A wooden roof rested on these supports, protected externally by plates of metal.

We do not know if the pillars had capitals, or if they supported an entablature; but probability is in favor of both these arrangements having existed.

When the Persians succeeded the Medes in the sovereignty of Western Asia, they found Arian architecture in this condition.

As stone, however, was the natural material of their country, which is but scantily wooded and is particularly barren towards the edge of the great plateau, where their chief towns were situated, and as they had from the first a strong desire of fame and a love for the substantial and the enduring, they almost immediately substituted for the cedar and cypress pillars of the Medes, stone shafts, plain or fluted, which they carried to a surprising height, and fixed with such firmness that many of them have resisted the destructive powers of time, of earthquakes, and of vandalism for more than three-and-twenty centuries, and still stand erect and nearly as perfect as when they received the last touch from the sculptor's hand more than 2000 years ago.

It is the glory of the Persians in art to have invented this style, which they certainly did not learn from the Assyrians, and which they can scarcely be supposed to have adopted from Egypt, where the conception of the pillar and its ornamentation were wholly different.
We can scarcely doubt that Greece received from this quarter the impulse which led to the substitution of the light and elegant forms which distinguish the architecture of her best period from the rude and clumsy work of the more ancient times.
Of the mimetic art of the Persians we do not possess any great amount, or any great variety, of specimens.