General Characteristics of Persian Art. 501 sixteenth centuries of our era. The native energy of these mountaineers and the intelligence of their chiefs had made of them able captains, excellent officers, and imperious satraps ; but where should they have learnt how to accomplish the delicate task of selecting and uniting the elements with which the royal art of Persia was formed, and taking the direction of worics and of men who belonged to at least three different nationalities and dilierent training ? It is highly probable, then, that the architect or archit^^ who received the commands of the Achsmenidx to build their tombs and palaces were strangers. The situation of Syria at the gates of tliree different worlds, Egypt, Chaldsa, and Greece, induced betimes a taste for eclecticism, and long practice had made them masters of the art It is just possible that it was a Phoenician who, with the pliancy of the men of his race, took the principal part in the formation of that complex art we have designated as Persian, and which it would perhaps be more correct to call Achaemenid art. Be that as it may, the interest which this art possesses in the c> es of the critic resides In the fact that it embodies all the labours and plastic creations of the oldest civilized peoples, of whom Greece and Rome were destined to become the heirs. At the same time, it is the first which, inasmuch as it is so much later than its predecessors, was influenced by the genius of Hellas, of which the traces are very apparent. Hence it is that the study of Persian art forms the natural conclusion to the history of Oriental arts, a study which we took up without sufficiently measuring, perhaps, the magnitude and importance of our self-imposed task. We have now run the first part of our course, that which lay across the least trodden ground. Henceforward our path is dear, and nothing more interposes between us and Greece, upon which our eyes have ever been fixed— as towards a longed-for goal and land of promise — even when we seemed to wander farthest away from it, and lose sight of its shores amidst the many curves and windings of the long way. "Arva, beata Petunus arva, divites et insulas I " Diyiiized by Google
