Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/111

 98 History of Art in Antiquity. local habits,' and there is no reason to believe that two thousand five hundred years ago the inhabitants of the tract known to the Greeks as Hyrcania, lived in houses that very much differed from those modern travellers find in Ghilan and Mazanderan. It follows, therefore, that from the remotest antiquity, the support of the roof was a wooden pillar, at any rate in this part of Iran. Now, FtG. 39.— . pcnsanl'j hou&e, Mazanderan. Dieui.afoy, V Art antiqtu, torn. ii. Fig. 35. in the oldest stone column ever raised by the Persian architects, standing even now among the ruins of the Palace of Cyrus at Pasargadae (Fig. ii), we have a faithful representation of the primitive post, save that its material is stone and not wood. There is no fluting ; the shaft being quite smooth, so that at a distance we might almost imagine we had before us a very straight ' Hist, of Art, torn. L p. 146; torn. ii. pp. 140, 145, 164. 171, 172, lyS; torn. v. pp. 73. 359-373