V. BYZANTINE PALACES 175

to that son of Noah in whom this covenant with mankind was to be fulfilled, and see how that name was justified by every one of the Asiatic races which descended from him. Not without meaning was the love of Israel to his chosen son expressed by the coat “of many colours;”¹ not without deep sense of the sacredness of that symbol of purity did the lost daughter of David tear it from her breast:-”With such robes were the king’s daughters that were virgins apparelled.”* We know it to have been by Divine command that the Israelite, rescued from servitude, veiled the tabernacle with its rain of purple and scarlet,² while the under sunshine flashed through the fall of the colour from its tenons of gold: but was it less by Divine guidance that the Mede, as he struggled out of anarchy, encompassed his king with the sevenfold burning of the battlements of Ecbatana?³-of which one circle was golden like the sun, and another silver like the moon; and then came the great secret chord of colour, blue, purple, and scarlet; and then a circle white like the day, and another dark, like night; so that the city rose like a great mural rainbow, a sign of peace amidst the contending of lawless races, and guarded, with colour and shadow, that seemed to symbolize the great order which rules over Day, and Night, and Time, the first organization of the mighty statutes-the law of the Medes and Persians, that altereth not.⁴

* 2 Sam. xiii. 18.

¹ [Genesis xxxvii. 3, 32.]

² [Exodus xxvi.]

³ [“And as the Medes obeyed him in this also, he (Deïokes, their King) built large and strong walls, those which are now called Ecbatana, standing in circles one within the other. And this wall is so contrived that one circle is higher than the next by the height of the battlement alone. And to some extent, I suppose, the nature of the ground, seeing that it is on a hill, assists towards this end; but much more was it produced by art, since the circles are in all seven in number ... and of the first circle the battlements are white, of the second black, of the third crimson, of the fourth blue, of the fifth red: thus are the battlements of all the circles coloured with various tints, and the two last have their battlements, one of them overlaid with silver and the other with gold” (Herodotus, i. 98). Discoveries made in recent years on Eastern sites tend to bear out this gorgeous description of Herodotus; see W. K. Loftus’ Chaldæa and Susiana, p. 185. For another reference to the battlements of Ecbatana, see Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. iii. § 24.]

⁴ [Daniel vi. 8, 12.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]