of the lords of Assyria, had palaces built for them. Those
best known to us are the palaces at Susa and Persepolis. The ruins of
Susa have been excavated by a French engineer,[36] who has discovered
sculptures, capitals, and friezes in enameled bricks which give
evidence of an advanced stage of art. The palace of Persepolis has
left ruins of considerable mass. The rock of the hill had been
fashioned into an enormous platform on which the palace was built. The
approach to it was by a gently rising staircase so broad that ten
horsemen could ascend riding side by side.

=Persian Architecture.=--Persian architects had copied the palaces of
the Assyrians. At Persepolis and Susa, as in Assyria, are flat-roofed
edifices with terraces, gates guarded by monsters carved in stone,
bas-reliefs and enameled bricks, representing hunting-scenes and
ceremonies. At three points, however, the Persians improved on their
models:

(1) They used marble instead of brick; (2) they made in the halls
painted floors of wood; (3) they erected eight columns in the form of
trunks of trees, the slenderest that we know, twelve times as high as
they were thick.

Thus their architecture is more elegant and lighter than that of
Assyria.

The Persians had made little progress in the arts. But they seem to
have been the most honest, the sanest, and the bravest people of the
time. For two centuries they exercised in Asia a sovereignty the least
cruel and the least unjust that it had ever known.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] That is, of about the same area as that part of the United States
east of the Mississippi, with Minnesota and Iowa. Modern Persia is not
two-thirds of this area.--ED.

[29] Most historians place Zoroaster before 1000 B.C.--ED.

[30] "I created the dog," said Ormuzd, "with a delicate scent and strong
teeth, attached to man, biting the enemy to protect the herds. Thieves
and wolves come not near the sheep-fold when the dog is on guard, strong
in voice and defending the flocks."

[31] Certain Persian heretics of our day, on the contrary, adore only
the evil god, for, they say, the principle of the good being in itself
good and indulgent does not require appeasing. They are called Yezidis
(worshippers of the devil).

[32] Herod., i., 131.

[33] i., 138.

[34] Herodotus mentions 20, but we find as many as 31 enumerated in the
inscriptions.

[35] Herod., iii., 34, 35. Compare also iii., 78, 79; and the book of
Esther.

[36] M. Dieul