S REV. ANDREW CRAIG ROBINSON, M.A., ON DARIUS 



having his son served up to him at table. Cyrus was sent off 

 to his parents in Persia, but when he came to man's estate, 

 Harpagus, mindful of the brutal outrage which Astyages had 

 perpetrated on him many years before, stirred up the spirit 

 of the youthful Cyrus to excite the Persians to rebel against the 

 Medes. They rose in revolt, and, commanded by Cyrus, took 

 the field. King Astyages, with the Medians, marched against 

 them ; but, as if blinded by fate, he appointed Harpagus to 

 command his army, who in secret was his deadly enemy. The 

 battle which ensued was disastrous to Astyages : some of his 

 soldiers deserted to the Persians, but the greater part of his 

 a,rmy took to flight. Astyages was taken prisoner, the Medes 

 became the subjects of the Persians, and the victorious Cyrus was 

 made their king. 



Here it will be seen that Herodotus also — when his story is 

 compared with the Cuneiform Inscriptions — is at fault in regard 

 to the parentage of Cyrus ; although he is not so much astray as 

 Ctesias — for he at least makes the mother of Cyrus — Mandane — to 

 have been a royal princess, and correctly states the name of 

 his father to have been Cambyses, but does not know he was a 

 king, and says that he was merely " a Persian of good family, 

 and of a quiet disposition," Astyages, he says, " considering him 

 much beneath a Median man of middle rank." And, moreover, 

 he also correctly names even the father of that Cambyses, in the 

 incident where he relates that the servant of Astyages, in 

 handing the infant Cyrus to the herdsman to be made away with, 

 tells him that the infant is the son of Mandane, the daughter of 

 Astyages, and Cambyses, son of Cyrus (Herod, i, 3). Yet 

 Herodotus all the while is completely unaware that both Cyrus 

 and Cambyses, of whom he is speaking, i.e. the grandfather and 

 the father of Cyrus the Great, had been — both of them in 

 succession — Kings : as a matter of fact. Kings of Ansan. This 

 misconception on the part of Herodotus, at the very start, 

 in regard to the real position of Cyrus, is fatal, and makes his 

 whole narrative a tissue of unreality and false tradition ; though, 

 after his own inimitable fashion, he has decked the story out 

 with many a sensational and dramatic scene. 



A revolt of the Persians against the Medes, resulting in a 

 decisive victory for the Persians, forms, it will be seen, the 

 climax of the narratives of Ctesias and Herodotus alike. On 

 what tradition does this war between the Medes and Persians 



