The Historians' History of the World 02

As to the origin of the Medo-Persians, nothing need be added beyond what has already been said of the origin of the Indians. There must have been a time, probably at a relatively late period, when the ancestors of the Indians and the ancestors of the Persians formed a single colony or group of colonies, which had its seat, it may reasonably be inferred, somewhere in the region which was afterwards known as Bactria. Thence the tide of migration swept to the southeast, as we have seen, into India, and to the southwest across the tableland of Iran, or, as we more generally term it, Persia. The vast territory of Iran came early to be divided between two peoples of this same stock, of which the one inhabiting the northeastern part of the territory was called by Greek writers the Medes, although recent investigation has tended to establish the fact that the so-called Median nation was really that of the Scythians and not that of the Medes, who lived farther to the west. Nevertheless, it seems advisable to retain the phrase Medo-Persian empire. The other, or the southeastern nation, had the name of Persian. The Scythians first gained world-historic importance and entered the field of secure history by their share in the overthrow of the Assyrian empire, in which enterprise, as we have seen, they were associated with the Babylonians. For a short period after this, the Scythians divided with the Babylonians the honours of world imperialism; then their power was snatched from them by their kindred on the south and west, and the great Medo-Persian empire came into existence.

The builder of this empire was the mighty Cyrus, one of the most powerful, and, if tradition is to be credited, one of the best of the great conquerors of history. He was an Elamite prince, but is more familiar to history as the king of Persia, which land he added to his domains early in his career of conquest. When Cyrus was born, Persia was an insignificant territory, the name of which had not yet impressed itself upon history; and before Cyrus died he had made himself absolute master of all southern Asia west of the Ganges, and the name of the minor border country, Persia, had been given to the greatest empire in the world. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, extended the sway of this empire over Egypt, and his successor and kinsman, Darius, crossed the Hellespont and precipitated that conflict between the East and the West which for two centuries continued to be perhaps the most important factor in world history. But before we turn to the specific incidents of this great drama, we must see something more in detail of this parent land of Aryan civilisation and its gifted people. a

THE LAND

The centre of the Iranian tableland consists of a great salt steppe, destitute alike of vegetation and fresh water, torrid and almost impassable by the foot of man in summer. The only spots fit for permanent habitation and agriculture are where the rainfall from lofty mountain ranges collects to form short watercourses, as in the provinces of Kerman and Jezd, and where, in the northeast, the rivers that flow down from the Hindu Kush, the Etymander (Helmund) and many like it, carry life farther into the interior, until they end in the shallow and swampy lake (Zireh or Hamun) in the land of the Drangians. With these exceptions, no more than the borders of Iran are habitable. It is hemmed in by lofty mountain ranges to the north and south, and from the Hindu Kush to the snow-clad heights of Mount Elburz to the south of the Caspian Sea, extends the hill country of Chorasan, in ancient times the abode of the Hyrcanian, Parthian, Aryan, and Drangian tribes. It forms the watershed of numerous rivers, which flow down on either side, making oases in the central desert and the Turanian lowlands, until they succumb in the struggle with the waste of sand. Chorasan constitutes the bridge between the mountain country of Bactria and Sogdiana, in the east, the region about the Oxus and Jaxartes, and Media in the west, where the ranges that run up from the south approach more and more closely to the mountains of the northern frontier, enclosing fertile highlands, rich in lakes and watercourses, where the summer is temperate and the winter severe. Here, in conflict with the Assyrians the Iranians first evolved their political system. From Media the Zagros Mountains run southeast to the Persian Gulf.