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groom of the latter, to secure him the Persian diadem. They state 

 Hystaspes, or GUSHSTAP, as they write the name, to have been the 

 eldest son of Lohorasp, a prince of great talents, but of a haughty 

 and martial disposition, constantly engaged, during his youth, in re- 

 bellious projects against his father's life and throne ; and, in his more 

 mature years, endeavouring once more to rend Turan, the daughter 

 of the nominal sovereign of which empire he espoused, from its tri- 

 butary dependance on the kings of Persia. At length, the prudent 

 resignation by Lohorasp of a sceptre, which increasing years and in- 

 firmities rendered him unable to wield with energy, saved himself 

 from public degradation, while this unexpected act of paternal kind- 

 ness contributed to reclaim a son whom no menaces could daunt and 

 no open hostilities subdue. For a long period they lived together in 

 one palace in the utmost harmony and affection. The dethroned 

 monarch, at length disgusted with the pomp of courts, laid aside 

 every vestige of his former dignity, invested himself with the habit of 

 a priest, and retired to spend the remainder of his life in the solitude 

 of a cloister, which he built for that purpose. . In that solitude he 

 passed thirty years in meditation and prayer, but it afforded not the 

 repose for which he languished to his closing life ; being, at the end 

 of that period, barbarously massacred with the other Magi in an ir- 

 ruption of the Turanians. On this voluntary retirement of his father, 

 Hystaspes having, by his marriage with the daughter of the king of 

 Turan, more firmly than ever established the union of the two king- 

 doms, quitted Balk as an imperial residence, and fixed his future 

 abode at Istakar, called by the Greeks Persepolis, where afterwards 

 he became the decided patron of the new superstition, which, under 

 Zeratusht, was then springing up in Persia, and with the insignia of 

 which he probably adorned the lofty walls and portals of that superb 

 palace, hewn, as its name implies, out of the living rock. 



Concerning the age and meaning of those sculptures, many wild 



