[238] There is great difficulty in ascertaining, from the accounts given by the ancient writers, the exact limits of this district, but it is supposed to have included a considerable portion of the province now known by the name of Azerbaijan. It derived its name from Atropates or Atropes, who was governor of this district under the last Darius.
[239] Most probably the place now known as Gazæa, the royal residence of the Parthian kings, and, as its name would imply, their treasure city. Colonel Rawlinson thinks that this place underwent many changes of name according to the rulers who successively occupied it; among other names, it appears to have borne that of Ecbatana.
[240] A city of great magnitude, pleasantly situate near the foot of Mount Orontes, in the northern part of Greater Media. Its original foundation was attributed by Diodorus Siculus to Semiramis, and by Herodotus to Deioces. It was the capital of the Median kingdom, and afterwards the summer residence of the Persian and Parthian kings. The genuine orthography of the name seems to be Agbatana. The ruins seen at the modern Hamadan are generally supposed to represent those of the ancient Ecbatana; but it is most probable that at different times, if not contemporaneously, there were several cities of this name in Media.
[241] Pliny in this statement, as also in the distances which he here assigns to Ecbatana, is supposed to have confounded Ecbatana with Europus, now Veramin, rebuilt by Seleucus Nicator.
[242] This was a city in the vicinity of Rhagæ, which was distant about 500 stadia from the Caspian Gates. It was built by the Greeks after the Macedonian conquest of Asia. The other places here mentioned do not appear to have been identified.
[243] See the beginning of c. [12], p. 21.
[244] This was the name of the wild tribes which occupied the high mountainous district between the great upland of Persia and the low plains of Mesopotamia. In addition to the name mentioned by Pliny, they were called Gordyæ, Cardaces, and Curtii. The present Kurds, inhabiting Kurdistan, are supposed to be descended from them.
[245] The Greek παρ’ ὁδὸν, “on the road”—meaning, probably, to the Caspian Gates. Hardouin says that the Pratitæ were so called from the Greek πρατῖται, “merchants.”
[246] Although dwelling at a considerable distance, the custody of these gates was delivered to them, Hardouin says, by the kings of Media.
[247] To the south-east of them.