Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/161

 History op Art in Antiquitv. taught him how to use, and which for ages they themselves had applied to clay. Fixed by great firing, its frank vivid tones com> posed a decoration at once more briUiant and lasting than the brush could supply. Enamelled earths yielded rev^tements suitable to all and any part of the edifice, whether supporting walls* outer shell of hypostyle chambers, staircases, and even lofts, where, owing to their lightness, they were very serviceable in filling up interstices between the beams, so as to bring every part to an even surface without risk of crushing the under supports. In other parts of the entablature the wood was sheathed in plaques of metal, adorned with work in reponssd, that could be easily fastened with nails to the joists of the roof or the planks of the gateways by which the royal precincts were entered. The reveting, which as a rule was bronze, was relieved and picked out with silver and gold. Sometimes, as we know from the palace at Ecbatana, even the tiles of the roof, duly sized, were coated with thin laminae of the precious metals. On the whole, the task of the omamcntist guided him to make judicious use of the boundless resources he had at his command, though it must be confessed that now and again he did not sufficiently resist the temptation of displaying his gold ; for example, when he put a plane-tree of the crlittcring metal near the throne, perhaps, of one of the palaces. To a sober-minded Greek of the fourth century, accustomed to the simple eles::;^ance of Hellenic moniftnents. the display of the exhaustless wealth he beheld around him must have appeared as bordering on vulgar ostentation. Xenophon has preserved the dictum of the Greek ambassador, who on his return among his countrymen, being questioned as to the fabulous riches and gorgeousness of the Persian court, replied, " The famous plane-tree would not afford enough shade to shelter a cicala from the ardour of the sun." ' Be that as it may, it remains true that the general effect on the stranger notably of Greek extraction was one of wonder, proved by a contemporary of the successors of Alexander, yho thus sums up the notion gained by his countrymen respecting Persian palaces from the reports of men that had visited Asia Minor, perhaps before Arbela, or with the Macedonian : — " As historians tell us, says the author of ' The World's Treatise ' (transmitted to us under the name of Aristotle), red stucco, which he thinks was used to hne the internal walls of the rooms {Dtu- xiime Rapport, etc., Rnue arc/ie., torn. viii. p. 265). Digitized by Google
 * XXMOPHON, Heli., I. vii. 38.