Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/250

 240 History of Art in Antiquity. CHAPTER IV. RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE. " The Persians," says Herodotus/ " have neither inia^j^es, nor temples, nor ahars ; these they consider unlawful, and impute folly to those that make them. This is because they do not believe like the Greeks in the personality of the gods. Their practice is to sacrifice to Zeus on the summit of the highest mountains, and under the name of Zeus they understand the whole circumference of the heavens." Cicero, a diligent reader of Herodotus, had evi-- dently this passage in his mind's eye when he gave it as his opinion that if Xerxes burnt the temples of Athens, it was solely to punish the Greeks for their sacrilege in their foolish attempt " to shut up within walls the gods, before whom everything ought to be open and free ; the gods, whose temple and habitation were the whole universe."' The sentence is neatly turned ; so pleased was Cicero with it that he put it in two of his works. But the explanation Herodotus gives further on in the book cited above is both simpler and more likely. The Persians burnt the Grecian temples to avenge the sacking of Sardcs.' The Avesla, which condemns in no measured terms the worshippers of the D;evas, or demons, and in a general way whoever does not strictly observe the rules established by Zoroaster, in that he exposes himself to pollute the sacred elements, fire, earth, and water, contains no sign or token of the feeling imputed to the Persians by the Greek historian, and more explicitly the Roman orator. Nowhere do we find anathemas directed against closed temples, or images of the deity. The information collected by Herodotus has in it a large amount of truth. The historian had discernment enough to per- ' i. 121. ' Cicero, De Republicii, III. ix. 14; De Legibus^ II. x. 26. • Herodotus, vi. 96, 100. Digiiized by Google