Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/36

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IN OLD IRÂN.
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visitants, everywhere beyond the limits of the Grecian states they formed the official class, and in the great towns they were even a considerable section of the population. There is no reason to believe that Herodotus ever set foot in Persia Proper, or was in a country where the Arian element preponderated. Hence his mistakes with regard to the Persian religion which he confounded with the Scythic worship of Susiania, Armenia and Cappadocia. . . . Herodotus, too, was by natural temperament inclined to look with favour on the poetical and the marvellous, and where he had to choose between a number of conflicting stories would be disposed to reject the prosaic and commonplace for the romantic and extraordinary. . . . Thus his narrative, where it can be compared with the Persian monumental records, presents the curious contrast of minute and exact agreement in some parts with broad and striking diversity in others. Unfortunately, a direct comparison of this kind can but rarely be made, owing to the scantiness of the Persian records at present discovered; but we are

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