heme with the Greeks, who
were, perhaps, the warmer in their praises from a latent consciousness
of their own deficiency in the virtue. According to Herodotus, the
attention of educators was specially directed to the point, and each
young Persian was taught by his preceptors three main things:--"To
ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth." We find that, in the
Zendavesta, and more especially in its earliest and purest portions,
truth is strenuously inculcated. Ahura-Mazda himself is "true,"
"the father of all truth," and his worshippers are bound to conform
themselves to his image. Darius, in his inscriptions, protests
frequently against "lies," which he seems to regard as the embodiment
of all evil. A love of finesse and intrigue is congenital to Orientals;
and, in the later period of their sway, the Persians appear to have
yielded to this natural inclination, and to have used freely in their
struggle with the Greeks the weapons of cunning and deception; but,
in the earlier period, a different spirit prevailed; lying was then
regarded as the most disgraceful act of which a man could possibly be
guilty truth was both admired and practised; Persian kings, entrapped
into a promise, stood to it firmly, however much they might wish it
recalled; foreign powers had never to complain that the terms of a
treaty were departed from; the Persians thus form an honorable exception
to the ordinary Asiatic character, and for general truthfulness and a
faithful performance of their engagements compare favorably with the
Greeks and Romans.

The Persian, if we may trust Herodotus, was careful to avoid debt.
He had a keen sense of the difficulty with which a debtor escapes
subterfuge and equivocation--forms, slightly disguised, of lying. To buy
and sell wares in a market place, to chaffer and haggle over prices,
was distasteful to him, as apt to involve falsity and unfairness. He
was free and open in speech, bold in act, generous, warm-hearted,
hospitable. His chief faults were an addiction to self-indulgence and
luxury, a passionate abandon to the feeling of the hour, whatever that
might happen to be; and a tameness and subservience in all his relations
towards his prince, which seem to moderns almost incompatible with real
self-respect and manliness.

The luxury of the Persians will be considered when we treat of
their manners. In illustration of the two other weak points of their
character, it may be observed that, in joy and i