The History of Antiquity, Vol. 5 (of 6)

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 gods. 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 Assyrians 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 Chaldæans 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 Sassanid Shapur II. one of the first officers at the court of Shapur insolently said: "Will the king of the goats pasture on our slopes?"547 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 noble descent and wealth of Cambyses, and is even more plainly marked in other passages 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 Achæmenes, 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 nobles 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 assistance. 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 Assyria 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 assume that the Persian songs gave similar prominence to the contests before Nineveh and Pasargadæ. 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 Achæmenes, 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 gods. Herodotus told us above that owing to his origin Cyrus counted himself as more than a man, and Xenophon represents him as begotten by gods, springing from a line of kings, and practised from his youth up in bravery and virtue.548 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 god, 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.549 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 Kereçaçpa seize the majesty when it departs from Yima, and the Turanian Franghraçyan seeks thrice to grasp the glance of the majesty.550 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 god Verethraghna appears in the form of a boar, and in that shape accompanies the chariot of Mithra.551 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 Achæmenes, 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 Sassan. His daughter brings forth Ardeshir to Sassan; Ardeshir serves at the court of the Parthian king Artaban, and shoots wild asses 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.552

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.553 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 (Çpitama, 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.554 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 vassal 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.555

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 passes 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,556 confirms this statement, on the ground of the accounts of the companions of Alexander, in a very definite way. We must assume, 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, Sacæ, 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.).557

CHAPTER V.

THE RISE OF THE PERSIAN KINGDOM

The Median empire was not of long duration. Little more than a century had passed since Phraortes succeeded Deioces in the government of the land of Ecbatana, little more than eighty since Phraortes had united the tribes of the Medes under his leadership, about sixty since Cyaxares had expelled the Scythians, and not quite fifty since Nineveh had succumbed to the arms of the Medes and Babylonians.

In the overthrow of so mighty a power, Cyrus had achieved a great, and, so far as we can tell, an unexpected, success. Scanty as our information is, we can still perceive that he used the victory with circumspection and moderation. Herodotus told us that he did no injury to the captive Astyages, and kept him with him till his death. Ctesias relates that at the command of Cyrus, the heavy chains, which Oebares had put on Astyages, were quickly taken off; that he honoured him as a father; and entrusted him with the government of the Barcanians. According to the statement of Pompeius Trogus, Cyrus allowed him to be viceroy of the Hyrcanians. The same nation may be meant by these two names; in the inscriptions of Darius Hyrcania is called Varkana, in the Avesta Vehrkana.558 Ctesias further tells us that Cyrus put to death the Mede Spitamas, whom Astyages had married to his daughter Amytis, and then made his successor, and that after treating Amytis for some time as his mother he subsequently made her his wife. No harm was done to Megabernes and Spitaces, the sons of her marriage with Spitamas; on the contrary, the first was placed by the wish of Cyrus in the satrapy of the Barcanians, the second in the satrapy of the Derbiccians.

Cyrus must have made it his object to reconcile the Medes to their defeat and loss of empire. If he could make the house of Astyages his own, and take his daughter to wife, the edge of the change was softened, and the more apparent it was that this marriage had the consent of Astyages, the more legitimate would his rule be in the eyes of the Medes, the less could they regard it as the dominion of a stranger. It was of importance to gain the assent of the Medes to the new kingdom, and support this if possible on the united power of Medes and Persians. Moreover, the relations of alliance in which Astyages stood to the princely houses of Lydia and Babylonia made it advisable to deal carefully with Astyages and his kindred. Astyages was still alive in 549 B.C.,559 according to Herodotus and Ctesias. Whatever may be the case as to the connection of Cyrus with Amytis, his legitimate wife was Cassandane, the daughter of the Persian Pharnaspes, who according to Herodotus was an Achæmenid, and was in fact one of the six tribal princes. Cassandane bore Cyrus two sons, Cambyses and Bardiya, whom Herodotus calls Smerdis; Ctesias, Tanyoxarkes; and Xenophon, Tanaoxares. The death of Cassandane was a great grief to Cyrus; he caused the whole kingdom to go into mourning for her.560

With respect to the position which Cyrus took up in regard to the royal family of Media, and Amytis more especially, Ctesias has preserved a somewhat incredible story. This narrative, which again is obviously taken from a poetical source, ascribes the death of Astyages to Oebares, to whom, according to Trogus, Cyrus had given the government of Persia and his sister in marriage, as a reward for his services, who in the beginning of his reign had been his associate in all his dangers, and whom, according to Ctesias, he had afterwards to thank for the capture of Sardis. The motive of this act, according to the drift of these poems, can only have been anxiety on the part of Oebares lest the influence of Astyages and his friends should endanger the succession of the house of Cyrus in the Persian kingdom and the dominion of the Persians. Oebares had previously murdered the Babylonian who possessed the secret which controlled the future of Persia, against the wishes and without the knowledge of Cyrus (p. 347), and he now acts in a similar manner towards Astyages. Cyrus, so we are told in our excerpt,561 after the Lydian war sent the eunuch Petesaces to bring Astyages from the Barcanians, as both he and Amytis wished to see him. Oebares advised Petesaces to abandon Astyages on the way in some desert place, to perish by starvation. This was done. The crime was revealed by dreams, and Cyrus, on the repeated entreaty of Amytis, gave Petesaces up to her for punishment. She caused him to be blinded, flayed, and crucified. Oebares, fearing that a similar lot was in store for him, though Cyrus assured him that he should not permit anything of the kind, refused all nourishment for ten days, and so put an end to his life. The corpse of Astyages received a splendid burial. Lions had guarded it in the desert place in which it had been abandoned, until Petesaces returned and carried it away. In the poem in which the singing woman warns Astyages against Cyrus he is compared to a lion (p. 349). Whether the lions performed this service to the corpse of Astyages in the source from which Ctesias copied – it could scarcely by such an incident exhibit him as a man favoured by heaven – or whether the lions dealt with the corpse in a manner more in accordance with the views of Eastern Iran, we must leave out of the question. What is more certain is, that the most zealous Persian could have no real reason for putting Astyages to death, for after the Lydian war he would be in his eightieth year. The importance ascribed to Amytis points to a Median version; the death of Oebares is accounted for in a manner suitable to his life and his fidelity.

In Herodotus the Persians, on the instigation of Artembares, one of their tribesmen, say to Cyrus: "Since Zeus gives the sovereignty to the Persians, and above all to thee, Cyrus, who hast overthrown Astyages, so let it be thy care that we leave our land and obtain a better, for our country is small and wild. Many better regions are close at hand, many at a distance, and if we gain one of them, we shall be more admired in the eyes of men. To do this is proper for men who possess the dominion, and when can it be done better than now, when we have so many men, and rule over all Asia?" When Cyrus heard this he expressed no astonishment, but said simply: they might do so, but they must be prepared to be rulers no longer, but subjects; the same land could not produce the noblest fruits and warlike men. The Persians saw that Cyrus' view was the better, and chose to inhabit and rule over a scanty land, rather than be the slaves of others.562 The distinct opposition of Cyrus and Artembares seems to carry us back to Persian poems, otherwise the narrative is less likely to belong to the tradition of Persia than to arise out of the necessity which the Greeks felt for explaining how the Persians succeeded in founding so mighty an empire from a mountain country so moderate in extent.