Persia won the rise and fall of the Medes their origins rulers the blood treaty of sardis degeneration who were the Medes that had played so vital role in the destruction of Assyria their origin of course eludes us history is a book that one must begin in the middle the first mention we have of them is on a tablet recording the expedition of shaman Issa the third into a country called Parsa wa in the mountains of Kurdistan he 37 BC there it seems twenty-seven chieftain Kings ruled over 27 States thinly populated by people called Ahmad I mod I Medes as indo-europeans they had probably come into Western Asia about a thousand years before Christ from the shores of the Caspian Sea the Zhen de beste sacred scriptures of the Furze ins idealized the racial memory of this ancient homeland and described it as a paradise the scenes of our youth like the past are always beautiful if we do not have to live in them again the means appear to have wandered through the region of Bukhara and Samarkand and to have migrated farther and farther south at last reaching Persia they found copper iron lead gold and silver marble and precious stones in the mountains in which they made their new home and being a simple and vigorous people they developed a prosperous agriculture on the plains and the slopes of the hills at at Bettina that is a meeting place of many ways in a picturesque Valley made fertile by the melting snows of the Highlands their first King diocese founded their first capital adorning and dominating it with the royal palace spread over an area two-thirds of a mile square according to an uncorroborated passage in Herodotus diocese achieved power by acquiring a reputation for justice and having achieved power became a despot he issued regulations that no man should be admitted to the King's presence but everyone should consult him by means of messengers and moreover that it should be accounted indecency for anyone to laugh or spit before him he established such ceremony about his person for this reason that he might appear to be of a different nature to them who did not see him under his leadership the Medes strengthened by their natural frugal life and hardened by custom and environment to the necessities of war became a threat to the power of Assyria which repeatedly invaded media thought it most instructively defeated and found it in fact never tired of fighting for its Liberty the greatest of the median Kings syak series settled the matter by destroying Nineveh inspired by this victory his army swept through Western Asia to the very gates of Sardis only to be turned back by an eclipse of the Sun the opposing leaders frightened by this apparent warning from the skies signed a treaty of peace and sealed it by drinking each other's blood in the next year Tsai excerise died having in the course of one reign expanded his kingdom from a subject province into an empire embracing Assyria media and Persia within a generation after his death this Empire came to an end its tenure was too brief to permit of any substantial contribution to civilization except insofar as it prepared for the culture of Persia - Persia the Medes gave their Aryan language their alphabet of 36 characters their replacement of clay with parchment and pen as writing materials their extensive use of the column in architecture their moral code of conscientious husbandry and time of peace and limitless bravery in time of war theirs or oestrogen religion of Ahura Mazda and Aram on their patriarchal family and polygamous marriage and a body of law sufficiently like that of the later Empire to be united with it in the famous phrase of Daniel about the law of the Medes and the Persians which alter if not of their literature and their art not a stone or a letter remains their degeneration was even more rapid than their rise astoya g's who succeeded his father sigh actuaries proved again that monarchy is a gamble in whose royal succession great wits and madness are near allied he inherited the kingdom with equanimity and settled down to enjoy it under his example the nation forgot its turn morals and stoic ways wealth had come too suddenly to be wisely used the upper classes became the slaves of fashion and luxury the men wore embroidered trousers the women covered themselves with cosmetics and jewelry the very horses were often caparison din gold these wants simple and pastoral people who had been glad to be carried in rude wagons with wheels cut roughly out of the trunks of trees now rode an expensive chariots from feast to feast the early Kings had prided themselves on justice but test IDs being displeased with her Fergus served up to him the dismembered and headless body of his own son and forced him to eat of it Harper guess aid saying that whatever a king did was agreeable to him but he revenged himself by helping Cyrus to depose ass deities when Cyrus the brilliant young ruler of the median dependency of on Shaun in Persia rebelled against the effeminate despot of batana the Medes themselves welcomed Cyrus's victory and accepted him almost without protest as their king by one engagement media ceased to be the master of Persia Persia became the master of media and prepared to become the master of the whole Near Eastern world to the great kings the romantic Cyrus his enlightened policies gambizzi's de rious the great the invasion of Greece Cyrus was one of those natural rulers at whose coronation as Emerson said all men rejoice royal in spirit and action capable of wise administration as well as of dramatic conquest generous to the defeated and loved by those who had been his enemies no wonder the Greeks made him the subject of innumerable romances and to their minds the greatest hero before Alexander it is a disappointment to us that we cannot draw a reliable picture of him from either Herodotus or Xenophon the former has mingled many fables with his history while the other has made the sorrow pedia an essay on the military art with incidental lectures on education and philosophy at times Xenophon confuses Cyrus and Socrates these delightful stories being put aside the figure of Cyrus becomes merely an attractive ghost we can only say that he was handsome since the Persians made him their model of physical beauty to the end of their ancient art that he established the Achaemenid dynasty of great kings which ruled Persia through the most famous period of its history but he organized the soldiery of media and Persia into an invincible army captured Sardis and Babylon ended for a thousand years the rule of the Semites in western asia and absorbed the former realms of Assyria Babylonia Lydia and Asia Minor into the Persian Empire the largest political organization of pre-roman antiquity and one of the best governed in history so far as we can visualize him through the haze of legend he was the most amiable of conquerors and founded his empire upon generosity his enemies knew that he was lenient and they did not fight him with that desperate courage which men show when their only choices to kill or die we have seen how according to Herodotus he rescued Croesus from the funeral pyre at Sardis and made him one of his most honored counselors we have seen how magnanimously he treated the Jews the first principle of his policy was that the various peoples of his empire should be left free in their religious worship and beliefs for he fully understood the first principle of statesmanship that religion is stronger than the state instead of sacking cities and wrecking temples he showed a courteous respect for the deities of the conquered and contributed to maintaining their shrines even the Babylonians who had resisted him so long warmed towards him when they found him preserving their sanctuaries and honoring their Pantheon wherever he went in his unprecedented career he offered pious sacrifice to the local divinities like Napoleon he accepted indifferently all religions and was much better grace humored all the gods like Napoleon - he died of excessive ambition having won all the Near East he began a series of campaigns aimed to free media and Persia from the inroads of Central Asia's nomadic barbarians he seems to have carried these excursions as far as the Jukes Artie's on the north and India on the east suddenly at the height of his curve he was slain in battle with the mass agita an obscure tribe that peopled the southern shores of the Caspian Sea like Alexander he conquered an empire but did not live to organize it one great defect had sullied his character occasional and incalculable cruelty it was inherited unmixed with Cyrus's generosity by his half-mad son cam biteys began by putting to death his brother and rival murders then lured by the accumulated wealth of Egypt he set forth to extend the Persian Empire to the Nile he succeeded but apparently at the cost of his sanity Memphis was captured easily but an army of fifty thousand Persians sent to annex the oases of Ammon perished in the desert and an expedition to Carthage failed because the Venetian cruise of the Persian fleet refused to attack a Phoenician colony can be seized lost his head and abandoned the wise clemency and tolerance of his father he publicly scoffed at the Egyptian religion and plunged his dagger derisive Lea into the bull revered by the Egyptians as the God APIs he exhumed mummies and fried into royal tombs regardless of ancient curses he profaned the temples and ordered their idols to be burned he thought in this way to cure the Egyptians of superstition but when he was stricken with illness apparently epileptic convulsions the Egyptians were certain that their gods had punished him and that their theology was now confirmed beyond dispute as if again to illustrate the inconveniences of monarchy can be seized with a Napoleonic kick in the stomach killed his sister and wife Roxana slew his son prex aspies with an arrow buried 12 noble Persians alive condemned Croesus to death repented rejoiced to learn that the sentence had not been carried out and punished the officers who had delayed in executing it on his way back to Persia he learned that he usurper and seized the throne and was being supported by widespread revolution from that moment he disappears from history tradition has it that he killed himself the usurper had pretended to be smeared as miraculously preserved from cam by ceases fratricidal jealousy in reality he was a religious fanatic a devotee of the early Magian faith who was bent upon destroying Zoroastrianism the official religion of the Persian state another revolution soon deposed him and the seven aristocrats who had organized it raised one of their number to rious son of Heist aspies to the throne in this bloody way began the reign of purges greatest King succession to the throne in Oriental monarchies was marked not only by Palace revolutions in strife for the royal power but by uprisings in subject colonies that grasped the Chan of chaos or an inexperienced ruler to reclaim their Liberty the usurpation and assassination of Merida's gave to purchase vassals an excellent opportunity the governors of Egypt and Lydia refused submission in the provinces of susiana Babylonia media Assyria Armenia Sasa and others rose in simultaneous revolt darius subdued them with a ruthless hand taking Babylon after a long siege he crucified three thousand of its leading citizens as an inducement to obedience in the rest and in a series of Swift campaigns he pacified one after another of the rebellious states then perceiving how easily the vast Empire might in any crisis fall to pieces he put off the armor of war became one of the wisest administrators in history and set himself to reestablish his realm in a way that became a model of Imperial organization till the fall of Rome his rule gave Western Asia a generation of such order and prosperity as that quarrelsome region had never before known he had hoped to govern in peace but it is the fatality of empire to breed repeated war for the conquered must be periodically reconquered and the conquerors must keep the arts and habits of camp and battlefield at any moment the kaleidoscope of change may throw up a new Empire to challenge the old in such a situation wars must be invented if they do not arise of their own accord each generation must be inured to the rigors of campaigns and taught by practice the sweet decorum of dying for one's country perhaps it was in part for this reason that the rious LED his armies into southern Russia across the Bosphorus and the Danube to the Volga to chastise the marauding Citians and again across Afghanistan and a hundred mountain ranges into the valley of the Indus adding there by extensive regions and millions of souls and rupees to his realm more substantial reasons must be sought for his expedition in degrees Herodotus would have us believe that to rious entered upon this historic faux pas because one of his wives a tossa teased him into it in bed but it is more dignified to believe that the king recognized in the Greek city-states in their colonies a potential empire or an actual Confederacy dangerous to the Persian mastery of Western Asia when Ionia revolted and received aid from Sparta and Athens to rious reconciled himself reluctantly to war all the world knows the story of his passage across the Aegean the defeat of his army at marathon and his gloomy return to Persia there amid far-flung preparations for another attempt upon Greece he suddenly grew weak and died three Persian life and Industry the Empire the people the language the peasants the imperial highways trade and finance at its greatest extent under derailleurs the Persian Empire included twenty provinces or satrapies embracing Egypt Palestine Syria Phoenicia Lydia Phrygia Ionia Cappadocia Silesia Armenia Assyria the Caucasus Babylonia media Persia the modern Afghanistan and felucca Stan India west of the indus sogdiana Bactria and the regions of the masa gita and other central asia attic tribes never before had history recorded so extensive an area brought under one government Persia itself which was to rule these 40 million souls for 200 years was not at that time the country now known to us as Persia and to its inhabitants as Iran it was that smaller tract immediately east of the Persian Gulf known to the ancient Persians as parse and to the modern Persians as farce or Farsi Stan composed almost entirely of mountains and deserts foreign rivers subject to severe winters and hot arid summers it could support its two million inhabitants only through such external contributions as trade or conquest might bring its race of Hardy Mountaineers came like the Medes of indo-european stock perhaps from South Russia and its language and early religion reveal its close kinship with those Aryans who crossed Afghanistan to become the ruling caste of northern India der is the first in an inscription at naqshi Rustom described himself as a persian the son of a persian an Aryan of Aryan descent the Zoroastrians spoke of their primitive land as arianna of age oh the Aryan home stray bow applied the name Arianna to what is now called by essentially the same word Iran the Persians were apparently the handsomest people of the ancient Near East the monuments picture them as erect and vigorous made hardly by their mountains and yet refined by their wealth with the pleasing symmetry of features an almost Greek straightness of nose and a certain nobility of countenance and courage they adopted for the most part the median dress and later the median ornaments they considered it indecent to reveal more than the face clothing covered them from turban Filat or cap to sandals or leather shoes triple drawers a white undergarment of linen a double tunic with sleeves hiding the hands and a girdle of the waist kept the population warm in winter and hot in summer the king distinguished himself with embroidered trousers of a crimson hue and saffron button choose the dress of the women differed from that of the men only in a slit at the breast the men wore long beards and hung their hair and dark curls or later covered it with wigs in the wealthier days of the empire men as well as women made much use of cosmetics creams were employed to improve the complexion and coloring matter was applied to the eyelids to increase the apparent size and brilliance of the eyes a special class of a Dorner's called cosmic eye by the Greeks arose as Beauty experts to the aristocracy the Persians were connoisseurs incense and were believed by the ancients to have invented cosmetic creams the King never went to war without a case of costly unguent to ensure his fragrance in victory or defeat many languages have been used in the long history of Persia the speech of the court and the nobility in the days of derives the first was Old Persian so closely related to Sanskrit that evidently both were once dialects of an older tongue and were cousins to our own old persian developed on the one hand into Zend the language of the Zenda vesta and on the other hand into Pallavi a Hindu tongue from which has come the Persian language of today when the Persians took to writing they adopted the Babylonian cuneiform for their inscriptions and the Aramaic alphabetic script for their documents they simplified the unwieldy Salaberry of the Babel from 300 characters to 36 signs which gradually became letters instead of syllables and constituted a cuneiform alphabet writing however seemed to the persians and effeminate amusement for which they could spare little time from love war and the chase they did not condescend to produce literature the common man was contentedly illiterate and gave himself completely to the culture of the soil the zen de beste exalted agriculture as the basic and noblest occupation of mankind pleasing above all other laborers to ahura mazda the supreme god some of the land was killed by peasant proprietors who occasionally joined several families and agricultural cooperatives to work extensive areas together part of the land was owned by feudal barons and cultivated by tenants in return for a share of the crop part of it was tilled by foreign never Persian slaves oxen pulled a plow of wood armed with a metal point artificial irrigation drew water from the mountains to the fields barley and wheat were the staple crops and foods but much meat was eaten and much wine drunk Cyrus served wine to his army and Persian councils never undertook serious discussions of policy when sober though they took care to revise their decisions the next morning one intoxicating drink the how OMA was offered as a pleasant sacrifice to the gods and was believed to engender in its addicts not excitement and anger but righteousness and piety industry was poorly developed in Persia she was content to let the nations of the Near East practice the handicrafts while she bought their products with their imperial tribute she showed more originality in the improvement of communications and transport engineers under the instructions of derailleurs the first built great roads uniting the various capitals one of these highways from Susa de Sardis was 1500 miles long the roads were accurately measured by Paris ons 3.4 miles and at every fourth Paris song says Herodotus there are Royal stations and excellent inns in the whole road is through an inhabited and safe country at each station a fresh relay of horses stood ready to carry on the mail so that the ordinary traveller required 90 days to go from Souza the Royal Mail moved over the distance as quickly as an automobile party does now that is in a little less than a week the larger rivers were crossed by ferries but the engineers could when they wished throw across the Euphrates even across the Hellespont substantial bridges over which hundreds of skeptical elephants could pass in safety other roads led through the Afghanistan passes to India and made Susa a halfway house to the already fabulous riches of the east these roads were built primarily for military and governmental purposes to facilitate central control and administration but they served also to stimulate commerce in the exchange of customs ideas and the indispensable superstitions of mankind along these roads for example angels and the devil passed from Persian into Jewish and Christian mythology navigation was not so vigorously advanced as land transportation the Persians had no fleet of their own but merely engaged or conscripted the vessels of the Phoenicians and the Greeks the riots built a great canal uniting Persia with the Mediterranean through the Red Sea and the Nile but the carelessness of his successors soon surrendered this achievement to the shifting sands when Xerxes royally commanded part of his naval forces to circumnavigate Africa it turned back in disgrace shortly after passing through the Pillars of Hercules commerce was for the most part abandoned the foreigners Babylonians Phoenicians and Jews the Persians despised trade and looked upon a marketplace as a breeding ground of lies the wealthy classes took pride in supplying most of their wants directly from their own fields and shops are contaminating their fingers with either buying or selling payments loans and interest were at first in the form of goods especially capital and grain coinage came later from Lydia de reyes issued gold and silver Derrick's stamped with his features and valued at a gold the silver ratio of thirteen point five to one this was the origin of the bimetallic ratio in modern currencies for an experiment in government the king the nobles the army law a savage punishment the Capitals thus a trapeze and achievement in administration the life of Persia was political and military rather than economic its wealth was based not on industry but power it existed precariously as a little governing aisle in an immense and unnaturally subject see the imperial organization that maintained this artifact was one of the most unique and competent in history at its head was the King Orchestra that is warrior the title indicates the military origin and character of the Persian monarchy since lesser Kings were vassal to him the Persian ruler entitled himself King of Kings and the ancient world made no protest against his claim the Greeks called him simply Basilius the king his power was theoretically absolute he could kill with the word without trial or reason given after the manner of some very modern dictator and occasionally he delegated to his mother or his chief wife this privilege of capricious slaughter few even of the greatest Nobles dared offer any criticism or rebuke and public opinion was cautiously impotent the father whose innocent son had been shot before his eyes by the king merely complimented the monarch on his excellent archery offenders bastinado by the royal order thanked his majesty for keeping them in mind the king might rule as well as reign if like cyrus and the first arise he cared to bestir himself but the later monarchs delegated most of the cares of government to noble subordinates or imperial eunuchs and spent their time at loved ice or the chase the court was overrun with eunuchs who from their coins advantage as guards of the harem and pedagogues to the princes stood a poisonous brew of intrigue in every rain the King had the right to choose his successor from among his sons but ordinarily the succession was determined by assassination and revolution the royal power was limited in practice by the strength of the aristocracy that mediated between the people and the throne it was a matter of custom that the six families of the men who had shared with de rious the first the dangers of the revolt against false Meredith should have exceptional privileges and be consulted in all matters of vital interest many of the nobles attended court and served as a council for whose advice the monarch usually showed the highest regard most members of the aristocracy were attached to the throne by receiving their States from the king in return they provided him with men and materials when he took the field within their phoebs they had almost complete authority levying taxes and acting laws executing judgment and maintaining their own Armed Forces the real basis of the royal power and imperial government was the army an empire exists only so long as it retains its superior capacity to kill the obligation to enlist on any declaration of war fell upon every able-bodied male from 15 to 50 years of age when the father of three sons petitioned derailleurs to exempt one of them from service all three were put to death and when another father having sent four sons to the battlefield beg Xerxes to permit the fifth son to stay behind and manage the family estate the body of this fifth son was cut in two by Royal Order and placed on both sides of the road by which the army was to pass the troops marched off to war amid the blare of martial music and the plaudits of citizens above the military age the spearhead of the army was the Royal Guard two thousand horsemen and 2,000 infantry all Nobles whose function it was to guard the king the standing army consisted exclusively aversions and Medes and from this permanent force came most of the Garrison's stationed as centers of persuasion at strategic points in the Empire the complete force consisted of levies from every subject nation each group with its own distinct language weapons and habits of war its equipment and retinue was as varied as its origin bows and arrows scimitars javelins daggers pikes slings knives shields helmets leather cuirasses coats of mail horses elephants heralds scribes eunuchs prostitutes concubines and chariots armed on each hub with great steel scythes the whole mass though vast in number and mounting in the expedition of Xerxes to 1,800,000 men never achieved unity and at the first sign of a reverse it became a disorderly mob it conquered by mere force of numbers by an elastic capacity for absorbing casualties it was destined to be overthrown as soon as it should encounter well-organized army speaking one speech and accepting one discipline this was the secret of Marathon and put in such a state the only law was the will of the king and the power of the army no rights were sacred against these and no precedents could avail except an earlier decree of the King for it was a proud boast of Persia that its laws never changed and that a royal promise or decree was irrevocable in his edicts and judgments the king was supposed to be inspired by the god Ahura Mazda himself therefore the law of the realm was the Divine Will and any infraction of it was an offense against the deity the king was the supreme court but it was his custom to delegate this function to some learn and elder in his retinue below him was a high court of justice with seven members and below this were local courts scattered through the realm the priests formulated the law and for a long time acted as judges in later days laymen even lay women sat in judgment bail was accepted in all but the most important cases and a regular procedure of trial was followed the court occasionally decreed rewards as well as punishments and in considering a crime weighed against it the good record and services of the accused the laws delays were mitigated by fixing a time limit for each case and by proposing to all disputants an arbitrator of their own choice who might bring them to a peaceable settlement as the law gathered precedents and complexity a class of men arose called speakers of the law who offered to explain it to litigants and help them conduct their cases both were taken and use was occasionally made of the ordeal bribery was discouraged by making the tender or acceptance of it a capital offense can be seized improved the integrity of the courts by causing an unjust judge to be flayed alive and using his skin to upholster the judicial bench to which he then appointed the dead judge's son minor punishments took the form of flogging from five to 200 blows with a horsewhip the poisoning of a shepherd dog received 200 strokes manslaughter 90 the administration of the law was partly financed by commuting stripes into fines at the rate of six rupees to a stripe more serious crimes were punished with branding maiming mutilation blinding imprisonment or death the letter of the law for bad anyone even the king to sentence a man to death for a simple crime but it could be decreed for tree rape sodomy murder self-pollution burning or burying the dead intrusion upon the Kings privacy approaching one of his concubines accidentally sitting upon his throne or for any displeasure to the ruling house death was procured in such cases by poisoning impaling crucifixion hanging usually with the head down stoning burying the body up to the head crushing the head between huge stones smothering the victim in hot ashes or by the incredibly cruel right called the boats because the soldier Mithra date he's in his cups blurted out the fact that it was he and not the king who should have received credit for slaying Cyrus the younger at the Battle of June AXA artaxerxes the second says Plutarch decreed that Mithradates should be put to death in boats which execution is after the following manner taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other they lay down in one of them the malefactor that suffers upon his back then covering it with the other and so setting them together that the head hands and feet of him are left outside and the rest of his body lies shut up within they offer him food and if he refused to eat it they force him to do it by pricking his eyes then after he has eaten they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey pouring it not only into his mouth but all over his face they then keep his face continually turned toward the Sun and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle upon it and as within the boats he does with those that eat and drink must do creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption of the excrement and these entering into the bowels of him his body is consumed when the man is manifestly dead the uppermost vote being taken off they find his flesh devoured and swarms of such noise and creatures preying upon and as it were growing to his innards in this way Mithra date he's after suffering for 17 days at last expired some of these barbarous punishments were bequeathed to the invading Turks of a later age and past found into the heritage of mankind with these laws and this army the king sought to govern his twenty safe rupees from his many capitals originally passer Gaddy occasionally Alice in Sam Urick Bettina usually Susa here in the ancient capital of Elam the history of the ancient Near East came full-circle binding the beginning and the end Susa had the advantage of an accessibility and the disadvantages of distance Alexander had to come 2,000 miles to take it but it had to send its troops 1,500 miles to suppress revolts in Lydia or Egypt ultimately the great Rhodes merely paved the way for the physical conquest of Western Asia by Greece and Rome and the theological conquest of Greece and Rome by Western Asia the Empire was divided in the provinces or satrapies for convenience of administration and Taxation each province was governed in the name of the king of kings sometimes by a vassal Prince ordinarily by a SATA ruler royally appointed for as long and time as he could retain favor at the court to keep the same traps in hand Darius sent to each province in general to control its armed forces independently of the governor and to make matters Trembley sure he appointed in each province a secretary independent of both say trap in general to report their behavior to the king as a further precaution and intelligence service known as the Kings eyes and ears might appear at any moment to examine the affairs records and finances of the province sometimes thus a trap was deposed without trial sometimes he was quietly poisoned by his servants at the order of the king underneath the state trap and the Secretary was a horde of clerks who carried on so much of the government has had no direct need of force this body of clerks carried over from one administration to another even from rain to rain the King dies but the bureaucracy is immortal salaries of these provincial officials were paid not by the king but by the people whom they ruled the remuneration was ample enough to provide the say traps with palaces harems and extensive hunting parks to which the Persians gave the historic name of paradise in addition each state trap he was required to send the King annually a fixed amount of money and goods by way of Taxation India sent 4,680 talents Assyria and Babylonia 1000 each of 700 the force a trapeze of Asia Minor 1760 etc may a total of some 14,000 560 talents variously estimated as equivalent to from 160 to 218 million dollars a year furthermore each province was expected to contribute to the Kings needs and goods and supplies Egypt had to furnish corn annually for 120,000 men the Medes provided 100,000 sheep the Armenians 30,000 foals the Babylonians 500 young eunuchs other sources of wealth swelled the central revenue to such a point that when Alexander captured the Persian capitals after 150 years of Persian extravagance after a hundred expensive revolts and Wars and after derailleurs the third had carried off 8,000 talents with him in his flight he found 180,000 talents left in the Royal Treasury's some 2 billion 700 million dollars despite these high charges for its services the Persian Empire was the most successful experiment in Imperial government that the Mediterranean world would know before the coming of Rome which was destined to inherit much of the earlier empires political structure and administrative forms the cruelty and dissipation of the later monarchs the occasional barbarism of the laws and the heavy burdens of Taxation were balanced as human governments go by such order and peace has made the provinces rich despite these levies and by such Liberty as only the most enlightened empires have accorded to subject States each region retained its own language laws customs morals religion and coinage and sometimes it's native dynasty of kings many of the tributary nations like Babylonia Phoenicia and Palestine were well satisfied with the situation and suspected that their own generals and tax gatherers would have plucked them even more ferociously under de rious the first the Persian Empire was an achievement in political organization only Trajan Hadrian and the Antony ins would equal it 5 Zarathustra the coming of the Prophet Persian religion before Zarathustra the Bible of Persia Ahura Mazda the good and the evil spirits their struggle for the possession of the world Persian legend tells how many hundreds of years before the birth of Christ a great prophet appear in Ariana Vigo the ancient home of the Aryans his people called him Zarathustra but the Greeks who could never bear the orthography of the barbarians patiently called him Zoroaster ease his conception was divine his guardian angel entered into an alma plant and passed with its juice into the body of a priest as the latter offered divine sacrifice at the same time array of heavens glory entered the bosom of a made of noble lineage the priest espoused the made the imprisoned angel mingled with the imprisoned ray and Zarathustra began to be he laughed aloud on the very day of his birth the evil spirits that gather around every life fled from him in tumult and terror out of his great love for wisdom and righteousness he was drew from the Society of men and chose to live in a mountain wilderness on cheese and the fruits of the soil the devil tempted him but to no avail his breast was pierced with the sword and his entrails were filled with molten lead he did not complain but clung to his faith in a hora Mazda the Lord of Light as supreme god Ahura Mazda appeared to him and gave into his hands the Avesta or book of knowledge and wisdom and bad him preach it to mankind for a long time all the world ridiculed and persecuted him but at last a high prince of Iran wished ospa or his fast bees heard him gladly and promised to spread the new faith among his people thus was the Zoroastrian religion born Zarathustra himself lived to a very old age was consumed in a flash of lightning and descended into heaven we cannot tell how much of his story is true perhaps some Josiah discovered him the Greeks accepted him as historical and honored him with an antiquity of fifty five hundred years before their time burro sious the babylonian brought him down to two thousand bc modern historians when they believed in his existence assigned to him any century between the 10th and the 6th before christ when he appeared among the ancestors of the Medes and the Persians he found his people worshipping animals ancestors the earth and the Sun in having many elements and deities in common with the Hindus of the Vedic age the chief divinities of this priests or alas tree and faith were Mithra God of the Sun and Anita goddess of fertility and the earth and Homer the bull God who dying rose again and gave mankind his blood as a drink that would confer immortality him the earlier on Ian's worshiped by drinking the intoxicating juice of the Howell ma herb found on their mountain slopes Zarathustra was shocked at these primitive deities and dis died and I see in ritual he rebelled against the Magi or priests who prayed and sacrificed to them and with all the bravery of his contemporaries Amos and Isiah he announced to the world one God here ahora Mazda the Lord of Light in heaven of whom all other gods were but manifestations and qualities perhaps to rise the first who accepted the new doctrine saw in it a faith that would both inspire his people and strengthen his government from the moment of his accession he declared war upon the old cults and the Magian priests hood and made Zoroastrianism the religion of the state the Bible of the new faith was the collection of books in which the disciples of the master had gathered his sayings and his prayers later followers called these books Avesta by the error of a modern scholar they are known to the Occidental world as the Zen da Vesta the contemporary non-persian reader is terrified to find that the substantial volumes that survived their much shorter than our Bible are but a small fraction of the revelation vouchsafe to Zarathustra by his God what remains is to the foreign and provincial observer a confused mass of prayers songs legends prescriptions ritual and morals brightened now and then by noble language fervent devotion ethical elevation or lyric piety like our Old Testament it is a highly eclectic composition the student discovers here and there the gods the ideas sometimes the very words and phrases of the Rig Veda to such an extent that some Indian scholars consider the Avesta to have been inspired not by a hora Mazda but by the vetters at other times one comes upon passages of ancient Babylonian provenance such as the creation of the world in six periods the heavens the waters the earth animals man the descent of all men from two first parents the establishment of an earthly paradise the discontent of the creator with his creation and his resolve to destroy all but a remnant of it by a flood but the specifically Iranian elements suffice abundantly to characterize the whole the world is conceived in dualistic terms as the stage of a conflict lasting 12,000 years between the god Ahura Mazda and the devil ar-rahman purity and honesty are the greatest of the virtues and will lead to everlasting life the dead must not be buried or burned as by the obscene Greeks or Hindus but must be thrown to the dogs or to birds of prey the god of Zarathustra was first of all the whole circle of the heavens themselves ahora mazda clothes himself with the solid vault of the firmament as his raiment his body is the light and the sovereign glory the Sun and the moon are his eyes in later days when the religion passed from prophets to politicians the great deity was pictured as a gigantic king of imposing majesty as creator and ruler of the world he was assisted by a legion of lesser divinities originally pictured as forms and powers of nature fire and water Sun and Moon wind and rain but it was the achievement of Zarathustra that he conceived his God as supreme over all things in terms as noble as the book of Job this I ask v Tony truly Oahu or amaz de who determined the paths of suns and stars who is it by whom the moon waxes and wanes who from below sustained the earth and the firmament from falling who sustained the waters and plants who yoked swiftness with the winds and the clouds who were a Mazda called forth the good mind this good mind meant not any human mind but a divine wisdom almost a logos used by Ahura Mazda as an intermediate agency of creation Zarathustra had interpreted Ahura Mazda as having seven aspects or qualities light good mind right Dominion piety well-being and immortality his followers habituated to polytheism interpreted these attributes as persons called by them Amisha spenta or immortal holy who under the leadership of ahora master created and banished the world in this way the majestic monotheism of the founder became as in the case of Christianity the polytheism of the people in addition to these holy spirits were the guardian angels of which persian theology supplied one for every man woman and child but just as these angels and the immortal Holy Ones helped men to virtue so according to the pious Persian influenced presumably by babylonian demonology seven divers or evil spirits hovered in the air always tempting men to crime and sin and forever engaged in a war upon Ahura Mazda and every form of righteousness the leader of these Devils was Angra - or our Amon Prince of Darkness and ruler of the netherworld prototype of that busy Satan whom the Jews appear to have adopted from Persia and bequeath to Christianity it was our Amon for example who had created serpents vermin locusts ants winter darkness crime sin sodomy menstruation and the other plagues of life and it was these inventions of the devil that had ruined the paradise in which ahora Mazda had placed the first progenitors of the human race Zarathustra seems to have regarded these evil spirits as spurious deities popular and superstitious incarnations of the abstract forces that resist the progress of man his followers however found it easier to think of them as living beings and personified them in such abundance that in after times the devil's of Persian theology were numbered in millions as this system of belief came from Zarathustra bordered upon monotheism even with the intrusion of ar-rahman and the evil spirits it remained as monotheistic as Christianity was to be with its Satan its devils and its angels indeed one here is an early Christian theology as many echoes of Persian dualism as of Hebrew Puritanism or Greek philosophy the Zoroastrian conception of God might have satisfied as particular spirits as Matthew Arnold Ahura Mazda was the sum total of all those forces in the world that make for righteousness morality lay in cooperation with those forces furthermore there was an Estill ISM a certain justice to the contradictory nests and perversity of things which a theism never provided and though the Zoroastrian theologians after the manner of Hindu mystics and scholastic philosophers sometimes argued that evil was unreal they offered in effect a theology well adapted to dramatize for the average mind the moral issues of life the last act of the play they promised would be for the just man a happy ending after four epochs of three thousand years each in which Ahura Mazda and ar-rahman would alternately predominate the forces of evil would be finally destroyed right would triumph everywhere and evil would forever cease to be then all good men would join ahora Mazda in Paradise and the wicked would fall into a gulf of outer darkness where they would feed on poison eternally 6-0 a streon ethics man is a battlefield the undying fire hell purgatory and paradise the cult of Mithra the Magi the parsy's by picturing the world is the scene of a struggle between good and evil the Zoroastrians established in the popular imagination a powerful supernatural stimulus and sanction for morals the soul of man like the universe was represented as a battleground of beneficent and Maleficent spirits every man was a warrior whether he liked it or not in the army of either the Lord or the devil every act or omission advanced the cause of Ahura Mazda or evaru man it was an ethic even more admirable than the theology if men must have supernatural supports for their morality it came to the common life a dignity and significance grander than any that could come to it from a worldview that looked upon man in medieval phrase as a helpless worm or in modern terms as a mechanical automaton human beings were not to Zarathustra thinking mere pawns in this cosmic war they had free wills and so for a Mazda wish them to be personalities in their own right they might freely choose whether they would follow the light or the lie for our man was the living lie and every liar was his servant out of this general conception emerged a detailed but simple code of morals centered about the golden rule that nature alone is good which shall not do unto another whatever is not good unto its own self man's Duty says the Avesta is threefold to make him who is an enemy a friend to make him who was wicked righteous and to make him who is ignorant learned the greatest virtue is piety second only to that is honor and honesty in action and speech interest was not to be charged to Persians but loans were to be looked upon as almost sacred the worst sin of all in the Avesta nez in the mosaic code is unbelief we may judge from the severe punishments with which it was honored that skepticism existed among the Persians death was to be visited upon the apostate without delay the generosity and kindness and joined by the master did not apply in practice to infidels that his foreigners these were inferior species of men whom Ahura Mazda had deluded into loving their own countries only in order that they should not invade Persia the Persians says Herodotus esteemed themselves to be far the most excellent of men in every respect they believe that other nations approach to excellence according to their geographical proximity to Persia but that they are the worst who live farthest from them the words have a contemporary ring and the universal application piety being the greatest virtue the first duty of life was the worship of God with purification sacrifice and prayer Zoroastrianism either temples nor idols altars were erected on hilltops in palaces or in the centre of the city and fires were kindled upon them in honor of Ahura Mazda or some lesser divinity fire itself was worshipped as a God ATAR the very son of the Lord of Light every family centered round the hearth to keep the home fire burning never to let it be extinguished was part of the ritual of faith and the undying fire of the skies the son was adored as the highest and most characteristic embodiment of Ahura Mazda or Mithra quite as Ignat on had worshipped it in egypt the morning sun says the scriptures must be reverenced to mid-day and that of mid-day must be reverenced till the afternoon and that of the afternoon must be reverenced till evening while men reverence not the Sun the good works which they do that they are not their own to the Sun to fire to Ahura Mazda sacrifice was offered a flowers bread fruit perfumes oxen sheep camels horses asses and stags anciently is elsewhere human victims have been offered to the gods received only the odor the edible portions were kept for the priests and the worshipers for as the Magi explained the gods required only the soul of the victim though the master abominated it and there is no mention of it in the Avesta the old Aryan offering of the intoxicating howlman juice to the God's continued far into Zara last rien days the priest drank part of the sacred fluid and divided the remainder among the faithful in Holy Communion when people were too poor to offer such tasty sacrifices they made up for it by agile Ettore prayer Ahura Mazda like yah they like to sip his praise and made for the pious and imposing list of his accomplishments which became a favorite version litany given a life of piety and truth the Persian might face death unafraid this after all is one of the secret purposes of religion aster behad the god of death finds everyone no matter where he is the confident seeker from whom not one of mortal men can escape not those who go down deep like RSI of the Turk who made himself an iron palace under the earth a thousand times the height of a man with a hundred columns in that palace he made the Stars the moon and the Sun go round making the light of day in that palace he did everything at his pleasure and he lived a happiest life with all his strength and witchcraft he could not escape from master Mahad nor he who dug this wide round earth with extremities that lie afar like Dahak who went from the east to the west searching for immortality and did not find it with all his strength and power he could not escape from rostov Ahad to everyone comes the unseen deceiving a stove Ahad who accepts neither compliments nor bribes who is no respecter of persons and ruthlessly makes men perish and yet for it is in the nature of religion to threaten and terrify as well as to console the Persian could not look upon death unafraid unless he had been a faithful warrior in a hora Mazdas cause beyond that most awful of all mysteries lay a hell and a purgatory as well as a paradise all dead souls would have to pass over a sifting bridge the good soul would come on the other side to the abode of song where it would be welcomed by a young maiden radiant and strong with well-developed bust and would live in happiness with the hora master to the end of time but the wicked soul failing to get across would fall into his deeper level of Hell as was adjusted to its degree of wickedness this hell was no mere Hades - which has in earlier religions all the dead descended whether good or bad it was an abyss of darkness and terror in which condemned Souls suffered torments to the end of the world if a man's virtues outweigh his sins he would endure the cleansing of a temporary punishment if he had sinned much but had done good works he would suffer for only twelve thousand years and then would rise into heaven already the good zoroastrians tell us the divine consummation of history approaches the birth of Zarathustra began the last world epic of 3,000 years after three prophets of his seed have at intervals carried his doctrine throughout the world The Last Judgment will be pronounced the kingdom of Ahura Mazda will come and al-rahman and all the forces of evil will be utterly destroyed then all good souls will begin life anew in a world without evil darkness or pain the dead shall rise life shall return to the bodies and they shall breathe again the whole physical world shall become free from old age and death from corruption and decay forever and ever here again as in the Egyptian Book of the Dead we hear the threat of that awful Last Judgment which seems to have passed from Persian to Jewish eschatology in the days of the Persian ascendancy in Palestine it was an admirable formula for frightening children into obeying their parents since one function of religion is to ease the difficult and necessary task of disciplining the young by the old we must grant to the Zoroastrian priests a fine professional skill in the brewing of theology all in all it was a splendid religion less warlike and bloody less idolatrous and superstitious than the other religions of its time and it did not deserve to die so soon for a while and in derailleurs the first it became the spiritual expression of a nation at at its height but humanity loves poetry more than logic and without a myth the people perish underneath the official worship of Ahura Mazda the cult of Mithra and Anita God of the Sun and goddess of vegetation and fertility generation and sex continued to find devotees and in the days of artaxerxes ii their names began to appear again in the royal inscriptions thereafter Mithra grew powerfully in favor and Ahura Mazda faded away until in the first centuries of our era the cult of Mithra as a divine youth of beautiful countenance with a radiant halo over his head as a symbol of his ancient identity with the Sun spread throughout the Roman Empire and shared in giving Christmas to Christianity Christmas was originally a solar festival celebrating at the winter solstice about December 22nd the lengthening of the day and the triumph of the Sun over his enemies it became a Mithraic and finally a Christian holy day xerath awestruck had he been immortal would have been scandalized to find statues of Anna eita the Persian Aphrodite set up in many cities of the Empire within a few centuries after his death and surely it would not have pleased him to find so many pages of his revelation devoted to magic formulas for healing divination and sorcery after his death the old priesthood of wise men or Magi conquered him as priesthoods conquer in the end every vigorous rebel or heretic by adopting and absorbing him into their theology they numbered him among the mage eye and forgot him by an austere anonymous life by a thousand precise observances of sacred ritual and ceremonial cleanliness by abstention from flesh food and by a simple and unpretentious dress the Magi acquired even among the Greeks a high reputation for wisdom and among their own people and almost boundless influence the Persian kings themselves became their pupils and took no step of consequence without consulting them the higher ranks among them were sages the lower were diviners and sorcerers readers of stars and interpreters of dreams the very word magic is taken from their name year by year the Zoroastrian elements in persian religion faded away they were revived for a time under the sassanid dynasty 226 to 651 ad but were finally eliminated by the and tatar invasions of persia Zoroastrianism survives today only among small communities in the province of farce and among the 90,000 parsy's of India these devotedly preserve and study the and scriptures worship fire earth water and air as sacred and expose their dead in towers of silence to birds of prey less burning or burial should defile the holy elements they are people of excellent morals and character a living tribute to the civilizing effect of Zarathustra doctrine upon mankind seven Persian manners and morals violence and honor the code of cleanliness sins of the flesh virgins and bachelors marriage women children Persian ideas of Education nevertheless it is surprising how much brutality remained in the Medes and the Persians despite their religion derives the first their greatest King writes in the bay his tomb inscription Parvati SH was seized and brought to me I cut off his nose and ears and I cut out his tongue and I put out out his eyes at my court he was kept in Chains all the people saw him later I crucified Him in ik batana ahora Mazda was my strong support under the protection of Ahura Mazda my army utterly smote the rebellious army and they seized citron Conqueror and brought him to me then I caught off his nose and ears and put out his eyes he was kept in Chains at my court all the people saw him afterwards I crucified him the murders retailed in Plutarch's Life of artaxerxes the second offer a sanguinary specimen of the morals of the later courts treasures were dealt with without sentiment they and their leaders were crucified their followers were sold as slaves their towns were pillaged their boys were castrated the girls were sold into harems but it would be unfair to judge the people from their kings virtue is not news and virtuous men like happy nations have no history even from the kings showed on occasion of fine generosity and were known among the faithless Greeks for their fidelity a treaty made with them could be relied upon and it was there both that they never broke their word it is a testimony to the character of the Persians that whereas anyone could hire Greeks to fight Greeks it was rare indeed that a Persian could be hired to fight Persians manners were milder than the blood and iron of history would suggest the Persians were free and open in speech generous warm-hearted and hospitable etiquette was almost as punctilious among them with the Chinese when equals met they embraced and kissed each other on the lips two persons of higher rank they made the deep obeisance to those of lower rank they offered the cheek to commoners they bowed they thought it unbecoming to eat or drink anything in the street or publicly to spit or blow the nose until the reign of Xerxes the people were obscene eosin food and drink eating only one meal per day and drinking nothing but water cleanliness was rated as the greatest good after life itself good works done with dirty hands were worthless for while one does not utterly destroy corruption germs there is no coming of the Angels to his body severe penalties were decreed for those who spread contagious diseases on festal occasions the people gathered together all clothed in white the Avastin code like the brahman and the mosaic heaped-up ceremonial precautions and ablutions great arid tracts of these Zoroastrian scriptures are given over to wearisome formulas for cleansing the body and the soul pairings of nails cuttings of hair and accelerations of the breath were mocked out as unclean things which the wise Persian would avoid unless they had been purified the code was again Judaica lease turn against the sins of the flesh onanism was to be punished with flogging and men and women guilty of sexual promiscuity or prostitution ought to be slain even more than gliding serpents than howling wolves the practice kept its usual distance from precept appears from an item in Herodotus to carry off women by violence the Persians think is the act of wicked men but to trouble oneself about avenging them when so carried off is the act of foolish men and to pay no regard to them when carried off as the act of wise men for it is clear that if they had not been willing they could not have been carried off he adds elsewhere that the Persians have learned from the Greeks of passion for boys and that we cannot always trust this supreme Reporter we sent some corroboration of him in the intensity with which the Avesta excoriates sodomy for that deed it says again and again there is no forgiveness nothing can wash it away virgins and bachelors were not encouraged by the code but polygamy and concubines were allowed a military society has used for many children the man who has a wife says the Avesta is far above him who lives in countenance he who keeps a house is far above him who has none he who has children is far above him who has none he who has riches is far above him who has none these are criteria of social standing fairly common among the nations the family is ranked as the holiest of all institutions o maker of the material world Zarathustra asks Ahura Mazda thou holy one which is the second place where the earth feels most happy and Ahura Mazda answers him it is the place where on one of the faithful erect a house with a priest within with cattle with a wife with children and good herds within and where and afterwards the cattle continue to thrive the wife to thrive the child to thrive the fire to thrive and every blessing of life to thrive the animal above all others the dog was an integral part of the family as in the last commandment given to Moses the nearest family was enjoined to take in and care for any homeless pregnant beasts severe penalties were prescribed for those who fed unfit food to dogs or served them their food too hot and 1,400 stripes were the punishment for smiting a which has been covered by three dogs the bull was honored for his procreative powers and prayer and sacrifice were offered to the cow matches were arranged by the parents on the arrival of their children at puberty the range of choice was wide for we hear of the marriage of brother and sister father and daughter mother and son concubines were for the most part a luxury of the rich the aristocracy never went to war without them in the later days of the Empire the Kings harem contained from 329 to 360 concubines for it had become a custom that no woman might share the Royal couch twice unless she was overwhelmingly beautiful in the time of the Prophet the position of woman in Persia was high as ancient manners went she moved in public freely and unveiled she owned and managed property incurred like most modern women direct the affairs of her husband in his name or through his pen after derailleurs her status declined especially among the rich the poorer women retained their freedom of movement because they had to work but in other cases the seclusion always enforced in the menstrual periods was extended to the whole social life of woman and laid the foundations of the institution of perda upper-class women could not venture out except in curtain litters and were not permitted to mingle publicly with men married women were forbidden to see even their nearest male relatives such as their fathers or brothers women are never mentioned or represented in the public inscriptions and monuments of ancient Persia concubines had greater freedom since they were employed to entertain their masters guests even in the later rains women were powerful of the court rivaling the eunuchs in the persistence of their plotting in the Kings and the refinements of their cruelty State IRA was a model Queen to artaxerxes the second but his mother marisa des bois and her out of jealousy encouraged the king to marry his own daughter Atossa played dice with him for the life of a eunuch and winning had him flayed alive when artaxerxes ordered the execution of a carrion soldier for assadÃs bettered his instructions by having the man stretched upon the rack for ten days his eyes torn out and molten led poured into his ears until he died children as well as marriage were indispensable to respectability sons were highly valued as economic assets to their parents and military assets to the king girls were regretted for they had to be brought up for some other man's home and profit men do not pray for daughters said the Persians and angels do not reckon them among their gifts to mankind the King annually sent gifts to every father of many sons as if an advance payment for their blood fornication even adultery might be forgiven if there was no abortion abortion was a worse crime than the others and was to be punished with death one of the ancient commentaries the Buddha hish specifies means for avoiding conception but warns the people against them on the nature of generation it is said in revelation that a woman when she cometh out from menstruation during ten days and nights when they go near unto her readily Leiby cometh pregnant the child remained under the care of the women till five and under the care of his father from five to seven at seven he went to school education was mostly confined to the sons of the well-to-do and was usually administered by priests classes met in the temple or the home of the priest it was a principle never to have a school meet near a marketplace lest the atmosphere of lying swearing and cheating that prevailed in the bazaars should corrupt the young the texts were the Avesta and it's commentaries the subjects were religion medicine or law the method of learning was by Commission to memory and by the rote recitation of long passages boys of the unpretentious classes were not spoiled with letters but were taught only three things to ride a horse to use the bow and to speak the truth higher education extended to the age of 20 or 24 among the sons of the aristocracy some were especially prepared for public office or provincial administration all were trained in the art of war.the life in these higher schools was arduous the students rose early ran great distances rode difficult horses at high speed swam hunted pursued thieves sowed farms planted trees made long marches under a hot Sun or in bitter cold and learned to bear every change in rigor of climate to subsist on coarse foods and to cross rivers while keeping their clothes and armor dry it was such a schooling as would have gladden the heart of friedrich nietzsche in those moments when he could forget the bright and varied culture of ancient greece eight science and art medicine minor arts the tombs of cyrus and Darius the palaces of Persepolis the frieze of The Archers estimate of Persian art the Persians seem to have deliberately neglected to train their children in any other art than that of life literature was a delicacy for which they had small use science was a commodity which they could import from Babylon they had a certain relish for poetry and romantic fiction but they left these arts to hirelings and inferiors preferring the exhilaration of keen-witted conversation to the quiet and solitary pleasures of reading and research poetry was sung rather than read and perished with the singers medicine was at first a function of the priests who practiced it on the principle that the devil had created 99999 diseases which should be treated by a combination of magic and hygiene they resorted more frequently to spells than to drugs on the ground that the spells that they might not cure the illness would not kill the patient which was more than could be said for the drugs nevertheless lay medicine developed along with the growing wealth of Persia and in the time of artaxerxes ii there was a well-organized guild of physicians and surgeons whose fees were fixed by law as in Hammurabi's code according to the social rank of the patient priests were to be treated free and just as among ourselves the medical novice practices for a year or two as in turn upon the bodies of the immigrant and the poor so among the Persians a young physician was expected to begin his career by treating infidels and foreigners the Lord of Light himself and decreed it o maker of the material world thou holy one if a worshiper of God wish to practice the art of healing on whom shall he first prove his skill on the worshippers of Ahura Mazda or on the worshippers of the divers the evil spirits ahora Mazda made answer and said on worshippers of the divers shall he prove himself rather than on worshipers of God if he treat with the knife a worshipper of the divers and he died if he treat with the knife a second worshipper of the divers and he died if he treat with the knife a third worshiper of the divers and he died he is unfit for ever and ever let him never attend any worshiper of God if he treat with a knife a worshipper of the divers and he recover if he treat with the knife a second worshipper of the divers and he recover if he treat with a knife a third worshipper of the divers and he recover then he is fit forever and ever he may at his will treat worshippers of God and healed them with the knife having dedicated themselves to Empire the Persians found their time and energies taken up with war and like the Romans depended largely upon imports for their art they had a taste for pretty things but they relied upon foreign or foreign-born artists to produce them and upon provincial revenues to pay for them they had beautiful homes and luxuriant gardens which sometimes became hunting parks or zoological collections they had costly furniture tables plated or inlaid with silver or gold couches spread with exotic coverlets floors carpeted with rugs resilient in texture and rich in all the colors of earth and sky they drank from golden goblets and adorned their tables or their shelves with Boz's turned by foreign hands they liked song and dance and the playing of the harp the flute the drum and the tambourine jewel bounded from Tiaras Deering's to golden anklets and shoes even the men flaunted jewels on necks and ears and arms pearls rubies emeralds and lapis lazuli came from abroad but turquoise came from the Persian mines and contributed the customary material for the aristocrats signet ring gems of monstrous and grotesque form copied the supposed features of favorite Devils the King sat on a golden throne covered with golden canopies upheld with pillars of gold only an architecture did the Persians achieve a style of their own under Cyrus to rious the first in Xerxes the first they erected tombs and palaces which archaeology has very incompletely exhumed and it may be that those prying historians the pic and the shovel will in the near future raise our estimate of Persian art at posaga D Alexander spared for us with characteristic graciousness the tomb of Cyrus the first the caravan road now crosses the bear platform that once bore the palaces of Cyrus and his mad son of these nothing survives except a few broken columns here and there or a door jamb bearing the features of Cyrus in bow relief nearby on the plain is the tomb showing the wear of 24 centuries a simple stone Chapel quite Greek in restraint and form rising to some 35 feet in height upon a terrorist base once surely it was a loftier Monument with some fitting pedestal today it seems a little bare and forlorn having the shape but hardly the substance of beauty the cracked and ruined stones merely chasing us with the quiet permanence of the inanimate far south that naqshi rustam near Persepolis is the tomb of to rise the first cup like some Hindu chapel into the face of the mountain rock the entrance is carved to simulate a palace facade with four slender columns about a modest portal above it as if on a roof figures representing the subject peoples of Persia support a dais on which the king has shown worshipping ahura mazda and the moon it is conceived and executed with the aristocratic refinement and simplicity the rest of such Persian architecture as has survived the wars raids thefts and weather of two millenniums is composed of palace ruins a tech baton are the early kings built a royal residence of cedar and cypress plated with metal which still stood in the days of Polybius circa 150 but of which no sign remains the most imposing relics of ancient Persia now rising day by day out of the grasping and secretive earth are the stone steps platform and columns at Persepolis for there each monarch from Darius onward built a palace to defer the Oblivion of his name the great external stairs that mounted from the plain to the elevation on which the buildings rested were unlike anything else in architectural records derived presumably from the flights of steps that approached and encircled the Mesopotamian ziggurats they had nevertheless a character specifically their own so gradual in a sentence as spacious that ten horsemen could mount them abreast they must have formed a brilliant approach to the vast platform twenty to fifty feet high fifteen hundred feet long and one thousand feet wide that bore the Royal Palaces underneath the platform and a complicated system of drainage tunnels six feet in diameter often drilled through the solid rock where the two flights of steps coming from either side met at their summit stood a gateway or propylene flanked by winger than human headed Bulls in the worst Assyrian style at the right stood the masterpiece of persian architecture the che Hillman AR or Great Hall of Xerxes the first covering with its roomy antechambers an area of more than a hundred thousand square feet vaster if size mattered than vast Karnak or any European Cathedral except Milan's another flight of steps led to this Great Hall these stairs were flanked with ornamental parapets and their supporting sides were carved with the finest bow reliefs yet discovered in Persia 13 of the 172 columns of Xerxes palace stand among the ruins like palm trees and some desolate oasis and these marble columns though mutilated are among the nearly perfect works of man they are slender er than any columns of Egypt or Greece and rise to the unusual height of 64 feet their shafts are fluted with 48 small grooves their bases resemble bells overlaid with inverted leaves their capitals for the most part take the form of floral almost ionic volutes surmounted by the four quarters of two bulls or unicorns upon whose necks joined back to back rested the cross beam or architrave this was surely of wood for such fragile columns so a part could hardly have supported a stone and tablature the door jambs and window frames were of ornamented black stone that shone like ebony the walls were of brick but they were covered with enameled tiles painted in brilliant panels of animals and flowers the columns pilaster x' and steps were a fine white limestone or hard blue marble behind or east of this.j home in our rows the hall of a hundred columns nothing remains a bit but one pillar in the outlines of the general plan possibly these palaces were the most beautiful ever erected in the ancient or modern world and Susa the artaxerxes first and second though palaces of which only the Foundation's survived they were constructed of brick redeemed by the finest glazed tiles known from Susa comes the famous frieze of the archers probably the faithful immortals who guarded the king the stately bowmen seemed dressed rather for court ceremony than for war their tunics resound with bright colors their hair and beards are wondrously curled their hands bare proudly and stiffly their official staffs in Suez and the other capitals painting and sculpture were dependent arts serving architecture and the statuary was mostly the work of artists imported from Assyria Babylonia and Greece one might say of Persian art as perhaps of nearly every art that all the elements of it were borrowed the tomb of cyrus took its form from lydia the slender stone columns improved upon the like pillars of Assyria the colonnades and bar reliefs acknowledge their inspiration from Egypt the animal capitals were an infection from Nineveh and Babylon it was the ensemble er that made Persian architecture individual and different an aristocratic taste that refined the overwhelming columns of Egypt into heavy masses of Mesopotamia into the brilliance and elegance the proportion and harmony of Persepolis the Greeks would hear with wonder and admiration of these halls and palaces there busy travelers and observant diplomats would bring them stimulating word of the art and luxury of Persia soon they would transform the double volutes and stiff-necked animals of these graceful pillars into the smooth lobes of the ionic capital they would shorten and strengthen the shafts to make them bear any entablature whether of wood or of stone architectural II there was but a step from Persepolis Athens all the Near Eastern world about to die for a thousand years prepared to lay its heritage at the feet of Greece nine decadence how a nation may die Xerxes a paragraph of murders artaxerxes the second Cyrus the younger to rious the little causes of decay political military moral alexander conquers persia and advances upon india the empire of darius lasted hardly a century the moral as well as the physical backbone of persia was broken by marathon Salamis and Plataea the emperors exchanged mars for Venus and the nation descended into corruption and apathy the decline of Persia anticipated almost in detail the decline of Rome immorality and degeneration among the people accompanied violence and negligence on the throne the Persians like the means before them passed from stoicism to Epicureanism in a few generations eating became the principal occupation of the aristocracy these men who had once made it a rule to eat but once a day now interpreted the rule to allow them one meal prolonged from noon tonight they stocked their largers with a thousand delicacies and often served entire animals to their guests they stuffed themselves with rich rare meats and spent their genius upon new sauces and desserts a corrupt and corrupting multitude of menials filled the houses of the wealthy while drunkenness became the common Bice of every class Cyrus and Darius created Persia Xerxes inherited it his successors destroyed it Xerxes the first was every inch a king externally tall and vigorous he was by Royal Consent the handsomest man in his empire but there was never yet a handsome man who was not vain nor any physically vain man whom some woman has not led by the nose Xerxes was divided by many mistresses and became for his people an exemplar of sensuality his defeat at Salamis was in the nature of things for he was great only in his love of magnitude not in his capacity to rise to a crisis or to be in fact and need a king after 20 years of sexual intrigue and administrative indolence he was murdered by a courtier our table anus and was buried with regal pomp and general satisfaction only the records of after Tiberius could rival in bloodiness the Royal annals of Persia the murderer of Xerxes was murdered by artaxerxes the first who after a long reign was succeeded by Xerxes the second who was murdered a few weeks later by his half-brother so died eNOS who was murdered six months later by Darius the second who suppressed the revolt of Terror to tonie's by having him slain his wife cut into pieces and his mother brothers and sisters buried alive dereyes ii was followed by his son artaxerxes ii who at the Battle of Kuhn AXA had to fight to the death his own brother the younger Cyrus when the youth tried to seize the royal power artaxerxes ii enjoyed the long reign killed his son Darius for conspiracy and died of a broken heart on finding that another son okis was planning to assassinate him oh cool for 20 years and was poisoned by his general Bhagirath this iron livered Warwick placed our C's son of okis on the throne assassinated our ceases brothers to make our seas secure then assassinated our seas and his infant children and gave the sceptre to ko Dominus a safely effeminate friend ko Dumanis reigned for eight years under the name of Darius the third and died in battle against Alexander at Arbela in the final ruin of his country not even the democracies of our time have known such indiscriminate leadership it is in the nature of an empire to disintegrate soon for the energy that created it disappears from those who inherit it at the very time that it's subject peoples are gathering strength to fight for their lost Liberty nor is it natural that nations diverse in language religion morals and traditions should long remain united there is nothing organic in such a union and compulsion must repeatedly be applied to maintain the artificial bond in its 200 years of Empire version did nothing to lessen this heterogeneity these centrifugal forces she was content to rule a mob of Nations and never thought of making them into a state year by year the Union became more difficult to preserve as the vigor of the Emperor's relaxed the boldness and ambition of the say traps grew they purchased or intimidated the generals and secretaries who were supposed to share and limit their power they arbitrarily enlarged their armies and revenues and engaged in recurrent plots against the king the frequency of revolt and war exhausted the vitality of little Persia the braver stalks were slaughtered in battle after battle until none but the cautious survived and when these were conscripted to face Alexander they proved to be cowards almost to a man no improvements had been made in the training or equipment of the troops or in the tactics of the generals bees blundered childishly against Alexander while their disorderly ranks aren't mostly with darts proved to be mere targets for the long Spears and solid phalanx is of the Macedonians Alexander frolicked but only after the battle was won the Persian leaders bought their concubines with them and had no ambition for war the only real soldiers in the Persian army were the Greeks from the day when Xerxes turned back defeated from Salamis it became evident that Greece would one day challenge the Empire Persia controlled one end of the great trade route that bound Western Asia with the Mediterranean Greece controlled the other and the ancient acquisitiveness and ambition of men made such a situation provocative of war as soon as Greece found a master who could give her unity she would attack Alexander crossed the Hellespont without opposition having what seemed to Asia a negligible force of 30,000 footmen and 5,000 cavalry a Persian army of 40,000 troops tried to stop him at Granicus the Greeks lost 115 men the Persians 20,000 Alexander marched south and east taking cities and receiving surrenders for a year meanwhile de rious the third gathered a horde of 600,000 soldiers and adventurers five days were required to march them over a bridge of boats across the Euphrates six hundred mules and three hundred camels were needed to carry the royal purse when the two armies met at Issus Alexander had no more than 30,000 followers but two rious with all the stupidity that destiny could require had chosen a field in which only a small part of his multitude could fight at one time when the slaughter was over the Macedonians had lost some 450 the Persians won 10,000 men most of these being slain in wild retreat Alexander in reckless pursuit crossed a stream on the bridge of Persian corpses Darius fled ignominiously abandoning his mother a wife two daughters his chariot and his luxuriously appointed tent Alexander treated the Persian ladies with the chivalry that surprised the Greek historians contenting himself with marrying one of the daughters if we may believe Quintus curses the mother of Darius became so fond of Alexander that after his death she put an end to her own life by voluntary starvation the young Conqueror turned aside now with what seemed foolhardy leisure leanness to establish his control over all of Western Asia he did not wish to advance farther without organizing his conquests and building a secure line of communications the citizens of Babylon like those of Jerusalem came out on mass to welcome him offering him their city and their gold he accepted these graciously and pleased them by restoring the temples which the unwise Xerxes had destroyed the rious sent him a proposal of peace saying that he would give Alexander ten thousand talents for the safe return of his mother his wife and his children would offer him his daughter in marriage and would acknowledge his sovereignty over all Asia west of the Euphrates if only Alexander would end the war and become his friend Parmenio second-in-command among the Greeks said that if he were Alexander he would be glad to accept such happy terms and avoid with honor the hazard of some disastrous defeat Alexander remarked that he would do likewise if he were Parmenio being Alexander he answered the rious that his offer meant nothing since he Alexander already possessed such parts of Asia as to riah's proposed to cede to him and could marry the daughter of the Emperor when he pleased darius despairing of feasts with so reckless a logician turned unwillingly to the task of collecting another and larger force meanwhile Alexander had taken tyre and annexed Egypt now he marched back across the great Empire straight to its distant capitals in 20 days from Babylon his army reached Susa and took it without resistance then should advanced so quickly to Persepolis that the guards of the royal treasury had no time to secrete its funds there Alexander committed one of the most unworthy acts of his incredible career against the Council of Parmenio and we are told to please the court isn't II's he burned the palaces of Persepolis to the ground and permitted his troops to loot the city then having raised the spirits of his army with booty and gifts he turned north to meet derailleurs for the last time der iessod gathered chiefly from his eastern provinces a new army of a million men Persians Medes Babylonians Syrians Armenians Cappadocia --nz Factory ins sogdians Erich ozians say Sai and Hindus and had equipped them no longer with bows and arrows but with javelins Spears shields horses elephants and sighs wielding chariots intended to mow down the enemy like wheat with this vast force old Asia would make one more effort to preserve itself from adolescent Europe Alexander was 7000 cavalry and 40,000 infantry met the motley mob at Gaugamela and by superior weapons generalship and courage destroyed it in a day the rious again chose the better part of valor but his generals disgusted with this second flight murdered him in his tent Alexander put to death such of the assassins as he could find sent the body of de Ryan state to Persepolis and ordered it to be buried in the manner of the Achaemenid Kings the Persian people flocked readily to the standard of the Conqueror charmed by his generosity in his youth Alexander organized Persia into a province of the Macedonian Empire left a strong garrison to guard it and marched on to India
