THE MEDIAN AND THE CYROPAEDIA OF XENOPHON. 13 



With regard to the two cities of Ekbatana, Professor D. S. 

 Margoliouth, in his article in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, on 



Acmetha " (Ekbatana), after mentioning that there were 

 two cities of that name, quotes the Armenian historian, Moses of 

 Chorine, as speaking of the " second Ekbatana the seven-walled 

 city." He also refers to a paper by Sir Henry Kawlinson 

 (Journal Royal Geographical Society, x, art. 2) which gives the 

 position of the two cities : one in Lat. 34° 8'N., surviving in the 

 present Hamadan — this would be the capital of the Umman- 

 manda ; the other — which Sir Henry considered the ancient capital 

 of the Medes — farther north in Lat. 36° 25' at Takht-i-Sulayman^ 

 in the ancient Atropatene. The positions of the two cities are 

 shown in Map No. 7 in the Oxford Teachers' Bible. 



Note. — That there was an Astyages, King of the Medes-, 

 however, seems certain, as it is recorded by all the Greek 

 historians ; but he was distinct from Astyages, King of the 

 Umman-man-da. 



It has been sometimes said that Xenophon, in his work the 

 Anabasis (III, iv, 7, 12) : 



" When writing as an historian and not as a novelist 

 ascribes the overthrow of the Median Empire to the Persians 

 under Cyrus after a prolonged resistance." 



But in the passage in question Xenophon merely relates the 

 local tradition which he heard when passing through the ruined 

 cities of Larissa (Chalah) and Mespila (Nineveh) in the Retreat 

 of the Ten Thousand. He uses the word " legetai " (" it is said "), 

 he does not interrupt his narrative to discuss whether what was 

 " said " was true or false. The tradition in question no doubt 

 once more confounded the Medes with the Manda. For although 

 the Medes are supposed to have taken part with the Babylonians, 

 Scythians and others in the overthrow of the Assyrian Empire in 

 607 B.C., and the destruction of Nineveh, yet it was not to them^ 

 but to the Babylonians, that after the war was over the territory of 

 Assyria seems to have fallen. (Hence the Babylonians are so 

 often called by the Greek writers " Assyrians.") Therefore the 

 Medes had no concern afterwards with the territory in which 

 these cities were. But the Umman-man-da had ; for we have 

 seen from the cylinder-inscription of NabonTdus, already cited, 

 that the Umman-man-da in his day (c. 549 B.C.) from their own 



