Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/298

 History op Art in Antiquity. Hence the third enceinte, built of hard stone and rectangular in shape* would coincide with the one we know ; but not one feature is in accord ; all we find to note are differences. The wall by which the level is supported and bound is almost intact ; there is little more than the cornice missing, and this allows itself to be easily restored. It never had more than about the third of the height assigned to it by Diodonis. We are equally puzzled as to the site of the gates that " were to be seen at lihe four sides," whose bronze folding-doors and railings come in at the end of his sentence with telling effect A single avenue, the great stairs, led to the north terrace ; but no means of access occurred on the other faces. The testimony of Diodorus, then, is in opposition rather than confirmed by that of the monuments ; the discrepancy is all the more strange that the historian, or, more strictly speaking, the author he followed, presents on this same page a just idea enough of the situation and character of the royal tombs.* We may perhaps penetrate the secret of such disagreement and inco- herences from the fact that his guide was Clitarchus. He had taken part in the expedition of Alexander, and with him travelled all over Anterior Asia ; he spoke, therefore, as an eye-witness. That he was given to exaggeration and delighted to astonish his readers, ancient writers attest. The mood was upon him when, having to depict Persepolis, he drew upon his imagination to round off and complete his notes, in order that the description should come up to that of Ecbatana with its seven walls as given by Herodotus. When Darius and his successors, in the plenitude of their power, erected the constructions at Persepolis, they could not look forward to a day when the enemy would scale their native mountains, threaten their capital, and disturb their tranquil possession of that magnihccnt platform fronting so noble and wide an expanse.' From within those stately halls open to the breeze, the monarch had peeps of the houses of Istakhr, nearly lost amidst deeply shaded gardens ; then his eye would follow the line of its suburbs, that stretched far out into the plain, dotted ^ HisU «f Art^ torn. v. pp. 617, 6x8. the view to be had from the platform, ^'c• borrow our instances ffom Flandin {ReiatioHf torn. ii. p. 147) and Dieulafov {L'/4rt, etc, it p. 17). Digitized by Google
 * All travellers who liave visited Persepolis are unanimous in praising the beauty of