tanding
out like a buttress from the Zagros range, with which it is connected
towards the north-west, while on every other side it stands isolated,
sweeping boldly down upon the flat country at its base. Copious streams
descend from the mountain on every side, more particularly to the
north-east, where the plain is covered with a carpet of the most
luxuriant verdure, diversified with rills, and ornamented with numerous
groves of large and handsome forest trees. It is here, on ground sloping
slightly away from the roots of the mountain, that the modern town,
which lies directly at its foot, is built. The ancient city, if we may
believe Diodorus, did not approach the mountain within a mile or a mile
and a half. At any rate, if it began where Hamadan now stands, it most
certainly extended very much further into the plain. We need not suppose
indeed that it had the circumference, or even half the circumference,
which the Sicilian romancer assigns to it, since his two hundred and
fifty stades would give a probable area of fifty square miles, more than
double that of London! Ecbatana is not likely to have been at its most
flourishing period a larger city than Nineveh; and we have already seen
that Nineveh covered a space, within the walls, of not more than 1800
English acres.

[Illustration: PLATE I.]

The character of the city and of its chief edifices has, unfortunately,
to be gathered almost entirely from unsatisfactory authorities. Hitherto
it has been found possible in these volumes to check and correct the
statements of ancient writers, which are almost always exaggerated,
by an appeal to the incontrovertible evidence of modern surveys
and explorations. But the Median capital has never yet attracted a
scientific expedition. The travellers by whom it has been visited have
reported so unfavorably of its character as a field of antiquarian
research that scarcely a spadeful of soil has been dug, either in the
city or in its vicinity, with a view to recover traces of the ancient
buildings. Scarcely any remains of antiquity are apparent. As the site
has never been deserted, and the town has thus been subjected for nearly
twenty-two centuries to the destructive ravages of foreign conquerors,
and the still more injurious plunderings of native builders, anxious
to obtain materials for new edifices at the least possible cost and
trouble, the ancient structures have everywhere disappeared from sight,
and are not even indicated b