cypresses, cedars, myrtles, arbutus-trees, cover the flanks of the
plateau and the hollows which break its surface, while the remainder is
suitable alike for the cultivation of cereals and for pasturage. Nature
has also made the region a special gift in the laserpitium or silphium,
which was regarded by the ancients as at once a delicacy and a plant
of great medicinal power, and which added largely to the value of the
country.

Such was the geographical extent of the Persian Empire, and such
were the chief provinces which it contained besides those previously
comprised in the empires of Media or Babylon. Territorially, the great
mass of the Empire lay towards the east, between long. 50° and 75°, or
between the Zagros range and the Indian Desert. But its most important
provinces were the western ones. East of Persepolis, the only regions
of much value were the valleys of the Indus and the Oxus. Westward lay
Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria, Media, Armenia, Iberia, Cappadocia, Asia
Minor, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, the Cyrenaica--all countries of
great, or at least considerable, productiveness. The two richest grain
tracts of the ancient world, the best pasture regions, the districts
which produced the most valuable horses, the most abundant of known
gold-fields, were included within the limits of the Empire, which may
be looked upon as self-sufficing, containing within it all that man in
those days required, not only for his necessities, but even for his most
cherished luxuries.

The productiveness of the Empire was the natural result of its
possessing so many and such large rivers. Six streams of the first
class, having courses exceeding a thousand miles in length, helped to
fertilize the lands which owned the sway of the Great King. These were
the Nile, the Indus, the Euphrates, the Jaxartes, the Oxus, and the