The minute account which has been now given of this palace will render unnecessary a very elaborate description of the remainder.  Two grand palatial edifices seem to have been erected on the platform by later kings—­one by Xerxes and the other by Artaxerxes Ochus; but the latter of these is in so ruined a condition, and the former is so like the palace of Darius, that but few remarks need be made upon either.  The palace of Xerxes is simply that of Darius on a larger scale, the pillars in the portico being increased from two rows of four to two rows of six, and the great hall behind being a square of eighty instead of a square of fifty feet, with thirty-six instead of sixteen pillars to support its roof.  On either side of the hall, and on either side of the portico, were apartments like those already described as abutting on the same portions of the older palace, differing from them chiefly in being larger and more numerous.  The two largest, which were thirty-one feet square, had roofs supported on pillars, the numbers of such supports being in each case four.  The only striking difference in the plans of the two buildings consisted in the absence from the palace of Xerxes of any apartments to the rear of the great hall.  In order to allow space for an ample terrace in front, the whole edifice was thrown back so close to the edge of the upper platform that no room was left for any chambers at the back, since the hall itself was here brought almost to the very verge of the sheer descent from the central to the low southern terrace.  In ornamentation the palaces also very closely resembled each other, the chief difference being that the combats of the king with lions and mythological monsters, which form the regular ornamentation of the side-chambers in the palace of Darius, occur nowhere in the residence of his son, where they are replaced by figures of attendants bringing articles for the toilet or the table, like those which adorn the main staircase of the older edifice.  Figures of the same kind also ornament all the windows in the palace of Xerxes.  A tone of mere sensual enjoyment is thus given to the later edifice, which is very far from characterizing the earlier; and the decline of morals at the Court, which history indicates as rapid about this period, is seen to have stamped itself, as such changes usually do, upon the national architecture.

A small building, at the distance of about twenty or twenty-five yards from the eastern wall of the palace of Xerxes, possesses a peculiar interest, in consequence of its having some claims to be considered the most ancient structure upon the platform.  It consists of a hall and portico, in size, proportions, and decoration almost exactly resembling the corresponding parts of Darius’s palace, but unaccompanied by any trace of circumjacent chambers, and totally devoid of inscriptions.  The building is low, on the level of the northern, rather than on that of the central terrace, and is indeed half buried in the rubbish