Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/369

 Inhabited Palaces. 347 a higher and bolder relief than anywhere else.* A main objec- tion against this hypothesis resides in the fact that the works on the esplanade do not appear to have been commenced before the reign of Darius. Moreover, none of the explorers who have studied the remains of these buildings on the spot have been impressed with difference of style between them ; nor do they think a considerable space divides one from the other. One of them goes so far as to affirm that the bas-reliefs of the edifice we are considering were fashioned by the same hand as those of the Palace of Xerxes.' To complete this list, it remains to mention confused traces, which lie midway between the Palace of Xerxes and the south-west angle of the Hall of a Hundred Columns (Fig. lo in plan). Here most certainly stood a structure of some importance, the piers of which had a mean altitude of 6 m. 50 c. The mass, however, is too hopelessly ruined to permit hazarding a guess at the plan or attempting a reconstruction. More utterly ruined still are the remains of a porch at the very verge of the terrace, west of the Palace of Darius. We are equally at sea respecting a hillock which rises in the plain, at some distance from the south comer of the platform (Fig. 10). The edifice, now irretrievably destroyed, was nearer than any other to the villages and their cemeteries. All that can be made out are the jambs of a doorway, sculptured in •the taste of those of the palaces on the platform, but in so poor a state as to be undistinguishable. Our view, taken from the north-west, represents the group of edifices that «>nstituted the royal residence before the Macedonian conquest and the violent scenes which accompanied it ; that is to say, about the middle of the fourth century b.c. (Plate IX.). Of course, there were many more buildings than those we have put in our pictuie; since, wherever the platform has not been cleared, are heaps of stone and rubbish, veritable hillocks as > et unsounded.. We have only undertaken to restore the remains of such, buildings as are im- portant enough to permit of a restoration not altogether based on pure fancy. Travellers, after due examination of these ruins, have expressed the opinion that many of them were never finished. Tablets ready prepared for inscriptions which have of the sister edifice."— Trs. Digitized by Google
 * This is not so, Fexgusson says that " its squlptures are identical with those
 * Stolzb, Perupolis^ BemerkM^gen.