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This very important city of the Achaemenid empire was taken over by the Seleucids. Pliny states that it was founded by Seleucus, the first Seleucid ruler, while Strabo writes that the existing Achaemenid palace was an occasional residence of the Seleucid kings.
D. N. Wilber, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
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Total results on 30/4/2001: 64 for Ecbatana, 6 for Agbatana, 2 for Ekbatana.
(ta Ekbatana; Heb. Acmetha). The capital of Media, situated,
according to Diodorus, about twelve stadia from Mount Orontes. The genuine orthography
of the word appears to be Agbatana (Agbatana), a form employed by Ctesias. Ecbatana,
being in a high and mountainous country, was a favourite residence of the Persian
kings during summer, when the heat of Susa was almost insupportable. The Parthian
kings also, at a later period, retired to it in the summer to avoid the excessive
heat of Ctesiphon. According to Herodotus, Ecbatana was built near the close
of the eighth century B.C. by Deioces, the founder of the Median monarchy. The
Book of Judith assigns the building of this city, or, rather, the erection of
its citadel, to Arphaxad, in the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Assyria. Some writers make Arphaxad the same with Deioces, while others
identify him with Phraortes, the son of the latter, who might have repaired
the city or else made some additions to it.
Herodotus furnishes us with no hint whence we may infer the
relative position of Ecbatana on the map of Media. His description of the fortress
or citadel, however, is particular. "The Medes," he remarks, "in
obedience to their king's command, built those spacious and massive fortifications
now called Ecbatana, circle within circle, according to the following plan:
each inner circle overtops its outer neighbour by the height of the battlements
alone. This was effected partly by the nature of the ground, a conical hill,
and partly by the building itself. The number of the circles was seven; within
the innermost were built the palace and the treasury. The circumference of the
outermost wall and of the city of Athens may be regarded as nearly equal. The
battlements of the first circle are white; of the second, black; of the third,
scarlet; of the fourth, azure; of the fifth, orange. All these are brilliantly
coloured with different paints. But the battlements of the sixth circle are
silvered over, while those of the seventh are gilt. Deioces constructed these
walls around his palace for his own personal safety; but he ordered the people
to erect their houses in a circle around the outer wall". The Orientals,
however, according to Diodorus Siculus, claimed a far more ancient origin for
Ecbatana. Ctesias not only describes it as the capital of the first Median monarchy,
founded by Arbaces, but as existing prior to the era of the famed and fabulous
Semiramis, who is said to have visited Ecbatana in the course of her royal journeys
and to have built there a magnificent palace. She also, with immense labour
and expense, introduced abundance of excellent water into the city by perforating
the adjacent Mount Orontes, and forming a tunnel, fifteen feet broad and forty
feet high, through which she conveyed a lake-stream. The palace stood below
the citadel. Its tiles were of silver and its capitals, entablatures, and wainscotings
of gold and silver. This metal the Seleucidae coined into money, amounting to
the sum of 4000 talents, or $4,730,000.
Ecbatana was taken by Cyrus in B.C. 549, and remained a splendid
city under the Persian sway, the great king spending at this place the two hottest
months of the year. The Macedonian conquest did not prove destructive to Ecbatana,
as it had to the royal palace at Persepolis. Alexander deposited in Ecbatana
the treasures taken from Persepolis and Pasargada, and one of the last acts
of his life was a royal visit to the Median capital. Although not equally favoured
by the Seleucidae, it still retained the traces of its former grandeur; and
Polybius has left on record a description of its state under Antiochus the Great,
which shows that Ecbatana was still a splendid city, though it had been despoiled
of many of its more costly decorations (Polyb. x. frag. 4). When the Seleucidae
were driven from Upper Asia, Ecbatana became the favourite summer residence
of the Arsacidae, and at the close of the first century it still continued to
be the Parthian capital. When the Persians, under the house of Sassan, A.D.
226, recovered the dominion of Upper Asia, Ecbatana continued to be a favourite
and secure place of residence. The natural bulwarks of Mount Zagros were never
forced by the Roman legions. Consequently, as we learn from Ammianus Marcellinus,
near the close of the fourth century Ecbatana continued to be a strongly fortified
city.
This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Ecbatana (ta Ekbatana: the genuine orthography appears to be Agbatana,
as it is now written in Herodotus, and as we learn from Steph. B. it was written
by Ctesias: Apobatana, Isid. Char. p. 6, ed. Hudson: Ecbatana-ae, Hieron. Chron.
Euseb.; Lucil. Satyr. vii.), a celebrated ancient city of Media. Its foundation
was popularly attributed, like those of many other very ancient places, to Semiramis,
who is said to have made a great road to it from Assyria, by Mt. Zarcaeus or Zagros,
to have built a palace there, and to have plentifully supplied the district in
which it was situated with water, by means of an enormous tunnel or aqueduct.
(Diod. ii. 13.) According to the same author, the city of Semiramis was seated
in a place at the distance of twelve stadia from the Orontes (Mt. Elwend), and
would therefore correspond pretty nearly with the position of the present Hamadan.
Herodotus tells a different story: according to him, the city was of later origin,
and was built by the command of Deioces, who had been elected king by the people,
after they had renounced their former independence. Herodotus describes with considerable
minuteness the peculiar character of this structure, which had seven concentric
walls, each inner one being higher than the next outer one by the battlements
only. The nature of the ground, which was a conical hill, favoured this mode of
building. These battlements were painted with a series of different colours: the
outermost was white, the second black, the third purple, the fourth blue, the
fifth bright red, and sixth and seventh, respectively, gilt with silver and gold..
It has been conjectured that this story of the seven coloured walls is a fable
of Sabaean origin, the colours mentioned by Herodotus being precisely the same
as those used by the Orientals to denote the seven great heavenly bodies, or the
seven climates in which they are supposed to revolve. (Rawlinson, J. R. Geogr.
Soc. vol. x. p. 128.) Herodotus adds, what is clearly improbable, that the size
of the outer wall equalled in circumference that of the city of Athens. He probably
obtained his information from the Medes he met with at Babylon. Diodorus, on the
other hand, states that Arbaces, on the destruction of Nineveh, transferred the
seat of empire to Ecbatana (ii. 24-28), so that, according to him, it must have
been already a great city. Xenophon, at the foot of the Carduchian hills, heard
that there were two principal roads from Assyria; one to the S. into Babylonia
and Media, and the other to the E. to Susa and Ecbatana. It would seem pretty
certain, that the former is the road by Kermanshh to Hamadan; the latter, that
by Rowandiz and Keli Shin into Azerbaijan, and thence through the valleys of Kurdistan
(Mah-Sabadan) and Laristan to Susa. He mentions that the great king passed his
summer and spring respectively at Susa and Ecbatana (Anab. iii. 5. § 15), and,
in another place, that the Persian monarch spent generally two summer months at
Ecbatana, three spring months at Susa, and the remaining seven months at Babylon
(Cyrop. viii. 6. § 22). The same fact is noticed by Strabo (xi. p. 523). During
the period of the wars of Alexander the Great we have frequent mention of Ecbatana:
thus, after Arbela, Dareius flies thither, taking, most likely, the second of
the routes noticed by Xenophon (Arrian, Anab. iii. 19. § 2). Alexander marching
in pursuit of him, comes to it from Susa (iii. 19. § 4), and transports thither
as to a place of peculiar security the plunder which he had taken previously at
Babylon and Susa, ordering Parmenio to place them eis ten akran ten en Ekbatanois,
and to leave there a force of 6000 Macedonians under Harpalus as their guard (iii.
19. § 7). Again, when Alexander at last overtook and captured Bessus, he sends
him to Ecbatana - as to the most important place in his new dominions, to be put
to death by the Medes and Persians (iv. 7. § 3); arid, on his return from the
extreme east, Alexander sacrifices at Ecbatana and exhibits games and musical
contests (vii. 14. § 1). At Ecbatana, Alexander's favourite Hephaestion died,
and the conqueror is said to have destroyed the famous temple of Aesculapius there,
in sorrow for him; an anecdote, however, which Arrian does not believe (vii. 14.
§ 5). In Polybius we have a curious description of the grandeur of this ancient
town, as it had existed up to the time of Seleucus. He states that, of all the
provinces of Asia, Media was the one best fitted, from natural causes, for the
maintenance of a great and settled monarchy, the richness of its land being remarkable
and the abundance both of its inhabitants and of its cattle. He remarks of Ecbatana
itself, that it was situated in the northern part of the province, adjoining the
districts which extend thence to the Palus Maeotis and the Euxine, and that it
was under the roots of Mt. Orontes (Elwend) in a rocky situation. He adds that
there were no walls round it, but that it had a citadel of enormous strength,
and, adjoining the citadel, a royal palace full of rich and beautiful workmanship,
- all the wood used being cedar or cypress, but wholly covered with silver and
golden plates: most of these metallic ornaments, he subsequently states, had been
carried away by the soldiers of Alexander, Antigonus and Seleucus, the temple
of Aena (Anaitis) alone preserving some of these decorations up to the. time when
Antiochus came there; so that a considerable sum of money was coined from them.
The book of Judith gives a remarkable account of the building of Ecbatana in the
days of Arphaxad who reigned over the Medes in Ecbatana, from which it is evident
that it was a place of great. strength (i. 2-4). It has not been quite satisfactorily
made out who this Arphaxad was; and some have identified him with Phraortes and
some with Deioces. The former is, perhaps, the most probable conclusion, as the
same book relates a few verses further his overthrow by Nebuchodonosor in the
mountains of Ragau (v. 14), which corresponds with Herodotus's statement, that
this king fell in a battle with the Assyrians (i. 102). The place is also mentioned
in 2 Maccab. i. 3, where it is stated that Antiochus died there, on his flight.
from Persepolis; in Tobit, ii. 7, vi. 5, vii. 1, where it is evidently a place
of importance; and in Ezra, vi. 2, under the name of Achmetha, when the decree
of Cyrus for the restoration of the Jews was, found in the palace that is in the
province of the Medes. Subsequently to the period of the wars of the Seleucidae,
we find scarcely any mention of Ecbatana, and it might be presumed that it had
ceased to be a place of any note, or that its site had been occupied by a city
of some other name: Pliny, however, alludes to it, stating that it was built (more
probably, restored) by Seleucus (vi. 14. s. 17); adding, a little further on,
that it was removed by Dareius to the mountains (vi. 26. s. 29), though it would
seem, that his two statements can hardly apply to the same place. Curtius speaks
of it as caput Mediae, remarking that it was (at the time when he was writing)
under the domination of the Parthians (v. 8. § 1); while Josephus preserves, what
was probably a Jewish tradition, that Daniel built, at Ecbatana in Media, a tower
of beautiful workmanship, still extant in his day, asserting that it was the custom
for the kings both Persian and Parthian to be buried there, and for the custody
of their tombs to be committed to a Jewish priest (Ant. Jud. x. 11. § 7). He states
that it was in this tower that the decree of Cyrus was discovered. (Ant. Jud.
xi. 4. § 6.) Lastly, Ammianus places it in Adiabene (or Assyria Proper), on the
confines of which province he must himself have marched, when accompanying the
army of Jovian (xxiii. 6).
Various theories have been propounded as to the origin of the name
of Ecbatana, none of which are, we think, satisfactory. Bochart supposed that
it was derived from Agbatha, which, he says, means variously coloured; but it
is more probable that it should be derived from Achmetha. Herodotus and Ctesias
write Agbatana. There seems little doubt that the Apobatana of Isidorus refers
to Ecbatana, and is perhaps only a careless mode of pronouncing the name; his
words are curious. He speaks of a place called Adrogiananta or Adrapananta, a
palace of those among or in the Batani (ton en Batanois), which Tigranes, the
Armenian, destroyed, and then of Apobatana, the metropolis of Media, the treasury
and the temple where they perpetually sacrifice to Anaitis. If the country of
the Batani corresponds, as has been supposed, with Mesobatene, the position and
description of Apobatana will agree well enough with the modern Hamadan. (C. Masson,
J. R. As. Soc. xii. p. 121.) The coincidence of the names of the deity worshipped
there, in Polybius Aena, in Isidorus Anaitis, may be noticed; and there is little
doubt that the Nanea whose priests slew Antiochus and his army (2 Maccab i. 13)
was the goddess of the same place. Plutarch (Artax. c. 27) mentions the same fact,
and calls this Anaitis, Artemis or Diana; and Clemens Alex. referring to the same
place speaks of the shrine of Anaitis, whom he calls Aphrodite or Venus.
It is worthy of remark that Mr. Masson noticed outside the walls of
Hamadan some pure white marble columns, which he conjectured might, very possibly,
have belonged to this celebrated building.
It is, however, not a little curious that, though we have such ample
references to the power and importance of Ecbatana, learned men have not been,
indeed, are not still, agreed as to the modern place which can best be identified
with its ancient position. The reason of this may, perhaps, be, that there was
certainly more than one town in antiquity which bore this name, while there is
a strong probability that there were, in Media itself, two cities which, severally
at least, if not at the same time, had this title. If, too, as has been suspected,
the original name, of which we have the Graecised form, may have meant treasury,
or treasure-city, this hypothesis might account for part of the confusion which
has arisen on this subject. It must also be remembered that all our accounts of
Ecbatana are derived through the medium of Greek or Roman authors, who themselves
record what they had heard or read, and who, in hardly any instance, if we except
the case of Isidorus, themselves had visited the localities which they describe.
The principal theories which have been held in modern times are those of Gibbon
and Jones, who supposed that Ecbatana was to be sought at Tabriz; of Mr. Williams
(Life of Alexander), who concluded that it was at Isfahan; of the majority of
scholars, and travellers, such as Rennell, Mannert, Olivier, Kinneir, Morier,
and Ker Porter, who place it at Hamadan; and of Colonel Rawlinson, who has contended
for the independent existence of two capitals of this name, the one that of the
lower and champaign country (known anciently as Media Magna), which he places
at Hamadan, the other that of the mountain district of Atropatene, which he places
at Takht-i-Soleiman in the province of Azerbaijan, in N. lat. 36° 25? W., long.
47° 10 (J. R. Geog. Soc. vol. x. pt. 1). Of these four views the two first may
be safely rejected; but the last is so new and important, that it is necessary
to state the main features of it, though it would be obviously impossible to do
more in this place than to give a concise outline of Colonel Rawlinson's investigations.
It is important to remember the ancient division of Media into two provinces,
Upper Media or Atropatene, and Lower or Southern Media or Media Magna (Strab.
xi. pp. 523, 524, 526, 529); for there is good reason for supposing that, in the
early history, contemporary with Cyrus (as subsequently in Roman times), Media
was restricted to the northern and mountainous district. It was, in fact, a small
province nearly surrounded by high ranges of hills, bearing the same relation
to the Media of Alexander's aera which the small province of Persis did to Persia,
in the wide sense of that word. It is on this distinction that much of the corroborative
evidence, which Colonel Rawlinson has adduced in favour of his theory, rests:
his belief being, that the city of Deioces was the capital of Atropatene, and
that many things true of it, and it alone, were in after-times transplanted into
the accounts of the Ecbatana of Media Magna (the present Hamadan). Colonel Rawlinson
is almost the only traveller who has had the advantage of studying all the localities,
which he attempts to illustrate, on the spot, and with equal knowledge, too, of
the ancient and modern authorities to whom he refers.
In his attempt to identify the ruins of Takht-i-Soleiman with those
of the earliest capital of Media, Col. Rawlinson commences with the latest authorities,
the Oriental writers, proceeding from them through the period of the Byzantine
historians to that of the Greek and Roman empires, and thence, upwards, to the
darkest times of early Median history. He shows that the ruins themselves are
not later than Tmur's invasion in A.D. 1389; that they probably derive their present
name from a local ruler of Kudistan, Soleiman Shah Abuh, who lived in the early
part of the thirteenth century A. D.; that, previous to the Moghels, the city
was universally known as Shiz in all Oriental authors, and that Shiz is the same
place as the Byzantine Canzaca, This is his first important identification, and
it depends on the careful examination of the march of the Roman general Narses
against the Persian emperor Bahran, who was defeated by him and driven across
the Oxus. (Theophylact. v. 5-10.) Canzaca is described by Theophanes, in the campaigns
of Heraclius, as that city of the East which contained the fire-temple and the
treasuries of Croesus king of Lydia (Chronogr. ed. Goar. p. 258: see also Cedren,
Hist. p. 338; Tzetz. Chil. iii. 66; and Procopius, Bell. Pers. ii. c. 24); its
name is derived from Kandzag, the Armenian modification of the Greek Gaza, mentioned
by Strabo as the capital of Atropatene (xi. p. 523; Ptol. vi. 18. § 4). The notice
of the great fire-temple (of which ample accounts exist in the Oriental authorities
which Col. Rawlinson cites), and the Byzantine legend of the treasuries of Croesus
(in manifest reference to Cyrus; compare Herod. i. 153), are so many links in
the chain which connect Shiz, Canzaca, and Ecbatana together. Colonel Rawlinson
proceeds next to demonstrate that Canzaca was well known even earlier, as it is
mentioned by Ammianus, under the form Gazaca, as one of the largest Median cities
(xxiii. c. 6), and he then quotes a remarkable passage from Moses of Chorene,
who (writing probably about A.D. 445) states that Tiridates, who received the
satrapy of Atropatene in reward for his fidelity to the Romans in A.D. 297, when
he visited his newly acquired province of Azerbaijan repaired the fortifications
of that place, which was named the second Ecbatana, or seven-walled city (ii.
c. 84; compare also Steph. Byz. s. v. Gazaca, who quotes Quadratus, an author
of the second century, for the name of what he calls the largest city in Media,
and Arrian, who terms it a large village ). During the aera of the Parthian empire,
and its conflicts with the Roman power, Col. Rawlinson proves, as we think, satisfactorily,
that the names Phraata, Praaspa, Vera, Gaza, and Gazaca are used indifferently
for one and the same city. (Compare, for this portion of the history, Plut. Anton.;
Dion Cass. xlix. 25-31; Appian, Hist. Parth. pp. 77, 80, ed. Schweigh.; Florus,
iv. 10; and for the names, of Gaza and Vera, and the distinction between them,
Strab. xi. p. 523.) The next point is to compare the distances mentioned in ancient
authors. Now Strabo states that Gazaca was 2400 stadia from the Araxes (xi. p.
523), a distance equivalent to about 280 English miles; while Pliny, in stating
that Ecbatana, the capital of Media founded by Seleucus, was 750 miles from Seleuceia
and 20 from the, Caspian gates, has evidently confounded Ecbatana with Europus
(now Veramin) (vi. 14. s. 17). The former measure Col. Rawlinson shows is perfectly
consistent with the position of Takht-i-Soleiman. Colonel Rawlinson demonstrates
next, that the capital of Media Atropatene was in the most ancient periods called
Ecbatana, assuming what is certainly probable, that the dynasty founded by Arbaces
was different from that which, according to Herodotus, commenced with Deioces,
a century later. Arbaces, on the fall of Nineveh, conveyed the treasures he found
there to Ecbatana, the seat royal of Media, and it is clear that here the Ecbatana
of Media Magna is meant. (Diod. ii. 3.) To the same place belongs the story of
Semiramis, also recorded by Diodorus, and previously mentioned. After five generations
Artaeus ascends the throne at the same place. During his reign the Cadusians (who
are constantly associated with the Atropatenians in subsequent history) revolt,
under the leadership of Parsodes. Colonel Rawlinson happily suggests that this
is no other than the Deioces of Herodotus, Parsodes or Phrazad being an affiliative
epithet from his father, Phraortes. (Diod. l. c.; Herod. i. 95-130.) When we examine
the narrative of Herodotus, it is clear that he is speaking of some place in Atropatene
or Northern Media. Thus he states that the pastures where they kept the royal
cattle were at the foot of the mountains north of Agbatana, towards the Euxine
sea. In this quarter, toward the Sapires, Media is an elevated country, filled
with mountains and covered with forests, while the other parts of the province
are open and champaign. (Herod. i. c. 110.) Colonel Rawlinson then shows that
the existing state of Takht-i-Soleiman bears testimony to the accurate information
which Herodotus had obtained. It is clear from his account that the Agbatana of
Deioces was believed to be an embattled conical hill, on which was the citadel,
and the town was round its base in the plain below. Colonel Rawlinson adds that
there is no other position in Azerbaijan which corresponds with this statement,
except Takht-i-Soleiman, and cites abundant evidence from the Zend Avesta, as
compared with the Byzantine and other writers to whom we have alluded, in reference
to peculiarities, too important to have been only imagined, which mark out and
determine this locality. It is impossible here to state his arguments in their
fulness; but we may add that from the Zend he obtains the word Var, the root of
the baris of the Greeks (see Hesych. and Suidas, s. v.), which is constantly used
to denote the Treasure Citadel of Ecbatana; of the Vera of Strabo; of the Balaroth
(i. e. Vara-rud, river of Vara) of Theophylact, whence we have Barisman - the
keeper of the Baris - the title used by the emperor Heraclius in reference to
the governor of the fortress of this very place. In conclusion, Colonel Rawlinson
suggests that the Ecbatana of Pliny and Josephus refers to the Treasure Citadel
of Persepolis; that there are grounds for supposing a similar treasury to have
existed in the strong position of the Syrian Ecbatana on Mount Carmel (Herod.
iii. 62-64; Plin. v. 19. § 17); and that, if there ever was (as some have supposed)
an Assyrian place of the same name (Rich, Kurdistan, i. p. 153), the castle of
Amadiyah - which, according to Mr. Layard (i. p. 161), retains the local name
of Ek-badan - will best suit it. (See also Journal of Education, vol. ii. p. 305;
and Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. vi. Append. 2., where the site of Hamadan
is ably defended.)
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited September 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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