ESSAY II.

NATIONS OF ASIA MINOR.

387

principle causes the omission of the Caunians and the mention of the Trojans, the Pisidians, and the Milya. Ephorus is dividing the inhabitants of Asia Minor, not politically, but ethnically. Herodotus himself informs us that the Milya were a distinct race from the Lycians (Termila 7), and a peculiar ethnic character may have attached to the Trojans and Pisidians. By the Trojans are probably intended those inhabitants of Lycia who were neither Milye nor Termile, the Troûoûes of the Lycian inscriptions, and the Trojans (Troës) mentioned in the Iliad as brought from Lycia by Pandarus. This race, though Lycian, had its peculiar characteristics.9 The ethnic difference between the Pisidians and their neighbours may have been even greater, for there is reason to believe that they were an ancient and very pure Semitic race.1 On the other hand, the Caunians were perhaps too nearly akin to the Troës to be distinguished from them; or they may have been omitted on account of their insignificance. The subjoined table will show more distinctly the harmony of Herodotus and Ephorus.

1. Arian origin of the Medes. 2. Close connexion with the Persians. 3. Original migration from beyond the Indus. 4. Medes occupy the tract south of the Caspian. 5. First contact between Media and Assyria-Conquest of Sargon. 6. Media under the Assyrians. 7. Establishment of the independence (i.) Account of Ctesias-(ii.) Account of Herodotus. 8. Cyaxares the real founder of the monarchy. 9. Events of his reign: (i.) His war with the Scyths-(ii.) Conquest of Assyria-(iii.) Conquest of the tract between Media and the river Halys (iv.) War with Alyattes-(v.) Aid given to Nebuchadnezzar. 10. Reign of Astyages-uneventful. 11. His supposed identity with "Darius the Mede." 12. Media becomes a Persian satrapy. 13. Median chronology of Herodotus-its difficulties. 14. Attempted

solution.

1. THAT the Medes were a branch of the great Arian family, closely allied both in language and religion to the Persians, another Arian tribe, seems now to be generally admitted. The statement of Herodotus with regard to the original Median appellation,1 combined with the native traditions of the Persians which brought their ancestors from Aria,2 would, perhaps, alone suffice to establish this ethnic affinity. Other proofs, however, are not wanting. The Medes are invariably called Arians by the Armenian writers; and Darius Hystaspis, in the inscription upon histomb, declared himself to be "a Persian, the son of a Persian, an Arian, of Arian descent."'* Thus it appears that the ethnic appellative of Arian appertains to the two nations equally; and there is every reason to believe that their language and religion were almost identical.5

1 Herod. vii. 62. Οἱ δὲ Μῆδοι ἐκαλέοντο πάλαι πρὸς πάντων ̓́Αριοι.

2 In the first Fargard of the Vendidad, the primeval seat of the Persians, whence their migrations commence, is called Airyanēm vaėjo, "the source or native land of the Arians." (Cf. Prichard's Natural History of Man, p. 165; Müller's Languages of the Seat of War, p. 29, note.)

3 See Mos. Chor. i. 28, and cf. Quatremère's Histoire des Mongols, tom. i. p. 241, note 76.

4 See Sir H. Rawlinson's Memoir on the Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. x. part iii. p. 292.

5 It may be thought that the recent discoveries militate against the notion of an identity of language, since undoubtedly the (so-called) Median tablets are written not only in a different language from the Persian, but in a language of a completely distinct family. It is, however, now pretty generally allowed that the

ESSAY III.

MEDES AND PERSIANS NEARLY ALLIED.

389

7

2. This consideration will help us to understand many facts and expressions, both in sacred and profane writers, which would be altgether inexplicable if, as has sometimes been supposed, the Medes had been of an ethnical family entirely distinct from the Persians, a Semitic, for instance, or a Scythic race. The facility with which the two nations coalesced, the high positions held by Medes under the Persian sway, the identity of dress remarked by Herodotus, the precedency of the Medes over all the other conquered nations, indicated by their position in the lists, the common use of the terms "the Mede,' Medism," ""the Median war," in connexion with the Persian attacks upon Greece,1 the oft-repeated formula in the book of Daniel "according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not,"

8

99.66

term Median, as applied to this particular form of language, is a mis. nomer, retained in use at present for convenience' sake. The language in question is not Medic but Scythic, and inscriptions were set up in it, not for the benefit of the Medes, but of the Scythic or Tâtar tribes scattered over the Persian empire. (See Sir H. Rawlinson's Commentary on the Inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia, p. 75.)

It may be added that the Median names of men and places admit almost universally of being referred by etymological analysis to Zend roots, while the original language of the Persians is closely akin to the Zend.

Among the ancients, Nearchus and Strabo (xv. p. 1030, Oxf. ed.) maintained that the Median and Persian tongues only differed as two dialects of the same language.

6 Bochart (Phaleg. iii. 14) and Scaliger, by proposing Hebrew or Arabic derivations of the word Ecbatana, seem to imply that they look on the Medes as a Semitic race.

7 Harpagus, the conqueror of the Asiatic Greeks, of Caria, Caunus, and Lycia, is a Mede (Herod. i. 162). So is Datis, the joint leader with Artaphernes of the army which fought at Marathon (ib. vi. 94). So are Harmamithres and Tithæus, sons of Datis,

9

these and similar expressions

the commanders of Xerxes's cavalry (ib. vii. 88). In the inscriptions we find Intaphres, a Mede, mentioned as reducing Babylon on its second revolt from Darius (Beh. Ins. col. iii. par. 14). And Tachmaspates, another Mede, is employed to bring Sagartia into subjection (ibid. col. ii. par. 14). No foreigners except Medes are so employed.

8 Herod. i. 135, and vii. 62.

9 See Herod. vii. 62-80, and the inscriptions, passim. "Persia, Media, and the other provinces," is the usual formula. (See Behistun Inscription, par. 10, 11, 12, 14.) When there is a complete enumeration, Media either heads the entire list, as in the inscription on the tomb of Darius (Sir H. Rawlinson's Pers. Cun. Inser. vol. i. p. 292), or at least one portion of it, as in that at Behistun. The only case in which any other province takes positive precedence of Media is in the list at Persepolis, where Susiana, whose chief city had become the capital, is placed first, Media second (ib. p. 280).

Herod. i. 163; iv. 165, 197; vi. 64, &c. Thucyd. i. 14, 18, 23, &c. Eschyl. Pers. 787 (ed. Scholefield). Aristoph. Lysistr. 615. Thesm. 316. Pax, 108, &c.

2 Dan. vi. 8, 12, 15. The precedency of the Medes over the Persians, which is found not only in this formula, but

390 ORIGINAL MIGRATION FROM BEYOND THE INDUS. APP. Book L

and facts become instinct with meaning, and are no longer strange but quite intelligible when once we recognise the ethnical identity of Medes and Persians, the two pre-eminent branches of the Arian stock. We see how natural it was that there should be an intimate union, if not an absolute fusion, of two peoples so nearly allied; how it was likely that the name of either should apply to both; how they would have one law and one dress as well as one religion and one language, and would stand almost, if not quite upon a par, at the head of the other nations, who in language, religion, and descent were aliens.

3. The great migration of the Arian race westward from the upper Oxus, simultaneous probably with the movement of a kindred people, the progenitors of the modern Hindoos, eastward and southward to the Ganges and the Vindhya mountain-range, is an event of which the most sceptical criticism need not doubt, remote though it be, and obscurely seen through the long vista of intervening centuries. Where two entirely distinct lines of national tradition converge to a single point, and that convergence is exactly what philological research, in the absence of any tradition, would have indicated,3 it seems impossible to suppose either coincidence or collusion among the witnesses. In such a case we may feel sure that here at length, among the bewildering mazes of that mythic or semimythic literature in which the first origin of nations almost invariably descends to later ages, we have come upon an historic fact; the tradition has for once been faithful, and has conveyed to us along the stream of time a precious fragment of truth. What the date of the movement was we can only conjecture. The Babylonian story of a Median dynasty at Babylon above 2000 years before the Christian era, although referring beyond a doubt to some real event, will yet aid us little in determining the time of the Arian emigration. For it is not unlikely that Berosus, in using the term "Mede," is guilty of a prolepsis, applying the name to a race, which in the early times inhabited the region known in his own days as Media—

ESSAY III.

FIRST HISTORIC NOTICES OF MEDIA.

391

just as if a modern writer were to call the ancient Britons English, or say that in the age of Camillus the French took and burnt Rome. Certainly the earliest distinct notice of the Arian race which is contained in the inscriptions hitherto discovered appears to indicate a far later date for this great movement of nations. When the Assyrians, in the progress of their conquests, first fall in with the Medes (about B.C. 840), he seems to find the emigration still in progress, and not yet complete.5

4. The Medes (Mada) occupy the region south of the Caspian, between the Kurdish mountains, which are in possession of the Zimri (Scyths), and the country called Bikni or Bikrat, which appears to be the modern Khorassan. Here, in the position to which the Arian race is brought in the first Fargard of the Vendidad, the Medes are first found by authentic history, and here they continue, apparently, unmoved to a late period of the Assyrian empire. There is every reason to believe that the Medes of history had not reached Media Magna fifteen hundred years after the time when the Medes of Berosus, probably a different race, conquered Babylon.

5. All that can be said, therefore, of the emigration is, that, at whatever time it commenced, it was not completed much before B.C. 640. Probably there was a long pause in the movement, marked by the termination of the list of names in the Vendidad, during which the main seat of Median power was the country south of the Caspian. In the first portion of this period the Medes were free and unassailed; but from towards the middle of the 9th century B.C. they became exposed to the aggressions of the growing Assyrian empire. The first king9 who menaced their independence was the monarch

didad. (Notes on Early History of Babylonia, p. 29, note 3).

7 In the list of the Vendidad no position west of Rhages (Rhaga) can be clearly identified. Varene may be the capital of Media Atropatené, which was called Vera, or Baris, by the Greeks; but this is very uncertain. (Ibid. p. 34, note3.)

8 As the Medes are not mentioned in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser I., who reigned about B.C. 1130, and warred in the countries east of Zagros, it is probable that they had not then reached Media Magna.

9 As this king does not tax the