Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/436

 Themes and their SiTUATroNS. 415 difference of features which characterize the two sexes, it is because it had no love for the human form as such, nor its fairness. What determined the artist in his choice of subjects and types, to which he strictly adhered, is that they sufficed him for carrying out the programme traced by the lords whose orders he executed. He was commanded to represent the monarch with the pomps sur- rounding his court, and woman, having no part in them, was naturally left out The abstract character this art assumed in the sculptures at Persepolis is no less remarkable. At BehistQn it is no longer a faithful portraiture of a given event or real incident, as in Assyria (Fig. 189). The ten rebek who appear before Darius, a rope around their necks, had not all been hunted down and dragged to the stake in a day. The scene represents the achievement of several campaigns ; it exhibits culprits awaiting a common doom, whose heads had rolled off their shoulders at different times and places. This tendency is even more marked in the sculptures at Per- sepolis. On the only tomb which bears any writing, short legends appear, it is true, by the side of minor figures ; as Gobr3ras of Patischoria (?}, the lance-bearer of Darius, Aspathines, companion and charioteer of Darius.* But, even if we suppose these indications to have been more numerous than they are, they will in no way affect the spirit which inspired the work. What the artist strove to depict both on the frontispieces, the front of the palaces, and their door-frames, was neither a sacrifice nor a festival which had taken place on a particular day of a particular year ; it was not, as at Nineveh, to record the king's prowess in this or that hunting expedition, when he was near losing his life, but had secured a laiger bag than usual. To attribute any reality to the combat between the king and monsters, griflRns and unicorns, is out of the question. This applies in full to the picture where the king sits enthroned upon a platform upheld on the shoulders and the head of caryatids, where negroes hustle the great nobles of the white race. It is self-evident that we have to do with fiction and symbolism. Even where the king appears in a more natural attitude, e.g, erect at the threshold of his dwelling, as far as we can see, he is not engaged in any particular business, but seems to take his ease. Lastly, in the processional scenes mounting towards the monarch, the figures are ranged according to a Digitized by Google
 * Spirgcl, Du aNptnUtkat JCeiiimtkr0en, p. 59.