ces of
Western Asia.

As time went on, and their monarchs became less warlike, and wealth
accumulated, and national spirit decayed, the Persian character by
degrees deteriorated, and sank, even under the Achaemenian kings, to
a level not much superior to that of the ordinary Asiatic. The Persian
antagonists of Alexander were pretty nearly upon a par with the races
which in Hindustan have yielded to the British power; they occasionally
fought with gallantry, but they were deficient in resolution, in
endurance, in all the elements of solid strength; and they were
quite unable to stand their ground against the vigor and dash of the
Macedonians and the Greeks. Whether physically they were very different
from the soldiers of Cyrus may be doubted, but morally they had fallen
far below the ancient standard; their self-respect their love of
country, their attachment to their monarch had diminished; no one showed
any great devotion to the cause for which he fought; after two defeats
the empire wholly collapsed; and the Persians submitted, apparently
without much reluctance, to the Helleno-Macedonian yoke.

Five centuries and a half of servitude could not much improve or elevate
the character of the people. Their fall from power, their loss of wealth
and of dominion did indeed advantage them in one way: it but an end to
that continually advancing sloth and luxury which had sapped the virtue
of the nation, depriving it of energy, endurance, and almost every manly
excellence. It dashed the Persians back upon the ground whence they had
sprung, and whence, Antseus-like, they proceeded to derive fresh vigor
and vital force. In their "scant and rugged" fatherland, the people of
Cyrus once more recovered to a great extent their ancient prowess and
hardihood--their habits became simplified, their old patriotism revived,
their self-respect grew greater. But while adversity thus in some
respects proved its "sweet uses" upon them, there were other respects
in which submission to the yoke of the Greeks, and still more to that of
the Parthians, seems to have altered them for the worse rather than
for the better. There is a coarseness and rudeness about the Sassanian
Persians which we do not observe in Achaemenian times. The physique of
the nation is not indeed much altered. Nearly the same countenance meets
us in the sculptures of Artaxerxes, the son of Babek, of Sapor, and of
their successors, with which we are familiar from the bas-reliefs