its lair by more than a thousand dogs.

[The same immense trains of followers of course accompanied the
kings on their hunting expeditions, as on their journeys. As the
Persian nobility were very fond of hunting, their boys were taught
this sport at an early age. According to Strabo, kings themselves
boasted of having been mighty hunters in the inscriptions on their
tombs. A relief has been found m the ruins of Persepolis, on which
the king is strangling a lion with his right arm, but this is
supposed to have a historical, not a symbolical meaning. Similar
representations occur on Assyrian monuments. Izdubar strangling a
lion and fighting with a lion (relief at Khorsabad) is admirably
copied in Delitzsch's edition of G. Smith's Chaldean Genesis.
Layard discovered some representations of hunting-scenes during his
excavations; as, for instance, stags and wild boars among the reeds;
and the Greeks often mention the immense troops of followers on
horse and foot who attended the kings of Persia when they went
hunting. According to Xenophon, Cyrop. I. 2. II. 4. every hunter
was obliged to be armed with a bow and arrows, two lances, sword and
shield. In Firdusi's Book of Kings we read that the lasso was also
a favorite weapon. Hawking was well known to the Persians more than
900 years ago. Book of Kabus XVIII. p. 495. The boomerang was
used in catching birds as well by the Persians as by the ancient
Egyptians and the present savage tribes of New Holland.]




CHAPTER II.