636 
REMARKS ON THE STRUCTURE. 
their surface. Such figures too, must have been colossal, to bear 
any proportion to the foundations on which they stood ; and that 
no fragment, either above or below, should ever be noted in the 
memory of any traveller, or held in tradition by any of the 
people about, would be miraculously wonderful, if such relics 
had ever existed. But I am not aware of a precedent in any 
idolatrous country, for such a wilderness of gods, as we should 
have found assembled here in effigy ; and, least of all, could we 
expect to find such extravagant proofs of polytheism in a palace 
that appears to have owed its origin to the immediate ancestors 
of Cyrus, the simple worshippers of Mithra, or the sun ; and the 
proudest decorations of which may be dated from Darius, the 
follower of the philosophic Zoroaster, who imaged the god of 
his idolatry in nothing grosser than the element of fire. To 
suppose these pillars to have been the supports of commemora¬ 
ting statues to the honour of the heroes of Persia, seems equally 
untenable ; for it is not in absolute monarchies, as in republics; 
or in commonwealths, where kings form only one great 
member of the body politic, that the eminent warriors and 
worthies of the land have such monuments erected to them. 
In Persia, we find the bas-reliefs of its kings and their attendants 
on the walls of its palaces : in Rome, we find the statues of 
Brutus, and Cato, and Cicero, under the ruins of the Forum. 
At a distance of sixty feet from the eastern and western 
colonnades, stood the central phalanx of columns, to the number 
of thirty-six; but no more than five, at present exist entire. 
Therefore, when we calculate these, with those standing in the 
three other groups, there are just fifteen remaining erect, 
amongst the fallen host which lie in all directions, broken, or 
mouldered to dust on the ground. This central group is 
