Sykes' History of Persia - Heritage Institute

THE ANCIENT PERSIANS 183
the evening, and then in the morning, if they saw no
reason to change their views, they decided the matter.
To be the father of many sons was, and still is, deemed
a proof of good fortune, and in this their attitude is surely
more sane than that of the modern European who shirks
the duties of a family. A well-known example of philoprogenitiveness
was Fath Ali Shah, who had three thousand
descendants when he died, a fact which gave him extra-
ordinary prestige among his subjects.
Laws.—" The law of the Medes and Persians which
altereth not " was, as may be supposed, extremely severe ;
but certainly not more so than that of the earlier empires.
The King could do as he willed, except that he could not
change an order once given, and the life and property of
his
subjects were at his mercy ; at the same time, abuse of
rights was tempered by fear of assassination. The criminal
code, which, rightly enough, made death the penalty for
murder, rape, treason and such serious crimes, seems to have
visited minor offences with equal severity. But in a wild
country, with a wild people to deal with and no organized
prisons, it is impossible to condemn death sentences or
mutilation in the case of brigands, thieves, and other bad
characters. To do so would be to ignore the severity of
our own code, by which sheep-stealing was a capital offence
even after the accession of Queen Victoria. Punishments
such as throwing into the ashes,^ burying alive, flaying,
and crucifying are horrible enough to modern ideas, but
equally horrible were punishments in medieval Europe.
The Position of IVomen.—As to the
position of women,
polygamy was encouraged, and then as now the upper
classes kept their wives secluded, litters with closely drawn
curtains
being always employed on journeys. Neither in
the
inscriptions nor in the sculptures does a woman appear.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that the nomad women
were ever veiled, and their position was probably much
better than that of their jealously -guarded sisters, who
were not even allowed to receive their fathers or brothers.^
^ This punishment consisted in throwing the criminal into a pit filled with ashes, in
which he was slowly suffocated.
^ As a result the nomad women are incomparably more capable and* thus bear more
capable and efficient children.