Ecbatana

"I have seen the great cities of the east," he wrote, "I have seen the Persian palaces of Susa and Ecbatana, but this is the greatest city in the world."

In the same year he died suddenly at Ecbatana.

He now caused them to build a great capital, Ecbatana, with a royal palace, and introduced the ceremonial of oriental courts; 933 he surrounded himself with a guard and no longer showed himself to the people, but gave his judgments in writing and controlled the people by officials and spies.

It is singular that in this Ecbatana, the capital of Greater Media, there should be so very few remains of an ancient greatness and splendour.

Amidst the meanness, not to say squalor, of modern 155 Hamadan, no legerdemain of the imagination can re-create the once magnificent Ecbatana, said by the early Greek writers to have been scarcely inferior to Babylon in size and splendour, with walls covered with "plates of gold," and fortifications of enormous strength; the capital of Arbaces after the fall of Nineveh, and the summer resort of the "Great King," according to Xenophon.