'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.' [‎281] (312/582)

VISIT TO THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS. £81
The ruins now seen, correspond neither with those of a palace
nor a castle ; and are not those, therefore, of the edifice burnt by
Alexander. On all these remains, no mark of fire is to be traced,
which could not have been the case if this had been the prin
cipal agent used in its destruction. Plutarch, in his Life of Alex
ander, remarks that after the burning of the Temple of Diana, at
Ephesus, it was necessary to scrape the parts that had resisted the
fire, which took away so much from them as visibly to alter their
proportions; so that the marks of fire would be as difficult to re
move here, if they had ever existed.
There are appearances at Persepolis of five different buildings
united in one, and each apparently of a different age, after the
manner of the Egyptians.
The books of the Maccabees, already cited, say, in the first,
that there was a rich temple at Persepolis; and in the second,
that Antiochus Epiphanes determined to pillage it. Alexander
therefore could not have destroyed it; for it is highly improbable,
from the history of those times, that so laboured and magnificent
a work should have been rebuilt and restored in the short period
between Alexander and the Syrian king. The Macedonian con
queror, it is true, might have pillaged it, and the celebrity of the
divinity there adored might have drawn to it again a new fund
of treasures. The historian of the Maccabees seems indeed more
occupied about the temple than the city, as an object of much
higher importance.
Diodorus and Justin agree in saying that Antiochus Epiphanes
having learnt that a temple of Belus, in the province of Elymais,
raised to terrify the beholders, and the other for the better strengthening and fortifying of the
place. On the east side of the citadel, about four hundred feet distant, stood a mount, called
the Royal Mount, for here are all the sepulchres of the kings; many apartments and little
cells being cut into the midst of the rock, into which cells there is made no direct passage ;
but the coffins with the dead bodies are by instruments hoisted up, and so let down into these
vaults. In this citadel were many stately lodgings, both for the King and his soldiers, of ex
cellent workmanship, and treasury chambers most conveniently contrived for the laying up of
money.'— Diod. Sic. lib. xvii. c. 8.
2 O