Kitap 11
12.5
According to the way in which I place them, then, these tribes would be towards the north, since they are inside the Taurus, but Eratosthenes, who is the author of the division of Asia into “Southern Asia” and “Northern Asia” and into “Sphragides,”See 2. 1. 35 and note on “Sphragides.” as he calls them, calling some of the “sphragides” “northern” and others “southern,” represents the Caspian Gates as a boundary between the two “climata”See Vol. I., p. 22, footnote 2. reasonably, therefore, he might represent as “southern” the parts that are more southerly, stretching towards the east,“Stretching towards the east,” seems to be an interpolation. than the Caspian Gates, among which are Media and Armenia, and the more northerly as “northern,” since this is the case no matter what distribution into parts is otherwise made of the country. But perhaps it did not strike Eratosthenes that no part either of Armenia or of Media lay outside the Taurus.
13.1
Media is divided into two parts. One part of it is called Greater Media, of which the metropolis is Ecbatana, a large city containing the royal residence of the Median empire (the Parthians continue to use this as a royal residence even now, and their kings spend at least their summers there, for Media is a cold country; but their winter residence is at Seleuceia, on the Tigris near Babylon). The other part is Atropatian Media, which got its name from the commanderIn the battle of Arbela, 331 B.C. Atropates, who prevented also this country, which was a part of Greater Media, from becoming subject to the Macedonians. Furthermore, after he was proclaimed king, he organized this country into a separate state by itself, and his succession of descendants is preserved to this day, and his successors have contracted marriages with the kings of the Armenians and Syrians and, in later times, with the kings of the Parthians.
