SHAPOUR.
[p. 86.]
The city of Shapour derived its name from the monarch who founded it,[60] Sapor, the son of Artaxerxes, and the second Prince of the Sassanian family. In his reign it was probably one of the capitals of Persia; and for some ages continued to be the chief city of that district of Persis Proper, which was connected with his name, the Koureh Shapour of Ebn Haukal.[61] The great province in which it was included, had been particularly favoured by Cyrus, and his dynasty: it was their native seat, and contained their palaces, their treasures and their tombs. When their empire was overthrown, this portion was still administered by a race of native princes,[62] who, after an interval of five hundred years, revived their pretensions to the throne of Cyrus,[63] and re-established in their ancient seats, the religion and the empire of the Caianian Kings. The Princes of the house of Sassan, who thus came forth from it as from the cradle of their strength, regarded it as the original and favourite appanage of their crown; and marked their peculiar connection with it by imposing their names on its four districts,[64] a division which, amid all the revolutions of their dominions, is even yet recognized.[65] Here, therefore, the revival of the worship of fire, the great object of their dynasty, was established more generally and more permanently, than in other parts of their monarchy; for in the tenth century, when the Mahomedans had been three hundred years in possession of Persia, “no town or district of Fars was without a fire-temple;”[66] and the division of Shapour in particular, contained two at least of the four temples which Ebn Haukal has particularised in the province.[67]
In this district accordingly, which was connected with the house of Cyrus and of Sassan by so many ties, and in Susiana, which was alike the favourite of both dynasties, we may expect to find the most splendid remains of their greatness. Both provinces have been explored very imperfectly, as travellers have been confined to the regular road; and no European has enjoyed those opportunities of observation and enquiry, which a residence in the country alone can give. Persepolis itself might probably have been unknown, if it had not been passed in the line from Shiraz to Ispahan; but the ruins of Pasagardæ,[68] of Darabgherd,[69] and of Jawr,[70] in Fars; as well as those of Susa, of Ahwaz, and of Shooster, in Khuzistan, are almost unknown. The whole of the plain of Merdasht, the hollow Persis of the ancients, as well as the part more immediately surrounding Persepolis, contained, as Chardin believed, a continued succession of ruins; “Je southaiterois que quelque habile curieux allât passer un eté a Persepolis, à la decouverte de toutes les ruines de cette fameuse ville. Les gens du pays assurent que ces ruines s’etendent a plus de dix lieues à la ronde.”[71]
Shapour itself is an instance of the very limited knowledge of Persia which we possess, beyond the immediate line of a common route. It is situated only a very few miles from the road, yet it has been passed by every traveller from Tavernier and Thevenot, down to Scott Waring, without a suspicion of its present existence. It certainly retained a share at least, of its political importance after the fall of the house of Sassan. It contained a mosque as well as a fire-temple, in the time of Eban Haukal;[72] and probably like other great cities of the East, suffered less from the first violence of the Arabian invasion, than from the successive wars of native dynasties, and from the gradual decay to which the declining population and exhausted wealth of the empire consigned all the works of their former greatness. Still Shapour appears to have survived these causes of desolation, and to have deserved a place among the cities of Asia, at the end of the sixteenth century, for it occurs in a table of latitudes and longitudes in the Ayeen Acbaree.[73] From that time nothing more is known of it: its position indeed is marked in a map of the year 1672;[74] and its name, on the authority of Oriental geographers, is repeated by D’Anville as the capital of the district. But no European traveller had described its actual state, or alluded to its history; and the first account of those sculptures, which yet render it an object of interest, was conveyed to us in a short note, added by Sir Harford Jones from his own observations, to the second edition of Dr. Vincent’s Nearchus, p. 391.
The Eastern monarchs have often commemorated the great exploits of their reigns by the foundations of cities. Cyrus is thus said to have built Pasagardæ, to celebrate his overthrow of the Median empire; and Artaxerxes, on the spot where he had defeated Artabanus, the last King of the Parthians, raised the city of Jawr.[75] Succeeding princes of his house, as Baharam[76] and Shapour D’Hulactaf,[77] severally raised Kermanshah and Casvin, to immortalize particular acts of their history. It is probable therefore that Shapour the first, who is described by the Orientals as the founder of great cities,[78] and acknowledged by all to have built Shapour, imposed his own name upon that which he destined to record the most brilliant of his successes: and that the city of Shapour accordingly, was the memorial of the defeat, captivity, and servitude of the Emperor Valerian.
The architect of such a work would naturally select his ornaments from the subject in which his plan originated; and the sculptures at Shapour might therefore be supposed to contain some prominent allusions to the Roman war. The triumphs of that war are almost unremembered in the history or the traditions of the Orientals; and the only records of the victories of Sapor, which are left in Persia, are the sculptures on the rocks of Shapour and Nakshi Rustam: and though, like every other work, of which nothing is known, they are referred by the modern Persians to the fabulous exploits of Rustam the Hercules of their country, the internal evidence of their design is sufficient to appropriate them to their real and historical objects.
That in fact the triumphs of the house of Sassan, are represented both at Shapour and at Nakshi Rustam, can hardly be contested. That in one of the sculptures, the royal figure on horseback is Sapor himself, and that the Roman suppliant before him is the Emperor Valerian, is probable almost from the first view of the delineations; is strengthened by the history of the spot where they are found; and is confirmed by the identity of the principal figure here, with one bearing an inscription in the name of Sapor,[79] at Nakshi Rustam.
Such a subject would naturally be suggested to the artists of Sapor, and while the Roman chariot and standard among the fragments, and the Roman dress of the suppliant alike mark in the sculpture the humiliation of Valerian, the Sassanian costume of the Prince on horseback, the double diadem, and the very expression of his face, (which is that of the medals ascribed to Sapor by De Sacy,[80]) concur in the designation, and supply the figure of the conqueror.
It may appear scarcely necessary to have added one line of explanation, as the internal evidence of the sculpture itself may seem to fix its history. But De Sacy[81] has considered all the subjects at Nakshi Rustam, and consequently their duplicates at Shapour, as representing one subject only, the conquest of the Parthians by Artaxerxes: and on this theory he has regarded the suppliant as Artabanus, the last King of the Parthians, and the victor as Artaxerxes. It is due to such a man as De Sacy, to differ from him with hesitation, and to state the grounds of difference fully. The engravings of Chardin, Le Brun, and Niebuhr, which alone were before De Sacy, are so entirely unworthy of the originals, that the conclusion to which he was led was almost unavoidable; but if he, who has done so much with imperfect materials, had enjoyed the opportunity of examining the full and characteristic distinctions preserved in Mr. Morier’s Sketches, he would have separated the subjects of the sculptures, into those which commemorate the Parthian victories of Artaxerxes, and those which were similarly destined to immortalise the Roman triumphs of Sapor.
The Plate, No. X. may be assumed then to represent Sapor in the act of receiving the submission of Valerian; and that marked No. XIX. to display him in his triumphal splendour. The fragments, No. XII. contain some of his Roman spoils; and the head to which the text alludes, page 89, in describing the hall of audience of a great King, is possibly that of Chosroes, King of Armenia,[82] who was murdered by Sapor, after an unavailing war of thirty years; and whose fall therefore may be commemorated as an object of importance in the series of the exploits of Sapor.
The Plates No. XV.[83] and No. XIX. though probably from the works of the same sculptor as the last, record the events of an earlier date; and delineate in different views the contest for the crown of Persia, which was waged between the last of the Parthian monarchs and Artaxerxes, the founder of the house of Sassan. Of this history, as it is connected with the sculptures at Shapour and Nakshi Rustam, it is sufficient to observe that, according to an inscription on the spot, explained and confirmed by De Sacy,[84] Artaxerxes was the son of Babec, the Satrap, or perhaps the hereditary Prince of Persis Proper, under the empire of the Arsaces.—Artaxerxes was the grandson of Sassan;[85] from whom, rather than from himself, his dynasty, like that of the Seljukians from the grandfather of their founder,[86] has been denominated. Others on the contrary, as the Lubb al Tarikh in De Sacy,[87] and the authorities on which Sir Wm. Jones relied,[88] assume Sassan a shepherd, to be his father by the daughter of Babec: and others again expand the whole genealogy into romance.[89] Vaillant[90] lavishes on Artaxerxes and his birth, all the bitterness of reproach; “infimæ sortis vir, sordidissimo loco natus, sceleratus, injustissimus.” So regularly however has this reproach followed success, that half the Eastern conquerors, as the Bouide sultans, the house of Togrul Shah, Genghiz, Timur, the Othman race, &c. have in their turns been represented as springing from the lowest origin; and a story, almost the same indeed as that attached to the birth of Cyrus, has been recorded of Artaxerxes, and forms a new point of resemblance in their history.[91]
That, however, the father of Sapor was not a man of very obscure descent, may be inferred from the silence of Moses of Chorona, who in the ninth or tenth century appears as the partizan of the Arsacides; as well as from the positive assertion in the inscription[92] at Nakshi Rustam, that he was the son of a king; an assertion which might have been safely made in his name in a distant age, but which would hardly have been hazarded by himself in a public and triumphal record, if its fallacy had been familiar to all his contemporaries.
He assumed also in his own name, and that of his father, the divinity which had been attached to their Kings by the ancient Persians, and which was continued by the Parthian monarchs. The royalty however claimed by Artaxerxes in the inscription, was certainly limited to his own native Persis, which in fact was always included in the dominions of the Parthian Kings; though the immediate rule may have been resigned to a descendant of the Caianian family. The provinces of the monarchy were administered by eighteen Satraps, to whom the Parthian Kings, like the Moguls, had gradually resigned almost all the power of the empire; and who, to justify in their nominal superior, the title of the King of Kings, severally assumed the regal dignity themselves: as in the polity of modern Persia, according to Niebuhr,[93] inferior officers are called Khans and Sultans, titles of Majesty in other countries, to exalt the predominant power of their universal ruler, the Padishah Buzurk.
Artaxerxes, like many other founders of Eastern dynasties Genghiz,[94] Timur,[95] Nadir Shah,[96] might ground his rebellion on the plausible pretext of the ingratitude of his sovereign; but while he supplanted the Arsacides in the empire, he recognised their superior interest in the affections of the people; and assumed their epoch, their language, and their name;[97] that his subjects might regard themselves rather as transferred to a different heir, than as subjugated to a new and unconnected race of conquerors. He accordingly styles himself Arsaces, in the coin preserved by Vaillant, and destined probably for the Western and Mesopotamian provinces: and Sapor continued the designation, though in the coins circulated in the Eastern Persia, which De Sacy[98] has decyphered, both Princes confirm to the corresponding genius of the country, relinquish the Greek and restore the native language, revive the symbols of the worship of fire, and connect themselves there also with the original prejudices of the people.
Possibly the title thus adopted by the first Princes of the Sassanides, was retained even to the middle of the fourth century; for Ammianus Marcellinus describes the family on the throne of Persia as Arsacides;[99] an assertion which Gibbon seems to contradict as very careless and inaccurate, but which may perhaps be reconciled with the truth of history, by supposing, that even when the ancient line of the Parthian Kings had ceased to reign for more than one hundred years, the house of Sassan retained their title of Arsaces, which still favoured the national pride of a great part of their people, and which was connected so long and so gloriously with the general history of the empire.
All the details of these sculptures confirm their history, but it is scarcely necessary to do more than allude to them. The lion held by a chain in one of the scenes at Shapour, may be emblematical of a conquered nation; or perhaps the literal historical representation of a real auxiliary in the warfare of the Parthians:[100]
“Et validos Parthi præ se misere liones,
Cum ductoribus armatis, sœvisque magistris.”
Brissonius however adds to this quotation the question, “Sed quis veritatem à poeta ut ab historico exigit?”[101] Notwithstanding however the incredulity thus implied, and the ridicule of Lucian, who describes the Parthians as using dragons for the same purpose;[102] it is possible that this sculpture may be admitted as evidence of the fact.
The dress of the royal characters may be similarly illustrated; the turreted tiara of Artabanus, is perhaps the πλημα πιυργωτον described by Strabo[103]; the tiara of Artaxerxes, which extends over the cheeks, is thus mentioned by Juvenal,[104] and thus represented in the medals of Vaillant and De Sacy. The exuberant hair of Sapor is likewise an historical fact: it was indeed the costume of the house of Arsaces as well as of Sapor. This might be learnt from their coins, but it is more familiar from the allusion of Vespasian, when he replied that the comet was not ominous to him, but regarded rather the King of the Persians, “cui capillus effusior.”[105]
The diadem of Persia was distinct from the tiara, and was itself “quod omnibus notum non est,” said Brissonius, p. 68, “nihil aliud quam candida fascia, qua Regum frons precingebatur.” This he proves from Lucian; but more decisively by the story of Favorinus, who, when Pompey bound his leg up with a fillet, said, “it mattered not on which part of the body he bore the diadem.” Many of the royal customs of ancient Persia are still observed in Abyssinia, as Bruce has collected them; and the fillet is still worn as the diadem. The ring then to which the text alludes, and which is described as such by Niebuhr,[106] is certainly as De Sacy observed,[107] the diadem of the disputed empire. In the coins of the Arsacides, this diadem,[108] with flowing redimicula, recurs frequently as presented to the sovereign by the genius of a city,[109] a Pallas,[110] or a Victoriola;[111] and in the Greek coins which the two first Princes of the Sassanides struck for their Mesopotamian provinces, the same diadem is offered to them.[112] It is probable therefore that the object extended over Sapor, by the figure in the air, is the same wreath or diadem, which in his coins he is receiving; a Grecian image, which was perhaps adopted by the Parthian monarchs from the Seleucidæ, whom they succeeded, and descended through the Arsacidæ to Artaxerxes and his son.
This image is therefore not sufficient to assign the work to Grecian hands: the classical merit however of the whole sculptures renders it probable that they were executed by European artists, whom Sapor may have taken in the train of Valerian, or those whom in his invasion of Asia Minor, he may have carried off into the heart of his own empire. Possibly by a refinement of cruelty he may have consigned the erection of this memorial of their warfare, to his captive Valerian; for a tradition at Shooster attributes to that monarch the superintendance of Sapor’s other works at that city, and the construction of the edifice there, which was destined for his own prison.
Gibbon,[113] as Milner has observed,[114] is perhaps the only author who ever doubted the nature of the treatment which Valerian experienced from Sapor. Less prejudiced minds might have drawn from the fact, that these cruelties are noticed in a speech of the Emperor Galerius, to the Persian Embassadors,[115] the better inference, that almost in the very days of their execution, the perpetration of these indignities was known to all the Roman world; and those who recollect the opportunities of knowing the Christian character which Valerian enjoyed, and the disgraces which crowded round him, when against that knowledge he persecuted the Christians, may admit the providential interposition of the Almighty in thus vindicating his own cause on the oppressor, and in reversing a light and a prosperity so abused.
Sapor is said to have placed his foot on the neck of Valerian when he mounted his horse, and after a long captivity to have flayed him alive. This treatment, however it may differ from the conduct which a European conqueror might display to his captive, is not sufficient to discredit the story; and might be paralleled, in ignominy at least, by many instances in the East. Genghiz Khan threw the victuals from his table even to a woman, a captive queen, the proudest monarch whom he had conquered.[116] The Carmathian Prince who advanced against Bagdad, tied the Lieutenant of the Caliph Moctadi with his dogs:[117] and the iron cage of Timour, (which is doubted, only because Timour does not himself record it) is a familiar illustration; of which the idea was not confined to that instance, for Badur, King of Cambay, prepared a cage to convey one of the Portuguese heroes to the Great Turk.[118] But there is a nearer precedent: the Persian monarchs have the unrivalled honour of alone taking two Roman Emperors; and Alp Arslan, who enjoyed the fortune of Sapor, remembered perhaps his treatment of his prisoner; and though in his subsequent conduct he resembles our own Black Prince, and forms a striking contrast to the sequel of Sapor’s conduct, yet, when his captive first appeared before him, he is said to have planted his foot on the neck of the Emperor.[119]
The dynasty of the Sassanides, though the commencement of the historical age of Persia;[120] and as such comparatively less obscure in Oriental writers, than the preceding period,[121] is yet, as D’Herbelot remarked,[122] involved in great difficulties. The darkness of the intermediate age from the death of Alexander to the accession of the house of Arsaces, and through the greatness of the Parthian empire, is confined principally to the East; and from the hereditary connection of the Seleucidæ, and their successors with the Greeks of Asia, is relieved by the Western authorities, whose testimonies have been collected with so much research by Vaillant, and confirmed by the medals of the Arsacidæ. But this light is lost in the middle of the third century; nor perhaps could a more difficult portion of ancient history be selected than the succeeding dynasty, a period nevertheless probably the most brilliant, in the foreign relations of Persia, of any since the extinction of the sovereignty of Darius, and at the same time the most fortunate in the internal prosperity and resources of the empire. The task was suggested to Vaillant,[123] who had so ably executed the Parthian annals, but he resigned it to the adviser, and it was left undone.
The deficiencies of European materials are not supplied by Oriental authorities. The value of the Mahomedan accounts of ancient Persia, may be estimated by their omission of the success of Sapor, the most splendid in the whole period of which they treat. Gibbon[124] has already remarked from D’Herbelot, that the modern Persians know nothing of the capture of a Roman Emperor; and it may be added, that though it appears from Mr. Morier, p. 201, that a Persian of the present day was acquainted with the event, yet neither Mirkhond,[125] nor Khondemir,[126] nor the Tarikh published by Sir Wm. Ouseley, allude to it. Whatever then may be the deficiencies or even the contradictions of the Greek historians in writing on the affairs of Persia, they are still probably the best authorities on which we can rely. The contemporary classics possess no one disadvantage, which is not shared by the later Mahomedans; they are alike writing on the history of a people, whom the Greeks hated as enemies, and whom the Mussulmans despised as infidels, and whose language was probably equally unknown to both; but to the Greek authors these defects were in a certain degree qualified by their comparative nearness to the events which they recorded; while the Mussulmans, in treating of the history before the time of Mahomed, were writing the annals of a conquered and contemned race, in an age when its language, polity, and religion were alike forgotten. It is therefore astonishing that De Sacy should have selected Mirkhond, an author of this class, to accompany his own able memoirs on the antiquities of Persia. Whatever may be the relative superiority of Mirkhond to other Oriental annalists, the value of his authority is in itself very low, and is sufficiently depreciated by the internal evidence of his own work. He begins his account of the Sassanian kings by saying that the Messiah was born in the reign of Ardeshir or Artaxerxes, the first Prince of that house, whose reign which did not commence till the two hundred and twenty-sixth year after Christ.[127] He continues, that Ardeshir received a message from the Messiah, and secretly professed his religion. Independently of the gross fabulousness of the chronology, the story itself is totally abhorrent to every other evidence, by which it is clear that Ardeshir, so far from professing or favouring a foreign religion, regarded the revival of the native worship as the glory of his reign; and combined in one re-establishment the religion and the empire of ancient Persia.[128]
The idle tale of the birth of his son Sapor,[129] is another proof of the manner in which the imagination of an Eastern historian has supplied the defects of his materials; if indeed it be not derived from the story of Astyages in Herodotus. Without discussing the probability of the fact or the accuracy of the chronology, it is impossible to conceive that an author could learn so much without knowing more; and that at the interval of one thousand two hundred years he could have ascertained the most private history of an Eastern Prince, when he is ignorant of his public exploits; or that he could have given a genuine account of Sapor from his birth to his death, when he never once alludes to the Romans, or notices, however transiently, the most celebrated event in the life of his hero, and in the history of his country.