Geography

​After Carmania is Persis, extensive on the coast of the gulf named after it, but much greater in the interior, and especially in length from the south and Carmania toward the north and the tribes around Media. It is threefold both in its nature and in the temperature of its air. For the coast is hot and sandy and deficient in crops except dates, being measured at about four thousand four hundred or three hundred stadia, and ending at a river, the greatest of those in these parts, called Oroatis. The region above this is fertile and level, and an excellent nurse of cattle, abounding both in rivers and in lakes. The third region is that toward the north, wintry and mountainous; and near the frontiers are the camel-breeders. Now, according to Eratosthenes, the length toward the north and the Caspian Gates is about eight thousand stadia along certain projecting promontories; but the remaining part to the Caspian Gates is not more than three thousand stadia. The breadth in the interior, from Susa to Persepolis, is four thousand two hundred stadia, and from there to the borders of Carmania another one thousand six hundred stadia. The tribes that inhabit the country are those called Pateischoreis, the Achaemenidae, and the Magi; now these indeed are zealots of a certain dignified life, but the Cyrtii and Mardi are predatory, and others are agricultural.

​Susis also has become almost a part of Persis, lying between it and Babylonia, and having Susa, a most noteworthy city. For when the Persians and Cyrus conquered the Medes, seeing that their own country was situated near the frontiers, while Susis was further inland and closer to Babylonia and the other nations, they established the royal seat of their empire there. At the same time, they also welcomed the neighborly position of the country, the dignity of the city, and the still better fact that Susis had never by itself been capable of great achievements, but had always been subject to others and ranked as a part of a larger system, except perhaps in ancient times in the age of the heroes. For indeed it is said to be a foundation of Tithonus, the father of Memnon, having a circumference of one hundred and twenty stadia, and being oblong in shape; and its acropolis was called Memnonium. The Susians are also called Cissians, and Aeschylus also calls the mother of Memnon Cissia. And Memnon is said to have been buried near Paltus in Syria, by the river Badas, as Simonides has stated in his “Memnon,” a dithyramb of the Delian collection. The wall of the city, the temples, and the palaces had been built, as some have said, in a manner very similar to those of the Babylonians, of baked brick and asphalt; but Polycletus says that its circumference is two hundred stadia and that it is without walls.

​Although they adorned the palace in Susa more than any other, they honored no less those in Persepolis and Pasargadae; and the treasury, the treasures, and the tombs were there for the Persians, as being in places more secure and at the same time ancestral. There were also other palaces, that in Gabae in some of the upper parts of Persis, and that on the coast near the place called Taoce. These, indeed, belonged to the time of the Persian empire; but those of later times used other and different palaces, and some of them more humble, as is natural, inasmuch as Persis had been diminished both by the Macedonians and still more by the Parthians. For even if the Persians are ruled by their own king until now, they fall very far short in power and pay attention to the Parthian king.