thentic history might afford some useful lessons both to the prince and people, the darkness of the first ages was embellished by the giants, the dragons, and the fabulous heroes of Oriental romance.[1] Every learned or confident stranger was enriched by the bounty, and flattered by the conversation, of the monarch: he nobly rewarded a Greek physician,[2] by the deliverance of three thousand captives; and the sophists who contended for his favour, were exasperated by the wealth and insolence of Uranius, their more successful rival. Nushirvan believed, or at least respected, the religion of the Magi; and some traces of persecution may be discovered in his reign.[3] Yet he allowed himself freely to compare the tenets of the various sects; and the theological disputes in which he frequently presided diminished the authority of the priest and enlightened the minds of the people. At his command, the most celebrated writers of Greece and India were translated into the Persian language: a smooth and elegant idiom, recommended by Mahomet to the use of paradise though it is branded with the epithets of savage and unmusical by the ignorance and presumption of Agathias.[4] Yet the Greek historian might reasonably wonder that it should be found possible to execute an entire version of Plato and Aristotle in a foreign dialect, which had not been framed to express the spirit of freedom and the subtleties of philosophic disquisition. And, if the reason of the Stagyrite might be equally dark or equally intelligible in
- ↑ In the fifth century the name of Restom or Rostam, an hero who equalled the strength of twelve [leg. 120] elephants, was familiar to the Armenians (Moses Chorenensis, Hist. Armen. l. ii. c. 7, p. 96, edit. Whiston). In the beginning of the seventh, the Persian romance of Rostam and Isfendiar was applauded at Mecca (Sale's Koran, c. xxxi. p. 335). Yet this exposition of ludicrum novæ historiæ is not given by Maracci (Refutat. Alcoran. p. 544-548).
- ↑ Procop. Goth. l. iv. c. 10. Kobad had a favourite Greek physician, Stephen of Edessa (Persic. l. ii. c. 26). The practice was ancient; and Herodotus relates the adventures of Democedes of Crotona (l. iii. c. 125-137).
- ↑ See Pagi, tom ii. p. 626. In one of the treaties an honourable article was inserted for the toleration and burial of the Catholics (Menander, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 142 [fr. 11; p. 213 in F. H. G. iv.]). Nushizad, a son of Nushirvan, was a Christian, a rebel, and — a martyr? (D'Herbelot, p. 681.)
- ↑ On the Persian language, and its three dialects, consult d'Anquetil (p. 339-343) and Jones (p. 153-185): ἁγρίᾳ τινὶ γλώττῃ καὶ ἀμουσοτάτῃ is the character which Agathias (l. ii. p. 66) ascribes to an idiom renowned in the East for poetical softness.
and Sir William Jones (Hist. of Nadir Shah, p. 161). [The Shāhnāma was begun by Dakikī and completed by Firdausī (who died A.D. 1020). The material probably goes back to a lost Chodāināma, or book of Lords, drawn up by the orders of Nushirvan, and worked up into a fuller form under Yazdegerd iii. (633-637). See Nöldeke, Tabari, p. xv.]
