fabrics. The arts of weaving and dyeing were undoubtedly practised in
the dominant country, as well as in most of the subject provinces, and
the Persian dyes seem even to have had a certain reputation; but none
of the productions of their looms acquired a name among foreign nations.
Their skill, indeed, in the mechanical arts generally was, it is
probable, not more than moderate. It was their boast that they were
soldiers, and had won a position by their good swords which gave them
the command of all that was most exquisite and admirable, whether in the
natural world or among the products of human industry. So long as the
carpets of Babylon and Sardis, the shawls of Kashmir and India, the fine
linen of Borsippa and Egypt, the ornamental metal-work of Greece,
the coverlets of Damascus, the muslins of Babylonia, the multiform
manufactures of the Phoenician towns, poured continually into Persia
Proper in the way of tribute, gifts, or merchandise, it was needless for
the native population to engage largely in industrial enterprise.

To science the ancient Persians contributed absolutely nothing. The
genius of the nation was adverse to that patient study and those
laborious investigations from which alone scientific progress ensues.
Too light and frivolous, too vivacious, too sensuous for such pursuits,
they left them to the patient Babylonians, and the thoughtful, many-sided
Greeks. The schools of Orchoe, Borsippa, and Miletus flourished under
their sway, but without provoking their emulation, possibly without so
much as attracting their attention. From first to last, from the dawn
to the final close of their power, they abstained wholly from scientific
studies. It would seem that they thought it enough to place before the
world, as signs of their intellectual vigor, the fabric of their Empire
and the buildings of Susa and Persepolis.

CHAPTER VI. RELIGION.

The original form of the Persian religion has been already described
under the head of the third or Median monarchy. It was identical with
the religion of the Medes in its early shape, consisting mainly in
the worship of Ahura-Mazda, the acknowledgment of a principle of
evil--Angro-Mainyus, and obedience to the precepts of Zoroaster. When
the Medes, on establishing a wide-spread Empire, chiefly over races by
whom Magism had been long professed, allowed the creed of their subjects
to corrupt their own belief, accepted the Magi for their priests, and
formed th