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If he had done nothing more than has already come under our notice, he would still have amply deserved that epithet of "Great" which, by the general consent of historians, has been assigned to him. He was undoubtedly among the greatest of the Sassanian monarchs, and may properly be placed above all his predecessors, and above all but one of those who succeeded him.

A few more days' march brought him from Aleppo to the outskirts of Antioch; and after an interval of nearly three centuries the "Queen of the East," the richest and most magnificent of Oriental cities, was once more invested by Persian troops and threatened by a Sassanian monarch. A great calamity had fallen upon Antioch only fourteen years previously.

The native names of these officers are known to us chiefly through the Armenian writers of the fifth and seventh centuries. The Sassanian court, though generally held at Ctesiphon, migrated to other cities, if the king so pleased, and is found established, at one time in the old Persian capital, Persepolis, at another in the comparatively modern city of Dastaghord.

On the other hand, there is spirit in the attitudes of both men and horses; the Fame floats well in air; and the relief is free from that coarse grotesqueness which offends us in the productions of the Sassanian artists. The monument seems to represent a Parthian king, mounted on horseback, and receiving a chaplet at the hand of a subject.

His Character. His Coins. The second reign of Chosroes II., who is commonly known as Chosroes Eberwiz or Parwiz, lasted little short of thirty-seven years from the summer of A.D. 591 to the February of A.D. 628. Externally considered, it is the most remarkable reign in the entire Sassanian series, embracing as it does the extremes of elevation and depression.

Religious Condition of the East in his Time. Rise into Notice of Mani. His Rejection by Sapor. Sapor's Death. His Character. Artaxerxes appears to have died in A.D. 240. He was succeeded by his son, Shahpuhri, or Sapor, the first Sassanian prince of that name.

The kings who followed him were pacific and unenterprising; they were almost unknown to their neighbors, and are among the least distinguished of the Sassanian monarchs. More especially does this character attach to the two immediate successors of Sapor II., viz. Artaxerxes II. and Sapor III. They reigned respectively four and five years; and their annals during this period are almost a blank.

But while adversity thus in some respects proved its "sweet uses" upon them, there were other respects in which submission to the yoke of the Greeks, and still more to that of the Parthians, seems to have altered them for the worse rather than for the better. There is a coarseness and rudeness about the Sassanian Persians which we do not observe in Achaemenian times.

He did not fear a collision with the best Roman troops. The Sassanian horse often charged the infantry of the legions with success, and drove it headlong from the field of battle. The archers formed the elite of the Persian infantry. They were trained to deliver their arrows with extreme rapidity, and with an aim that was almost unerring.

Even the very horses are alive, and manifestly rejoice in the strife. The entire work is full of movement, of variety, and of artistic spirit. If we have regard to the highest qualities of glyptic art, Sassanian sculpture must be said here to culminate.