A barbaric magnificence predominated in their ornamentation over artistic effort, richness in the material being preferred to skill in the manipulation.

Literature, and even letters, were very sparingly cultivated.

But little originality was developed.

A stately dress, and a new style of architecture, are almost the only inventions to which the Medes can lay claim.

They were brave, energetic, enterprising, fond of display, capable of appreciating to some extent the advantages of civilized life; but they had little genius, and the world is scarcely indebted to them for a single important addition to the general stock of its ideas.
Of the Median customs in war we know but little.