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.