Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/409

 Methods and Materials. 385 and the roundness of the eyeball, the breadth of the face, the amp1i> tude of the knees bent back at right angles, the hoof resting on the bracket, the thick tufts of hair falling about the forehead, neck, and body, every touch is full of fire, spirit, and vigour, and one and all testify to the rare knowledge of the sculptor as an ornamentist. He understood how far he could simplify the form the better to emphasize the broad outline and clearly define the type he had selected, so that, despite the elevation at which it stands, it should lose none of its effect It might have been supposed that sculptors who gave proof of such genuine artistic qualities as these, would find no difficulty in producing statues as good as those set up to the Pharaohs in many parts of Egypt, that Egypt rendered familiar to them hy the ex- peditions of Cambyses, Darius, and Artaxerxes Ochus. According to Plutarch, statues were actually made in Persia. He recounts that when the soldiers of Alexander entered the capital of Persia, they cast down a statue of Xerxes from its pedestal.' But what reliance can we place in such an assertion? I /mil rrai::nicnts of statuary have been found, we may question whether the historian had any authority in the writer he followed for that part of his narrative, and the term he employed. The so-called statue may have been no more than an image carved upon a stela, like those of the bas-reliefs at Persepolis. representing the kings for whom the palaces were built. As to the statues of gods and goddrsses, it is well known that they did not obtain in Persia until the fourth century B.C., when Ochus, affirms Berosus, set up statues to Anahita in the principal towns of the empire.' Traces of these simulacra, in imitation of a foreign fashion, have not been preserved. A descriptive passage in the Vcndidad-Sada may possibly apply to the images of Anahita, of which the first type must have been muzsle and bits of minor importanoe ; thejr could, however, be easily restored from the conesponding pnrts of his companion. For Persepolis, pcrha])s the best-pre- served specimen is the bull-capital which lies on the lloor of the hypostyle hall of Xerxes, of which a capital photograph will be found in Stolze's Plate XCIII. proved by the word ai^pui«, which he uses. This term is not found in a passage of Herodotus which has sometimes been cited to prove the existence of another statue of Persian make (iii. 88). The words of the historian, to the effect that Darius wished to ]icrpetuate -by a monument a victory he oved to his horse, are as follows : Twiraif «oti}a-a/Mm Aiftvor fimfvc The word fvsoc teems rather to imply a bas-relief than a statue properly so called. < Beiosns, Frag. 16 (Mullkr, Hist. Gratorum^ torn. ti.>. » c Digitized by Google
 * That Phitaich {Alaumier^ xxxm) thought a piece of statuary was intended is