The hardy tribes of Īrān which Cyrus led to victory were trained to manly exercise; they taught their children to endure hardship, to ride, to shoot and to tell the truth. They were strangers to dissipation, and so loyal to age that parricide was inconceivable to them. The royal edict was so inflexible that “the laws of the Medes and Persians” passed into a proverb. Their loyalty to their kings degenerated into servility, even legal injustice being considered a benefit to the victim, for which he should be duly grateful. No edict was too severe to be promptly obeyed, the very cruelty of their kings being considered a mark of greatness; they buried men alive in honor of the elements, they flayed their officials for bribery, while mutilation and stoning were legal punishments.
This hardy race of soldiers, that could rush into battle, almost without rations, was a terror to the pampered Lydian and the luxurious Babylonian, for the ideal life of the Persian was continual conquest, even his symbol of Ormazd being a winged warrior with bow and threatening hand. But when the contest was over, the conquerors irrigated the plains of Babylonia so faithfully that they were able to gather three harvests a year from the fertile soil. The roads of the kingdom were supplied with post-stations, and constantly traversed by government couriers, while a great commercial intercourse was carried even to the shores of Greece. It was not an enervated people that laid the wonderful masonry in the foundations of Persepolis, and reared the marble columns that still mock the changes of more than two thousand years. But luxury crept in with continued power, and after a time, it was said that the royal table was daily spread for fifteen thousand guests, even though the king dined alone. Their nobles were clothed in purple and decorated with jewels, while the person of the king was resplendent with diamonds and rubies. In the royal treasury pearls were piled up like the sands of the sea, and diamonds glittered amidst masses of amethyst and sapphire. The royal helmet and buckler flashed with the green light of emeralds and the crimson fire of the ruby.
But still they retained traces of the primitive simplicity which belonged to the early mountain tribes, and the constructive energy of their kings went on, building and planning, and forcing into their courts the splendors of rifled cities. Darius flung the floating bridge across the Bosphorus, that afterward furnished a highway for Alexander; their summer palaces rose upon the mountains of Media, while their winter homes, with marble pillars and graceful colonnades, were placed in sunny vales where fountains gleamed through the glossy leaves and the nightingale built her nest among thickets of roses. It is said of Artaxerxes that even while he wore upon his person jewels to the value of thousands of talents, he would still lead his army on foot through mountain passes, carrying his own quiver and shield, and forcing his way up the most rugged heights.
The Persians were quick to learn, and gladly appropriated to themselves the civilization of Nineveh and Babylon; but luxury and dissipation will unnerve the strongest empire, and after a time the designing beauties of the harem became the rulers of weak and wicked princes, and though Persian magnificence lasted from Darius to the last Persian king, their final failure was due to their own corruption as much as to the forces of Alexander the Great. The Īrānian mind seemed to be the harbinger of progress, in the simplicity of its beginnings, in its striving for the noble, the manly, and the true, but the selfishness of the later Persian kings developed not only into luxury, but also into dissipation: reclining on couches with golden feet, drinking the wines[[13]] of Helbon and Shīrāz, they yielded to no rule except their own pleasure—there was no precept of morality that they could not violate at will, no law in their legal code that involved the recognition of the rights of other nations; and this intense self-worship prepared the way for the coming conqueror. The government of Persia became what the government of Turkey now is—a highly centralized bureaucracy, the members of which owed their offices to an irresponsible despot; the people of Persia therefore hailed Alexander as their deliverer from disintegration and decay.
PHYSICAL FEATURES OF PERSIA.
“The Land of the Lion and the Sun,” presents the strongest physical contrasts; with the king of the forest and the king of day emblazoned upon her banners, she extended her dominion over rocky steppes and barren sands, as well as fertile fields and stately forests. Persia proper was a comparatively small province, but the tide of conquest gathered many nations beneath her banners, and the dominion of Cyrus extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and from the snowy peaks of the Caucasus, downward to the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The court of Darius was enriched by tributes from Egypt and Babylonia, from Assyria and India, from Media, Lydia, Phœnicia and many other lands.
Modern Persia occupies the larger portion of the great Īrānian plateau, which rises to the height of from four to eight thousand feet, between the valleys of the Indus and the Tigris, and covers more than a million square miles. On the northwest the Persian Empire is united to the mountains of Asia Minor by the high lands of Armenia, while on the northeast the Paropansius and the Hindū Kush connect it with the Himālayas of ancient India. The eastern and western boundaries are traced with more or less uncertainty, amidst high ranges of mountains broken here and there by deserts and valleys. The fertile lowlands are found in the forest-clad regions south of the Caspian Sea, and down toward the shore of the Persian Gulf.
Although she has of late exercised but little influence in the world’s political councils, she retains a fair position among the Asiatics, and the fact that a portion of her territory is under Russian influence, while the rest is controlled to a greater or less extent by England, would indicate that in the near future her political position may become one of great importance. She still occupies a territory which is more than twice the area of France, and her climate varies according to the contrasting features of her formation, being rough and cold in the mountain ranges, and often severe on the great table-lands where the sandstorms rage across the desert, while other portions of the empire are luxuriant with tropical foliage.
Down by the shores of the gulf the rice fields lift their dainty plumes, farther away the acres of barley lie like golden billows in the sunlight, and the cots of the peasantry are nestled under groups of flowering trees. Beyond them rises the forest of almost primeval grandeur where the great trunks of the trees are clothed with velvet mosses and encircled with floral vines. Here the green shades of the wood are relieved by the vivid scarlet of the pomegranate blossoms, and streams that leap from snowy hills come dashing through the woodlands, laden with life and rippling with music. Far away in the distance, the barren table-lands arise, and beyond these the mountain ridges press upward, dim and silent against the fields of blue, and the white clouds drop their feathery snows upon peaks which are unsoiled by the foot of man.