'Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia, including a journey from Bagdad by Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, researches in Ispahan and the ruins of Persepolis, and journey from thence by Shiraz and Shapoor to the sea-shore. Description of Bussorah, Bushire, Bahrein, Ormuz, and Muscat, narrative of an expedition against the pirates of the Persian Gulf, with illustrations of the voyage of Nearchus, and passage by the Arabian Sea to Bombay.' [‎164] (195/582)

164
ENTRY INTO HAMADAN,
other authorities. Ammianus Marcellinus, for instance, in speak
ing of the Nissean horses, places them in the plains of a fertile
country of Assyria, on the western side of a high mountain, called
Corone. This is evidently a part of the chain called Zagros,
Orontes, and Jason, in the same place ; and Corone is written
perhaps for Celonae, the name of the district where these horses
were bred. Now Ecbatana is placed by Ammianus at the foot
of Mount Jason, in the country of the Syro-Medes, which just
before he numbers with Zagros, Orontes, and Corone, as parts
of the country inhabited by the warlike nation of the Suziens,
and which it appears he confounded as parts of ;the same chain
which separates Susiana from Media. #
This corresponds also with the distance assigned by Diodorus
Siculus to Ecbatana from Persepolis, when, in narrating the return
of Antigonus with his whole army into Media, after the defeat
and death of Eumenes, he describes him as spending the rest of
the winter in a town not far from Ecbatana, where the Palace
Royal of Media stood; and adds, that when Antigonus marched
from Ecbatana, the capital of Media, into Persia, it took him twenty
days march to reach Persepolis.j- Again, in Arrian's History of
Alexander's expedition, the distance from Ecbatana to Persepolis
is estimated at fifteen days forced marches : as Alexander marched
twelve days from Persepolis, and then encamped within three days
of Ecbatana. Plutarch estimates this march of eleven days as
three thousand three hundred stadia, or about thirty-eight miles
per day; and adding the three days yet remaining before reaching
Ecbatana, the whole distance would be nearly four thousand
stadia, or about five hundred miles.
One of the most interesting events that is recorded as hap
pening at Ecbatana, is the death of Hephaestion, the favourite
of Alexander; and the grief of the Macedonian conqueror at the
loss of his friend. It is adverted to slightly by Diodorus ; but
Amm. Mar, lib. 23, cap. 6.
t Diod. Sic. lib. 19, cap. 2, 3.