Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/49

 34 History of Art in Antiquity. their advice was asked, and sometimes followed* if it happened to suit the taste of the masters. Satraps, as Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, may have surrounded themselves with Greeks, who expected to make a profit out of them, but who frequently met with more than their match. Not one of those Persian grandees, save perhaps C3rrus the Younger, was ever known to learn the language of his guests, or adopt their manners and habits, or yield to the attractive style of their poetry and plastic art The two people were too diametrically opposed to understand, like, or feel that kind of regard one for the other which leads to close intimacy and is productive of rich results. No Achaemenid would have dreamt of sending gifts to the great oracles of Greece, as Amasis, Midas, and Crcesus had done ; far less would he have cared to follow the example of the Arsacids, and style himself PkilkelUmsi king. Despite the relations and the almost daily contact which existed between the empire of Cyrus and of his successors with Greece, it was and remained in all essentials Asiatic to the last day of its existence; vaster and better organized than its predecessors it may have been, yet administered on precisely the same lines, its life made up of the same old customs and habits, and with a standard no higher than theirs. How unlike the ideal Greece had set up for herself, and to which she was even then giving effect in politics, letters, and arts. Granting the existence of a continuity whence numerous re- semblances arose, which it is unnecessary to enumerate in detail, we are entitled to assume, until disproved, that the dominant elements in the plastic creations of Persia were borrowed from older civilizations. • Division of the Soil Surface, and Nomen'Clature of Monuments to be studied. The history of Iran, as we have endeavoured to point out, has a sequence and continuity stretching from remote antiquity to our own day ; nevertheless, the monuments we propose to review in this place will be confined to such as were elaborated during the Median empire and the Achsmenid dynasty; that is to say, before the Macedonian conquest They are the sole monuments whose birth preceded the hour when Hellenic genius not only Digitized by Google