an monarch who sent his troops to combat at Marathon. Inscriptions
in a character termed the Arrow-headed, or Cuneiform, had long been
known to exist on the marble monuments at Persepolis, near the site of
the ancient Susa, and on the faces of rocks in other places formerly
ruled over by the early Persian kings. But for thousands of years they
had been mere unintelligible enigmas to the curious but baffled
beholder; and they were often referred to as instances of the folly of
human pride, which could indeed write its own praises in the solid rock,
but only for the rock to outlive the language as well as the memory of
the vainglorious inscribers.

The elder Niebuhr, Grotefend, and Lassen, had made some guesses at the
meaning of the cuneiform letters; but Major Rawlinson of the East India
Company's service, after years of labor, has at last accomplished the
glorious achievement of fully revealing the alphabet and the grammar of
this long unknown tongue. He has, in particular, fully deciphered and
expounded the inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun, on the western
frontiers of Media. These records of the Achaemenidae have at length found
their interpreter; and Darius himself speaks to us from the consecrated
mountain, and tells us the names of the nations that obeyed him, the
revolts that he suppressed, his victories, his piety, and his glory.

Kings who thus seek the admiration of posterity are little likely to dim
the record of their successes by the mention of their occasional
defeats; and it throws no suspicion on the narrative of the Greek
historians that we find these inscriptions silent respecting the
overthrow of Datis and Artaphernes, as well as respecting the reverses
which Darius sustained in person during his Scythian campaigns. But
these indisputable monuments of Persian fame confirm, and even increase
the opinion with which Herodotus inspires us of the vast power which
Cyrus founded and Cambyses increased; which Darius augmented by Indian
and Arabian conquests, and seemed likely, when he directed his arms
against Europe, to make the predominant monarchy of the world.

With the exception of the Chinese empire, in which, throughout all ages
down to the last few years, one-third of the human race has dwelt almost
unconnected with the other portions, all the great kingdoms, which we
know to have existed in ancient Asia, were, in Darius' time, blended
into the Persian. The northern Indians, the Assyrians, th