A. d . 50, had his name inscribed in Greek characters, on his coin,
now in the British Museum; hut the shape of his skull is Turanian,
and the die-sinker must have been a half-civilized and probably
half-bred Baetrian.
The series of the Arsacide coins is equally instructive, and leads
to the same result. The Macedonian conquest destroyed at once
the old Persian institutions and civilization; for, although Alexander
assumed the royal insignia and maintained the court etiquette
and provincial administration of Persia, yet both he and his courtiers
remained Greeks, and could not transform themselves into
Asiatics. His successors in Asia, the Seleucidse, were still more
averse to the old customs of the empire. They therefore removed
their residence and the capital of the empire from Babylon, which
at that time was still highly flourishing, so far west as Antioch; and
tried to introduce Greek manners and despotic centralized-eiviliza-
tion, into the provinces adjoining the seat of dominion. The out-
lying Satrapies could not long he kept in subjection: and during the
war between Antiochus Theos and Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt,
Arsaces the Satrap stirred up the Parthians (256 B.C.), and at the
head of his Scythian horsemen established the Parthian empire in
opposition to the Greek Seleucidse, who could not hold the country
beyond the Tigris. But Arsaces did not go back to the Achfeme-
nian institutions: he kept the Arian Persians in subjection, who from
the time of Cyrus to Alexander had been the rulers of the Empire:
his realm might easier be characterized as the revival of the Scythian
empire of Astyages. The Parthians had no indigenous art of their
own: according to Lucian, they were ou <piXoxaXoi, not friends of art,183
and they had to borrow their artisfie forms from their neighbors,
just as the Shemitic nations had done before them.
While assuming the empire, they copied the Greek language and
the Greek types of the Seleucidse
Fig. 58. Fig. 59.
on. their coins; and the
portraits of A rsaces I. [58],
b . c. 256, and of (Phraates I.)
A rsaces Y . [59], b . c. 190-
165, on their silver coins in
the British Museum, can
scarcely be distinguished
from Greek coins, as regards
art: but the globular shape
of the Parthian skull characterizes
them sufficiently
Arsaces V.
183 Lucian, de domo, 5.
,V U U t [U .G O l / v i L i l t / , / ---------------------- , - v v w I i / I i i i i m i m
soon cut off the influence of Hellenism, and isolated the Parthians,
whose art relapsed gradually
Fig. 60. Fig. 61.
into their original barbarism.
The portrait of Arsaces
XH. [60] (Phraates
Hi.), B. c. 50—60, belongs
to the beginning of the
decline of art, though this
king was a contemporary
of Lucullus, Pompey, and
J ulius Cæsar. Arsaces
the X lXth [61], (Volo-
geses IY , a . d . 196) exhibits
A rsaces XII.
a rudeness as if all the traditions of art had become forgotten.
Still, he was a contemporary of the emperor Commodus. One generation
after him we see a new, national, Arian art reviving in Persia
under the Sassanides.
Similar causes led to similar results in the Crimea, or as the
ancients called it, in the Taurian or Cimmerian Chersonesus.
Greek colonies from Heraclea and Miletus established themselves
here among the aboriginal barbarians, and
introduced art and civilization, fvi i igs of
Fig. 62.
these nations stood in friendly intercourse
with Athens and Byzantium, who used to
buy here their corn ; until Mithridates the
Great [62], king of Pontus, occupied the
country (in 108 b . c.) which was to become
the scene of his suicide. His portrait with
the rich flowing hair, probably a copy from
a statue representing him driving a chariot,
184 belongs to the wonders of Grecian art.
The Greek dynasty of Mithridates, in the
Crimea, died off m the second generation withAsander; and was
succeeded by a long series of indigenous kings, who, without any
historical importance, maintained their sway down to the 4th centurv
of our era. During their reign the Greek colonies of Panticapæum,
Chersonnesus,Phanagoria, and Gorgippia, lost their Hellenic characters
by the continuous immigration of barbarians; and all the traditions
of art disappeared little by little among the half-breed inhabitants
of the country,-until all Grecian blood, and with it, civiliza,
tion, became absorbed by intercourse with the barbarians. The
184 Visconti, Iconographie, n. p. 182; note 4, Milan edition.