41. BAS-RELIEF REPRESENTING KYROS, OR POSSIBLY HIS GLORIFIED FRAVASHI, WITH TRILINGUAL INSCRIPTION ABOVE: "I AM KURUSH, THE KING, THE AKHÆMENIAN." (Pasargadæ.)

blocks of white marble, surrounded by fragments of what evidently was once a colonnade. The monument was found intact by Alexander of Macedon, who visited it. His historians describe it as "a house upon a pedestal," with a door so narrow (it is moreover only four feet high) that a man could scarcely squeeze through. The gilt sarcophagus, we are told,

42. TOMB OF KYROS AT PASARGADE. (Entire height, 36 feet; height of chamber or chapel, 7 feet; area, 7 by 10% feet; thickness of walls, 5 feet')

stood by a couch with feet of massive gold, covered with purple-dyed draperies, and the walls were hung with Babylonian tapestries. Suits of clothes were also found, of costly material and workmanship. There was, besides, a table on which were deposited various precious relics-Persian weapons, some jewels, the king's own bow, shield, and sword. The inscription was brief and simple: "O man! I am Kurush,

the son of Kambujiya, who founded the greatness of Persia, and ruled Asia. Grudge me not this monument." Inside the inclosure was a small house, occupied by some Magi, who received an ample daily allowance of provisions, and whose duty it was to guard the place and keep it in order. The office had been first instituted by Kambyses, the son of Kyros, and was hereditary. When Alexander returned to Pasargadæ from his unsuccessful expedition to India, he found the noble shrine desecrated and plundered, the sarcophagus gone, and could do nothing but give orders to repair the monument, and restore it, at least outwardly, to a decent and seemly condition.

10. The ruins of Pasargadæ are the most ancient monuments we have of Persian art, and the merest glance at them suffices to show that it was, from first to last, and in its very essence, imitative, with the single exception of the Aryan principle of building, consisting in the profuse use of columns. As the Persians, fortunately, used stone, their monuments have survived, while nothing is left of the Median constructions, which were of wood. These monuments show traces of the influence of every country they have known or conquered. Had we no other specimen of Persian sculpture than that basrelief (ill. 41), we should be justified in declaring it to be imitated from Assyrian models; even the closefitting fringed robe betrays the originals from which the Persian artist copied. As to the head-dress, it is one frequently seen on the brow of Egyptian divinities and royalties, while the massive pillar itself

is a clumsy imitation of an Assyrian stele. That the Tomb of Kyros (ill. 42) reproduces, on a small scale and in different material, the Assyro-Babylonian Ziggurat is too obvious to need demonstration, while the chapel is distinctly Greek in design, and what little remains of Kyros' own constructions, shows that he employed Greek artists from the colonies on the sea-shore: the column-bases are exactly like those found in the ruins of some Ionian temples, and the masonry of the great platform recalls early Greek wall-masonry (see ill. 29). We shall soon become acquainted with far more numerous, imposing, and elaborate monuments of Persian art, but shall find nothing, even in its most beautiful productions, to reverse the verdict of lack of originality which was pronounced on that art as soon as it was discovered.

II. But, to return to the political world of Western Asia, which we left unheeded for years to follow the rising star of Persia. With Kyros still on the eastern side of the Halys, the balance of power, established after the Battle of the Eclipse (see pp. 220222), was as yet unbroken, no changes having taken place in the territorial conditions of the potentates who concluded that memorable agreement. The greatest of the three states in point of extent had merely changed hands and name: it was the Median Empire no longer, but the Persian, that was all. In 546 B.C. every thing was apparently undisturbed, yet every thing trembled in the balance. For the men were no longer the same. The petty, indolent, tyrannous Mede had been forced to yield