A literary history of Persia

MAZDAK 167reckless cruelty, nor from havinglittle more regard for thetruth than the Persians, even the best, are wont to have."His suppression of the Mazdakites, his successful campaignsagainst the " Romans " (Byzantines), his wise laws, his carefor the national defences, and the prosperity enjoyed by thePersian Empire during his reign (A.D. all531-578) conducedto the high reputation which he enjoys in the East as anPhii?srph e rstNdshfrwdnfideal monarch ;while his receptionof the sevenlstatGreek philosophers, expelled from their nativekmd ty tne intolerance of the Emperor Justinian,and his insertion of a special clause in their favour(whereby they were guaranteed toleration and freedom frominterference on their return thither) in a treaty which heconcluded with the Byzantines at the close of a successfulwar, as well as his love of knowledge, exemplified not onlyby his patronage of learned men, but by the establishment ofja gre^t jnedical school at Junde-Shap_ur, and by the numeroustranslations from Qreek and Sanskrit into Pahlawi_gx_ecuted byIhis orders, caused it to be believed, even in the West, " that a|disciple of Plato was seated on the Persian*throne."The importance of the visit to the Persian Court of theNeo-Platonist philosophers mentioned above has, I think,hardly been sufficiently emphasised. How much'"xe^piatonistthe later mysticism o f the Persians, the doctrine'id ersiaat1hrsepochof the Sufis, which will be fullydiscussed in alater chapter, owes to Neo-Platonism, is beginningto be recognised, and has been admirably illustrated by myfriend and former pupil Mr. R. A. Nicholson, late Fellow ofTrinity College, Cambridge, in his Selected Poems from theDlv&n of Shams-i-Tabriz (Cambridge,' 1898) ; nor, ifDarmesteter's views be correct, did Zoroastrianism disdainto draw materials from the same source. The great historicalintroduction of Greek philosophical and scientific ideas into1See the excellent account of Nushirwan given by Gibbon (Declineand Fall, ed. 1813, vol. vii, pp. 298-307).