THE MEDIAN AND THE CYROPAEDIA OF XENOPHON. 27 



One impostor declared : — 



" I am Xathrites of the race of Cyaxares. I am King of 

 Media." 



Another impostor named Sitatrachmes declared : — 



" I am King of Sagartia of the race of Cyaxares." 



Darius in his Inscription records his having put to death 

 each of the impostors who had seized on the different Provinces, 

 when they had been defeated and he had got them into his power ; 

 but in the case of these two, who claimed to be of the race of 

 Cyaxares, he records (to his eternal shame) that he mutilated 

 their features in a barbarous manner and exposed them in this 

 condition to the public gaze, bound in front of his palace ; before 

 having them put, later on, to a cruel death. The name Cyaxares 

 would seem to have had about it a dangerous vitality even 

 thirty years after the fall of Babylon. 



It was the throne of Media that the impostor Xathrites claimed 

 as being of the race of Cyaxares. Of Darius the Median, Josephus 

 writes : — 



" He was the son of Astyages and had another name 

 among the Greeks. Moreover, he took Daniel the prophet 

 and carried him with him into Media, and honoured him 

 very greatly, and kept him with him, for he was one of the 

 three presidents whom he set over his three hundred and 

 sixty provinces, for into so many did Darius part them." — 

 Ant. X., xi, 4. 



And then he relates the incident of Daniel being thrown into the 

 den of lions (Dan. vi). 



To me it appears that Josephus gives the true explanation 

 of the sixth chapter of the Book of Daniel, namely, that the 

 whole of the incidents related in that chapter, the appointment 

 of presidents, the decree of Darius, the casting of Daniel into the 

 den of lions, occurred, not in Babylon, but in Media, where 

 Darius (Cyaxares) was an independent and hereditary king. 

 It was with Media, according to Josephus, that Daniel was, by 

 tradition, most particularly associated ; he was said to have 

 built a tower at Ekbatana in Media, vfhich was still remaining 

 in the days of Josephus, and in that tower Josephus says : — 



They bury the kings of Persia and Parthia to this day." 



