Sykes' History of Persia - Heritage Institute

X THE RISE OF MEDIA 125
route to which lay past Demavand. Indeed, when we re-
collect that it is eight hundred miles from Teheran to
Herat, it seems clear that modern Afghanistan
must have
lain quite outside the orbit of Assyria.
The brief I summary have given of the various campaigns
and expeditions made during a period of some five
hundred years in the western half of the Iranian plateau is,
I would urge, of considerable value, as it proves clearly
that, on every occasion, the Assyrians were able to attack
the inhabitants of each district
separately, and that between
Armenia, then the kingdom of Urartu, on the north, and
the hill districts of Elam to the south there was no organized
power to be reckoned with. Moreover, it shows
that the western half of the Iranian plateau had been, to
some extent at any rate, under Babylonian influence, and
that the whole district was tributary to Assyria when that
power was It
strong.
is, however, reasonable to suppose
that the more remote and inaccessible districts were always
ready to rebel when the opportunity arose for the
;
Assyrian tribute was no light impost. Throughout this
long period the whole country must have been more or
less permeated with Assyrian influence ; and it was thanks
to the severe education it was forced to undergo that
Media became a powerful empire.
The Tradition of the Medes.—The meteoric empire of
the Medes was, so they themselves believed, the work of
one man of no high lineage. At the time when the
reign
of Sennacherib was drawing to a peaceful close, this race
of mountaineers, who had hitherto been but one of many
barbarous hill tribes
leading mainly a nomadic existence,
or at best dwelling
in scattered villages, had begun to
establish an organization which was destined to culminate
in a glorious, though short-lived, empire.
Deioces, the Founder of the Royal Dynasty,—We read
in the pages of Herodotus that the founder of Media as a
separate kingdom was Deioces, son of Phraortes, whose
justice became so famous that, first, his and then all his
fellow-villagers,
fellow-tribesmen, flocked to hear his
decisions. Seeing his power, Deioces gave out that he
could not continue to spend all his time judging his