dwelt on the Persian's borders; and fought him when they must;
intrigued with or against him when they might; called him
barbarian for self-respect's sake--and admired and envied him
always. Had he been really a barbarian, in contact with their
superior civilization, he would have become degraded by the
contact; in such cases it always happens that the inferior sops
up the vices only of his betters. But Alexander found the
Persians much the same courtly-mannered, lordly-living, mighty
huntsmen they had been when Herodotus described them; and was
ambitious that his Europeans should mix with them on equal terms
and learn their virtues.

Where and when did this high tradition grow up? There was not
time enough, I think, in that half cycle between the rise of
Cyrus and Marathon. In truth we are to see in these regions
vistas of empires receding back into the dimness, difficult to
sort out and fix their chronology. Cyrus overthrew the Assyrian;
from whose yoke his people had freed themselves some fifteen
years or so before. The Medes had been rising since the earlier
part of that seventh century; sometime then they brought the
kindred race of Persians under their sway. Sometime then, too, I
am inclined to think, lived the Teacher Zoroaster: about whose
date there is more confusion than about that of any other World
Reformer; authorities differ within a margin of 6000 years. But
Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Pythagoreanism all
had their rise about this time; the age of religions began then;
it was not a thing of chance, but marked a definite change in the
spiritual climate of the world. The _Bundahish,_ the Parsee
account of it, says that he lived 258 years before Alexander;
almost all scholars reject the figure--once more, "it is their