I04 History of Art in Antiquity. directions, serve as bases to the central rows of columns in the porch, a device which vividly recalls the oldest traditions of Persia. The reader will have guessed that, if we have laid so much stress on the palace at Ecbatana, it was because we consider it as the most Eastern representative of a constructive system in vogue over a portion of Anterior Asia from high antiquity ; a system characterized by the almost exclusive employment of timber, as we learn from the study of the tombs, whose facades were imitated from wooden shapes, as well as the modem houses of the peasantr) , in which are reflected and faithfully preserved primitive habits.' The area over which lignite architecture has obtained and still obtains corresponds with the vast wooded region which from the Propontis and the Euxine stretches right across the peninsula in a southern direction, traverses the timbered heights of Taurus, and adjoins on Lycia ; whilst in the cast the Caucasus connects it with H)rcania, and thence with the Caspian, where it terminates. Hcbatana lies, at present at least, outside this zone ; but if wooden houses are still built at Ispahan, where forest trees are only seen within orchards, there is all the more reason why lignite dwellings should have obtained in the capital of Media, whose situation is much nearer the mountains of Kurdistan and Luristan, where clumps of oaks — remains, no doubt, of ancient forests — are still encountered ; but here, as on many points of the old world, man's neglect and the gnawing tooth of animals have finally destroyed them. It is not hard to understand why the royal architecture of Media should have exercised on that of Persia an indelible influence, even when art, carried on amidst new surroundings and with the command of far greater resources, had entered on new paths. Historians agree as to the loans the Persians contracted of the Medes after the accession of Cyrus. Persian royalty had no past ; hence, to make as good a figure as its predecessor, the pompous display and court etiquette of the latter were adopted wholesale. The poor rude mountaineers, whose costume, up to the time when they found themselves the masters of Asia, was as simple as that of the present Lurs and Bakhtiyaris, now adopted the long robe and tiara of the Medes. By appro- priating the arms and tactics of the Medes, the ill-equipped and irregular contingents of Pars were turned into well-constituted
- Hi^ of Art ^ torn. V. pp, 183-186, 370-372.
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