The Persian monarch chooses the southern rather than the northern side of the mountains for the site of his capital, preferring the keen winter cold and dry summer heat of the high and almost waterless plateau to the damp and stifling air of the low Caspian region.
The narrow tract of which this is a description can at no time have sheltered a very numerous or powerful people.

During the Median period, and for many ages afterwards, it seems to have been inhabited by various petty tribes of predatory habits--Cadusians, Mardi, Tapyri, etc.,--who passed their time in petty quarrels among themselves, and in plundering raids upon their great southern neighbor.

Of these tribes the Cadusians alone enjoyed any considerable reputation.

They were celebrated for their skill with the javelin--a skill probably represented by the modern Persian use of the _djereed_.

According to Diodorus, they were engaged in frequent wars with the Median kings, and were able to bring into the field a force of 200,000 men! Under the Persians they seem to have been considered good soldiers, and to have sometimes made a struggle for independence.