The History of Antiquity Volume V Part 21

Let us set aside the poetical colours in the account of Herodotus in order to test its coherence. What alarm could Astyages, who was without male heirs, feel at the announcement that his daughter's son would one day rule over all Asia, _i.e._ would still further extend the dominion of the Medes? In the second dream, which portends no more than the first, a reason is given for the alarm; the interpreters declare that the dream signifies that Astyages will lose his throne. If Astyages had reason to fear the yet unborn child of his daughter, the obvious remedy was not to allow her to marry. Nevertheless she is married, not to a Mede, but to a man of the subject races, a Persian of a good family, _i.e._ of n.o.ble descent, wealthy, but "quiet in his disposition." This was equivalent to taking the Persian into the royal family, giving up to him or his son the right of succession, bringing the crown of Media into the possession of a stranger, and allowing the kingdom to pa.s.s from the Medes to the Persians. Even if such perversity could occur to Astyages the Medes were not likely to permit it, when the Magians tell Astyages, in Herodotus, how anxious they are that the dominion should not fall into the hands of a Persian. It is true that Herodotus represents Harpagus some twenty or thirty years later as persuading the chief Medes, and persuading them singly, that Astyages must be overthrown, and the Persian made king, but this is simply incredible. After this marvellous marriage of the heiress to the throne with a Persian, Cambyses is not brought to Ecbatana to the court, but remains in Persia, and no harm is done to the dreaded son of the marriage, even when his real origin has been discovered. Nay, more, the boy who at an early age discovers high aims, and a resolute will, is not even brought to the court to be under the eye of Astyages, but is sent back to Persia to his father, and by his means Harpagus is able to bring Persia to revolt. The letter hidden in the hare's belly obviously arose from an antic.i.p.ation of the supervision of the great roads which was introduced at a later time by the Achaemenids. But what reason had Cyrus to cause the Persians to revolt? According to Herodotus Cambyses is the son-in-law, and hence the heir, of Astyages. Cyrus will succeed his father as heir to the Median throne, why then should he rebel against his aged grandfather?--why should he seek by hazard, danger, and bloodshed, a crown which by inheritance must soon come to Cambyses or Cyrus?[544]

In the narrative of Herodotus Cyrus is no more than an instrument in the hands of Harpagus. The crime of Astyages against Harpagus; the well-merited punishment of this crime by his own imprisonment and loss of empire, form the hinge of the narrative, which at the same time brings into prominence the doctrine that no one, even though warned, can escape his doom. It is not probable that there were songs among the Persians or Medes, which ill.u.s.trated Herodotus' view of the unavoidable _Nemesis_ which governs the actions and fortunes of men; or that Persian poems would represent Cyrus as the son of a Median mother. In them the Persians merely glorified the founder of their freedom and supremacy, of whom, as we know, they cherished the most grateful memories. But the Medes might possess poems in which the change of empire was treated from their point of view; they might attempt to make the loss of empire appear less painful, the dishonour of defeat by the Persians less degrading. To be overthrown by a man belonging to the subject race was bitter. Hence the Medes could avail themselves of a change frequent in the East, and represent Cyrus as a scion of their own royal house. The Egyptians maintained that Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, who reduced them to subjection, was the son of Cyrus and the daughter of their own Pharaoh Hophra.[545] This was mere invention; and the Medes must have found their version the more easy to maintain, because Cyrus spared Astyages after the defeat, and took his daughter into his harem. And if it was not the arms of the Persians, but rather the treachery of a distinguished Mede, the discontent of the chiefs of Media with a cruel king, that decided the struggle between the Persians and Medes, the submission became thus less intolerable to the pride of the Medes. If a distinguished Mede had been at variance with Astyages, and in the last moment of the battle had gone over to Cyrus,--much could be made of the desertion in Median poems. If after his victory Cyrus reposed great confidence in an eminent Mede, this might be made a ground for previous treachery to Astyages. A few years after his victory Cyrus entrusted to the Mede Harpagus, the leadership of the army, the subjugation and maintenance of far distant regions. If the legend of the Persians represented Achaemenes, the ancestor of their princely race, as being fed by an eagle (p. 327), their poems would speak of the founder of their dominion as distinguished by divine honours, and surround his birth and youth with happy omens of the future. These traits the Medes could use for their own purposes as warnings vouchsafed to Astyages. If the Persians represented Cyrus as suckled by a dog, the favoured creature of Auramazda, the Medes carried the subject further, and spoke of the exposing of Cyrus, which was then brought into combination with the enmity of Harpagus to Astyages; the origin of this was the refusal of Harpagus to put the Persian boy to death, which Astyages punished by the Thyestean banquet. Thus owing to the crime of Astyages, Harpagus their own countryman became filled with desire for vengeance; he is the counsellor of Cyrus, the author and leader of the revolt.

Median poetry of this kind has been followed by Herodotus. He has told us already that he would narrate the life of Cyrus as it was given by the Persians, who had no desire to exaggerate their account, but these Persians are undoubtedly the Medes. The Median origin of his story is placed beyond doubt by the words which the captive Astyages addresses to Harpagus, and by the fact that with him it is a Mede who is the decisive counsellor and guide of Cyrus, while in the other version it is a Persian. Beside the reason given by Herodotus himself for choosing this version, others no doubt had influence. The Delphian oracle bade Croesus take to flight "whenever a mule should govern the Medes."

According to the Medes Cyrus was the son of a Persian father and Median mother. The sufferings and acts of Harpagus formed the centre of the Median version, and he was only too well known to the Greeks on the west coast of Asia Minor. With the warning portents, and the exposure of Cyrus, the Median version brought Herodotus on the familiar ground of Greek legend, in which similar oracles, futile exposing of children, and deceptive explanations were common. Finally, the vengeance which overtook Astyages suits the ethical feeling of Herodotus. We may a.s.sume therefore that his narrative faithfully represents the contents of Median poems. These could already have changed the dog which was said to have suckled Cyrus into the herdman's wife, who was called by the name of "dog." But inasmuch as Herodotus does not "intend to exaggerate," as he observes that "the dog was everything in the mouth of Cyrus," and "his parents caught this up in order to represent the preservation of Cyrus as a work of the G.o.ds,"--as he further remarks "that Cyrus owing to his origin was regarded as more than human,"[546]--this rationalising turn may have proceeded from the historian himself. In the Persian tradition Cyrus was certainly suckled and guarded by the dog, and this trait is retained in the account of Deinon-Trogus, though united with the story of the exposure. But Deinon has at the same time proved the exposure impossible, for he states that Cyrus came to the throne in his fortieth year, and lived till his seventieth.[547] If this were true, the exposure and the command of Astyages respecting it would fall to the ground, for Cyrus would have seen the light in the year 599 B.C., _i.e._ some years before the accession of Astyages, even if we allow the latter the longer reign which Eusebius a.s.signs to him.

If the story of Herodotus is governed by the conception of the unavoidable punishment of crime, the connecting clue in the story of Nicolaus is the rise of a beggar-boy of the lowest origin by skill and industry, by cunning and bravery, by endurance in the greatest danger, and final victory in the most severe struggles. Cyrus is the son of humble parents; his father is driven by want to robbery, his mother tends goats; they belong to the lowest tribe of the Persians, the marauding Mardians whom we have found in the mountains of south-western Persia (p. 323). Hunger drives the boy from the goat-pasture to Ecbatana. Beginning as a sweeper of the palace, he works his way step by step upwards by address and industry to the highest offices at the court, so that he can make his father satrap of Persia and his mother the most distinguished lady in Persia. Then the dream of his mother, and the interpretation given of it by the Babylonian, plant ambition in his soul, which is strengthened by the happy portent, vouchsafed to him on his mission to the chief of the Cadusians, and the advice of Oebares. He succeeds in persuading Astyages to grant him permission to visit his parents in Persia; when too late, Astyages is warned by the wife of the Babylonian, and the words of the singing-woman (Angares in Deinon). A fierce war breaks out. The father of Cyrus is taken captive, and in his last moments disavows the attempt of his son. Defeated again and again, the Persians in their last refuge at Pasargadae are reduced to the greatest distress. Then fortune turns; the Medes are driven back and defeated in numerous engagements, and Oebares can at length place the crown on the head of Cyrus in the tent of Astyages.

If Xenophon in his book on Cyrus sought to make it clear to the Greeks, by what personal and material means Cyrus was able to conquer Asia, Ctesias or Nicolaus will show pragmatically how a beggar-boy rose step by step to be lord of the continent. He says nothing of the relationship of Astyages and Cyrus, or of the princely origin of Cyrus, or of his exposure, or of the dog: Cyrus owes his successes to himself and the G.o.ds. However impossible it may be that this introduction and the whole tendency of the narrative can be borrowed from the tradition of the Persians; however certain that Cyrus the beggar-boy is an invention of the Greeks, to point the contrast between beginning and end, and make the subject more interesting; yet if only we give another turn to the introduction, we have the Persian account before us in the narrative of Nicolaus, as we have the Median in the account of Herodotus--and a mixture of the two in the excerpt from Trogus. The Persian version is from the first marked in Ctesias and Nicolaus by the fact that they do not represent Cyrus as the descendant of Astyages. Moreover, the parallel between the fall of the a.s.syrians and the fall of the Median empire cannot be mistaken. "We must narrate the great change brought about by the transition of the dominion to the Persians"--such is the beginning of the account of Nicolaus. This parallel can only have arisen from Persian minstrels. They had to show that the task of Cyrus was great, and more difficult than that of Arbaces. They had to lay the greatest stress on the personal excellence of Cyrus in order to raise him above the level of Arbaces. The latter, guided by the advice of the viceroy of Babylon and aided by the Babylonians, had proved the conqueror. The arts of the Chaldaeans were certainly respected and used in Iran; they must have been sought after and employed as a poetic motive. It was to carry out the parallel that the Persian songs gave Cyrus a Babylonian adviser; yet they represent the counsel and influence of this Babylonian as entirely removed by a Persian of far greater importance, and utterly thrown into the shade. The emphasis which the Persian songs laid on the personal virtue of Cyrus misled the Greeks into making an attempt at the biography of the beggar-boy, and so rendered this change easier. Atradates, the name given by Nicolaus to the father of Cyrus, is no doubt taken from an epithet of Cyrus himself.

Strabo tells us that Cyrus was originally called Atradates; the word is the old Persian _atriyadata_, old Bactrian, _ataredata_; the Avesta recommends the name as good and saving. The parents of Cyrus are said to belong to the tribe of the Mardians, but later on Nicolaus himself shows that Cyrus' ancestral home is at Pasargadae (p. 352). In contempt the Medes might unite the whole Persian nation under the name of their poorest tribes. "Why have I raised up these Mardians for such mischief?"

Astyages asks in Nicolaus. The goat-tending of the mother of Cyrus is due to the same cause. In the account of Herodotus Cambyses is said to be rich in herds; among the Persians the care of flocks occupied a large place, and at a later time the tending and protection of the flocks was one of the means employed for strengthening and hardening the Persian youth. Cyrus himself, in the narrative of Nicolaus, calls himself and his father goat-herds. When Arsaces of Armenia visited the court of the Sa.s.sanid Shapur II. one of the first officers at the court of Shapur insolently said: "Will the king of the goats pasture on our slopes?"[548] Such traits as these in the Persian poems, connected with the poverty and simplicity of the life of the "terebinth-eating"

Persians (which Nicolaus also, following the tradition, brings into such prominence), supplied the Greek revision with the necessary support for changing Cyrus into a Mardian goat-herd and beggar-boy. Yet the true position of the parents of Cyrus breaks through in the statement that the father of Cyrus was satrap of Persia, and his mother the first lady in the land, a position which also appears in the statement in Herodotus of the n.o.ble descent and wealth of Cambyses, and is even more plainly marked in other pa.s.sages in which the taunt is hurled at Cyrus: that the son of Cambyses ought not to give way to a woman,--and traces the lineage of Cyrus back to Achaemenes, though in the account of the rebellion of Cyrus he calls his grandfather also Cyrus.

The rise of Cyrus at the court of Astyages was borrowed from another trait in the Persian poems. The custom of the East, that the sons of distinguished princes and n.o.bles should perform certain courtly and honourable services at the gate of the king, must have been current in Media also. The Persian poems must have proudly declared how Cyrus distinguished himself there in his youth in the duties of the court or of arms. This description was changed into the series of stages by which the beggar-boy rose to the highest office at the court of the king. The Persian account is obviously preserved here in Deinon's narrative--like the suckling and protection of Cyrus by the dog--in which Cyrus before the rebellion is chief of the staff-bearers and the body-guard of the king. When Cyrus had won the favour of Astyages, Nicolaus is obviously more true to the Persian account. In old days the chaff of horses announced his elevation to Arbaces, and to Cyrus it is announced by horse-dung, which is carried to him by a Persian, the slave of a Mede, who has been recently whipped; and as to Arbaces, so to Cyrus, a Babylonian announces that the throne is destined for him. As Arbaces is instigated and encouraged by Belesys, so is Cyrus by the interpreter of dreams from Babylon, and Cyrus promises him great rewards if he reaches the throne, as Arbaces had promised Belesys. The conversations of Arbaces with Belesys correspond exactly to the conversations of Cyrus with the Babylonian and Oebares. In Nicolaus Cyrus says, that Arbaces who overthrew Sardanapalus was not wiser than himself, nor were the Medes better warriors than the Persians. But if the Median empire was founded with the help of the Babylonian, the Persian must rise without such a.s.sistance. Arbaces had to concede to Belesys and his successors the hereditary dominion over Babylonia; on this occasion Oebares takes care that in the future empire of the Persians, Babylonia shall not be in the way as an hereditary monarchy given in reward of services; he removes the Babylonian against the wishes of Cyrus. If the Medes had formerly been able to conquer a.s.syria with the aid of the Babylonians, the Persians now defeat the Medes unaided, and if Sardanapalus was effeminate, Astyages, according to Nicolaus, is the bravest king of the Medes after Arbaces. To treat the struggle so briefly as Herodotus does was impossible for Nicolaus, as the object of his narrative was to bring out the valour of Cyrus. So we may a.s.sume that the Persian songs gave similar prominence to the contests before Nineveh and Pasargadae. Arbaces is thrice defeated before Nineveh, and inclined to retire. Astyages leads against Cyrus the whole forces of his kingdom--more than a million soldiers. In spite of the excellent arrangements of Oebares and the utmost bravery, Cyrus is three times defeated:--he is already reduced to extremities in the fourth conflict, when the cry of the women restores the fight. At length Oebares is able to place the Median crown on the head of Cyrus in the tent of Astyages. With such servants the throne and kingdom of the Persians is more firmly established than that of the Medes.

This inquiry enables us to reconstruct in its main outlines the tradition of the Persians. Cambyses, the descendant of Achaemenes, was the chief of the Persians. Before the birth of Cyrus his wife had a dream that so much water came from her "that it was like a great river which inundated all Asia, and flowed into the sea." We know what reverence the Avesta pays to the dog, and the importance it ascribes to its glance (p. 207). The suckling of the boy Cyrus by a dog is the sign of the most bounteous favour and most secure protection on the part of the G.o.ds. Herodotus told us above that owing to his origin Cyrus counted himself as more than a man, and Xenophon represents him as begotten by G.o.ds, springing from a line of kings, and practised from his youth up in bravery and virtue.[549] In accordance with the custom of the Persians the son of the prince grows up among the flocks. Mithradates, which Herodotus gives as the name of the herdsman with whom the boy is brought up, means "given by Mithra;" the favourite of the G.o.d, who increases the flocks of the farms where men worship him, and gives victory in battles, is the protector of Cyrus. In the game of the boys he shows by cleverness and unbroken resolution the great destiny to which he was called. Then he goes into service at the court of the Median king; where the Persian poems have already shown us Parsondes at the time of Cyaxares, who subsequently made the Cadusians enemies of the Medes.[550]

Eminent in every position, Cyrus wins the confidence of Astyages, and becomes the chief of his bodyguard. Then according to Deinon's fragments he sees the sun in a dream thrice inclining towards him. It was the brilliance or majesty of the king which Cyrus is represented as beholding. In the Avesta Thraetaona and Kerecacpa seize the majesty when it departs from Yima, and the Turanian Franghracyan seeks thrice to grasp the glance of the majesty.[551] Then a Persian, the slave of a Mede, brings a new sign of good fortune to Cyrus when far from his fatherland on the borders of the Cadusians. Oebares (Hubara, the good bearer) is the first Persian whom Cyrus liberates from the service of the Medes; and thus he has gained his most faithful helper. Angares the Mede, who warns Astyages, calls Cyrus "more mighty than a wild boar."

The singing girl also calls Cyrus a "boar." We saw above that the victorious G.o.d Verethraghna appears in the form of a boar, and in that shape accompanies the chariot of Mithra.[552] The battle in the mountains of Persia, as described by Nicolaus, belongs in all essential traits to the Persian legend. It is precisely at Pasargadae, at the house of Cyrus, _i.e._ of Achaemenes, that the fortune of arms changes.

The proclamation of Cyrus in the tent of Astyages, and his coronation by the Persians, which first made him a free man instead of a Median slave, is throughout in accordance with the meaning and tendency of the Persian legend. The gentleness of Cyrus towards Astyages is the counterpart of the generosity which the Median king who conquered Nineveh once displayed towards Belesys. Oebares undoubtedly belongs to the Persian Epos; he is the faithful servant who upholds the interest of the kingdom even against the will of the king, and sacrifices himself for it. The Persians of the best time held it a duty to sacrifice themselves for the king.

The overthrow of the Parthian empire is explained in the same way as the overthrow of the Medes. Papak, the prince of Fars, sees in a dream the sun illuminating the world from the head of his herdman Sa.s.san. His daughter brings forth Ardeshir to Sa.s.san; Ardeshir serves at the court of the Parthian king Artaban, and shoots wild a.s.ses better than anyone else. On an announcement of the interpreters of stars, Ardeshir flies from the court and arms the Persians. Artaban abuses him as an impudent Kurd, and sends the prince of Susiana to fetch him, but this prince, and then Artaban himself, are overcome. Shapur, the son of Ardeshir, is restored to life against his command, and his grandson Auharmazdi is brought up secretly, and recognised by his conduct in the play of the boys. In both, dreams and letters and the inborn majesty of the royal children play their part.[553]

Astyages, who ascended the throne in the year 593 B.C., ruled over the Median empire for more than 30 years; he had already reached a great age when the Persians rebelled against him. Aristotle remarks that his effeminate life and the carelessness of his government inspired Cyrus with courage.[554] The daughter of Alyattes of Lydia, whom he had married in his youth, had brought him no son; both the Median version of Herodotus, and the Persian in Trogus and Ctesias, allow Astyages a daughter only--Mandane in the one case, in the other Amytis, the name of the sister of Astyages, whom Nebuchadnezzar married. This daughter, according to Ctesias and Nicolaus, Astyages marries to Spitamas, the Mede (cpitama, _i.e._ the excellent) and at the same time gives him "all Media as a dowry." Marriage with the heiress to the throne gave her husband the claim and right to succession. The daughter of the king bore two sons to Spitamas: Spitaces and Magabernes.[555] About the origin of Cyrus there is no doubt. He was the son of Cambyses, the grandson of Teispes, the great-grandson of Achaemenes, who united the Persian tribes under his leadership, and recognised the sovereignty of Phraortes the Median king. As Cyaxares and Astyages followed Phraortes on the throne of Media, so did Teispes and Cambyses follow Achaemenes as his viceroys or va.s.sal kings over Persia. It may have been the case that, as already remarked, after the consolidation of the Median empire, the sovereignty became more oppressive for the Persians, and the links of their dependence were drawn closer. According to the previous custom, the viceroyalty of Persia would descend, at the death of Cambyses, to his son Cyrus. If the custom which subsequently prevailed in the Persian kingdom was current among the Medes, and the sons of the satraps or princes of the subject lands had to wait at the king's gate, and perform courtly or martial service as hostages for the fidelity of their fathers, and at the same time to learn obedience and submission in order to find favour with the king when in his immediate presence and covered by the splendour of his power--Cyrus must also have served at the court of Astyages, and may have filled the office of the staff-bearer, body-guard, or of butler, an honourable position at the court of the Medes and Persians. In Ecbatana he had no doubt an opportunity of comparing the simple manners, the capacity and vigour of his Persians, with the splendour of the court, and the luxurious life of the Median chiefs. Moreover, the great advantage which Spitamas had gained by marriage with the daughter of the king must have excited the jealousy and ambition of other Medes who considered themselves to have a better claim, or even raised their eyes to the throne. In the account of Herodotus, Harpagus is said to be akin to the family of Astyages. It is possible that Cyrus contemplated a breach between Persia and Media on the death of Astyages, when he would find his opportunity in a contested and previously disputed succession. It may be a fact that Astyages had his suspicions, that he summoned Cyrus who had already left the court before him, and Cyrus was thus compelled to break with him sooner than he intended. It seems more certain that Cambyses was still alive, than that the Persians took up arms against Astyages at the instigation of Cyrus, who was, as we have remarked, at that time in his fortieth year.[556]

It follows from the position of affairs that the Persians awaited the attack of the Medes in their own country. It was only in the defence of the pa.s.ses of their mountains that they could hope to make a stand against the overwhelming power of their enemies. In this we may put confidence in the Persian tradition, as well as in all that it has to say of a character unfavourable to the Persians; above all, in the fact that the war was long and severe. As a fact the Medes appear to have twice penetrated into the heart of the Persian land. Not only Nicolaus, Pompeius Trogus, and Polyaenus tell us that the struggle took place at first in Persia, and that the battle which saved the country was fought at Pasargadae, but also an authority of importance, Anaximenes of Lampsacus, the contemporary of Aristotle and Strabo (p. 357). "In reward for the services which the women rendered in that battle," says Nicolaus, "the women of Persia each received, when the king came to Pasargadae, a gold coin of the value of twenty Attic drachmas."

Plutarch, as has been observed,[557] confirms this statement, on the ground of the accounts of the companions of Alexander, in a very definite way. We must a.s.sume, therefore, that Cyrus maintained the independence of Persia in a very severe struggle. When success had been obtained, he went on to attack Media, whether it was that he did not consider the freedom of Persia secure without the overthrow of that country, or that he at once formed the most ambitious designs. After a battle in Media had given Cyrus the victory in this new war, the chiefs of the nations subject to the Medes, the Hyrcanians, Parthians, Sacae, and Bactrians, and finally a part of the Medes, must have abandoned Astyages, who, after a second defeat, fell into the hands of Cyrus either in the encounter itself or at the capture of Ecbatana. The walls of Ecbatana and the seven rings round the citadel could not avert his fate (558 B.C.).[558]

FOOTNOTES:

[529] Herod. 1, 98, 99.

[530] Herod. 1, 112, [Greek: pistotatous ton doryphoron], while in the recapitulation, 1, 117, we have [Greek: pistotatous ton eunouchon].

[531] Ctesias, "Fragm. Pers." 2, 5.

[532] Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 66; Ctes. "Fragm. Pers." 2, 5; Tzetz.

"Chil." 1, 1, 82 ff.

[533] Athen. p. 633; Cic. "de Divin." 1, 23.

[534] Justin, 1, 4-7; cf. 44, 4.

[535] Polyaen. "Strat." 7, 6; 7, 45. But he also explains the change of fortune at Pasargadae in another way. When Cyrus fled to that place after his retreat, and many Persians deserted to the Medes, he spread abroad a report that on the following day 100,000 enemies of the Medes (Cadusians?) would come to his a.s.sistance; every man was to prepare a bundle of f.a.ggots for the allies. The deserter told this to the Medes, and when Cyrus in the night caused all the bundles to be lighted, the Medes, thinking that the Persians had received substantial a.s.sistance, deserted.

[536] Strabo, p. 727, 730. Steph. Byzant. [Greek: Pa.s.sargadai].

[537] "De mulier. virtute," 5.

[538] Diod. "Ex. de virt. et vit." p. 552, 553 (= 9, 24); cf. 4, 30.

[539] Moses Ch.o.r.en. 1, 24-30, and appendix to the first book, according to Le Vaillant's translation.

[540] The form and explanation of the legend of Asdahag in Moses, as well as the mention of Rustem Sakjig, who has the strength of ten elephants (2, 8), _i.e._ of Rustem of Sejestan, prove that the East-Iranian legend, as we find it in Firdusi, must have been current in Western Iran in the fourth century at the latest, if it came into Armenia in the fifth century. I do not think it probable that Moses took the legend of Tigran from Xenophon's narrative. The vision in a dream and the duel point to Armenian tradition.

[541] 1, 95.

[542] "Cyri Inst.i.t." 1, 2, 1.

[543] J. Mohl, "Livre des rois," Introd. p. 29.

[544] It has been objected to this a.n.a.lysis that the marriage with the heiress may not have conveyed the throne _ipso facto_ to the husband; it may have been open to the chieftains to elect a king out of the members of the royal family. This may be correct for the election of the Afghan chiefs at the present day by the heads of the families. How the succession to the throne was arranged among the Medes we do not know in any detail, or whether their chiefs had any importance at all; but we do see that the crown went from father to son from Deioces downwards. In any case, even under that hypothesis, the husband of the heiress had a nearer claim.

[545] Herod. 3, 2. So Deinon and Lyceas of Naucratis in Athenaeus, p.

560.

[546] Herod. 1, 207; 3, 75; 7, 11.

[547] Cicero, "de Divin." 1, 23.

[548] St. Martin on Lebeau, "Bas Empire," 2, 221.

[549] "Cyri inst.i.t." 7, 3, 24.

[550] Above, p. 299 ff.

[551] Above, p. 34, 35, 36, 256.

[552] Above, p. 110. Cf. Windischmann, "Zoroastrische Studien," s. 277.

[553] Noldeke, "Tabari," p. 12; Karnamak, s. 68.

[554] "Politic." 5, 10, 24.

[555] If Astyages was married to the daughter of Alyattes in the year 610 B.C. he must have been 18 or 20 years old at that time; between 610 and 558 the year of his fall there are 52 years. Moreover, according to Ctesias, Astyages outlived his fall at least ten years ("Fragm. Pers."

5). If this were the case, and Astyages did not die till 548, he cannot well have been born before 630 B.C. In Herodotus and Pompeius Trogus it is expressly said that Astyages had no son, and this is the motive which induces Harpagus not to put Cyrus to death, as he would in that case expose himself to the vengeance of the mother, the heiress to the throne. In Nicolaus also the daughter comes distinctly forward, and in Ctesias she is also the heiress (_e.g._ "Pers." 2); in the history of the overthrow and the death of Astyages, we hear of her constantly. At the death of Cyrus, her sons by the first marriage receive satrapies. In Ctesias, it is true, a brother of Amytis is incidentally mentioned, on the occasion of a later war of Cyrus ("Pers." 3). But as Ctesias is here following a Median version, and after the death of Astyages the husband of Amytis and not her supposed brother is removed out of the way, no importance can be attached to this.

[556] Above, p. 369.

[557] Above, p. 357. Nicol. Dam. Fragm. 66; Plut "Alex." c. 69; Plut.

"De Mul. virt." 5.

[558] According to the canon of Ptolemy, Cyrus dies 529 B.C. We arrive at the same year if we reckon back from the death of Darius. This took place five years after the battle of Marathon (Herod. 7, 1-4), _i.e._ 485 B.C. Darius reigned 36 years according to Herodotus and the canon of Ptolemy. An Egyptian pillar gives the year 34, a demotic contract the year 35 of his reign: he ascended the throne therefore in 521 B.C.

Before him the Magian reigned for seven months, Cambyses for seven years and five months (Herod. 3, 66, 67). The canon of Ptolemy omits the Magian and gives Cambyses eight years, because it reckons by complete years; hence Cambyses ascended the throne in 529. As Cyrus, according to Herodotus, reigned 29 years after his accession (1, 214), the beginning of his reign over Media must be placed in 558. If Ctesias gives Cyrus a reign of 30 years ("Pers." 8), like Deinon (p. 369), and Justin (1, 8), and Eusebius a reign of 31 years, these statements may be reconciled by the fact that Cyrus may have taken up arms against Media 30 or 31 years before his death, and reigned 29 years after the overthrow of Astyages.

Diodorus puts the beginning of Cyrus: Olymp. 55, 1 = 560 B.C. Africa.n.u.s in Euseb. "Praep. Evang." 10, p. 488.

CHAPTER V.