4. See Barnett, art. cit. p. 18f., the most up-to-date discussion of all questions of topography to the end of Book II.

5. The Persians were the great gardeners of antiquity. Each satrapal palace hadits firdu (or ‘paradise’, to give. the Greek borrowing), which was large enough to allow the hunting of the numerous wild animals with which it was stocked, and which contained trees and plants of all kinds. Cyrus astonished Lysander, the Spartan, when showing him the paradise in Sardis, by declaring that he had planned the whole garden himself and that whenever he was not on campaign he gardened before dinner (Xen.,Oeconomicus, 4.20-25). An earlier satrap had transplanted Syrian trees and plants to Lydia (Meiggs-Lewis,Greek Historical Inscrip tions N0.12). So the large Persian irrigation works are no surprise to us, though they excited bizarre explanations from Herodotus (I.189f. for the 360 canals of the river Gyndes and III.117 for water conservation in central Iran). Looking forward to the coming of Cyrus the Great, the prophet of Isaiah XL-LV foresees ‘ rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the valleys’, ‘the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water’, ‘in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree’, ‘in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together’.
For Persian gardens through the ages seeThe Legacy of Persia, ed. A. J. Arberry, p. 259ff.

6. Susa (Biblical Shushan) lay south-east of Babylon, Ecbatana (modern Hamadan) north-east. If an army came from both these places, Artaxerxes must have been assembling his forces in the area where later Darius faced Alexander the Great, i.e. near Arbela (modern Erbil). There was a direct road from Susa to Babylon, and, if Babylon had been the place of assembly, there was no reason for troops from Susa to go north through Luristan. See Introduction p. 42.