[323] Xenophon, Anabas. iii, 3, 6; iii, 4, 7-12. Strabo had read accounts which represented the last battle between Astyagês and Cyrus to have been fought near Pasargadæ (xv, p. 730).
It has been rendered probable by Ritter, however, that the ruined city which Xenophon called Mespila was the ancient Assyrian Nineveh, and the other deserted city which Xenophon calls Larissa, situated as it was on the Tigris, must have been originally Assyrian, and not Median. See about Nineveh, above,—the Chapter on the Babylonians, vol. iii, ch. xix, p. 305, note.
The land east of the Tigris, in which Nineveh and Arbêla were situated, seems to have been called Aturia,—a dialectic variation of Assyria (Strabo, xvi, p. 737; Dio Cass. lxviii, 28).
[324] Xenophanês, Fragm. p. 39, ap. Schneidewin, Delectus Poett. Elegiac. Græc.—
Πήλικος ἦσθ᾽ ὅθ᾽ ὁ Μῆδος ἀφίκετο;
compare Theognis, v, 775, and Herodot. i, 163.
[325] Strabo, xv, p. 724. ὁμόγλωττοι παρὰ μικρόν. See Heeren, Ueber den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, book i, pp. 320-340, and Ritter, Erdkunde, West-Asien, b. iii, Abtheil. ii, sects. 1 and 2, pp. 17-84.
[326] About the province of Persis, see Strabo, xv, p. 727; Diodor. xix, 21; Quintus Curtius, v, 13, 14, pp. 432-434, with the valuable explanatory notes of Mützell (Berlin, 1841). Compare, also, Morier’s Second Journey in Persia, pp. 49-120, and Ritter, Erdkunde, West Asien, pp. 712-738.
[327] Ktêsias, Persica, c. 2.
[328] Herodot. i, 153.