Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE BOOK OF PERSIA The Horsemen of Ahura So far the balance of Empire has inclined this way and that between Semite and Hamite, between the sons of the Deserts and the Dwellers by the Rivers. But now new blood appears to wrest the scepter away from son of Ham and son of Shem alike, and to give it to the children of the Plains of the North. With Persia the Aryan race enters the drama. Cyrus comes upon world-history as the first imperial representative of the Indo-Germanic peoples, who have ever since claimed the chief seats of power. Egypt and Mesopotamia dragged through their interminable careers alternating in power through long slow centuries. But Persia arose like a sudden thunder-cloud, and burst out the mountains to the North and East with a swiftness of victory which had no parallel. At the time, this Persian conquest amounted to little more than a change of administration. Cyrus announced himself as "son of Bel," was crowned in Babylon, and dated the years of his reign as King of Kings from that coronation,—all according to the tradition of the Valley. But what a difference! Passing from Babylon and Assyria to Persia, we feel like men crossing the frontier from a strange old grotesqu,e foreign land into the midst of home and countrymen. We are at last among those whom we can understand. Egyptian customs and beliefs are interesting, but incredible. We can hardly take them seriously. The Assyrians are repulsive, the Chal- dasans hardly less so. But we feel at home with the Per- sians. Partly this is because Greek history is seen always against the background of the Great King's Empire— and we were all brought up on Greek history. But it is in even larger measure due to the fact that with Persia begins the stock of ideas which modern men hold, as the starting po...