It has been intimated in the account of the Median Empire which was given in a former-volume that the language of the Persians, which was identical, or almost identical, with that of the Medes, belonged to the form of speech known to moderns as Indo-European. The characteristics of that form of speech are a certain number of common, or at least widely spread, roots, a peculiar mode of inflecting, together with a resemblance in the inflections, and a similarity of syntax or construction. Of the old Persian language the known roots are, almost without exception, kindred forms to roots already familiar to the philologist through the Sanscrit, or the Zend, or both; while many are of that more general type of which we have spoken--forms common to all, or most of the varieties of the Indo-European stock. To instance in a few very frequently recurring words--“father” is in old Persian (as in Sanscrit) _pitar_, which differs only in the vocalization from the Zendic _patar_, the Greek [ ], and the Latin _pater_, and of which cognate forms are the Gothic _fadar_, the German voter, the English _father_, and the Erse _athair_. [See the html version for the following pages of this chapter which is a section with hundreds of Greek words.] [Illustration: PAGE 365] [Illustration: PAGE 366] [Illustration: PAGE 367] [Illustration: PAGE 368] [Illustration: PAGE 369] [Illustration: PAGE 370] [Illustration: PAGE 371] [Illustration: PAGE 372] [Illustration: PAGE 373] [Illustration: PAGE 374] [Illustration: PAGE 375] [Illustration: PAGE 376] [Illustration: PAGE 377] [Illustration: PAGE 378] The ordinary Persian writing was identical with that which has been described in the second volume of this work as Median. A cuneiform alphabet, consisting of some thirty-six or thirty-seven forms, expressive of twenty-three distinct sounds, sufficed for the wants of the people, whose language was simple and devoid of phonetic luxuriance. Writing was from left to right, as with the Arian nations generally. Words were separated from one another by an oblique wedge; and were divided at any point at which the writer happened to reach the end of a line. Enclitics were joined without any break to the words which they accompanied.