"The Greeks talk of the club of Hercules, but what was his club to the bull-headed mace with which Roostem destroyed whole armies? Hercules, when an infant, crushed a couple of serpents; but Roostem, when a child, brained a furious elephant: Hercules shot his enemy, Ephialtes, in one eye; but Roostem did twice as much, for with a forked arrow he sealed in eternal darkness both eyes of the prince Esfendiâr: Hercules wore a lion's hide; Roostem had, according to Firdousee, a vest made of the skins of several lions. Both heroes had supernatural aid, but Roostem seldom required it; for he was endowed with the strength of one hundred and twenty elephants;[68] and out of fifty thousand horses one only, the celebrated Reksh, was found capable of bearing his weight.
"Hercules," I continued, "we are told by the Greeks (who, however, are great romancers), accomplished twelve labours; but what are these compared to the Heft Kh'ân, or Seven Stages of Roostem? Besides, it is doubted whether Hercules could ride—he certainly had no horse of any fame; whereas Reksh excelled all horses as much as his rider did all men."
This moderate and just tribute to the hero of Persia quite restored me to the good graces of my friends, who concurred with me in requesting our old minstrel, who had charge of the horses of some of our party, to recount to us the story of the Heft Kh'ân, or Seven Stages of Roostem. He could not, he said, recite these great events as written in the page of the immortal Firdousee; but if we would be satisfied, he could give us the tale in prose, as he had heard it read from the Shemsheer-Khânee.[69] Being assured that what he recollected of the story would be quite enough, and his audience having seated themselves beneath the sculptured rocks, he began as follows:
"Persia was at peace, and prosperous; but its king, Ky-Kâoos, could never remain at rest. A favourite singer gave him one day an animated account of the beauties of the neighbouring kingdom of Mazenderan;[70] its ever blooming roses, its melodious nightingales, its verdant plains, its mountains shaded with lofty trees, and adorned to their summits with flowers which perfumed the air, its clear murmuring rivulets, and, above all, its lovely damsels and valiant warriors.
"All these were described to the sovereign in such glowing colours, that he quite lost his reason, and declared he should never be happy till his power extended over a country so favoured by nature. It was in vain that his wisest ministers and most attached nobles dissuaded him from so hazardous an enterprise as that of invading a region, which had, besides other defenders, a number of Deevs, or demons, who, acting under their renowned chief Deev-e-Seffeed, or the White Demon, had hitherto defeated all enemies."
"Is the Deev-e-Seffeed," said I, stopping the narrator, and turning to Aga Meer, "believed by modern Persians to have been a supernatural being, as his name implies? or is this deemed a poetical fiction of Firdousee to describe a formidable warrior, perhaps a more northern prince, and therefore of a fairer complexion?" "Why," said the Meer, "it is with us almost a crime to refuse belief to a single line Firdousee has written; but though there is no doubt he has given the account of these Deevs as he found it, in the public records from which he composed his great historical poem; we find in some of our best dictionaries, such as the Jehângeeree, and Boorhân-e-Kâtih, the word Deev rendered 'a valiant warrior,' which shows that the learned authors of these works entertained the same notion as you do."
"If I had written a dictionary," said Mahomed Hoosein Khan, "I should have solved the difficulty by explaining, that Deev was a man who fought like a devil."
This little sally finished our grave disquisition; and Joozee Beg, who seemed not a little impatient at the interruption, resumed his narration.