Western Asia : The Medo-Persian Empire 99 introduced royal messengers along these roads, who formed the Commerce, beginnings of a postal system. These roads converged upon the p^^tai royal residence in the ancient Elamite city of Susa, in the Zagros system Mountains, where the king lived much of the time. The mild air Royal of the Babylonian plain attracted him during the colder months, when he wxnt to dwell among the palaces of the vanished Chal- dean Empire at Babylon. The old Persian home of the Great King lay too far from the centers of oriental civilization for him to spend much time in Persia. But Cyrus built a splendid palace near the battle field where he had defeated the Medes at Pasargadas, and Darius also established a new residence at Persepolis (Fig. 52), some twenty miles south of the palace of Cyrus. Near the ruins of these buildings the tombs of Cyrus, Tombs of the Darius, and other great Persian kings still stand (Fig. 53). The ^^^^^^ '"^^ art of. these buildings is made up of elements borrowed from the great oriental civilizations of Eg}^pt, Babylonia, and Assyria. The enormous terraces on which they stood suggested Babylonia ; Architecture the vast colonnades which swept along the front were more rich and sumptuous than the East had ever seen before, but they showed the influence of Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor. The great civilizations which made up the Empire were thus merged together in Persian art. The later world often represents the Persian kings as cruel character of , , , . , ™, . r 11 • • the Persian and barbarous oriental tyrants. This unfavorable opinion goes kings too far. Such impressions have descended to us from the Greeks, who thrust back the Persians from Europe (p. 177). The Persian kings were fully conscious of their great mission as civilizing rulers. This is shown when Darius finds Scylax, a skillful sea captain who had learned navigation along the shores of Asia Minor, and dispatches him to explore the course of the great Indus River in India. Then he is ordered to sail along the coast of Asia from the mouth of the Indus westward to the Isthmus of Suez. Here Darius restores the ancient but long filled-up canal of the Egyptians connecting the Nile with the Red Sea (p. 33). It was thus possible in Persian times for Mediterranean
