resenting a god or a good spirit, while in others he
was the type of a deva or evil genius.

[[Illustration: PLATE LX.]

The most common representatives of the Evil Powers of the mythology
were lions, winged or unwinged, and monsters of several different
descriptions. At Persepolis the lions which the king stabs or strangles
are of the natural shape, and this type is found also upon gems and
cylinders; but on these last the king's antagonist is often a winged,
while sometimes he is a winged and horned, lion. [PLATE LX., Fig. 3.]
The monsters are of two principal types. In both the forms of a bird and
a beast are commingled; but in the one the bird, and in the other the
beast predominates. Specimens are given [PLATE LX., Fig. 4] taken from
Persian gems and cylinders.

Such seems to have been, in outline, the purer and more ancient form
of the Persian religion. During its continuance a fierce iconoclastic
spirit animated the princes of the Empire, who took every opportunity of
showing their hatred and contempt for the idolatries of the neighboring
nations, burning temples, confiscating or destroying images, scourging
or slaying idolatrous priests, putting a stop to festivals,
disturbing tombs, smiting with the sword animals believed to be divine
incarnations. Within their own dominions the fear of stirring up
religious wars compelled them to be moderately tolerant, unless it
were after rebellion, when a province lay at their mercy; but when they
invaded foreign countries, they were wont to exhibit in the most open
and striking way their aversion to materialistic religions. In Greece,
during the great invasion, they burned every temple that they came near;
in Egypt, on their first attack, they outraged every religious feeling
of the people.

It was during this time of comparative purity, when the anti-idolatrous
spirit was in full force, that a religious sympathy seems to have drawn
together the two nations of the Persians and the Jews. Cyrus evidently
identified Jehovah with Ormazd, and, accepting as a divine command the
prophecy of Isaiah, undertook to rebuild their temple for a people who,
like his own, allowed no image of God to defile the sanctuary. Darius,
similarly, encouraged the completion of the work, after it had been
interrupted by the troubles which followed the death of Cambyses. The
foundation was thus laid for that friendly intimacy between the two
peoples, of which we have abundant evidence in the