388 
SHAPOUR. 
relieved by the Western authorities, whose testimonies have been 
collected with so much research by Vaillant, and confirmed by the 
medals of the Arsacidje. But this light is lost in the middle of the 
third century; nor perhaps could a more difficult portion of ancient 
history be selected than the succeeding dynasty, a period nevertheless 
probably the most brilliant, in the foreign relations of Persia, of any 
since the extinction of the sovereignty of Darius, and at the same 
time the most fortunate in the internal prosperity and resources of the 
empire. The task was suggested to Vaillant,* * * § who had so ably 
executed the Parthian annals, but he resigned it to the adviser, and it 
was left undone. 
The deficiencies of European materials are not supplied by Oriental 
authorities. The value of the Mahomedan accounts of ancient Persia, 
may be estimated by their omission of the success of Sapor, the most 
splendid in the whole period of which they treat. Gibbon p has 
already remarked from DTIerbelot, that the modern Persians 
know nothing of the capture of a Roman Emperor; and it may be 
added, that though it appears from Mr. Morier, p. 201, that a 
Persian of the present day was acquainted with the event, yet neither 
Mirkhond,J nor Khondemir,§ nor the Tarikh published by Sir 
Wm. Ouse ley, allude to it. Whatever then may be the deficiencies 
or even the contradictions of the Greek historians in writing on the 
affairs of Persia, they are still probably the best authorities on which we 
can rely. The contemporary classics possess no one disadvantage, which 
is not shared by the later Mahomedans ; they are alike writing on the 
history of a people, whom the Greeks hated as enemies, and whom the 
Mussulmans despised as infidels, and whose language was probably 
* Vaillant, Arsac: Imperium, p. 389. 
t Gibbon, vol. i. 4to. p. 331. 
f Mirkhond, in De Sacy, p. 282-90. 
§ Khondem in, in Ancient Universal History, vol, xi. p. 151. 
