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tie. After a contest of great obstinacy and slaughter, in which 

 half the royal family of Turan perished, victory declared for 

 the former; and, before Argiasp could levy a new army or 

 rally the routed one, the victorious Persians were in his capital, 

 where every thing was given up to pillage and the licentious 

 outrages of an enraged soldiery. Having taken this signal revenge 

 for religion derided and a throne insulted, Hystaspes marched 

 triumphantly back to his own dominion, where, from one or other 

 of those various causes, jealousy, or suspicion, which distract Eastern 

 courts, he shortly after tarnished his laurels by imprisoning the 

 prince, who was the partner of them, in a strong fortress, on the 

 summit of a lofty hill, called Gaird-Kuh, or the Round Mountain, 

 in the country of Rudbar*. 



The hostile flames, lighted at the new altar erected by Zeratusht 

 to the sovereign power who formed the elements, still burned with 

 unextinguishable fury in the northern Asia. Goaded by the recol- 

 lection of the aggravated injuries recently received from the Per- 

 sian monarch, his slaughtered relatives and ruined capital, Ar- 

 giasp, now, in his turn, meditated a deep and dreadful blow at the 

 very existence of the empire of Iran, and the holy impostor, (as he 

 deemed him,) who had instigated Hystaspes to invade his dominions. 

 Balk, the capital of Corasan, was at that time the hallowed re- 

 sidence of Zeratusht and the Magi, his disciples. The hoary 

 monarch who had once wielded the sceptre of Iran, secluded in the 

 cloister which he had erected, in that metropolis devoted the few 

 moments of his declining life to meditation and prayer. But soon 

 the sacred fires were to be quenched by the blood of the ministering 

 priests, and the ashes of royalty to be blended with those of the altar, 

 which its power had protected. Indefatigable in collecting an army 



* Mirkhond apud Texeira, p. 66. 



