Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/451

 426 History of Art in Antiquity. above. Did the soldiers represented here belong to the Ten Thousand or the Immortals, as the Greeks called them, a body of troops that followed close behind the king on the march ? ^ Although nothing can be urged against the hypothesis* the data furnished by Herodotus on the equipment of this picked corps are inadequate to prove their identity.' However that may be, it is certain that long processions of them are right and fitting in the palaces of monarchs who owed their ascendency to the "spear of the Persian man," as Darius declares in the inscription engraved upon his tomb.' Having gone over the few subjects that were treated by the sculptors entrusted with the decoration of the palaces erected for the Achsemenids, we will now proceed to define the style and workmanship of these same artists, along with the talent they dis- played in the prosecution of their work. Style and Execution. The only monument left to represent the primitive period of Persian sculpture, is the C3mis at Pasargadae (Fig. 187); but unfortunately the uncovered parts of the figure, the head, bands, and feet, are terribly defaced; so that it is more especially from the costume that we surmise where the artist took his models. The drapery is as straight as at Khorsabad, and there are no folds to indicate movement and vary its aspect The processes are those of Assyrian art, but applied by an imitator. The fabrication seems to have lost its energy and character. The monuments at Persepolis are equally damaged ; far more than is to be implied from the drawings that have been published. The sculptures have been exposed to the elements for the last twenty-two or twenty-four centuries, and, but for the hardness of the limestone in which they were chiselled, they would long ago have disappeared without leaving a sign of their existence. ' Herodotus, vii. 41, 83. ball that ornamented the lower extremity of the spear; bat, as stated above, it had a coat of paint of the same colour as the arrow-head, and the latter was certainly not silver. Besides, there is nothing about the ball to single it out as a jximegranate. It far more resembles an apple (fii^Xa), which, Herodotus tells us, adorned the extremity of the shaft of another body of spearmen, and was of gold. ' Spiegel, Die t^penis^en Keiiiiu^riftgit, p. 57. Digitized by Google
 * DiEULAFOY {Daa^me Rapport^ p. 18) recogniMi a rilm pomegranate in the