ascribed to the
Medes, who, dwelling in or near the more wooden parts of the Zagros
range, constructed, during the period of their empire, edifices of
considerable magnificence, whereof wooden pillars were the principal
feature, the courts being surrounded by colonnades, and the chief
buildings having porticos, the pillars in both cases being of wood. A
wooden roof rested on these supports, protected externally by plates of
metal. We do not know if the pillars had capitals, or if they supported
an entablature; but probability is in favor of both these arrangements
having existed. When the Persians succeeded the Medes in the
sovereignty of Western Asia, they found Arian architecture in this
condition. As stone, however, was the natural material of their country,
which is but scantily wooded and is particularly barren towards the edge
of the great plateau, where their chief towns were situated, and as
they had from the first a strong desire of fame and a love for the
substantial and the enduring, they almost immediately substituted for
the cedar and cypress pillars of the Medes, stone shafts, plain or
fluted, which they carried to a surprising height, and fixed with such
firmness that many of them have resisted the destructive powers of
time, of earthquakes, and of vandalism for more than three-and-twenty
centuries, and still stand erect and nearly as perfect as when they
received the last touch from the sculptor's hand more than 2000 years
ago. It is the glory of the Persians in art to have invented this style,
which they certainly did not learn from the Assyrians, and which
they can scarcely be supposed to have adopted from Egypt, where the
conception of the pillar and its ornamentation were wholly different.
We can scarcely doubt that Greece received from this quarter the impulse
which led to the substitution of the light and elegant forms which
distinguish the architecture of her best period from the rude and clumsy
work of the more ancient times.

Of the mimetic art of the Persians we do not possess any great amount,
or any great variety, of specimens. The existing remains consist of
reliefs, either executed on the natural rock or on large slabs of hewn
stone used in building, of impressions upon coins, and of a certain
number of intaglios cut upon gems. We possess no Persian statues, no
modelled figures, no metal castings, no carvings in ivory or in wood, no
enamellings, no pottery even. The excavations on Persian