Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/43

 28 History of Art in Antiquity. I ~ tales were circulated all over Greece to the effect that men of acknowledged talent were kidnapped, at the king's order, and transplanted to his residence, where a state of bondage awaited them.* We do not exactly know to what personages or incidents Xeno- phon alludes in the above citation, but we may safely conclude that reasonable hopes of large salaries were incentives likely to cause a perpetual flow of artisans and educated people in the direction of Persia. From that time, both hopHtes and officers out of service were ready to wander to almost any quarter of the globe in quest of remunerative employment. Nor should the roving disposition of the Greeks be left out of the reckoning ; their horror of sameness, the love of change for change's sake which is inherent to the race, and causes men to abandon home ties with as little concern as If bent on a simple walk, yet through it all never forgetting the country of thdr birth» and living in the expectation that some day they may return.* Then, too, craftsmen were surely found among the Greek grioups, which represented some- times the whole population of a township, transferred to Chaldxa and Susiana by idle kings of Persia.* Cast by a wanton act of cruelty amidst surroundings where ever) thing was unfamiliar, the wretched colonists at first felt strange and sadly out of place, and had to solve the difficult problem of how to live. The grants of land some had received gave but small returns ; the nature of the soil, the climate, and modes of culture were totally unlike what they had been accustomed to. On their native hills ^ey had grown with ease the vine and olive, but the humid and burning plains of Lower Chaldaea required a skilful system of irrigation. It was a dreary look-out ; better leave it for the town, where a man who knows how to fashion metal, marble, and wood into pleasing elegant shapes is sure to find plenty to do ; above all, when it is inhabited by princes of magnificent taste with a decided turn for ' Xfnophon', Memorab.y IV. ii 33. b<riclitc of the Berlin Academy, 1882, pp. 943-957) i <or modern Greeks, A, Dumont, Le BaUtttnaFAirU^fm^ 8v<^ 1873, p. 30. ' Thus in the reign of Darius the Miletans were transplanted on the Persian Gul^ at the mouth of the Tigris (Herod, vi. 2;?). and those of Eretria into Cissia, thirty kilometres north of Susa vL 119). When Alexander entered Persepolis, he found Greek captives, some of whom had been shamefully mutihited (Diodtmis, xvii. 69 ; Cvrtius, v. 5 ; Justin, xL 14)^ Digitized by Google
 * For ancient Greeks, see E. CuRTius, Die Griecfun in der Diaspora {Sitiungs-