SHAPOUR. 
SSI 
the victuals from his table even to a woman, a captive queen, the 
proudest monarch whom he had conquered.* The Ccirmathian 
Prince who advanced against Bagdad, tied the Lieutenant of the 
Caliph Moctadi with his dogs :j* * § and the iron cage of Timour, 
(which is doubted, only because Timour does not himself record it) 
is a familiar illustration; of which the idea was not confined to that in¬ 
stance, for Badur, King of Cambay , prepared a cage to convey one 
of the Portuguese heroes to the Great Turk.J But there is a nearer 
precedent: the Persian monarchs have the unrivalled honour of alone 
taking two Roman Emperors; and Alp Arslan, who enjoyed the 
fortune of Sapor, remembered perhaps his treatment of his prisoner; 
and though in his subsequent conduct he resembles our own Black 
Prince, and forms a striking contrast to the sequel of Sapor’s conduct, 
yet, when his captive first appeared before him, he is said to have 
planted his foot on the neck of the Emperor .§ 
The dynasty of the Sassanides, though the commencement of the 
historical age of Persia ;|| and as such comparatively less obscure in 
Oriental writers, than the preceding period,^ is yet, as D’Herbelot 
remarked,** involved in great difficulties. The darkness of the inter¬ 
mediate age from the death of Alexander to the accession of the 
house ofARSACEs, and through the greatness of the Parthian empire, 
is confined principally to the East; and from the hereditary connection 
of the Seleucida;, and their successors with the Greeks of Asia, is 
* Petit de la Croix, Life of Genghiz, p. 27 6. 
f Gibbon, vol. v. 4to. p. 451. 
t A.D. 1537. Faria “ Asia Portuguesa by Stevens, vol. i. p. 405. 
§ Gibbon, vol. v. p. 664. 
|| De Sacy, pref. p. v. De Guignes. MSS. of the King 1 of France, ii. p. 140, 
English Edit. Gibbon, i. 4to. p. 2 56. 
f Ancient Universal History, vol. xi. p. 142, &c. 
** D’Herbelot, in Sir Wm. Ouseley’s Epitome. 
3 d 2 
