=Susa and Persepolis.=—­The kings of the Medes and Persians, following the example of the lords of Assyria, had palaces built for them.  Those best known to us are the palaces at Susa and Persepolis.  The ruins of Susa have been excavated by a French engineer,[36] who has discovered sculptures, capitals, and friezes in enameled bricks which give evidence of an advanced stage of art.  The palace of Persepolis has left ruins of considerable mass.  The rock of the hill had been fashioned into an enormous platform on which the palace was built.  The approach to it was by a gently rising staircase so broad that ten horsemen could ascend riding side by side.

=Persian Architecture.=—­Persian architects had copied the palaces of the Assyrians.  At Persepolis and Susa, as in Assyria, are flat-roofed edifices with terraces, gates guarded by monsters carved in stone, bas-reliefs and enameled bricks, representing hunting-scenes and ceremonies.  At three points, however, the Persians improved on their models: 

(1) They used marble instead of brick; (2) they made in the halls painted floors of wood; (3) they erected eight columns in the form of trunks of trees, the slenderest that we know, twelve times as high as they were thick.

Thus their architecture is more elegant and lighter than that of Assyria.

The Persians had made little progress in the arts.  But they seem to have been the most honest, the sanest, and the bravest people of the time.  For two centuries they exercised in Asia a sovereignty the least cruel and the least unjust that it had ever known.

FOOTNOTES: 

[28] That is, of about the same area as that part of the United States east of the Mississippi, with Minnesota and Iowa.  Modern Persia is not two-thirds of this area.—­ED.

[29] Most historians place Zoroaster before 1000 B.C.—­ED.

[30] “I created the dog,” said Ormuzd, “with a delicate scent and strong teeth, attached to man, biting the enemy to protect the herds.  Thieves and wolves come not near the sheep-fold when the dog is on guard, strong in voice and defending the flocks.”

[31] Certain Persian heretics of our day, on the contrary, adore only the evil god, for, they say, the principle of the good being in itself good and indulgent does not require appeasing.  They are called Yezidis (worshippers of the devil).

[32] Herod., i., 131.

[33] i., 138.

[34] Herodotus mentions 20, but we find as many as 31 enumerated in the inscriptions.

[35] Herod., iii., 34, 35.  Compare also iii., 78, 79; and the book of Esther.

[36] M. Dieulafoi.

CHAPTER VII

THE PHOENICIANS

THE PHOENICIAN PEOPLE