stronghold.
It may be thought perhaps that the description which Herodotus gives
of the building called by him "the palace of Deioces" should be here
applied, and that by its means we might obtain an exact notion of the
original structure. But the account of this author is wholly at variance
with the natural features of the neighborhood, where there is no such
conical hill as he describes, but only a plain surrounded by mountains.
It seems, therefore, to be certain that either his description is a pure
myth, or that it applies to another city, the Ecbatana of the northern
province. It is doubtful whether the Median capital was at any time
surrounded with walls. Polybius expressly declares that it was an
unwalled place in his day and there is some reason to suspect that it
had always been in this condition. The Medes and Persians appear to have
been in general content to establish in each town a fortified citadel or
stronghold, round which the houses were clustered, without superadding
the further defence of a town wall. Ecbatana accordingly seems never to
have stood a siege. When the nation which held it was defeated in the
open field, the city (unlike Babylon and Nineveh) submitted to the
conqueror without a struggle. Thus the marvellous description in the
book of Judith, which is internally very improbable, would appear to be
entirely destitute of any, even the slightest, foundation in fact.

The chief city of northern Media, which bore in later times the names of
Gaza, Gazaca, or Canzaca, is thought to have also been called Ecbatana,
and to have been occasionally mistaken by the Greeks for the southern or
real capital. The description of Herodotus, which is irreconcilably
at variance with the local features of the Hamadan site, accords
sufficiently with the existing remains of a considerable city in the
province of Azerbijan; and it seems certainly to have been a city in
these parts which was called by Moses of Chorene "the second Ecbatana,
the seven-walled town." The peculiarity of this place was its situation
on and about a conical hill which sloped gently down from its summit
to its base, and allowed of the interposition of seven circuits of wall
between the plain and the hill's crest. At the top of the hill, within
the innermost circle of the defences, were the Royal Palace and
the treasuries; the sides of the hill were occupied solely by the
fortifications; and at the base, outside the circuit of the outermost
w