this to have been, had perished utterly from the memory of the world, and the lethe-waters of time had washed every vestige of it away. But such is not the case the national poem of Persia does really preserve it, and with wonderful exactness, if we only consider for a moment the vicissitudes to which it has been exposed. Every trace of the old ballad-literature of Persia was believed to have been destroyed by the Mahometans after their conquest of that country, until in the reign of Mahmoud of Ghazni, an old chronicle was discovered (compiled by the order of Yezdjird, the last king of Persia), which preserved these ballads in a prose form, as the annals of Pictor and Cincius preserved those of ancient Rome. Firdusi was employed to remodel them into a poetic form, and this he has done in his Shahnameh, from which we now proceed to extract the story which tells HOW GUSHTASP WOOED HIS BRIDE. The King of Rúm cast about in his mind, Since she was now tall of stature and ripe for marriage, He resolved that he would gather an assembly at his palace Of all his wise nobles and counsellors; There should meet together all his friends and chiefs, And all his mighty men, proved in war. In her father's palace that moon-faced maiden Was to come forth to that assembly, seeking a husband, Now in the chambers of this mighty king In a bright cluster, like the Pleiades ; A wanderer, all desolate and alone, His stature like a cypress, and his face like the moon, And he sat on the ground like a king on his throne. And she dreamed that she gave him a garland And he gave her another, full of colours and scents, in return.— The nobles all awoke from their sleep, And the king called a great assembly together, Kitaiyun came with her sixty attendants, And she held a bunch of fresh narcissuses in her hand. And she walked along, and sadness crept over her, For not in that assembly was the man of her choice. And she turned away from the hall and went back to her chamber, Walking slowly and weeping, with a longing heart. Night came, and the ground grew dark like a raven's wing, Till once more the sun lifted his head from the mountains; Then the king commanded that all the youths in his kingdom, High and low, should meet at his palace, That all should come in assembly there, Till his daughter found a husband to her heart. And when the news spread through the city, To the nobles, and the high and the low, All turned their faces to the palace of the king, All blossoming with the colours and sweet odours of hope, Go, thou may'st see the palace and the court, And, perhaps, thy spirit may lose its load of care there." And he came in haste to the palace of the king. And he sat down in a corner apart from the chieftains, The attendants came forth with cheerful looks, And Kitaiyun, and her rose-cheeked handmaidens ; And she slowly walked around the hall, With the counsellors behind her, and her maidens before. And, when she beheld Gushtasp at a distance, She exclaimed, "My dream has returned out of darkness!'' He turned and hastened at once to the king, And cried, "She has chosen a man from the crowd, In stature like a tall cypress in the garden, With a cheek like the rose, and broad shoulders; All who look on him behold him with wonder: You would say that he was a son of heaven; But I know him not, nor who he is." The king replied, "God forbid that my daughter If I give my daughter to an unknown fellow like this My head will lie down low in dishonour! Go, take her and him whom she hath chosen, too, The vizier replied, "This must never be done, For too many of the nobles were present before thee. The custom of those mighty and pure-hearted heroes; Through this hath thy kingdom been established, Seek not to break thine oath, nor wander in an unknown path of error." When the king heard these words he changed his purpose, And he gave his peerless daughter to Gushtasp; But he said to her, "Go with him such as thou art, Never shalt thou have treasure, or throne, or sceptre from me." When Gushtasp beheld this, he marvelled greatly, And he prayed in heart to the Maker of the world. And he turned and said to the maiden, "Oh thou, who hast been brought up in softness and luxury, With a rank so lofty and a crown thine own, Why hast thou made choice of such a wretch as I? Thou hast chosen an outcast, and, if thou livest with him, Thou wilt find no treasure, but a life of woe. O seek one of thy equals, amongst these noblemen, That thy father's face may look brightly on thee once more." Kitaiyun answered, "Thou knowest me not, Repine not at the decrees of heaven; If I am contented to share thy lot, Why should'st thou talk of a crown or throne?" * Gushtasp had fled from his father's kingdom, who had continually shewn a great partiality for his children by another wife; and Gushtasp and his brother Zarir (Hystaspes and Zariadres) had received a great many proofs of it; the former therefore left the country and fled to Rúm, and lodged there with a poor husbandman. Slowly then walked out of her father's hall Such is a literal translation of this beautiful story, the last vestige of that legend, which was so often sculptured (Chares tells us) in the temples and palaces of ancient Persia; the fair Odatis and her love lie embalmed in the records of her husband's country, and time has had but little power to efface the lineaments of her history. The ancient ballad, which was often sung at the royal banquets, and became such a national favourite, SO was preserved in the prose chronicle of king Yezdjird, and resuscitated from oblivion under the auspices of Mahmoud; and it then met with a poet whose genius was worthy of it, and he has given it a place in his immortal Shalinameh. Some thirteen or fourteen centuries had passed since that ballad was first sung, and it had from the nation's memory faded away and was forgotten; but, as Keats says, A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Firdusi found the materials as fresh and living as ever; and he has, as usual, entered into all the spirit of the legend. The story is preserved in all its essential particulars; thus the dream is the same in both, and so too is the whole history of the princess. The brothers are changed, and the Persians make Gushtasp the hero instead of Zariadres; but this can easily be accounted for, as Gushtasp, or Hystaspes, is the favourite hero of Persian romance, and the actions of the various persons who bore that name, appear to be all ascribed to him, just as was done by the Greeks to their Hercules, and by the Hindus to their Ráma. It is he that is recorded to have upheld Zoroaster, and to have propagated the doctrines of the far-famed Zendavesta by the sword. Many of his actions, as related in the Shahnameh, seem to belong to the Darius Hystaspes of Grecian history, others perhaps belong to his father Hystaspes,† whom we read so much of in Herodotus. Much of this hero's history certainly does not belong to Darius Hystaspes; and Hyde, and those who have followed him, have been led astray by the similarity of the name and of some of the incidents recorded of both. To all who study the Shahnameh, and compare it with other national collections of legends, I think it will be evident that Gushtasp, as he appears there, is compounded of several heroes who have been merged into one; and the actions of each (as we see in the foregoing legend, which certainly does not belong to Darius,) are now so mingled together, that it is impossible to divide them. A writer in the April number of the Quarterly (on the inscriptions which Major Rawlinson has so successfully deciphered in Behistan) remarks,-"The great objection to the common theory of Hyde, Prideaux, &c. which makes Darius Hystaspes the Gushtasp of Persian religious fable, is, as has been observed (Milman's Gibbon) the silence of Herodotus; and here again we find the inscriptions, as far as they have yet been interpreted, maintaining the same total silence." But, although it be untrue that Gushtasp is entirely Darius, it is on the other hand certain that much of their history is identical. Fiction is Athenæus gives an interesting account of these feasts in the fourth book of his Deipnosophists. He says they were called Tycta in the old Persian language. Τούνομα δε τώ δείπνῳ Περσιστὶ μεν τυκτά, Ελληνιστὶ δε τέλειον. + Hystaspes was not an uncommon name. Thus Zuinger in his Theatrum Vitæ mentions, though I know not on what authority, "Hystaspes, antiquissimus Medorum rex et vates, cujus vaticiniis Medi usi sunt." continually interwoven with it, and the actions of other heroes are borrowed to swell the glory of the favourite; but enough of truth is left to dispel any doubts that might otherwise arise in our minds. Nor are we without the hope of ere long obtaining further information on this subject. The discovery of the cuneiform alphabet, and the success of Major Rawlinson and others in reading the ancient monumental inscriptions in Persia, will throw an unexpected light on the legendary history of that country. Many valuable incidents relating to Darius have been already rescued from oblivion; and we may reasonably trust that, as these investigations proceed, and as fresh materials are collected, and fresh aids to their being used are discovered, many of the difficulties in the ancient annals of Persia will be explained, and its national legends no longer seem irreconcileable with the accounts which we find preserved in the Greek historians. E. B. C. INSCRIPTION at angora, IN ASIA MINOR, ILLUSTRATING ANCIENT BRITISH HISTORY, AND THE CHRONICLES OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND ITS COINS. FROM this source, through recent discoveries, some information is made available for Roman history beyond what was before possessed, and some for that of Britain. Suetonius informs us that Augustus left his testamentary papers in five parts or divisions. The two first of these were properly his will, in which he appointed his heirs, and distributed various legacies. The remaining parts were in three rolls, of which the first roll contained directions for his funeral; the second was a summary of his public acts during the whole of his reign, ordered to be engraved on brass tablets and set up before his mausoleum; and the third was a statistical account of his empire, detailing the amount of public revenue, the number of soldiers in pay, arrears due, names of collectors, and the like. How long the engraved brass tablets at Rome existed we are not informed. If they escaped other revolutions, they were doubtlessly melted down by the Goths, as not a line from them seems to have been preserved. Copies of them, however, were made for the provinces, and such a copy was engraved for a temple at Ancyra, now Angora, the former capital of Asia Minor, dedicated to Augustus and to Rome. The major part of this remains still extant, and was published very faithfully by Chishull, in his Antiquitates Asiaticæ, above a century ago. It was, however, much disconnected by chasms, and therefore its value considerably impaired; but fortunately a Greek translation was found on the outside of the same temple, concealed by buildings, which has been given to the public by W. J. Hamilton, Esq., Secretary of the Geological Society, about five years since, though a considerable part remains still concealed by a thick wall, and another part would appear not to have been copied, from having been too much defaced. On the whole, enough has been recovered not only to be of much use to the antiquary, but also to form a literary fragment of great value, it being written in the purest style of the purest era of Latin composition, as we may state with confi dence, the inscription expressing that it was written by the emperor with his own hand. Transcripts, though imperfect, of this ancient relic were obtained as long ago as the year 1554. It may be right to trace the gradual communication of it to the world from that time down to the date of Mr. Hamilton's discoveries, and to endeavour to elucidate the various former accounts of it, which will enable us more correctly to understand some particulars. 66 The celebrated Busequius and his friends seem first to have obtained a knowledge of it. He thus describes it in his Letters or Travels, edition 1660, p. 87 (translation): Here we saw a very good inscription, being a copy of those brass tablets, containing a summary of his acts, which Augustus caused to be engraved. We took care to have it transcribed by our party, as far as it could be read. It is on (the walls of) a building, perhaps formerly prætorium, built of marble, and in its present condition without a roof. Half of it is to the right hand as you enter, half to the left." The heads (of each column) are, for the most part, entire; the middle parts have many chasms; whilst the lower parts have been so knocked about with sticks as to be illegible." The next transcript was that of Verantius. This person, whose proper appellation was Antoine Verantui, and who was bishop of Agria, otherwise Erlaw, in Hungary, and ambassador from Ferdinand the Second to the Porte, procured it to be transcribed when passing through Angora. From him it passed to his nephew Faustus Verantius, who gave it to Clusius, secretary to an embassy to the East, and he to Leunclavius. Clusius procured it to be verified by two German travellers, who went to Angora, and who copied it themselves. On comparing their copies, he could only detect two mistakes in that of Verantius, and otherwise found his copy the most perfect. The substance of Clusius' letter on the subject is given in the second edition of Gruter, in a note to Inscription cexxxii., in which Clusius adds that, in his opinion, there was no probability a better copy would ever be made, the original being wantonly injured every day by the barbarism of the Turks, which was the case when the two Germans were making their copy. It is very singular that we are not now able to distinguish the transcript of Busequius from that of Verantius; and Chishull, in his Antiquitates Asiaticæ, p. 170, pronounces them the same. The inscription first appeared in print in the edition of Aurelius Victor, by Andreas Schottus, and was commented on by Justus Lipsius. It was also printed by Grævius, in his edition of Suetonius, 4to. 1691. After Verantius, Daniel Cosson, a Dutch merchant, resident at Smyrna, of cultivated mind and great probity, who was afterwards murdered, while taking a walk near the above place, by two Algerines, made, in 1689, a much better copy, published, with notes, by James Gronovius, in his work entitled "Memoria Cossoniana," 4to. 1695, and by Pitiscus, in his edition of Suetonius, 2 vols. 4to. 1714. But hitherto the transcripts were so imperfect that scarce more than two or three words were given of the sixth column, which since has been brought out in such considerable length. Nor could it have been guessed from any of the transcripts that there was the least mention or reference made to Britain in the original; but soon afterwards this renowned inscription came under the notice of the eminent men who traversed Asia Minor in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Tournefort, Chishull, and Pocock, when the transcript quickly assumed a new and improved complexion. Our present more correct Latin copy seems due to the celebrated Tournefort, who made it in 1701, and gave it to Chishull, whom he met on his travels in Asia Minor. Chishull published it in his Antiquitates Asiaticæ, folio, 1728. This transcript seems so superior that, though many copies have been taken since, none have been printed subsequent to his time. A French merchant, named Le Favre, also made a copy, which had great reputation for correctness, as Chishull mentions, p. 171; but whether this last came to his hands, and is incorporated in his copy, he does not clearly inform us. We have seen that, one hundred and fifty years before, Busequius had described the face of the wall on which the inscription is engraved as being in a ruinous state. In Tournefort's time it must of course have been still more so. Besides the letters effaced, he says that the whole surface was full of great holes, like those made by cannon shot. His words are,"Outre les lettres effacées, tout est plein de grands trous, semblables à ceux qu'auroient pu faire des boulets de canon." Voyage du Levant, vol. ii. p. 447. What was actually removed of course could not be transcribed, but of the relics he has made us a full and excellent copy. What increases the value is his assurance that the entire lines in his transcript correspond with those of the original, the mutilations to the mutilations, and the chasms to the chasms, which is generally true, though it is not true that the spaces |