people with its special characteristics, which once fixed have withstood the action of time, and kept their ground in face of political and religious revolutions. This much it was important to make perfectly clear. As to the princes who ruled over Media, from the mythical Deiokes to Astyages, or later in Persia, from Cyrus to Darius Codomanus, it would be superfluous to give the list of their names, or discuss in detail the fables of which they are made the heroes, whether set afloat by the patriotic vanity of the Medes and Persians, or afterwards embellished with many additions by Greek fancy, and which impart so uncertain a character to the beginnings of Persian history. It will be enough if we recall such facts as it is necessary to have present to one's mind in order to understand the enormous resources the Persian sovereigns could appropriate to their buildings, and hazard a guess at the kind of influences artists were swayed by, the models whence they drew their inspirations, when the whims of their royal masters had to be satisfied.
In the west, the dash of the Medio-Aryan conquest had been arrested at the old boundary line of Assyria, i.e. the frontiers of Lydia and the Halys to the southward. But all these barriers fell before the Achæmenidæ. Such was the name of one of the oldest families of Persia, whose members called themselves the descendants of Akhamanish, the Achæmenes of the Greeks, said to have been the chief of the tribe at the time of their migration to Fars.[1] Cyrus, the first king of this line known to history, began by wresting from the Medes the supremacy they had hitherto enjoyed; he then struck into Lydia, took Sardes, and reduced the Greek cities of Asia Minor to a state of vassalage, and obliged them to pay tribute. Long successful wars brought under his sway all the populations of the outlying tracts to the north and east of the plateau, as far as the valleys of the Indus and Oxus; when, holding in his grasp all the forces of Iran, he invaded Lower Mesopotamia and seized upon Babylon (538 b.c). Syria, Palestine, Phœnicia herself, who now and again had bravely resisted Assyrian and Chaldæan conquerors, were frightened into
- ↑ The Chaldæan documents that have lately come to light call Cyrus "king of Ashan," a title that has given rise to much discussion, some having sought to identify Ashan with Susiana (Dieulafoy, L'Art antique, etc., tom. i. pp. 23, 23, notes; Amiaud, Cyrus, roi de Perse). Noeldeke (under the heading "Persia" in Encyclop., p. 505) is of the opinion that the theory rests on no sound basis.
