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tion of Nineveh, its capital, by the same monarch, has been already 

 noticed ; a conquest which widely extended the power of the Medes 

 over the region of the Higher Asia, and was secured not only by bonds 

 of public alliance, but by the force of domestic ties with Nebuchad- 

 nezzar, the reigning sovereign of Babylon, who married the daughter 

 of Cyaxares. 



To Cai-Cobad, on the Imperial throne of Iran, succeeded Cai- 

 Caus, called by the Greeks Darius the Mede, the word Darius being 

 formed from Dara, the Persian word for sovereign ; and the title, 

 therefore, should more properly be applied to the dynasty than to 

 any individual prince of Persia then flourishing. In his reign, with 

 the assistance of his successor, Cai-Khosru, the great Cyrus, the 

 Babylonian kingdom was added to this amazing empire ; and, at 

 his death, Khosru, by hereditary right king of the empire, properly 

 called Persia, became the undisputed sovereign of all the Greater 

 Asia. But even this immense domain could not satisfy the bound- 

 less ambition of Khosru, who soon subjugated Asia Minor also, and, 

 by the invincible Rostam, extended his sway over Syria and Ara- 

 bia ; the Gulph of that name and Ethiopia forming the southern, 

 and the Caspian and Euxine Seas the northern, limit of his empire ; 

 while the distant ./Egean Sea washed it on the western, and the Indus 

 on the eastern, frontier. Although the Indus be here stated, on the 

 authority of Xenophon*, as its eastern boundary, that is only to be 

 understood in a geographical sense ; for, so rich a prize as India, and 

 so near a neighbour to the provinces over which Rostam and his 

 brave sons successively enjoyed little less than a kingly authority, 

 can scarcely be supposed to have been, under this vigorous reign, 

 absolved from that tributary dependance under which it was holden 

 by former monarchs of Iran. In truth, the extracts from the native 



* Cyropaedia, lib. viii. p. 233. 



U 2 



