SECOND BOOK.
History of the Persian Empire, from B. C. 560—330.
Sources. Preservation of historic records among the Persians themselves under the form of royal annals; origin and nature of those annals. As these have been destroyed, we are obliged to deduce the history from foreign writers, some of whom, however, availed themselves of the Persian annals. 1. Greeks: their authority as writers, contemporary, but not always sufficiently acquainted with the east. (a) Ctesias. His court history compiled from Persian annals, would be the principal work did we possess the whole; we have, however, only an extract from it preserved by Photius. (b) Herodotus: who probably availed himself of similar sources in some portion of his work. (c) Xenophon. To this period of history belong, not only his Anabasis and Hellenica, but also his Cyropædia, or portraiture of a happy empire and an accomplished ruler, according to eastern ideas, exhibited in the example of Cyrus: of use so far as pure historic records are interwoven with the narrative. (d) Diodorus, etc. 2. Jewish writers. The books of Esdras and Nehemiah; and more particularly that of Esther, as containing a faithful representation of the Persian court and its manners. 3. The accounts of the later Persian chroniclers, Mirkhond in particular, who flourished in the thirteenth century of the christian era, can have no weight in the scale of criticism; they are nevertheless interesting, inasmuch as they make us acquainted with the ideas that the inhabitants of the east form of their early history.
The modern authors on Persian history are principally those who have written on ancient history in general: see p. 2. A treatise on Persian history, deduced from eastern sources, will be found in the Ancient Universal History, vol. iv.
Brissonius, de Regno Persarum, 1591, 8vo. A very laborious compilation.
The section concerning the Persians in † Heeren, Ideas, etc. vol. i, part 1.
[Malcolm, Sir John, History of Persia, from the earliest ages to the present times. Lond. 1816, 4to. 2 vols. "A valuable work.">[
Original condition of the Persians.