Like the Hellic races, the Persians of old were remarkable for personal modesty. They did not practice any unnatural vice, until they learned it from Greece[941]. They placed an extremely high value on their own race, which they esteemed far before all others[942]. Different social relations among those who were intimate were marked by differences in the kiss[943]. Equals kissed with the mouths, unequals by the mouth of one on the cheek of the other: while persons greatly inferior fell prostrate. In the Odyssey, Ulysses kisses his son Telemachus (doubtless on the face) (Od. xvi. 190), and Penelope kisses Telemachus on the head and eyes (xvii. 39); but Ulysses kisses the king of Egypt, when he is a suppliant (xiv. 279) on the knees, and the slave Dolius on the hands (xxiv. 398): he kisses Eumæus and Philœtius on the head and hands, while they embrace, but do not kiss him (xxi. 224, 5). Dolius held the hand, and no more, of Ulysses. But the chief is kissed on the head and eyes by his grandmother (Od. xix. 417.)
Like the Greeks, the Persians shore the hair in mourning. They held lying to be the most disgraceful of all things. It was also disgraceful to be called a woman[944]. Again, the Persians in the time of Crœsus were highlanders[945], destitute of all the comforts of life, just as Achilles describes the Helli round Dodona. Like the καρηκομόωντες Ἀχαιοὶ, they wore their hair long[946].
All these are points of similarity. Upon the other hand, there are two points of discrepancy, which may be noticed. The Persians had many wives and concubines: and they did not burn their dead. Upon the first of these points of discrepancy with the Greeks, the Persians were in harmony with, at least, the ruling race of Troas; and polygamy must always be an affair of ruling races, or of a select few.
A fragment of the old historian Xanthus[947] would lead us to suppose that they derived this habit from the Medes, who, according to that author, had no law of incest, and freely exchanged their wives.
On the second point, they differed from Troy: for the Trojans, like the Greeks, burned their dead.
It was also the Persian custom to introduce women to their banquets[948]. There is, however, a trace of this last-named practice at least in the Olympian banquets of Homer. And it is plain that Arete, the queen of Alcinous, was at the Phæacian banquet (Od. vii. 49, 50, 147, 8): but this may have been due to the unusual honour in which she was held (Od. vii. 67). More ordinarily the Greek women do not appear at meals with men.
Thus far we seem to be carried by the text of Herodotus standing alone. And it should be borne in mind, that Ctesias, as he is reported in Photius[949], though he condemns Herodotus as a teller of untruth, and contradicts him in his narrative, does not question his account of religion and manners.
Evidence of the Behistun Inscription.
But the discovery and deciphering by Rawlinson of the Behistun Inscription throws an additional light upon this question, and one highly confirmatory of the general conclusions towards which we have tended. The Magian, called Smerdis[950] by Herodotus, appears in this Inscription under the name of Gomates: and it is now demonstrated, that the revolution which he wrought, or of which he took advantage, and which was reversed by Darius, was religious as well as political. For, says the Inscription, ‘when Cambyses had proceeded to Egypt, the state became irreligious.’ It is then related that Gomates obtained the empire. But, says Darius, ‘I adored Ormuzd. Ormuzd brought me aid.’ ‘Then did I, with faithful men, slay Gomates the Magian.... By the grace of Ormuzd I became king. Ormuzd gave me the empire.... The rites which Gomates the Magian had introduced I prohibited. I restored the chants, and the worship, to the State, and to those families, which Gomates the Magian had deprived of them.’ Thus Darius represents in this great transaction the Persian party and its religion, as against the Medians and the Magi. Hence arises a direct presumption that the Magi were properly a Median class, and were adopted into the Persian system, only in consequence of the connection and political amalgamation of the Persians with the Medes.