FROM WORLD-DOMINION TO SUBJECTION. 



1:59' 



requesting him to send to him his nephew Cyrus in command of a 

 contingent of Persians. The uncle and nephew took the field, and 

 carried on a successful campaign against the Babylonians. After a 

 time, Cyaxares, who was of an indolent disposition, retired to his 

 kingdom of Media, and Cyrus prosecuted the war. After he had 

 invaded Babylonia, a local noble named Gobryas, governor of a 

 principality under the King of Babylon, joined him. Later on in 

 the C)jro2)edia, Xenophon relates in detail the stratagem of lowering 

 the depth of the river by which Babylon was taken. In agreement 

 with what the annalistic tablet seems to say, he states that it was 

 Gobryas (in conjunction with another officer named Gadatas) to 

 whom Cyrus committed the command of the force of Persians, who 

 entered the city in the night of a great festival and by whom 

 Belshazzar was slain. 



After the fall of Babylon, Xenophon relates how Cyrus paid his 

 uncle a visit in Media, on which occasion Cyaxares gave him his 

 daughter in marriage, and saying that he had no legitimate male 

 child, bestowed upon Cyrus the kingdom of Media as his daughter's 

 dowry. Cyrus, on his part, told Cyaxares " that a house had been 

 set apart for his special use in Babylon, and Government offices- 

 (archeia) as well, so that whenever he should come thither he might 

 be able to put up in a residence of his own " (Cyropedia, VII, 17, 18,. 

 19)-, 



Since then Xenophon, who has so much to say about this King of 

 Media, Cyaxares II., is confirmed in so many points regarding the 

 birth and career of Cyrus by the cuneiform inscriptions, we are 

 entitled to claim that if we identify Darius the Median with this 

 Cyaxares of Xenophon, we are not identifying him with an imagin- 

 ary person who never existed, but with a real historical king, 

 who is not mentioned by Ctesias or Herodotus simply because 

 they were in the same ignorance of his existence as they were 

 of the royal birth of Cyrus, and of the existence of his lieutenant,. 

 Gobryas. 



Of Darius the Median, Josephus says that he carried Daniel the 

 prophet into Media, and honoured him greatly ; and he relates the 

 incident of his being cast into the den of lions. And this would 

 seem to be the true explanation of the sixth chapter of the Book of 

 Daniel — namely, that the whole of the incident there related 



