and seems to have been regarded as naturally hostile to the new dynasty: hence we find the Persian monarchs bitter persecutors of the priests wherever they established their sway, destroying the Chaldeans in Babylon, and the sacerdotal caste in Egypt. The nature of the religious changes made by Cy'rus can not now be determined; but the revolution was completed by Zoroaster, whose system is the most perfect devised by unassisted human reason. God, he taught, existed from all eternity, and was like infinity of time and space. There were, he averred, two principles in the universe-good and evil: the one was named Hormuzd, the other Ahrimán. Each of these had the power of creation, but that power was exercised with opposite designs; and it was from their co-action that an admixture of good and evil was found in every created thing. But the source of good alone, the great Hormuzd, was eternal, and must therefore ultimately prevail.*

With these speculative tenets was combined a system of castes, which are described by Ferdousí, who attributes their introduction to Jemshid.

The conservation of the ordinances that regulated public morals was intrusted to the Mági, who were, as we have said, originally a caste or tribe of the Medes. Zoroas'ter reformed the institutions of this body, and appears to have opened the priestly dignity to persons of every caste, though few entered on the functions of public worship who were not of the Magian descent. Thus the sacerdotal rank in Persia partook of the nature both of a caste and an order. It was high in power: the court was principally composed of sages and soothsayers. The priests also were judges in civil cases, because religion was the basis of their legislation; but they were strictly bound by the ancient code. No circumstances were deemed sufficiently strong to warrant a departure from ancient usages; and hence "the laws of the Medes and Persians" were proverbial for their strictness of execution.

The king was as much bound by the national code as his meanest subject; but in every other respect his power was without control; and the satraps, or provincial governors under him, were equally despotic in their respective provinces. The court scarcely differed in any material point from the oriental courts of the present day. It was a heavy tax on the national resources to support the barbarous splendor with which the kings and satraps deemed it necessary to surround their dignity; and the exactions wrung from the cultivators of the soil always made the Persian peasantry the most miserable even in Asia. The army was another source of wretchedness to the country: a vast amount of standing forces was always maintained, and hordes of the wandering tribes on the borders of Persia kept in pay: beside this, in case of any emergency, every man capable of bearing arms was enrolled in his own district, and forced to become a soldier on the first summons. This constitution enabled the Persians to make rapid conquests, but it prevented their empire from becoming permanent: the soldiers fought for pay or plunder, and were held together by no common principle, save attachment to their leader; hence the fall or flight of the commander-in-chief instantly decided the fate of a Persian army

Sir JOHN MALCOLM's Persia, vol. i., p. 194. The Jews have a tradition that Zoroaster was instructed in the true religion by one of the prophets.

however great its numbers; and when the army was defeated, the kingdom was subdued. (The great oriental monarchies were liable to vicissitudes scarcely known in European states. There was no patriotic spirit in the people, no love of independence in the nation); if the invader prevailed in the battle-field, he had no further enemies to dread; the mass of the population cared little for a change of rule, which left unaltered the miseries of their situation.

SECTION IV.-History of the Medes and Persians under the Kaianian

Dynasty.

FROM B. C. 710 To B. c. 522.

MEDIA and Persia were provinces of the great Assyrian empire; and their native legends preserve the memory of the cruelty with which they were treated by the monarchs of Nineveh. When that empire was broken to pieces after the death of Sardanapálus, Media fell into a state of anarchy, from which it was delivered by Deióces (B. C. 710), the Kai-Kóbad of oriental writers: he built the city of Ecbatána, and greatly strengthened his new kingdom by inducing his subjects to form permanent settlements; but in the midst of his useful career, he was summoned to check the rising power of the Babylonians, and fell in battle. The Median power was restored by Phraor'tes, who succeeded his father; but it attained its highest glory under Cyax'ares, the third monarch of this dynasty.

In the early part of his reign, Cyax'ares had to encounter many formidable difficulties. While he was engaged besieging Nineveh, the Scythian hordes from the north entered Media, and overran the greater part of central and western Asia. Their ravages were continued for twenty-eight years, and they had compelled the Medes to give them free admittance to their houses, when they were simultaneously destroyed by a conspiracy of their hosts, which Cyax'ares had organized. A party that had escaped the general massacre entered into the service of the Median monarch; but finding reason to dread the fate of their countrymen, they transferred their allegiance to the king of Lydia, and thus caused a war between the two monarchs. The most memorable event of this war, which lasted five years, was the total eclipse of the sun, that took place in the midst of a battle, and so alarmed the contending parties, that both the Medes and Lydians fled in confusion from the field. A peace was soon after concluded between the two crowns, and Cyax'ares renewed his war against the Assyrians. Aided by the king of Babylon, he besieged and took Nineveh, and totally destroyed that ancient city (B. c. 601). The allies next attacked the districts that the Egyptians possessed in Syria, defeated Pharaoh-Nécho at Car'chemish, and subdued the principal part of western Asia. It seems probable that the supremacy of the Medes over the Persian principalities was first established during the reign of Cyax'ares, who is generally identified with the Kai Káoos of Mirkhond and Ferdousí. Asty'ages, called in the book of Daniel Ahasuerus,* that is, "the mighty hero" (Achash Zwerosh), an epithet given to several oriental

• Daniel ix. 1.

monarchs, was the next king. To reconcile the Persians to his authority, he gave his daughter in marriage to Cam'byses, of the family of the Achæmen'idæ, and the royal tribe of the Pasargádæ. The issue of this union was Agrad'ates, subsequently named Cy'rus, Khorésh, or Khosrau, different forms of a Persian word which signifies the sun.

The main facts of the romantic legend that Herodotus has preserved respecting the early years of Cyrus, are confirmed by the oriental historians; and when stripped of some embellishments, can scarcely be deemed incredible. The following are the facts in which the Greek and Persian historians confirm each other's testimony; the Persian names of the principal actors are enclosed in parentheses. Camby'ses (Siyáwesh) is said to have sought refuge at the court of Astyages (Afrasiáb), king of a country north of Persia (Turán), to avoid the effects of his father's jealousy. He obtained the hand of his host's daughter Mandáne (Ferangíz) in marriage. Envious courtiers prejudiced the Median king against his son-in-law; he resolved to destroy him, and the child of which his own daughter was pregnant. The Persian prince, according to the oriental historians, was murdered; but the princess and her unborn child were saved by Har'pagus (Pirán Wisáh), the tyrant's prime minister. The posthumous child of Cam'byses was the celebrated Cyrus: he was brought up in obscurity until he approached the age of manhood, when he learned the secret of his birth. With all the courage of enthusiastic youth, he went among his countrymen, who revered the memory of his father, and were weary of the tyranny of Asty'ages; they flocked to his standard, and the young prince, entering Media, dethroned Asty'ages, and threw him into prison. Instead, however, of seizing the crown for himself, he submitted to the rule of Cyax'ares II. (Kai Kaoos), his maternal uncle, whom the Persians describe as his paternal grandfather.

Cyax'ares, immediately after his accession to the dignity of Darawesh, or king of Media (B. c. 560), sent his nephew to invade the Babylonian empire, which had now fallen from its high estate. Cy'rus invested the city of Bab'ylon, and, after a long siege, took it, in the manner that has been already related. Cyax'ares, whose title of Darawesh, or Daríus, is frequently mistaken for a proper name, removed the seat of his government to the newly-acquired city, where becoming acquainted with the merits of the prophet Dan'iel, he took him into his service, and appointed him his chief vizier. Some envious courtiers attempted to ruin him by means of his well-known piety, and procured an edict from the Darawesh, forbidding any one, for thirty days, to offer up prayers to any one but the king, under penalty of being exposed to lions. Dan'iel disobeyed the impious command, and was thrown into the lions' den; but God closed the mouths of the ferocious animals, and he was taken out uninjured. He was immediately restored to his office, which he retained to the end of his life; and it deserves to be added, than in consequence of his fidelity to the Median and Persian kings, he is described as a renegade in some ancient Jewish traditions. Cyrus succeeded Cyax'ares in the kingdom; and thus the supremacy was transferred from the Medes to the Persians (B. c. 534). But long before he reigned alone, he had been associated with his uncle in the government, and had the sole command of the army that subdued

Ly'dia, Assyria, Babylónia, and western Asia, to the confines of Egypt. Immediately after his accession, he issued an edict permitting the Jews to return to their native land, and rebuild the walls and tem ple of Jerúsalem, as the prophet Isaíah had predicted a hundred years before his birth. For seven years he ruled his empire in peace and prosperity, directing his attention to establishing a stable government in his extensive dominions, and endeavoring, as we have good reason to believe, to restrict the extravagant privileges claimed by the Magi, or priestly caste.

Whatever may have been the manner of his death, about which there is some doubts, it is certain that he was buried at Pasargádæ, where the remains of his tomb may still be see. In the age of Strábo, it bore the following inscription, "O man, I am Cy'rus, who founded the Persian empire: envy me not then the little earth which covers my remains."

Cam'byses (Lohorásp) succeeded to the throne (B. c. 529), and immediately prepared to invade Egypt. He soon made himself master of Pelúsium, and, being aided by the local information of Phánes, a Greek deserter, he overthrew Psammenítus, the last Egyptian monarch, and subdued the entire country. His fierce hostility to the sacerdotal caste, which he inherited from his father, made him a persecutor of the Egyptian priests, who, in revenge, have portrayed him as the worst of tyrants. After the conquest of Egypt, he resolved to annex Ethiopia to his dominions, and, at the same time, to plunder the Ammónium, or great temple of Júpiter Am'mon, built on an oásis in the midst of the desert. In the midst of the desert the Persians were deserted by their perfidious guides, and the greater part of them were finally overwhelmed by the moving sands that winds sometimes raise in the desert.

Camby'ses intended to have carried his arms into western Africa; but his designs were frustrated by the refusal of the Phoenician mariners to serve against their Carthagenian brethren. To secure his throne, he, with the cruel precaution so common in Asia, put his brother Smer'dis to death; but was soon alarmed by hearing that a usurper, under his brother's name, had seized the Persian crown. On his return home, Camby'ses died of an accidental wound from his own sword, having first solemnly assured his officers of the falsehood practised by the pretended Smer'dis. As Camby'ses died without heirs, the Kaianian dynasty, which, as we have seen, included both Medes and Persians, became extinct (B. c. 522).

SECTION V.-History of the Persians under the Hystaspid Dynasty.

FROM B. C. 522 TO B. c. 330.

THE real history of the false Smer'dis appears to be slightly disguised in the narratives of the Grecian writers: he was manifestly raised to the throne by a conspiracy of the priestly caste, who were desirous of restoring their own supremacy, and that of their allies, the Medes. The Persian nobles combined to prevent such a calamity, destroyed the usurper, and chose for their sovereign, or darawesh, Hystas'pes (Gushtásp), who appears to have been a member of the family of the Achæ'menidæ. Daríus Hystas'pes appears to have been the

first who used the old title of royalty (Darawesh or Darius) as a proper name. When fixed upon the throne, he persecuted the magi with great severity, and patronised the religious system ascribed to Zerdusht, or Zoroas'ter. The Persian legends describe this philosopher as his contemporary; and this is rendered exceedingly probable by a comparison of the various accounts given of this great reformer.*

To secure his title, Daríus, for henceforth he will be best known by this name, united himself in marriage with the two surviving daughters of Cy'rus, and then prepared to punish the Babylonians, who, in consequence probably of the ancient connexion between the Chaldeans and the sacerdotal caste of the Medes, had not only revolted but murdered all whom they regarded as useless mouths, to prove their determined obstinacy. Baby'lon sustained a siege of twenty months; and might have baffled its besiegers, had not a Persian noble mutilated himself, and gone over to the citizens as a deserter who had escaped from the inhuman cruelty of his sovereign. His wounds gave credit to his words: he was intrusted with the command of an important post, which he betrayed to Daríus, and thus enabled that monarch to become master of the rebellious city. The attention of the conqueror was next directed to quelling an insurrection of the Greek commercial cities of western Asia; he added Thrace to his dominions, and undertook an invasion of Scythia. The Danube was passed on a bridge of boats; and the Persians advanced without opposition through a difficult and barren country, until they had advanced beyond the reach of their supplies. Daríus was forced to retreat, and his safety was purchased by the loss of the greater part of his followers.

Having severely punished a subsequent revolt of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Daríus resolved to extend his vengeance to their Grecian allies, and collected a large naval and military force, which he intrusted to the command of his son-in-law Mardónius. Mardónius crossed the Hellespont into Thrace, whence he passed into Macedonia, at that time a Persian province. All the neighboring countries submitted; but his fleet was shattered in a storm, while doubling Mount A'thos, and his army soon afterward was attacked unexpectedly by the barbarous Thracian tribes, who slew a great many of the soldiers, and severely wounded Mardónius himself. A second expedition was sent to Greece, under the command of Dátis and Artapher'nes, who forced a passage into the northern parts of that country, stormed Eret'ria, and were menacing Athens, when they were totally routed by the Athenians under Miltiades, at the memorable battle of Marathon (B. c. 490). To avenge these losses, Daríus resolved to invade Greece in person; but an insurrection of the Egyptians, and disputes among his children respecting the succession, and not long after his own death, frustrated his designs.

Xer'xes, immediately after his accession (B. c. 485), marched against the Egyptian rebels, whom he completely subdued. Elated by this success, he prepared to invade Greece, and collected the largest army that had ever been assembled. His naval preparations were on an equally extensive scale. But on the very threshold of Greece, at the mountain-pass of Thermopyla, his countless hordes were checked and •See Professor Shea's admirable translation of Mirkband .274.