rly period,
since their absence from the sculptures may be accounted for on other
grounds.

It is peculiarly noticeable in the Persian sculptures and inscriptions
that they carry to excess that reserve which Orientals have always
maintained with regard to women. The inscriptions are wholly devoid
of all reference to the softer sex, and the sculptures give us no
representation of a female. In Persia, at the present day, it is
regarded as a gross indecorum to ask a man after his wife; and anciently
it would seem that the whole sex fell under a law of taboo, which
required that, whatever the real power and influence of women, all
public mention of them, as well as all representations of the female
form, should be avoided. If this were so, it must of course still more
have been the rule that the women--or, at any rate, those of the upper
classes--should not be publicly seen. Hence the indignant refusal of
Vashti to obey the command of King Aha-suerus to show herself to his
Court. Hence, too, the law which made it a capital offence to address or
touch one of the royal concubines or even to pass their litters upon
the road. The litters of women were always curtained; and when the Queen
Statira rode in hers with the curtains drawn, it was a novelty which
attracted general attention, as a relaxation of the ordinary etiquette,
though only females were allowed to come near her. Married women
might not even see their nearest male relatives, as their fathers and
brothers; the unmarried had, it is probable, a little more liberty.

As the employment of eunuchs at the Persian Court was mainly in the
harem, and in offices connected therewith, it is no wonder that
they shared, to some extent, in the law of taboo, which forbade the
representation of women. Their proper place was in the female courts and
apartments, or in close attendance upon the litters, when members of
the seraglio travelled, or took the air--not in the throne-room, or the
antechambers, or the outer courts of the palace, which alone furnished
the scenes regarded as suitable for representation.

Of right, the position at the Persian Court immediately below that of
the king belonged to the members of certain privileged families. Besides
the royal family itself--or clan of the Achaemenidae--there were
six great houses which had a rank superior to that of all the other
grandees. According to Herodotus these houses derived their special
dignity from the accident that the