The Historians' History of the World 02

He was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces. He is reported to have been superior to his ancestors in valour, and was the first who regularly trained the Asiatics to military service, dividing them, who had before been promiscuously embodied, into companies of spearmen, cavalry, and archers. He it was who was carrying on war with the Lydians, when the engagement which happened in the day, was suddenly interrupted by nocturnal darkness. Having formed an amicable connection with the different nations of Asia beyond the Halys, he proceeded with all his forces to the attack of Nineveh, being equally desirous of avenging his father, and becoming master of the city. He vanquished the Assyrians in battle; but when he was engaged in the siege of Nineveh, he was surprised by an army of Scythians, commanded by Madzas, son of Protothyas.[27] Having expelled the Cimmerians from Europe, the Scythians had found their way into Asia, and, continuing to pursue the fugitives, had arrived at the territories of the Medes.

[ca. 607-585 B.C.]

After possessing the dominion of Asia for a space of twenty-eight years, the Scythians lost all they had obtained, by their licentiousness and neglect. The extravagance of their public extortions could only be equalled by the rapacity with which they plundered individuals. At a feast, to which they were invited by Cyaxares and the Medes, the greater part of them were cut off when in a state of intoxication. The Medes thus recovered their possessions, and all their ancient importance; after which they took Nineveh; the particulars of which incident we shall hereafter relate. They, moreover, subdued the Assyrians, those only excepted which inhabited the Babylonian district. Cyaxares reigned forty years, and then died; but in this period is to be included the time in which the Scythians possessed the empire.

His son Astyages succeeded to the throne: he had a daughter whom he called Mandane; she, in a dream, appeared to make so great a quantity of water, that not only his principal city, but all Asia, was overflowed. The purport of this vision, when explained in each particular by the magi, the usual interpreters, terrified him exceedingly. Under this impression, he refused to marry his daughter, when she arrived at a suitable age, to any Mede whose rank justified pretensions to her. He chose rather to give her to Cambyses, a Persian, of a respectable family, but of a pacific disposition, though inferior in his estimation to the lowest of the Medes.

The first year after the marriage of his daughter, Astyages saw another vision. A vine appeared to spring from the womb of Mandane, which overspread all Asia. Upon this occasion also he consulted his interpreters: the result was, that he sent for his daughter from Persia, when the time of her delivery approached. On her arrival, he kept a strict watch over her, intending to destroy her child. The magi had declared the vision to intimate that the child of his daughter should supplant him on his throne. Astyages, to guard against this, as soon as Cyrus was born, sent for Harpagus, a person whose intimacy he used, upon whose confidence he depended, and who indeed had the management of all his affairs. He addressed him as follows: “Harpagus, I am about to use you in a business, in which if you either abuse my confidence, or employ others to do what I am anxious you should do yourself, you will infallibly lament the consequence. You must take the boy of whom Mandane has been delivered, remove him to your own house, and put him to death: you will afterwards bury him as you shall think proper.” “Sir,” he replied, “you have hitherto never had occasion to censure my conduct; neither shall my future behaviour give you cause of offence: if the accomplishment of this matter be essential to your peace, it becomes me to be faithful and obedient.”b

According to Herodotus, Harpagus realising that as Astyages had no son, Cyrus was his sole male descendant, was fearful of Mandane’s vengeance when the king should be dead. So, resolved not to have the child’s blood on his hands he gave him to a herdsman, Mithridates by name, with the injunction that young Cyrus be exposed to the wild beasts in an unfrequented part of the mountains among which the herdsman lived. Now it so happened that the wife of Mithridates had the day before been delivered of a still-born child, and when the woman saw the beautiful infant and knew its origin, she proposed that her own dead child be exposed on the mountain, and that she keep the one put into her husband’s hands for destruction. Mithridates approved. His own child, “dressed in the other’s costly clothing, was exposed on a desert mountain.” Proof of this was brought to Harpagus, and then “the herdsman’s child was interred: the other, who was afterwards called Cyrus, was brought up carefully by the wife of the herdsman and called by some other name.”

[ca. 585 B.C.]