Inhabited Palaces. 337 was loth to repair to either of the great throne-rooms, the hall, though not grand, had enough of elegance and beauty of form to serve the purpose of a great monarch for holding levies and giving audiences. Here his image, above life size, appeared everywhere carved in the depth of massive door-frames. Below, around, and above these sculptures were floors, walls, and ceilings, decorated in the same taste and as liberally as the larger reception- rooms. The precious metals and costly woods, ivory and enamels, curtains of brilliant hues, mingled their severe and gay tints into excellent harmony. About the hall and porch not a single shaft is in situ; and, stranger still, neither bases, nor drums, nor capitals strew the floor.* All that has been discovered, either by Coste or the more extensive diggings of the Governor of Shiraz, are foundation- stones of pillars, composed of irregular blocks which, before the excavations in question took place, were overlaid by paving slabs. These substructures show no circular depression or hollow at the top, either in the vestibule or the central colonnade, to mark the site of the bases.* Hence the question has been asked as to whether the pillars were not wood, as those which uphold the "Mirrors' Pavilion" at Ispahan (Fig. 129). By itself the con- jecture is plausible enough ; nevertheless, timber supports would doubtless have been more airy than these derived from lime- stone. Antse, however, tell a different tale, inasmuch as they yield the same proportion for the shafts supporting the roof of. the porch as in those edifices where the existence of stone columns cannot be questioned. In the false architecture of the royal tombs — universally acknowledged as a faithful representation of the palace faqade — the pillars invariably seem to have been copied upon a stone model ; ' hence we have introduced It here, whilst fully admitting the difficulty of how to account for their total disappearance. • No trace has been detected of a second story about this
- Stoi.ze, Persi'Po/is^ Eemcrkunf^en.
« G. Rawlinson, Tiu Hve Great Monarchies, tom. iv. p. 360. The above is the rig^t lefereiice, wluch I have conected. In a foot-note Pro- fessor Rawlinscn says: "The non-discovery of any fragment of a pillar is strong evidence that the supports were not of stone. That those at Ecbatana were mainly of wood, plaited with gold and silver, we know from Polybius (see vol. iii., ' The Monarchies,' p. 20)." — Trs.
- IHst, of Artf tom. v. pp. 4Ss» 45 >•
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