Copious streams descend from the mountain on every side, more particularly to the north-east, where the plain is covered with a carpet of the most luxuriant verdure, diversified with rills, and ornamented with numerous groves of large and handsome forest trees.

It is here, on ground sloping slightly away from the roots of the mountain, that the modern town, which lies directly at its foot, is built.

The ancient city, if we may believe Diodorus, did not approach the mountain within a mile or a mile and a half.

At any rate, if it began where Hamadan now stands, it most certainly extended very much further into the plain.

We need not suppose indeed that it had the circumference, or even half the circumference, which the Sicilian romancer assigns to it, since his two hundred and fifty stades would give a probable area of fifty square miles, more than double that of London! Ecbatana is not likely to have been at its most flourishing period a larger city than Nineveh; and we have already seen that Nineveh covered a space, within the walls, of not more than 1800 English acres.
[Illustration: PLATE I.] The character of the city and of its chief edifices has, unfortunately, to be gathered almost entirely from unsatisfactory authorities.