Unlike the modern Persia, however, the territory consisted almost entirely of productive regions.  The excellent quality of the soil in Parthia Proper, Hyrcania, and Margiana, has been already noticed.  Bactria, the next province to Margiana towards the east, was less uniformly fertile; but still it contained a considerable proportion of good land along the course of the Oxus and its tributaries, which was cultivated in vineyards and cornfields, or else pastured large herds of cattle.  The Mardian mountain territory was well wooded; and the plain between the mountains and the Caspian was rich in the extreme.  Media, where it adjoined on the desert, was comparatively sterile; but still even here an elaborate system of artificial irrigation brought a belt of land under culture.  Further west, in the Zagros chain, Media comprised some excellent pasture lands, together with numerous valleys as productive as any in Asia.  Elymais was, in part, of the same character with the mountainous portion of Media, while beyond the mountain it sank down into a rich alluvium, not much inferior to the Babylonian.  Babylonia itself was confessedly the most fertile country in Asia.  It produced wheat, barley, millet, sesame, vetches, dates, and fruits of all kinds.  The return of the wheat crop was from fifty to a hundred-and-fifty-fold; while that of the barley crop was three hundred-fold.  The dates were of unusual size and superior flavor; and the palm, which abounded throughout the region, furnished an inexhaustible supply both of fruit and timber.

The great increase of power which Mithridates had obtained by his conquests could not be a matter of indifference to the Syrian monarchs.  Their domestic troubles—­the contentions between Philip and Lysias, between Lysias and Demetrius Soter, Soter and Alexander Balas, Balas and Demetrius II., Demetrius II. and Tryphon, had so engrossed them for the space of twenty years (from B.C. 162 to B.C. 142) that they had felt it impossible, or hopeless, to attempt any expedition towards the East, for the protection or recovery of their provinces.  Mithridates had been allowed to pursue his career of conquest unopposed, so far as the Syrians were concerned, and to establish his sway from the Hindoo Koosh to the Euphrates.  But a time at last came when home dangers were less pressing, and a prospect of engaging the terrible Parthians with success seemed to present itself.  The second Demetrius had not, indeed, wholly overcome his domestic enemy, Tryphon; but he had so far brought him into difficulties as to believe that he might safely be left to be dealt with by his wife, Cleopatra, and by his captains.  At the same time the condition of affairs in the East seemed to invite his interference, Mithridates ruled his new conquests with some strictness, suspecting, probably, their fidelity, and determined that he would not by any remissness allow them to escape from his grasp.  The native inhabitants could scarcely be much attached to the Syro-Macedonians,