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different character from the youthful, ardent, aspiring, Xerxes of 

 the Greeks. From his other name of Ardeshir, often given him in 

 Mirkhond, he is, most probably, the Artaxerxes of their history. 

 Mirkhond, in Texeira, asserts, that his right hand and arm were 

 actually considerably longer than his left ; but the judicious author 

 above-cited thinks that his title of Longimanus metaphorically 

 alluded to his extensive power. There certainly are not, in the 

 Oriental writers, as Mr. Richardson has observed, any accounts, 

 similar to those of the Greeks, of the invasion of Greece by the 

 myriads of Xerxes, or of the subsequent defeat of that monarch 

 and the dispersion of his innumerable army and fleet. A defeat 

 and compelled retreat of such a disgraceful kind was not likely to 

 become the theme of any contemporary domestic historian in the 

 despotic empire of Asia ; or, if the story were ever recorded by the 

 Persian historic muse, may it not have perished with the archives 

 of the state, and the other treasures of Persian literature, on the 

 invasion of the Greeks, and amidst the flames that consumed Per- 

 sepolis ? It is impossible to conceive that Herodotus, who flourished 

 so near that period, and doubtless had his account from eye-wit- 

 nesses of that dreadful catastrophe, could be deceived as to the 

 leading circumstances of a fact of such public notoriety ; or to 

 coincide with Mr. Richardson in opinion, that the movements of a 

 Persian general and the inferior army of a satrap, or several satraps, 

 could be mistaken for the solemn march of Xerxes himself and 

 the concentrated force of the whole Persian empire. Convinced, 

 therefore, that, in travelling over the page of Greek history, de- 

 scribing this invasion, we are not wholly treading on fairy-ground, 

 and that, under whatever name, a monarch of the genius and cha- 

 racter of Xerxes once sat on the Persian throne, I shall proceed 

 to connect the narrative of events before-described, as ultimately 

 tending to the subjugation of India, by a concise recapitulation of 



