Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/523

 General Characteristics of Persian Art. 499 it in the enceinte, the great staircase, the inhabited palace, and the tomb of Darius. It is probable that the Hall of a Hundred Columns, and perhaps the hypostyle hall of Xerxes, built at the beginning of his reign, should be placed in the same category. Of course, this is a mere hypothesis, yet it has at least the merit to explain, better than any other, the strangeness of an art whose finest works were all produced within a very narrow space of tin^e, which began somewhere about the year 500 b.c, and lived on for nearly two hundred years with no marked change or progress. This immovableness. despite an appearance of great brilliancy at times, implies decay more or less marked. If in the course of so long a period no evolution or progress was manifested in this art, it was because, unlike that of the peoples whence it had taken its inspirations at the outset, it could not renew its strength and youth at the quickening fountains of religion and poetry. The simplicity of tlic dogma and the monotheistic proclivities of Magism did not stir the artist to lend a body to the deities or vary their appearance and attributes. Popular legends could find no place in a sculpture that was set upon representing the monarch, and again the monarch, and nought but the monarch in the diffcnmt attitudes of his public or private existence. The monumental and ornamented tomb, such as we see it in the two royal necropoles, almost savours of heresy ; no one but the prince, whose position placed him above the prejudices of public opinion, could indulge in the luxury. In a country where the king was emphatically the state, the architect and the sculptor neither worked for private individuals nor corporations, so that they lacked opportunities for introducing variety in the schemes submitted to them, or renewing their working powers and perfect- ing their art. That art with the ancient Persians was but on the surface and had no roots, is proved from the fact that the minor or industrial arts neither flourished nor lived side by side with the nobler art. The furniture and utensils exhibited on the bas-reliefs at Persepolis are void of originality, and those that have come out of the excavations arc utterly insignificant. The half score or so of vases w^e have figured as specimens of the ceramic industry of the Achaimenidai testify to no inventive power or delicacy whatsoever. No surer test than this could be put forth in proof of the theory we uphold ; the smallest article fashioned by an artisan who belongs to a people truly gifted with Digitized by Google