Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph
of the bas-relief from Persepolis
now in the British Museum.
He came to the throne about 655 B.C. at a time when the styar of Assur-bani-pal was still in the ascendant, and at first does not seem to have thought of trying to shake off the incubus of Assyrian rule. He began very wisely by annexing such of the petty neighbouring states as had hitherto remained independent, and then set himself to attack the one other nation of Iranian blood which, by virtue of the number and warlike qualities of its clans, was in a position to enter into rivalry with his own people. The Persians, originally concentrated in the interior, among the steep valleys which divide the plateau on the south, had probably taken advantage of the misfortunes of Elam to extend their own influence at its expense. Their kings were chosen from among the descendants of a certain Akhâmanish, the Achæmenes of the Greeks, who at the time of the Iranian invasion had been chief of the Pasargadæ, one of the Persian clans. Achæmenes is a mythical hero rather than a real person; he was, we are told, fed during infancy by an eagle—that mighty eagle whose shadow, according to a Persian belief in mediaeval times, assured the sovereignty to him on whom it chanced to fall. Achæmenes would seem to have been followed by a certain Chaispi—or Teispes—a less fabulous personage, described in the legends as his son. It was, doubtless, during his reign that Assur-bani-pal, in hot pursuit of Tiummân and Khumbân-khaldash, completed the downfall of Susa; Chaispi claimed the eastern half of Elam as his share of the spoil, and on the strength of his victory styled himself King of Anshân—a title on which his descendants still prided themselves a hundred years after his death.*
* The fact that Teispes was the immediate successor of
Achæmenes, indicated by Herodotus, is affirmed by Darius
himself in the Behistun inscription. According to Billet-
beck, the Anzân (Anshân) of the early Achæmenidæ was merely
a very small part of the ancient Anzân (Anshân), viz. the
district on the east and south-east of Kuh-i-Dena, which
includes the modern towns of Yezdeshast, Abadeh, Yoklîd, and
Kushkiserd.
Persia, as then constituted, extended from the mouths of the Oroatis—the modern Tab—as far as the entrance to the Straits of Ormuzd.* The coast-line, which has in several places been greatly modified since ancient times by the formation of alluvial deposits, consists of banks of clay and sand, which lie parallel with the shore, and extend a considerable distance inland; in some places the country is marshy, in others parched and rocky, and almost everywhere barren and unhealthy. The central region is intersected throughout its whole length by several chains of hills, which rise terrace-like, one behind the other, from the sea to the plateau; some regions are sterile, more especially in the north and east, but for the most part the country is well wooded, and produces excellent crops of cereals. Only a few rivers, such as the Oroatis, which forms the boundary between Persia and Susiana,** the Araxes, and the Bagradas succeed in breaking through the barriers that beset their course, and reach the Persian Gulf;*** most of the others find no outlet, and their waters accumulate at the bottom of the valleys, in lakes whose areas vary at the different seasons.
* Herodotus imagined Carmania and Persia Proper to be one
and the same province; from the Alexandrine period onwards
historians and geographers drew a distinction between the
two.
** The form of the name varies in different writers. Strabo
calls it the Oroatis, Nearchus the Arosis; in Pliny it
appears as Oratis and Zarotis, and in Ammianus Marcellinus
as Oroates.
*** The Araxes is the modern Bendamîr. The Kyros, which
flowed past Persepolis, is now the Pulwar, an affluent of
the Bendamîr. The Bagradas of Ptolemy, called the Hyperis by
Juba, is the modern Nabend.
