SHAPOUR. 
381 
the text alludes, page 89, in describing the hall of audience of a great 
King, is possibly that of Ciiosroes, King of Armenia,* who was 
murdered by Sapor, after an unavailing war of thirty years; and 
whose fall therefore may be commemorated as an object of importance 
in the series of the exploits of Sapor. 
The Plates No. XV.J* * § and No. XIX. though probably from the 
works of the same sculptor as the last, record the events of an earlier 
date; and delineate in different views the contest for the crown of 
Persia, which was waged between the last of the Parthian monarchs 
and Artaxerxes, the founder of the house of Sassan. Of this 
history, as it is connected with the sculptures at Shaponr and Nakshi 
Rustam , it is sufficient to observe that, according to an inscription on 
the spot, explained and confirmed by De Sacy,J Artaxerxes was 
the son of Babec, the Satrap , or perhaps the hereditary Prince of 
Persis Proper, under the empire of the Arsaces.—Artaxerxes was 
the grandson of Sassan ;§ from whom, rather than from himself, his 
dynasty, like that of the Seljukians from the grandfather of their 
founder,|| has been denominated. Others on the contrary, as the 
Lubb al Tarikh in De Sacy,^[ and the authorities on which Sir Wm. 
Jones relied,** assume S ass an a shepherd, to be his father by the 
daughter of Babec : and others again expand the whole genealogy 
into romance.-f j* Vaillant lavishes on Artaxerxes and his 
birth, all the bitterness of reproach; “ infimae sortis vir, sordidissimo 
“ loco natus, sceleratus, injustissimus.” So regularly however has 
* Gibbon, i. 326, 4to. 
+ A fac-simile at Nakshi Rustam , p. 125-6, of that subject already noticed at Shapour « 
f P. 30, &c. 
§ De Sacy, p. 167. Ancient Universal History, xi. p. 146. 
|| Gibbon, vol. v. p. 654. Modern Univ. Hist. iv. p. 79. 
5 P. 32. See the Ancient Universal History, vol. xi. 
** History of Persia : Works, vol. v. p. 600. 
+t De Sacy, p. 32-3 
Vaillant, pref. p. vii. 389, 
