  His Religion.  Religious Condition of the East in his Time.  Rise into Notice of Mani.  His Rejection by Sapor.  Sapor’s Death.  His Character.

[Illustration:  CHAPTER-4]

Artaxerxes appears to have died in A.D. 240.  He was succeeded by his son, Shahpuhri, or Sapor, the first Sassanian prince of that name.  According to the Persian historians, the mother of Sapor was a daughter of the last Parthian king, Artabanus, whom Artaxerxes had taken to wife after his conquest of her father.  But the facts known of Sapor throw doubt on this story, which has too many parallels in Oriental romance to claim implicit credence.  Nothing authentic has come down to us respecting Sapor during his father’s lifetime; but from the moment that he mounted the throne, we find him engaged in a series of wars, which show him to have been of a most active and energetic character.  Armenia, which Artaxerxes had subjected, attempted (it would seem) to regain its independence at the commencement of the new reign; but Sapor easily crushed the nascent insurrection, and the Armenians made no further effort to free themselves till several years after his death.  Contemporaneously with this revolt in the mountain region of the north, a danger showed itself in the plain country of the south, where Manizen, king of