That Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the space which he overran covered no less than fifty degrees of longitude, from the coast of Asia Minor to the Oxus and the Indus, are facts quite indisputable; but of the steps by which this was achieved, we know very little.  The native Persians, whom he conducted to an empire so immense, were an aggregate of seven agricultural, and four nomadic tribes—­all of them rude, hardy, and brave—­dwelling in a mountainous region, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine, or fruit, or any of the commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale.  Their tribes were very unequal in point of dignity, probably also in respect to numbers and powers, among one another.  First in estimation among them stood the Pasargadae; and the first phratry or clan among the Pasargadae were the Achaemenidae, to whom Cyrus himself belonged.  Whether his relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a matter of fact, or a politic fiction, we cannot well determine.  But Xenophon, in noticing the spacious deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila, which he saw in his march with the ten thousand Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris, gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle.  However this may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last complete:  though the Medes always continued to be the second nation in the empire, after the Persians, properly so called; and by early Greek writers the great enemy in the East is often called “the Mede” as well as “the Persian.”  The Median Ekbatana too remained as one of the capital cities, and the usual summer residence, of the kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspes, on the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of the Tigris, being their winter abode.

The vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the east, the Oxus and Caspian Sea to the north, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the south, and the line of Mount Zagros to the west, appears to have been occupied in these times by a great variety of different tribes and people, yet all or most of them belonging to the religion of Zoroaster, and speaking dialects of the Zend language.  It was known amongst its inhabitants by the common name of Iran or Aria:  it is, in its central parts at least, a high, cold plateau, totally destitute of wood, and scantily supplied with water; much of it indeed is a salt and sandy desert, unsusceptible of culture.  Parts of it are eminently fertile, where water can be procured and irrigation applied.  Scattered masses of tolerably dense population thus grew up; but continuity of cultivation is not practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large proportion of the population of Iran seems to have consisted of wandering or nomadic tribes with their tents and cattle.  The rich pastures, and the freshness of the summer climate, in the region of mountain and valley near Ekbatana, are extolled