'Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, including a journey from Bagdad by Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, researches in Ispahan and the ruins of Persepolis, and journey from thence by Shiraz and Shapoor to the sea-shore. Description of Bussorah, Bushire, Bahrein, Ormuz, and Muscat, narrative of an expedition against the pirates of the Persian Gulf, with illustrations of the voyage of Nearchus, and passage by the Arabian Sea to Bombay.' [‎279] (310/582)

VISIT TO THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS.
279
either the conveniences or the leisure to execute such works in an
uninhabited place.
It is thought that the ruined edifice at Persepolis is a temple
of the ancient Persians, and that its sculptured subjects, as well as
style of architecture, resemble, in many particulars, that of Egypt.
Among these may be numbered the figures divided by trees, # the
sphynxes, vases, and chairs, the doors and architraves, subterranean
passages in the tombs, sarcophagi and urns, and a square well
twenty-five feet deep and fifteen square. The sculpture at Per
sepolis was also painted, mostly in blue, a favourite colour of
Egypt, but sometimes in black and in yellow. Le Brun counted
thirteen hundred figures of men and animals, the half of which
were large as life, without including those on the tombs; and he
counted the fragments of no less than two hundred and five
columns.
The opinion of these ruins being the remains of the palace
burnt by Alexander, is founded only on the assertion of Quintus
Curtius. Diodorus Siculus, (lib. xvii.) says that Alexander, assem-
bling his Macedonian followers, observed to them that Persepolis,
the capital of Persia, and the seat of its kings, had been always the
most distinguished city in Asia for its enmity to the Greeks, and
that he therefore abandoned it to their pillage, excepting only
from violation the palace of the King.f
* It would appear from a passage of Justin, that there was formerly much wood about this
place, as in the mention he makes of the stratagem of a letter being conveyed from Harpagus
to Cyrus in a hare's belly, and of the messengers arriving safe with it to the city of Persepolis,
he says' The people being there called together, he commanded all of them to be ready
with their hatchets to cut down the wood that did shut up the way ; which when they had
cheerfully performed, he invited them on the next day to a dinner:—Justin, lib. i.
f The following is the description given by Diodorus Siculus of the destruction of this city ;
— 4 When Alexander marched from Babylon against Persepolis, on approaching it he met a
large company of Grecians, who had been made prisoners by the Persians, and most inhumanly
mangled and disfigured, by the cutting off their hands, their feet, their ears, their noses, and
which excited the indignation of the monarch, and drew from him both tears of commisera
tion and more substantial proofs of his bounty. When Alexander had/ says the historian,