ancient city of Persia, stood near the confluence of the Medus and the Araxes, on the spacious plain now called Merducht. It was one of the wonders of the East. According to Arrian and other writers, it was from the most ancient times the capital of the Persian empire. At any rate, it is almost certain that in the reign of Darius Hystaspes it began to assume an unparalleled splendour, by becoming the site of a magnificent pile of architecture. To afford a foundation for this huge fabric, there was cut out from the side of a neighbouring hill, at a great distance from the ground, an immense platform in the shape of a series of terraces. These terraces were covered with sculptured porticoes, gigantic statues, and colossal temples and palaces. Each Persian king in succession extended and enriched the magnificent structure, until it became the crown and glory of the East. The splendour of Persepolis, however, seems to have begun to decline at the time of the overthrow of the Persian empire. Alexander the Great burned a considerable part of it, including its royal palace. After the date at which, according to the Second Book of Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes attempted to plunder its temples, it disappears altogether from the page of history. Yet the tall white forms of several columns, standing sentinel over the remains of many temples and palaces on the solitary plain of Merducht, still preserve the memory of the long-perished glories of Persepolis. (A full account of these magnificent ruins is given in Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, Vaux's Nineveh and Persepolis, and Ferguson's Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored. See also Persia.)