PERSIA HISTORY, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE 359 



In the early Christian ages a phase of Zoroastrianism, known as 

 . Mithraism, penetrated into the Roman world and spread so widely 

 that in many parts of Europe altars were set up and cave temples 

 built to celebrate the mysteries of the Persian divinity Mithra and 

 to glorify this personification of light, the sun, and truth. Further- 

 more, the system of Manichaeism, which sprang up on Persian soil, 

 was powerful enough for a time to compete with neo-Platonism and 

 Christianity for the religious and intellectual supremacy of the 

 Roman Empire. 



Persia to-day is Muhammadan, having accepted Islam in the 

 seventh century, at the time of the Arab conquest, but here again 

 she has played a prominent part, because she is the chief represent- 

 ative of the Shiite sect which acknowledged Ali as the successor 

 of Muhammad in opposition to the orthodox Sunnites. Within the 

 last seventy years, moreover, a new religious movement, eclectic in 

 character and known as Babism, has sprung up in Persia and as- 

 sumed such proportions as to menace the progress of Muhammadan- 

 ism in Iran and to attract attention even in the Occident. 



In the domain of art and architecture Persia is thought to have 

 borrowed largely from Assyria and Babylon in ancient times, and 

 later from Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, and in more recent days 

 from China and even the West ; nevertheless she has added so much 

 and made the importation so characteristically her own creation as to 

 command attention in all histories of these subjects. Our knowledge 

 of the artistic condition of Iran during the Median period is extremely 

 limited. Regarding architecture at that remote era we have to rely 

 solely on the account which Herodotus gives of the magnificent 

 walls at Ecbatana, colored in rainbow hues, and supplement this by 

 the description in the book of Judith, or again we must reproduce the 

 picture which Polybius gives of the temple of the Persian Artemis 

 at Ecbatana, the walls of which were covered with plates of silver 

 and gold. These structures have all vanished long since, except one 

 or two bases of columns and capitals of pillars, and there remains 

 not a trace of Median sculpture at Hamadan, which was the ancient 

 Ecbatana, save one, and even its claim to so great an antiquity 

 has been questioned. This is the great stone lion outside the city. 

 Although it is broken, battered, and prone on the ground, its outlines 

 are lifelike and artistic, and show what the Persian sculptor could 

 accomplish in ages past. 



The art and architecture developed under the Achsemenian 

 kings, between the sixth and the fourth century B.C., can boast of 

 having brought forth some of the grandest monuments produced 

 by the Aryan race. The ruins of ancient Pasargadse and Persepolis 

 find their superior in grandeur only at Athens and Rome. The 

 remains at the ancient city of Hathra, and perhaps also the huge 



