e been published; but they have been scanty in the
extreme, and the greater number of them have been based on the authority
of a single class of writers. It has been the present author's aim to
combine the various classes of authorities which are now accessible to
the historical student, and to give their due weight to each of them.
The labors of M. C. Muller, of the Abbe Gregoire Kabaragy Garabed, and of
M. J. St. Martin have opened to us the stores of ancient Armenian
literature, which were previously a sealed volume to all but a small
class of students. The early Arab historians have been translated or
analyzed by Kosegarten, Zotenberg, M. Jules Mohl, and others.
The coinage of the Sassanians has been elaborately--almost
exhaustively--treated by Mordtmann and Thomas. Mr. Fergusson has
applied his acute and practised powers to the elucidation of the
Sassanian architecture. By combining the results thus obtained with the
old sources of information--the classical, especially the Byzantine
writers--it has become possible to compose a history of the Sassanian
Empire which is at once consecutive, and not absolutely meagre. How the
author has performed his task, he must leave it to the public to judge;
he will only venture to say that he has spared no labor, but has gone
carefully through the entire series of the Byzantine writers who treat
of the time, besides availing himself of the various modern works to
which reference has been made above. If he has been sometimes obliged
to draw conclusions from his authorities other than those drawn by
Gibbon, and has deemed it right, in the interests of historic truth, to
express occasionally his dissent from that writer's views, he must not
be thought blind to the many and great excellencies which render the
"Decline and Fall" one of the best, if not the best, of our histories.
The mistakes of a writer less eminent and less popular might have been
left unnoticed without ill results. Those of an historian generally
regarded as an authority from whom there is no appeal could not be so
lightly treated.

The author begs to acknowledge his great obligations, especially, to the
following living writers: M. Patkanian, M. Jules Mohl, Dr. Haug, Herr
Spiegel, Herr Windischmann, Herr Mordtmann, Canon Tristram, Mr. James
Fergusson, and Mr. E. Thomas. He is also largely beholden to the works
of M. Texier and of MM. Flandin and Coste for the illustrations, which he
has been able to give,