Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/16

 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY PERSIA. CHAPTER I. m THE PERSIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, RELIGION, AND RELATIONS WITH GREECE. How WE ACCOUNT FOR THE POSITION ASSIGNED TO PERSIA IN THIS History. As we made our way among the Phrygians, Lydians, and Lydans, we carefully surveyed their art and industries, along with the first glimmerings of civil life, the.primitive notions of which were learnt of the Syro-Cs^padocians, themselves pupils of ancient Eastern civilizations. We said how at the outset they had served as intermediaries between the as yet barbarous Greeks and Oriental culture ; how, by degrees, somewhere about the sev«»th or sixth century B.C., they were influenced in their turn by these same Greeks, when contact with a genius far transcending their own caused them to lose whatever of originality- they had possessed. If yielding to our propensities and secret longings, we could follow chronological order, we should forthwith take up the history of Hellenic art. By allowing ourselves, however, to succumb to so alluring a temptation, we should be obliged to halt on our route, and to retrace our steps so as to deal with the intel- lectual activity of Persia, whose masterpieces were produced in, the sixth or fifth century B.C. For her development is not only ' younger than that of Ionian Greece, but certain of her emanations . are actually younger than the Parthenon and the Propylaca gracing Digitized by Google