on the boundaries, where, if the nature of the ground permitted it, the passage from one province to another was strongly fortified. It certainly remains a question what was the strength of these forces in the provinces, but the great facility with which armies were got together proves them to have been very considerable. In Asia Minor alone Cyrus assembled above one hundred thousand men; Abrocomas, who was opposed to him on his march, had three hundred thousand; and the Persian army on the Granicus was forty thousand strong.

From these troops the garrisons in the cities were kept entirely distinct, and the importance attached by the Persians to places of strength was in proportion to the difficulty which (like all other nomad nations, who know nothing about the conduct of sieges) they had experienced in subduing them. They were looked upon as the keys of the provinces in which they were situated, and accordingly provided with ample garrisons. The troops in question were completely different from those mentioned above, not being comprehended in the military divisions alluded to, but being under commanders of their own, and not bound to appear at the general muster.

Both descriptions of forces were, however, comprehended under the title of the king's army, and were distinct from the household troops of the satraps and grandees, which often amounted to several thousands. By the customs of the East every great man is attended by an armed retinue, proportioned to his rank and wealth, and as the viceregal courts were formed upon the model of the king's, this became necessarily a part of their establishments, and the more readily as corps of troops were a no less customary present from the monarch to his favourites than were cities.

Originally, it is probable that all these troops may have been Persians, but as these gradually withdrew themselves from martial duties, their places were supplied by mercenaries, Greeks or Asiatics. As cavalry, the nomad nations to the south and east of the Caspian were preferred, the Hyrcaniaus, Parthians, and Sacæ. The first, especially, had a high character with the Persians for courage, and on this account the latter kept up a good understanding with the wandering hordes of Great Bucharia, though no longer their tributaries. The Greeks, however, were preferred to all the rest, and as early as the time of the younger Cyrus, not only did the flower of the army always consist of them, but towards the end of the Persian monarchy they constituted the garrisons of all the cities of Asia Minor. Before the time of the younger Cyrus their pay amounted to a daric per month (about 17. 08. 4d. sterling), which was augmented by Cyrus to a daric and a half. We have already remarked the fatal consequences which this custom had on the warlike temper of the Persians.

In a nation of conquerors every individual is expected to be a soldier, and among the Persians all, especially those in possession of lands, were required to be able to serve on horseback. This necessitated an internal constitution of the whole empire, having for its object the military equipment of the population; and the arrangement adopted has usually been the same in all Asiatic nations, and is the simplest that could have been devised. A decimal system runs through the whole empire, and serves at the same time to mark the rank of the commander. The common people are divided into bodies of ten, having a captain of that number, after whom come the commanders of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. Officers of a higher rank are not apportioned to particular bodies of men, but form the general staff. This has been equally the case among the Mongols and the Persians, and this simple arrangement made it possible for both races to

assemble large armies with incredible rapidity. All that was required was a mandate from the commander of ten thousand, which was transmitted to the commanders of thousands, and hundreds, and tens, till the forces, already organised, assembled in martial array. In this manner the Mongol princes often got together, in a few days, armies of cavalry to the number of several hundreds of thousands, and we cannot, therefore, be astonished to see the same thing take place among the Persians.

The great multitude of nomad tribes which wandered on the borders of the Persian empire greatly facilitated the assembling of mighty armaments. These tribes readily engaged in such enterprises, either for pay or allured by the hope of plunder. As the Baskirs and Calmucks follow the Russian armies, so did the Mardi, Pericanii, and others, those of Cyrus; and the more widely the dominion of the Persians was extended, the greater became the number of such auxiliaries. The Persians stood the more in need of their aid as their own cavalry was always heavy-armed. With them, as with the Parthians, both man and horse were armed in mail, though, strictly speaking, this appears to have been a distinction confined to a certain number, and the greater part seem to have had no defensive armour, and thus served to swell the carnage which the Greeks wrought among them after the victory of Platæa.

The foregoing sections must have served to explain the way in which these forces subsisted in the provinces. Each province was obliged to furnish to the governor what was necessary to their maintenance, in kind, and the governor caused what was so collected to be distributed among the soldiers. Payment in money was made only to the Grecian auxiliaries, who could not otherwise have been kept together, having been accustomed to the same in their own country; the Persians were bound to serve without pay, and the nomad races of Central Asia, many of whom had never even seen coined money, were as little disposed to require remuneration in that shape as are at the present day many of the auxiliaries of the Russian armies.

In a warlike nation, a military command always confers great distinction, being often regarded as more honourable than the civil magistracies; and this was the case among the Persians. The Myriarchs (commanders of tens of thousands) and Chiliarchs (commanders of thousands) enjoyed a distinguished rank, and the officers above them, the generals, were among the most illustrious of the nation. Of the generality of these we are expressly told that they belonged to the family of the Achæmenidæ, or at all events to the tribe of the Pasargadæ, or were connected by marriage with the royal house, and consequently the officers of rank consisted principally of the king's kinsmen. Among these generals themselves, however (of whom there were usually several in an army), there existed gradations of rank; and if a king's son was appointed generalissimo, this was understood as equivalent to his nomination as successor.

Hitherto we have confined our remarks to the troops which were regularly maintained by the Persians to defend the conquered provinces. With the exception of those raised among the Persians themselves, these appear, from what has been stated, to have consisted of mercenary troops, to the exclusion of the natives of the provinces themselves; nevertheless, the latter were by no means free from all military service, but were summoned on occasions of extraordinary expeditions undertaken for the extension of the empire. On such emergencies general mandates were issued throughout all the vast dominion of Persia, the nations of the East and West were gathered together in herds, and one of the most extraordinary spectacles

ensued which the history of the world has recorded, and the more deserving of our regard for the accuracy with which Herodotus has described the armament of Darius, and still more that of Xerxes.

When the Persians began their career as conquerors they adopted, and always maintained, the custom that the conquered nations should swell the numbers of their host, and accompany them in their more remote expeditions. When, however, their empire had become consolidated and organised, and stretched from the Indus to the Mediterranean, the drawing together of forces so widely disseminated must have become burdened with endless difficulties, and would consequently, on occasions of minor importance (such as slight internal disturbances, or trifling wars,) have been as futile as impossible. On extraordinary occasions, however, whether of great national undertakings for the aggrandisement of the empire, or of formidable invasions from without, the custom was revived of mustering the whole force of the empire, as is proved by the mighty expeditions of Darius Hystaspes, of Xerxes, and the last Darius.

Even the preliminary steps to such armaments were of vast magnitude. The king's mandate was addressed to all nations, and specified the number of men, horses, and ships, or the amount of provisions to be furnished by each. The commotion which was excited in all Asia by the preparations made for the expedition of Xerxes, lasted for four years. Time was necessary to enable the remote nations to send in their contingent.

A general rendezvous was then appointed, which, in the case of the armament just mentioned, was Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Hither all the contingents of the different provinces resorted, conducted by leaders of their own race. These, however, were allowed no authority in actual war, the officers being taken exclusively from among the Persians. This was a privilege reserved for the conquering nation, as was the case, also, among the Mongols and Tatars. The subject nations, on the other hand, were treated as bondsmen, and termed slaves, in contradistinction to the Persians, who were denominated freemen. These terms, however, only marked the comparative freedom of the nations to whom they were applied, for with reference to the king, the Persians were as little free as the other subject nations.

The order of the march, as long as the army continued to traverse the dominions of the empire, was remarkable; or rather, it might almost be called an absence of all order. The men were not arranged according to the nations to which they belonged, but formed one vast chaotic mass. In the centre was the king, among his Persians, and the baggage was sent on before. As the troops advanced on their march, the inhabitants of the country were driven on before them, and augmented the numbers of the host, which thus perpetually accumulated; and as most nations took their wives and children with them to war, the baggage must have been immense. Undoubtedly the most inexplicable part of this account, is the way in which the army was supplied with provisions. In the countries through which they had to pass, magazines of corn were necessarily prepared, long before, and further supplies of the same followed the army by sea. The rest of their food the forces were left to find for themselves. For the king and his suite banquets were provided long before, and with such an unbounded expense that this alone sufficed to ruin the cities which furnished them. This also was a consequence of the idea that a monarch was the sole proprietor of all that his provinces contained, and the Persians understood this so literally as to carry away with them the costly utensils of plate which were

displayed on these occasions. It is needless to say that the idea of a regular encampment could not be entertained in the case of such enormous hosts; the king and his great men had indeed their tents, but the army at large bivouacked under the open heavens, the necessary consequence being a multitude of diseases.

It was only on their approaching the enemy's borders that the army was classed according to the nations of which it was composed; and at the same time the host was reviewed at the king's command. To this custom we are

indebted for that precious document, the catalogue of the host of Xerxes, which the Father of History has preserved for us. This review took place just within the confines of Europe, and little as the scene may instruct the soldier, this is one of the most interesting of all the records of history to the philosophical historian. On no occasion have so many and such various races of men been gathered together as were here assembled in one spot, in their appropriate dresses and armour, on the plain of Doriscus. Herodotus has enumerated and described fifty-six, which served some on foot, some on horseback, and others on board the fleet. Here were to be seen the cotton garments of the Indians, and the Ethiopians from above Egypt habited in lions' hides, the swarthy Baluchis from Gedrosia, and the nomad hordes from the steppes of Mongolia and Great Bucharia; wild races of huntsmen like the Sagartians, who, destitute of weapons of brass or iron, caught their enemies, like animals of the chase, in leathern lassos; and besides these, the rich dresses of the Medes and Bactrians, the Libyans drawn in war chariots of four horses, and the Arabs mounted on camels. Here also were to be seen the fleets of the Phoenicians and the Greeks of Asia Minor, compelled to serve against their kindred. Never did despotic power create a spectacle more glorious at its commencement or more lamentable in its issue. The straits of Thermopylæ first presented to the astonished Asiatics a sight completely novel to them; it was to no purpose that their countless hordes were driven by the scourge against a handful of Spartans; and although treachery at last conducted them over the lifeless bodies of those heroes, the names of Salamis and Platea remained behind, everlasting monuments of Grecian valour.

THE FINE ARTS

Rude nations which suddenly pass to the condition of conquerors from that of wandering shepherds and herdsmen are not capable of erecting for themselves cities and palaces. For this purpose they are obliged to enlist the services of the conquered, among whom the arts of architecture and sculpture may have already attained some degree of perfection. This was the case with the Mongol tribes in China, the Chaldeans in Babylon, as well as other nations; and it is expressly related of Cambyses, that he transported from Egypt a large number of builders to erect his palaces at Susa and Persepolis. It is certain, however, that we discover at the latter place no traces of Egyptian art, either as regards the general character of the ruins or their details; nor can we reasonably suppose an Egyptian architect to have conceived the plan of structures so completely different from any to be found in his native country, any more than we can suppose that masons accustomed to what we call the Gothic style, if transported into another country, would at once be able to construct buildings in the Grecian taste. The prevailing character of Persian architecture, a fondness for terrace works, a style totally unknown to the ancient Egyptians, was considerably more ancient than the

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reign of Cambyses, and altogether of Asiatic origin, as is proved by the hanging gardens of Babylon, constructed by Semiramis. Allowing the utmost that in fairness we can to the account of the Egyptian workmen imported by Cambyses, we cannot suppose them to have achieved more than

the mechanical parts of the structures erected. The architectural remains of Egypt prove that the Egyptians were very capable of elevating and working large masses of stone, and possibly also of carving relievos after a given design or copy. The question, therefore, may be considered as still unanswered: What was the original country whence this style of architecture was derived? Who were the masters of the Persians in this art, and whence did they borrow their models?

The simple answer is undoubtedly this: from the same quarter that they derived the other rudiments of their civilisation, in short, from Media.

From all that we know of the Medes, and the splendour of the Median court and their principal city Ecbatana (a city which appears originally to have been constructed on terraces elevated successively one above the other), we may conclude that the science of architecture had attained among them a certain degree of perfection a conjecture which appears carried to certainty by the accounts of recent travellers. The traces of the ancient royal seat Ecbatana, of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, presented, according to Morier and Porter, the same characteristic style of architecture with which those travellers had become familiar at Chehl-Menar, the fashion of the columns and even the characters of the inscriptions being the same. We cannot avoid inferring that it was from the Medes that the Persians derived, with the rest of their civilisation, the art of architecture also. It must be added, that the sculptures in these ruins are so obviously derived from the Magian religion, which prevailed among the Medes, that we can hardly doubt that the buildings in question were erected under the influence and according to the ideas of that caste, since the figures in question must not be mistaken for mere idle decorations, but had an intimate relation to the purposes for which the buildings themselves were severally designed. But the Magian religion and the Magian priesthood were not confined to Media, but extended over the countries to the East, especially those upon the Oxus, as far as the mountains bordering on India, the parent country of those fabulous monsters of which, as we have observed, traces are to be seen. Here lay Bactriana, at all times one of the richest countries of the world, in consequence of its position between the Indus and Oxus, and its connection with India, as well as the fertility of its soil, forming an important part of the empire of the Medes, whose monarchs appear to have resided at Bactra long before they occupied Ecbatana. This also was the country where the religion of Zoroaster first took root and flourished, and thus it became the parent land of the civil institutions of the Medes. When, therefore, the Persians are said to have derived their architecture originally from thence, it must be understood that they did so as the disciples of the Medes.