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,