Burckhardt notes the parallels between the nobility of late antique Persia and the knights of the Western middle ages: “The nobility itself, with its bluff chivalry, is quite Western. Its formal relationship to the King appears to have bene feudal; its principal obligation was assistance in war. As represented in monuments, these Persian warriors in mail and plumed helmets, with lance and sword, and with the magnificent accouterments of their steeds, are quite like the knights of our own Middle... Read more

A sentence from Burckhardt’s description of the Persian campaigns of Galerius: “But two indecisive battles and a third which Galerius lost through excessive boldness again drenched with Roman blood the desolate plain between Carrhae and the Euphrates where Crassus had once led ten legions to their death.” What does one need to know to write a sentence like that? A great deal. Burckhardt gives us judgments about three battles in the space of half a sentence (two indecisive, one lost);... Read more

Burckhardt once again, describing the spread of Semitic religion through the empire: “From the Old Testament, we know Baalzebub, Baalpeor, Baalberith, and the like, whose names may have been long forgotten. In Palmyra Baal seems to have been divided into two divinities for sun and moon, as Aglibol and Malachbel, who are represented on a very late Palmyrene relief in the Capitoline Museum bearing the Greco-Roman name of the donor, Lucius Aurelius Heliodorus, son of Antiochus Hadrianus . . .... Read more

Burckhardt again, describing the Roman spread of the Isis cult: “Roman arms spread the worship of Isis to the frontiers of the Empire, in the Netherlands as in Switzerland and South Germany. It penetrated private life more thoroughly and earlier than the cult of the great Semitic goddess.” Thus an Egyptian cult, spread by Roman legions, ended up in the low countries along the Atlantic coast of Europe. Read more

Jacob Burckhardt ( Age of Constantine the Great ) describes the temple of Isis at Hieropolis: “Its Ionic colonnades resting upon masonry terraces with huge propylaea, upon a hill which towered over the city, made a brilliant and conspicuous spectacle. It is remarkable that this temple precinct, with its wild scenes, also supplied a model for the later stylites; from the propylaea there towered two enormous stone pillars representing phalluses, such as were found in Asia Minor wherever similar cults... Read more