LITMIR.BIZ

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they executed.”^[57]

      The history is then given of various pretenders who led revolts against him. The whole account of these rebellions occupies many lines of cuneiform writing, but victory was always gained by the crown, and the usurpers were put to death in the most barbarous manner. Their noses and ears and tongues were cut off, their eyes were put out, and in this pitiable condition they were chained to the palace where “all the people saw” them, and afterward they were carried away and placed upon crosses. The penalty inflicted upon each one is given in detail, but there is a great uniformity in the accounts, although the punishment was sometimes varied by hanging the leader of the revolt, together with his principal followers. Often a decree of extermination was issued against all the people engaged in the rebellion. The great inscription is finished with a pictorial representation of the nine kings which Darius took in battle, one of whom claimed to be Bardes, the son of Cyrus. Another claimed to be the king of Susiana;^[58] another led the revolt of the Babylonians; the fourth caused the rebellion of the Medians; the fifth, like the second, proclaimed himself the king of Susiana, while the sixth led the Sagartians in an attack upon their king. “The seventh was a Persian who lied and said, ’I am Smerdis, son of Cyrus, and he caused the revolt of Persia.’ ”^[59] The eighth proclaimed himself king of Babylon, and the ninth claimed to exercise kingly power over the Margians. The first of these is represented by a prostrate figure, upon which the victorious king is trampling, the others are standing in the position of captives, and are branded as imposters by the inscriptions beneath them. The king also recorded the names of the warriors who assisted him in his campaigns, and requested those who might succeed him upon the Persian throne, to “remember to show favor to the descendants of these men.”

      DARIUS AT PERSEPOLIS.

      Afar in the mountains of Persia stand the ruins of the capital city of her ancient kings. Porch and temple, hall and palace, lie together amidst the desolation wrought by the ages. The long stairway still leads to the great plateau, while the gray marble pillars stand like sentinels above the ruins at their feet, and the moonlight gleams upon sepulchres of Persian monarchs. But even here, on panel and column, we find symbols graven by a forgotten hand—the desert voice of the past, still boasting of the grandeur of her fallen kings.

      An inscription on the door of a ruined palace, written in Persian, Median, and Assyrian, recounts the greatness of “Darius the great king—the king of kings—the king of the lands—the son of Hystaspes, the Achæmenian (who) has built the palace.” The “lands which are numerous” over which he holds sway are declared to be “Susiana, Media, Babylon, Arabia, Assyria, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Lycia, the Ionians, those of the continent and those of the sea, and the Eastern lands, Sagartia, Parthia, Sarangia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Sattagydia, Arachotis, India, Gandaria, the Maxyans, Karka (Carthage), Sacians, and the Maka.”Maka.”^[60]

      Darius the king says “If thou say it may be so I shall not fear the other Ahriman.^[61] Protect the Persian people. If the Persian people are protected by thee, Ormazd, the Good Principle, which has always destroyed the demon, will descend as ruler on this house. The great Ormazd, who is the greatest among all the gods, is he who created the heaven, and created the earth, who created the men and the Good Principle, and who made Darius king, and gave to Darius the king, the royalty over this wide earth, which contains many lands; Persia and Media, and other lands and other tongues, on the mountains, and in the plains, of this side of the sea, and on the side beyond the sea; of this side of the desert, and on the side beyond the desert.” The inscriptions of Darius at Mount Elvend, at Susa, and at Suez, are merely repetitions of the greatness of Darius and of Ormazd.

      INSCRIPTIONS OF XERXES.

      These are engraved upon the staircase and columns at Persepolis, and like the texts of Darius, they are employed chiefly to represent the greatness of the king, and the greatness of Ormazd. Says Dr. Oppert, “The texts of Xerxes are very uniform, and not very important. The real resulting fact is the name of the king, Khsayarsa, which proves to be identical with Ahasuerus”^[62] of the Book of Esther. There are also legends on vases which were found in Egypt, at Susa and Halicarnassus. The vase found at Halicarnassus is now in the gold room of the British Museum, bearing the inscription of “Xerxes the great king.”

      ARTAXERXES.

      The texts of this monarch, which are written in Persian, Median and Assyrian, are found on the bases of columns at Susa, and also at Persepolis, as well as upon vases. They comprise the records of three kings—Artaxerxes I, II and III.

      We are indebted to the excavations of Loftus at Susa for the records of Artaxerxes II; these are far more important than the inscriptions of his predecessor, which merely illustrate the egotism of their author. The text which is borne upon these columns brings down to us a new historical statement, to the effect that the palace at Susa was burned under the reign of Artaxerxes I, and restored by his grandson. During this period the Persian monarchs resided principally at Babylon, and Darius II died there.

      The great importance of these texts arises from the fact that they give the genealogy of the Achæmenidæ, and confirm the statements transmitted to us on this subject by the Greeks, which are in direct opposition to the traditions of the modern Persians. The text of Artaxerxes III contains the genealogy of that king upward to the names of Hystaspes and Arsames, who were the father and grandfather of Darius Hystaspes of the Achæmenian line.

      A LATER PERSIAN TABLET.

      A much later tablet is merely a note of hand given by a Persian king (Pacorus II), with a promise to pay “in the month of Iyar (April) in the Temple of the sun in Babylon,” and it also bears the names of four witnesses. This little clay tablet was discovered by Dr. Oppert in the Museum of the Society of Antiquarians at Zurich, and has been carefully translated by him. It is interesting mostly from the fact of its comparatively modern origin, King Pacorus II having been contemporary with the Emperor Titus and Domitian. Some of the names mentioned upon it are Babylonish, and some of them Persian. All the witnesses, however, bear Persian names which may even be called modern. King Pacorus II commenced his reign A.D. 77, and hence this is the only tablet, so far as known, which belongs to the Christian era.

      RÉSUMÉ.

      These sculptured temples and graven stones have lain in the path of the ages with silent lips, but the questioning hand of the nineteenth century has broken the spell and wrested the story of the past even from the “heaps” of Nineveh and Babylon. From mountain cliff, from palace wall, from corner-stone and fallen pillar comes the same historic voice that speaks to us from the forgotten libraries of buried kings.

      The literature of the tablets comes into our own age, leading a splendid retinue of historic figures—Sargon, the early king of Accad, with his imperishable library, with the monuments and tablets of Assyria, then Nineveh, “that great city,” with her temples and palaces, where the gilded tiles of many a a dome flashed back the glory of the setting sun—Babylon, “the joy of the whole earth,” and “the beauty of the Chaldee’s excellency,” who for centuries held her position as the queen of the world’s commerce, and through whose hands the wealth of the Euphrates flowed down to the Persian Gulf. Babylon, with her maze of life and color, with her silver vases and golden vessels, with her princely halls and gorgeous hangings, with the breath of the myrtle and the bay, borne upward from her terraced gardens and moonlight meads.

      Then the scene changes, and the kingly Cyrus is riding at the head of his Medo-Persian cohorts, and the crown of the Orient is within his grasp. “Bel boweth down—Nebo stoopeth,” and the seat of government is removed, and “the daughter of the Chaldeans” sits in the dust beneath the foot of the invader.

      Later still, Darius the Great is enthroned on Persian soil; haughtily he wears the imperial purple, and the crown of many kingdoms, while upon the face of Persia’s mountains, he writes himself “The king of kings.” But a reckless policy led the Persian host to a sure defeat upon the plains of Marathon, and prepared the way for the humiliation

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