George Rawlinson

"The residuum of truth, or at any rate the important conviction of the ancient writers, which remains after their stories are sifted, is the character of the . On this point, Strabo, , and Arrian are agreed. The manners of the Parthians had, they tell us, much that was Scythic in them. ... Their language was half-Scythic, half-. ... They armed themselves in the Scythic fashion. ... They were, in fact, Scyths in descent, in habits, in character."

"... There is an essential antagonism between European and Asiatic ideas and modes of thought, such as seemingly to preclude the possibility of Asiatics appreciating a European civilisation. The ns must have felt towards the ns much as the Mahometans of India feel towards —they may have feared and even respected them—but they must have very bitterly hated them. Nor was the rule of the such as to overcome by its justice or its wisdom the original antipathy of the dispossessed lords of Asia towards those by whom they had been ousted. The ial system, which these monarchs lazily adopted from their predecessors, the s, is one always open to great abuses, and needs the strictest superintendence and supervision. There is no reason to believe that any sufficient watch was kept over their s by the , or even any system of checks established, such as the Achæmenidæ had, at least in theory, set up and maintained. ... The Greco-Macedonian governors of provinces seem to have been left to themselves almost entirely, and to have been only controlled in the exercise of their authority by their own notions of what was right or expedient. Under these circumstances, abuses were sure to creep in ..."

"... All over Western Europe we see the barbarous races which overran and crushed the settling down into a less wild and savage life, adopting the arts as well as the of the conquered, and gradually emulating or surpassing the civilization which at their first coming they destroyed. In our own time, and before our eyes, a civilizing process is going on in Russia and in Turkey; disappears; nomadic tribes become settled ; the arts, the habits, even the dress, of neighbouring nations, are in course of adoption ; and the Muscovite and Turkic hordes are becoming scarce distinguishable from other Europeans. But, while this is the more ordinary process, or at any rate the one which most catches the eye when it roves at large over the historic field, there are not wanting indications that the process is occasionally reversed. Herodotus tells us of the , ... a Greek people, who, having been expelled from the cities on the northern coast of the , had retired into the interior, and there lived in wooden huts, and spoke a language "half Greek, half ." By the time of this people had become completely barbarous, and used the skins of those slain by them in battle as coverings for themselves and their horses. ... A gradual degradation of the is apparent in the series of their coins, which is extant ..."