es and concubines; and polygamy was commonly practised among the
more wealthy classes. Strabo speaks of a strange law as obtaining with
some of the Median tribes--a law which required that no man should be
content with fewer wives than five. It is very unlikely that such a
burden was really made obligatory on any: most probably five legitimate
wives, and no more, were allowed by the law referred to, just as four
wives, and no more, are lawful for Mohammedans. Polygamy, as usual,
brought in its train the cruel practice of castration; and the court
swarmed with eunuchs, chiefly foreigners purchased in their infancy.
Towards the close of the Empire this despicable class appears to have
been all-powerful with the monarch.

Thus the tide of corruption gradually advanced; and there is reason to
believe that both court and people had in a great measure laid aside
the hardy and simple customs of their forefathers, and become enervated
through luxury, when the revolt of the Persians came to test the quality
of their courage, and their ability to maintain their empire. It would
be improper in this place to anticipate the account of this struggle,
which must be reserved for the historical chapter; but the well-known
result--the speedy and complete success of the Persians--must be adduced
among the proofs of a rapid deterioration in the Median character
between the accession of Cyaxares and the capture--less than a century
later--of Astyages.

We have but little information with respect to the state of the arts
among the Medes. A barbaric magnificence characterized, as has been
already observed, their architecture, which differed from the Assyrian
in being dependent for its effect on groups of pillars rather than on
painting or sculpture. Still sculpture was, it is probable, practised to
some extent by the Medes, who, it is almost certain, conveyed on to the
Persians those modifications of Assyrian types which meet us everywhere
in the remains of the Achsemenian monarch? The carving of winged genii,
of massive forms of bulls and lions, of various grotesque monsters,
and of certain clumsy representations of actual life, imitated from
the bas-reliefs of the Assyrians, may be safely ascribed to the Medes;
since, had they not carried on the traditions of their predecessors,
Persian art could not have borne the resemblance that it does to
Assyrian. But these first mimetic efforts of the Arian race have almost
wholly perished, and there