, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale. Their tribes were
very unequal in point of dignity, probably also in respect to numbers
and powers, among one another. First in estimation among them stood the
Pasargadae; and the first phratry or clan among the Pasargadae were the
Achaemenidae, to whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether his relationship to
the Median king whom he dethroned was a matter of fact, or a politic
fiction, we cannot well determine. But Xenophon, in noticing the
spacious deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila, which he saw in his march
with the ten thousand Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris, gives us
to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to
him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle. However this
may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last complete: though
the Medes always continued to be the second nation in the empire, after
the Persians, properly so called; and by early Greek writers the great
enemy in the East is often called "the Mede" as well as "the Persian."
The Median Ekbatana too remained as one of the capital cities, and the
usual summer residence, of the kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspes, on
the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of the Tigris, being their
winter abode.

The vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the east, the
Oxus and Caspian Sea to the north, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to
the south, and the line of Mount Zagros to the west, appears to have
been occupied in these times by a great variety of different tribes and
people, yet all or most of them belonging to the religion of Zoroaster,
and speaking dialects of the Zend language. It was known amongst its
inhabitants by the common name of Iran or Aria: it is, in its central
parts at least, a high, cold plateau, totally destitute of wood, and
scantily supplied with water; much of it indeed is a salt and sandy
desert, unsusceptible of culture. Parts of it are eminently fertile,
where water can be procured and irrigation applied. Scattered masses of
tolerably dense population thus grew up; but continuity of cultivation
is not practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large
proportion of the population of Iran seems to have consisted of
wandering or nomadic tribes with their tents and cattle. The rich
pastures, and the freshness of the summer climate, in the region of
mountain and valley near Ekbatana, are extolled by modern tr