ly the tomb was ornamented with sculptures, and
sometimes, though rarely, it had an inscription (or inscriptions) upon
it, containing the name and titles of the monarch whose remains reposed
within.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.]

If the tomb were a building, and not rock-hewn, the ground in the
vicinity was formed into a park or garden, which was planted with all
manner of trees. Within the park, at some little distance from the
tomb, was a house, which formed the residence of a body of priests, who
watched over the safety of the sepulchre.

The Greeks seem to have believed that divine honors were sometimes paid
to a monarch after his decease; but the spirit of the Persian religion
was so entirely opposed to any such observance that it is most probable
the Greeks were mistaken. Observing that sacrifices were offered once a
month in the vicinity of some of the royal tombs, they assumed that
the object of the cult was the monarch himself, whereas it was no doubt
really addressed either to Ormazd or to Mithras. The Persians cannot
rightly be accused of the worship of dead men, a superstition from which
both the Zoroastrian and the Magian systems were entirely free.

From this account of the Persian monarchs and their Court, we may
now turn to a subject which moderns regard as one of much greater
interest--the general condition, manners, and customs of the Persian
people. Our information on these points is unfortunately far less full
than on the subject which we have been recently discussing, but still it
is perhaps sufficient to give us a tolerably complete notion of the real
character of the nation.

The Persians, according to Herodotus, were divided into ten tribes, of
which four were nomadic and three agricultural. The nomadic were the
Dai, the Mardi, the Dropici, and the Sagartii; the agricultural were
the Panthilaei, the Derusisei, and the Germanii, or Carmanians. What the
occupation of the other three tribes was Herodotus does not state;
but, as one of them--the Pasargadae--was evidently the ruling class,
consisting, therefore (it is probable), of land owners, who did not
themselves till the soil, we may perhaps assume that all three occupied
this position, standing in Persia somewhat--as the three tribes of
Dorians stood to the other Greeks in the Peloponnese. If this were the
case, the population would have been really divided broadly into the two
classes of settled and nomade, whereof the former class wa