eir reappearance they are no longer in Armenia, but have descended the
line of Zagros and reached the districts which lie north and north-east
of Susiana, or that part of the Bakhtiyari chain which, if it is not
actually within Persia Proper, at any rate immediately adjoins upon it.
Arrived thus far, it was easy for them to occupy the region to which
they have given permanent name; for the Bakhtiyari mountains command it
and give a ready access to its valleys and plains.

The Persians would thus appear not to have completed their migrations
till near the close of the Assyrian period, and it is probable that
they did not settle into an organized monarchy much before the fall of
Nineveh. At any rate we hear of no Persian ruler of note or name in the
Assyrian records, and the reign of petty chiefs would seem therefore to
have continued at least to the time of Asshur-bani-pal, up to which date
we have ample records. The establishment, however, about the year
B.C. 660, or a little later, of a powerful monarchy in the kindred and
neighboring Media, could not fail to attract attention, and might well
provoke imitation in Persia; and the native tradition appears to have
been that about this time. Persian royalty began in the person of a
certain Achaemenes (Hakhamanish), from whom all their later monarchs,
with one possible exception, were proud to trace their descent.

The name Achaemenes cannot fail to arouse some suspicion. The Greek
genealogies render us so familiar with heroes eponymi--imaginary
personages, who owe their origin to the mere fact of the existence
of certain tribe or race names, to account for which they were
invented--that whenever, even in the history of other nations, we
happen upon a name professedly personal, which stands evidently in close
connection with a tribal designation, we are apt at once to suspect it
of being fictitious. But in the East tribal and even ethnic names
were certainly sometimes derived from actual persons; and it may be
questioned whether the Persians, or the Iranic stock generally, had the
notion of inventing personal eponyms. The name Achaemenes, therefore,
in spite of its connection with the royal clan name of Achaemenidae, may
stand as perhaps that of a real Persian king, and, if so, as probably
that of the first king, the original founder of the monarchy, who united
the scattered tribes in one, and thus raised Persia into a power of
considerable importance.

The immediate succ