* The apple obtained from Media was known as the Modicum malum, and was credited with the property of being a powerful antidote to poison:  it was supposed that it would not grow anywhere outside Media.

     ** In some places, as, for instance, at Kirmanshahan, the
     vine stocks have to be buried during the winter to protect
     them from the frost.

     *** Irrigation was effected formerly, as now, by means of
     subterranean canals with openings at intervals, known as
     kanat.

The fauna include, besides wild beasts of the more formidable kinds, such as lions, tigers, leopards, and bears, many domestic animals, or animals capable of being turned to domestic use, such as the ass, buffalo, sheep, goat, dog, and dromedary, and the camel with two humps, whose gait caused so much merriment among the Ninevite idlers when they beheld it in the triumphal processions of their kings; there were, moreover, several breeds of horses, amongst which the Nisasan steed was greatly prized on account of its size, strength, and agility.* In short, Media was large enough and rich enough to maintain a numerous population, and offered a stable foundation to a monarch ambitious of building up a new empire.**

* In the time of the Seleucides, Media supplied nearly the whole of Asia with these animals, and the grazing-lands of Bagistana, the modern Behistun, are said to have supported 160,000 of them.  Under the Parthian kings Media paid a yearly tribute of 3000 horses, and the Nisaean breed was still celebrated at the beginning of the Byzantine era.  Horses are mentioned among the tribute paid by the Medic chiefs to the kings of Assyria.

** The history of the Medes remains shrouded in greater obscurity than that of any other Asiatic race.  We possess no original documents which owe their existence to this nation, and the whole of our information concerning its history is borrowed from Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, and from the various legends collected by the Greeks, especially by Herodotus and Ctesias, from Persian magnates in Asia Minor or at the court of the Achaemenian kings, or from fragments of vanished works such as the writings of Borosus.  And yet modern archaeologists and philologists have, during the last thirty years, allowed their critical faculties, and often their imagination as well, to run riot when dealing with this very period.  After carefully examining, one after another, most of the theories put forward, I have adopted those hypotheses which, while most nearly approximating to the classical legends, harmonise best with the chronological framework—­far too imperfect as yet—­furnished by the inscriptions dealing with the closing years of Nineveh; I do not consider them all to be equally probable, but though they may be mere stop-gap solutions, they have at least the merit of reproducing in many cases the ideas current among those races of antiquity who had been in direct communication with the Medes and with the last of their sovereigns.

[Illustration:  269.jpg NISAEAN HOUSES HARNESSED TO A ROYAL CHARIOT]