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i88 History of Art in Antiquity. for covering vast spaces without cutting them up by internal supports. If vaulting began very soon in Chaldaeia, it was because of die nature of the material, the only one the builder had at his command ; here, however, the art has already divested itself of its swaddling clothes, but it still hovers on the threshold of that other period in which the principle it has set itself will bring out an abundance of exquisite fruits, and give birth, on the one hand, to Byzantine architecture, whose masterpiece culminated in St. Sophia, and, on the other, to the Persian architecture of the second empire, whose lineal descendants are the stupendous mosques of the Middle Ages. We are inclined to place the edifices of Feniz-Abad and Sarvistan in the reign of the last Arsacidae or the first Sassanidse. There is a curious passage in Strabo worthy of more attention than it seems to have received. The geographer, after having enumerated the royal residences at Susa, Persepolis, and Pasar- gadae, as well as the Achaemenid palaces at Gabae in Upper Persia and Taocse on the coast, has the following : — " It was so at least in the time when the Persians were masters of Asia, but as years rolled on and the country was reduced to a state of vassalage, first by the Macedonians, and still more so by the Parthians, these antique palaces were abandoned for houses of a humbler description ; for if, up to the present, Persia has preserved native sovereigns, they have lost much of their power, and are dependent upon the Parthian king."' It is just possible that the ruins of Feruz-Abad, Sarvistan, and Ferash-Abad represent the residences of native princes who had become the vassals of the Parthians. This would explain in a natural manner how, in a fit of patriotic pride, one of them should have been tempted to decorate his house in a fashion that would recall the heroes of his race. Then, too, before Ardeshir, more than one Persian chief may have wished, and perhaps tried, to win back for his country not only her independence, but her former power as well. If it should be thought that in carrying back the edifices in question to the opening years of our era we have made them too old, we are quite willing to transfer them to the first Sassanida^, who, after the revolution they had successfully carried through, were in a better position to claim as their own some of the great things done in that past which they strove to revive. Down to ' Strabo, XV'. iit. ^ Digitized by Google