The story of Parthia

by George Rawlinson

Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART OF BACTRIA?MEDIA MAGNA. II north of the Paropamisus, either upon the Murghab, or upon the Ab-i-Kaisar river. The accession of territory gained by this conquest was insignificant. But some extensive and most valuable conquests soon followed. Turning her attention once more towards the west, Parthia made war show more upon Media, the great country which had for a time held the first place in Western Asia, and exercised a dominion which reached from the Caspian Gates to the Halys, and from the mouth of the Araxes to the vicinity of Isfahan. Subjected first by Persia, and then by Alexander the Great, she had sunk back within much narrower limits, and had at the same time become split up into three provinces?Media Rhagiana, Media Magna, and Media Atropatene. The Parthians had previously swallowed up, as already stated, Media Rhagiana: now they attacked Media Magna. This was an extensive tract situated between the thirty- second and thirty-seventh parallels, and reaching from the Great Salt Desert of Iran upon the east to the main chain of Mount Zagros upon the west. Its length from north to south was about five degrees, or nearly three hundred and fifty miles, and its width from west to east four degrees, or about two hundred and forty miles. The entire area cannot have been much under eighty thousand square miles, which is a little less than the size of Great Britain, and a little more than that of German Austria. The tract, divides itself into two portions?the western and the eastern. The western, which is rather more than one half of the whole, lies within the limits of the broad mountain region known as Zagros, and is a country of alternatemountain and valley, with here and there a tolerably extensive plain, very productive, and for the most part picturesque and beautiful. The lof... show less