great and world-important
doings; it must wait for these till Mohammed, who struck
into the very least promising quarter of it, and kindled
in the barbarous wilderness a light to redeem the civilization of
the western world. I shall hardly have to turn to the Sassanians
again; so will say here what is to be said. We have seen that
their empire was quite unlike the Parthian; it was a reversion
to, and copy in small of, the Achaemenian of Cyrus and Darius.
It never attained the size of that; and only late in its
existence, and to a small degree, overflowed the Parthian limits.
But it was a well-organized state, with a culture of its own;
and enough military power to stand throughout its existence the
serious rival of Rome. Its arts and crafts became famous,
--thanks largely to Mani; in architecture it revived the
Achaemenian tradition, with modifications of its own; and passed
the result on to the Arabs when they rose, to be the basis of the
Saracenic Style. There was a fairly extensive literature:
largely religious, but with much also in _belles lettres,_
re-tellings of the old Iranian sagas, and the like. Its history is
mainly the record of gigantic wars with Rome; these were
diversified later by tussles with the Turks, Ephthalites or White
Huns, _et hoc genus omne._ Its whole period of existence lasted
from 227 to 637; 410 years;--which we may compare with the 426
of the Hans, and the Roman 424 from the accession of Augustus to
the final division of the empire. Of its cycles, there is a
little information forthcoming; but we may say this: Sapor I
came to the throne in 241, succeeding his father Ardashir; he
had on the whole a broad outlook; favored Mani at first; was at
pains to bring in teachers of civilization from all possible
sources;--with his reign the renaissance of the arts and
learning, such as it was,--and it was by no means contemptible,--
began. Three times thirteen decades from that, and we are at
631. The thirteen decades (less a year) from 499 to 628 are
mainly filled with the reigns of Kavadh I and the two Chosroeses,--

"Kai-Kobad the great and Kai-Khusru,"

--all three strong kings and conquerors. When Chosroes II was
killed in 628, after a war with Heraclius that began brilliantly
and ended in disaster,--the empire practically fell: split up
under several pretenders, to be an easy prey for the Moslems a
few years later. Was the whole Sassanian period divisible into a
day, a nig