wood rather than o£ stone. Polybius distinguishes the pillars into
two classes, those of the main buildings, and those which skirted the
courts, from which it would appear that at Ecbatana the courts were
surrounded by colonnades, as they were commonly in Greek and Roman
houses. These wooden pillars, all either of cedar or of cypress,
supported beams of a similar material, which crossed each other at right
angles, leaving square spaces between, which were then filled in with
woodwork. Above the whole a roof was placed, sloping at an angle, and
composed (as we are told) of silver plates in the shape of tiles. The
pillars, beams, and the rest of the woodwork were likewise coated with
thin laminse of the precious metals, even gold being used for this
purpose to a certain extent.

Such seems to have been the character of the true ancient Median palace,
which served probably as a model to Darius and Xerxes when they designed
their great palatial edifices at the more southern capitals. In the
additions which the palace received under the Achaemenian kings, stone
pillars may have been introduced; and hence probably the broken shafts
and bases, so nearly resembling the Persepolitan, one of which Sir E.
Ker Porter saw in the immediate neighborhood of Hamadan on his visit
to that place in 1818. [PLATE I., Fig. 1.] But to judge from the
description of Polybius, an older and ruder style of architecture
prevailed in the main building, which depended for its effect not on the
beauty of architectural forms, but on the richness and costliness of the
material. A pillar architecture, so far as appears, began in this part
of Asia with the Medes, who, however, were content to use the more
readily obtained and more easily worked material of wood; while the
Persians afterwards conceived the idea of substituting for these
inartificial props the slender and elegant stone shafts which formed the
glory of their grand edifices.