578 
PERSEPOLIS. 
was considered by scholars in his days. “ The capital city in 
the kingdom of Persia (he says,) was named Susa. It was 
thwarted with the great river Choaspis, of which water, and none 
other, the kings of Persia used to drink, in whatsoever place 
they were. At .one parasangue from Susa, (a parasangue con¬ 
tained! three-score stades, which made seven thousand five 
hundred paces, amounting to two miles or thereabout, at four 
thousand paces for a mile,) was a village called Persepolis for 
excellency, and therein was a temple, dedicated to Pallas, the 
goddess of arms, and named Pasargadis, in which temple the 
monarchs of the Persians were crowned.” It is curious to see 
how a really learned man of that period has abridged the distance 
between these two ancient capitals; and while he shows so much 
knowledge concerning the history of the places he names, how 
he makes so great a jumble of their relative positions; yet, it is 
not unsatisfactory to find, from what he says of the temple of 
Pasargadm, that opinion had then placed its site so near the 
situation where we believe its ruins stand ; if not within the 
boundaries of Persepolis, yet not many farsangs from them. 
To attempt any guess of the period when the city of Persepolis 
first rose from the plain, would be as useless and bewildering as 
to analyse its various names; the means now in our hands, of 
forming any satisfactory conjectures respecting its origin, can only 
reach to the probable era of the different remaining ruins; by 
comparing their architectural fragments and sculptured relics, 
with the yet existing specimens of these arts in those countries 
which were once connected with Persia either by conquest or 
alliance. The most conspicuous remains in Persepolis, or, as the 
natives call it, Tackt-i-Jemsheed, (the throne of Jemsheed,) are 
Chehelminar, or the Forty Columns. The immediate impression 
