According to the Armenian geography, Media contained eleven districts; Ptolemy makes the number eight; but the classical geographers in general are contented with the twofold division already indicated, and recognized at the constituent parts of Media only Atropatene (now Azerbijan) and Media Magna, a tract which nearly corresponds with the two provinces of Irak Ajemj and Ardelan.  Of the minor subdivisions there are but two or three which seem to deserve any special notice.  One of these is Ehagiana, or the tract skirting the Elburz Mountains from the vicinity of the Kizil-Uzen (or Sefid-Eud) to the Caspian Gates, a long and narrow slip, fairly productive, but excessively hot in summer, which took its name from the important city of Rhages.  Another is Nissea, a name which the Medes seem to have carried with them from their early eastern abodes, and to have applied to some high upland plains west of the main chain of Zagros, which were peculiarly favorable to the breeding of horses.  As Alexander visited these pastures on his way from Susa to Ecbatana, they must necessarily have lain to the south of the latter city.  Most probably they are to be identified with the modern plains of Kbawah and Alishtar, between Behistun and Khorramabad, which are even now considered to afford the best summer pasturage in Persia.

It is uncertain whether any of these divisions were known in the time of the great Median Empire.  They are not constituted in any case by marked natural lines or features.  On the whole it is perhaps most probable that the main division—­that into Media Magna and Media Atropatene—­was ancient, Astro-patene being the old home of the Medes, and Media Magna a later conquest; but the early political geography of the country is too obscure to justify us in laying down even this as certain.  The minor political divisions are still less distinguishable in the darkness of those ancient times.

From the consideration of the districts which composed the Median territory, we may pass to that of their principal cities, some of which deservedly obtained a very great celebrity.  Tho most important of all were the two Ecbatanas—­the northern and the southern—­which seem to have stood respectively in the position of metropolis to the northern and the southern province.  Next to these may be named Rhages, which was probably from early times a very considerable place; while in the third rank may be mentioned Bagistan—­rather perhaps a palace than a town—­Concobar, Adrapan, Aspadan, Charax, Kudrus, Hyspaostes, Urakagabarna, etc.

The southern Ecbatana or Agbatana—­which the Medes and Persians themselves knew as Hagmatan—­was situated, as we learn from Polybius and Diodorus, on a plan at the foot of Mont Orontes, a little to the east of the Zagros range.  The notices of these authors, combined with those of Eratosthenes, Isidore, Pliny, Arrian, and others, render it as nearly certain as possible that the site was that of the modern