Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/591

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 563 who had his seat in Ecbatana. After conquering the Persian, Phraortes, says Herodotus, subjugated piece after piece of Asia, until he was discomfited and slain in the attempt to conquer the Assyrians in Nineveh, whose empire was by that time completely lost. Allowing for some exaggerations with respect to the extent of the empire, there is nothing in these statements that need excite sus picion. Independent evidence seems to show that towards the middle of the 7th century the Assyrian empire had fallen very low ; l and that the inhabitants of the cluster of vast cities to which Nineveh belonged were able to repel the first attack of an enemy who could hardly have been their match in the art of siege- warfare is perfectly natural. Besides, the stability of the Median military, political, and court institutions, which were afterwards taken over un altered by the Persians, must surely have required for its development a longer time than some modern inquirers, following exclusively the cuneiform inscriptions, have assumed for the actual duration of the Median empire. .res. Phraortes s successor Cyaxares (Huwakhshatara ; accord ing to Herodotus s reckoning 634-594 [625-585]) brought the empire to the highest pitch of power. He is said to have introduced fixed tactical arrangements into the army. It was to him that the pretenders whom Darius had to over come traced their descent, as he tells us himself. Cyaxares, according to Herodotus, took the field successfully against Nineveh, but as he was besieging the city the inroad of the &quot;Scythians&quot; compelled him to forego for a time all the fruits of victory. Who these Scythians were is unknown. Herodotus took them for the people tolerably familiar to the Greeks, whose true name was Scolotse ; but his evidence does not go for much, since he often falls into the popular misuse of the term &quot; Scythian &quot; as a name for all the peoples of the steppes, and brings the inroad of these Scythians into a most unlikely connexion with the desolating raids of Thracian tribes (the Trares or Treres, commonly called Cimmerians) in Asia Minor. We must content ourselves with assuming that we have here one of those irruptions of northern barbarians into Iran of which we hear so often in later times. Probably these nomads came, as Herodotus indicates, through the natural gate between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, the pass of Derbend, though it is quite possible that they came from the east of the Caspian, from the steppes of Turkestan. Whether these Scythians are really the same people who made their way as far as Palestine and Egypt 2 is, indeed, far from being as certain as is commonly supposed, nor can the date of the irruption into these countries be deter mined. At any rate, the barbarians overthrew the Medes and flooded the whole empire. From what we know of the doings of Huns, Khazars, Turks, and Mongols in later times we can infer how these Scythians behaved in Iran. Cyaxares must have come to some sort of terms with them ; and at last he rid himself of them in a truly Eastern fashion, by inviting most of them i.e., of their chiefs to a feast, where he made them drunk and slew them at their wine. 3 It is not in the least surprising that Cyaxares afterwards had Scythians in his service ; savages like these have no steady national feeling, and serve any potentate for pay. With the Scythian disorders we might combine the contests which, according to Ctesias, the Parthians and Sacas (i.e., the inhabitants of the Turkoman desert, who are also called &quot; Scythians &quot; by the Greeks) waged with 1 The Assyrian inscriptions break off abruptly with the year 644 ; Gutschmid, op. cit., 89. 2 Herod., i. 105 ; compare Trogus, in Justin, ii. 3, and Jordanes, De orig. Get., 6, whose account perhaps goes back to Dinon. 3 Between the years 1030 and 1040 A.D. we know three cases where princes of Iranian lands despatched inconvenient Turkomans in exactly similar fashion ; see Ibu Athir, ix. 266 sq., 272. Cyaxares or Astibaras, as Ctesias calls him. 4 But it is 634-585. not safe to do so, as the whole narrative is only the frame work for a pretty romance. Cyaxares marched a second time against Nineveh and Nineveh destroyed it about 607. Not only Ctesias but also Berosus 5 taken, asserts that the king of the Medes achieved this great success in league with the king of Babylon. That the Median tradition represented the Mede and the Babylonian tradition the Babylonian as suzerain, and the other king as a vassal, is not surprising. The more powerful of the two was doubtless the Median, the richer the Babylonian. Unfortunately Herodotus s work does not include the &quot;Assyrian memoirs,&quot; in which he intended to give a fuller account of the fall of Nineveh, probably because he died before completing the task. In order to protect himself against his ally, who by the fall of the Assyrian empire had grown too powerful, the Chaldaean king had recourse to a double precaution : he married his son, afterwards the potent Nebuchadnezzar, to Amyite or Amyitis, daughter of the Median king ; but he also erected extensive fortifica tions. After the fall of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar made himself master of Syria and Palestine, and Cyaxares acquired most of the rest of the Assyrian territory. Prob ably Assyria proper belonged to him also, and we can thus explain Xenophon s error that the Assyrian cities before their destruction belonged to the Medes (Anab., iii. 4, 7- 10). When Cyaxares afterwards began the war with the War with Lydians he was already master of Armenia and Cappadocia, Lydians. though he probably did not acquire them until after he had got rid of the Scythians and destroyed Nineveh. The pretext for the war was afforded by the flight of some Scythians in Cyaxares s service to Alyattes, 6 king of Lydia ; but the real cause was doubtless thirst of conquest. The war lasted for five years with varying fortune, and was ended by the battle during which the eclipse of the sun, said to have been predicted by Thales, took place. The terrified combatants saw in this a divine warning and hastily concluded peace. An impression so profound could be produced by nothing short of a total eclipse. Now, according to Airy s calculation, of all the eclipses of that period the only one which was total in the east of Asia Minor (where we must necessarily look for the seat of war) was that of 28th May 585. Ancient writers &quot; also place the eclipse in this year. But this only proves that learned Greeks of a much later age calculated the year of an eclipse which they took to be that of Thales ; yet in this case they have hit the truth. More exact calculations have shown that the eclipse of 30th September 610, formerly regarded as that mentioned by Herodotus, was total only to the north of the Black Sea. Besides, it is inconceivable that this war and the new grouping of states which it involved should have taken place before the destruction of Nineveh. The 28th of May 585 is perhaps the oldest date of a great event which can be fixed with perfect certainty down to the day of the month. The conclusion of peace which followed affords us a remarkable instance of diplomatic mediation in 4 See Diod. , ii. 34 ; Nicol. Dam., 6 ; Anonynius de inulieribus. 5 See Euseb., Chronicon, pp. 30, 35, 37, and Syncellus, 210 B. The first passage refers to Abydenus, who made use of Berosus. He names the Median king Aem cryT/s, which Gutschmid regards as a corruption of AffTvdprjs = Acm/Sapi??. This is acute, but it seems better to suppose that Abydenus or an excerptor confused Cyaxares with the last king of the Medes. 6 He reigned, according to Herodotus s reckoning, from 618 to 561. As this is narrated by Herodotus in his history of Lydia, he probably has it from Lydian sources, and we may regard this as a welcome con firmation of what we are told on Median authority about the destruc tion of the Scythians. 7 Pliny, If. J?., ii. 53, and other passages; compare Gelzer, in PJieiii. Museum fiir Pliilologie, N. F., xxx. 264 sq. An astronomer, a friend of the writer of this article, has by independent calculations confirmed the dates assigned iu the text for both eclipses.