CHAP. 98. PLAN OF THE CITY. 227 rising in circles one within the other. The plan of the place is, that each of the walls should out-top the one beyond it by the battlements. The nature of the ground, which is a gentle hill, favours this arrangement in some degree, but it was mainly effected by art. The number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and the treasuries standing within the last. 228 WALLS OF AGBATANA. Book I. The circuit of the outer wall is very nearly the same with that of Athens. Of this wall the battlements are white," of the next [One of the most important argu. ments in favour of the identification of Takhti-Soleimán with the ancient Agbatana, is the fact that Moses of Chorené, in speaking of the city which then occupied the site in question, and which was usually named Ganzac Shahasdan, calls it specifically "the second Ecbatana, or the seven-walled city." Mos. Chor. ii. 84.-H. C. R.] "This is manifestly a fable of Sabæan origin, the seven colours mentioned by Herodotus being precisely those employed by the Orientals to denote the seven great heavenly bodies, or the seven climates in which they revolve. Thus Nizami, in his poem of the Heft Peïher, describes a seven. bodied palace, built by Bahrám Gúr, nearly in the same terms as Herodotus. The palace dedicated to Saturn, he says, was black-that of Jupiter orange, or more strictly sandal-wood colour (Sandalí)-of Mars, scarlet-of the sun, golden-of Venus, white-of Mercury, azure-and of the moon, green-a hue which is applied by the Orientals to silver." (Journal of Geogr. Soc. vol. x. Part i. p. 172.). The great temple of Nebuchadnezzar CHAP. 98, 99. WALLS OF AGBATANA. 229 black, of the third scarlet, of the fourth blue, of the fifth orange; all these are coloured with paint. The two last have their battlements coated respectively with silver and gold." 99. All these fortifications Deioces caused to be raised for himself and his own palace. The people were required to 66 at Borsippa (the modern Birs.i.Nimrud) was a building in seven platforms coloured in a similar way. Herodotus has deranged the order of the colours, which ought to be either that dependent on the planetary distances, "black, orange, scarlet, gold, white, blue, silver," as at the Birs, or black, white, orange, blue, scarlet, silver, gold," if the order of the days dedicated to the planets were taken. It may be suspected that Herodotus had received the numbers in the latter order, and accidentally reversed the places of black and white, and of scarlet and orange. [There is, however, no evidence to show that the Medes, or even the Babylonians, were acquainted with that order of the planets which regulated the nomenclature of the days of the week. The series in question, indeed, must have originated with a people who divided the day and night into 60 hours instead of 24; and, as far as we know at present, this system of horary division was peculiar in ancient times to the Hindoo calendar. The method by which the order is eliminated is simply as follows:-The planets in due succession from the Moon to Saturn were supposed to rule the hours of the day in a recurring series of sevens, and the day was named after the planet who happened to be the regent of the first hour. If we assign then the first hour of the first day to the Moon, we find that the 61st hour, which commenced the second day, belonged to the 5th planet, or Mars; the 121st hour to the 2nd, or Mercury; the 181st to the 6th, or Jupiter; the 241st to the 3rd, or Venus; the 301st to the 7th, or Saturn; and the 361st to the 4th, or the Sun. The popular belief (which first ap pears in Dion Cassius) that the series in question refers to a horary division of 24 is incorrect; for in that case, although the order is the same, the succession is inverted. One thing indeed seems to be certain, that if the Chaldæans were the inventors of the hebdomadal nomenclature, they must have borrowed their earliest astronomical science from the same source which supplied the Hindoos; for it could not have been by accident that a horary division of 60 was adopted by both races.-H. C. R.] 7 There is reason to believe that this account, though it may be greatly exaggerated, is not devoid of a founda. tion. The temple at Borsippa (see the preceding note) appears to have had its fourth and seventh stages actually coated with gold and silver respectively. And it seems certain that there was often in Oriental towns a most lavish display of the two precious metals. The sober Polybius relates that, at the southern Agbatana, the capital of Media Magna, the entire woodwork of the royal palace, including beams, ceilings, and pillars, was covered with plates either of gold or silver, and that the whole building was roofed with silver tiles. The temple of Anaitus was adorned in a similar way. (Polyb. x. xxvii. § 10-12.). Consequently, though Darius, when he retreated before Alexander, carried off from Media, gold and silver to the amount of 7000 talents (more than 1,700,000l.), and though the town was largely plundered by the soldiers of Alexander and of Seleu. cus Nicator, still there remained tiles and plating enough to produce to Antiochus the Great on his occupation of the place a sum of very nearly 4000 talents, or 975,000l. sterling! (See Arrian. Exp. Alex. iii. 19. Polyb. 1. s. c.) 230 ARRANGEMENT OF THE CEREMONIAL. Book I. build their dwellings outside the circuit of the walls. When the town was finished, he proceeded to arrange the ceremonial. He allowed no one to have direct access to the person of the king, but made all communication pass through the hands of messengers, and forbade the king to be seen by his subjects. He also made it an offence for any one whatsoever to laugh or spit in the royal presence. This ceremonial, of which he was the first inventor, Deioces established for his own security, fearing that his compeers, who were brought up together with him, and were of as good family as he, and no whit inferior to him in manly qualities, if they saw him frequently would be pained at the sight, and would therefore be likely to conspire against him; whereas if they did not see him, they would think him quite a different sort of being from themselves. 100. After completing these arrangements, and firmly settling himself upon the throne, Deioces continued to administer justice with the same strictness as before. Causes were stated in writing, and sent in to the king, who passed his judgment upon the contents, and transmitted his decisions to the parties concerned: besides which he had spies and eavesdroppers in all parts of his dominions, and if he heard of any act of oppression, he sent for the guilty party, and awarded him the punishment meet for his offence. 101. Thus Deioces collected the Medes into a nation, and ruled over them alone. Now these are the tribes of which they consist the Busæ, the Parêtacêni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi.8 102. Having reigned three-and-fifty years, Deioces was at his death succeeded by his son Phraortes. This prince, not satisfied with a dominion which did not extend beyond the single nation of the Medes, began by attacking the Persians; 8 Mr. Grote speaks of the Median tribes as coinciding in number with the fortified circles in the town of Agbatana, and thence concludes that Herodotus conceived the seven circles as intended each for a distinct tribe (Hist. of Greece, vol. iii. p. 306). But the number of the Median tribes is not seven but six; and the circles are not in the town, but around the palace. Herodotus says expressly that the people dwelt outside the outermost circle. CHAP. 99-103. PHRAORTES CONQUERS PERSIA. 231 and marching an army into their country, brought them under the Median yoke before any other people. After this success, being now at the head of two nations, both of them powerful, he proceeded to conquer Asia, overrunning province after province. At last he engaged in war with the Assyrians,those Assyrians, I mean, to whom Nineveh belonged, who were formerly the lords of Asia. At present they stood alone by the revolt and desertion of their allies, yet still their internal condition was as flourishing as ever. Phraortes attacked them, but perished in the expedition with the greater part of his army, after having reigned over the Medes twoand-twenty years. 103. On the death of Phraortes1 his son Cyaxares ascended the throne. Of him it is reported that he was still more warlike than any of his ancestors, and that he was the first who gave organization to an Asiatic army, dividing the troops into 9 Herodotus intends here to distinguish the Assyrians of Assyria Proper from the Babylonians, whom he calls also Assyrians (i. 178, 188, &c.). Against the latter he means to say this expedition was not directed. 1 Phraortes has been thought by some to be the Arphaxad of the Book of Judith. A fanciful resemblance be. tween the names, and the fact that Phraortes is the only Median monarch said by any historian of repute to have been slain in battle with the Assyrians, are the sole grounds for this identification. But the Book of Judith is a pure historical romance, which one is surprised to find critical writers at the present day treating as serious. (See Clinton's F. H., vol. i. p. 275; Bosanquet's Fall of Niveveh, p. 16.) The following are a few of the anomalies which condemn it. The Jews are recently returned from the captivity (ch. iv. ver. 13, 18-19). Joacim (Joiakim) is the High Priest. He was the son of Jeshuah, and contemporary with Ezra and Nehemiah (Neh. xii. 10-26). The date of the events narrated should therefore be about B.C. 450-30, in the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus. Yet, 1. Nineveh is standing, and is the capital of Nabuchodonosor's kingdom (i. 1). 2. Assyria is the great monarchy of the time (i. 7.10). 3. Persia is subject to Assyria (i. 7). 4. Egypt is also subject (i. 9-10). Media, however, is an independent kingdom under Arphaxad, who as the builder of the wall of Ecbatana should be Deioces or Cyaxares. The book appears to be the work of a thoroughly Hellenized Jew, and could not therefore have been written before the time of Alexander. It is a mere romance, and has been assigned with much probability to the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes (Grotius in the Preface to his Annotations on the Book of Judith; Works, vol. i. p. 578). It has many purely Greek ideas in it, as the mention of the Giants, the sons of the Titans (ch. xvi. ver. 7), and the crowning with the chaplet of olive (ch. xv. ver. 13). Probably also the notion of a demand for earth and water (ii. 7) came to the writer from his acquaintance with Greek history. At least there is no trace of its having been an Assyrian custom. |