The Historians' History of the World 02

Phraortes’ successor, Cyaxares (Huwakhshatara; according to Herodotus’ reckoning 634-594 [625-585]), brought the empire to the highest pitch of power. He is said to have introduced fixed tactical arrangements into the army. It was to him that the pretenders whom Darius had to overcome traced their descent, as he tells us himself. Cyaxares, according to Herodotus, took the field successfully against Nineveh, but as he was besieging the city the inroad of the “Scythians” compelled him to forego for a time all the fruits of victory. Who these Scythians were is unknown. Herodotus took them for the people tolerably familiar to the Greeks, whose true name was Scolotæ; but his evidence does not go for much, since he often falls into the popular misuse of the term “Scythian” as a name for all the peoples of the steppes, and brings the inroads of these Scythians into a most unlikely connection with the desolating raids of Thracian tribes (the Trares or Treres, commonly called Cimmerians) in Asia Minor. We must content ourselves with assuming that we have here one of those irruptions of northern barbarians into Iran of which we hear so often in later times. Probably these nomads came, as Herodotus indicates, through the natural gate between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, the pass of Derbend, though it is quite possible that they came from the east of the Caspian, from the steppes of Turkestan. Whether these Scythians are really the same people who made their way as far as Palestine and Egypt is, indeed, far from being as certain as is commonly supposed, nor can the date of the irruption into these countries be determined. At any rate, the barbarians overthrew the Medes and flooded the whole empire. From what we know of the doings of Huns, Khazars, Turks, and Mongols in later times we can infer how these Scythians behaved in Iran. Cyaxares must have come to some sort of terms with them: and at last he rid himself of them in a truly Eastern fashion, by inviting most of them (i.e., of their chiefs) to a feast, where he made them drunk and slew them at their wine. It is not in the least surprising that Cyaxares afterwards had Scythians in his service; savages like these have no steady national feeling, and serve any potentate for pay.

[ca. 625-600 B.C.]

With the Scythian disorders we might combine the contests which, according to Ctesias, the Parthians and Sacæ (i.e., the inhabitants of the Turkoman desert, who are also called “Scythians” by the Greeks) waged with Cyaxares, or Astibaras, as Ctesias calls him. But it is not safe to do so, as the whole narrative is only the framework for a pretty romance.

Cyaxares marched a second time against Nineveh and destroyed it about 607. Not only Ctesias but also Berosus asserts that the king of the Medes achieved this great success in league with the king of Babylon. In order to protect himself against his ally, who by the fall of the Assyrian empire had grown too powerful, the Chaldean had recourse to a double precaution: he married his son, afterwards the potent Nebuchadrezzar, to Amyite or Amyitis, daughter of the Median king; but he also erected extensive fortifications. After the fall of Nineveh, Nebuchadrezzar made himself master of Syria and Palestine, and Cyaxares acquired most of the rest of the Assyrian territory. Probably Assyria proper belonged to him also, and we can thus explain Xenophon’s error that the Assyrian cities before their destruction belonged to the Medes (Anab., III, 4, 7-10). When Cyaxares afterwards began the war with the Lydians he was already master of Armenia and Cappadocia, though he probably did not acquire them until after he had got rid of the Scythians and destroyed Nineveh.

[ca. 600-550 B.C.]