Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/592

 PERSIA [MEDO-PERSIAN c. 585-550. very ancient times. The peace was brought about by Syennesis, prince of Cilicia, and Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. 1 Astyages, son of Cyaxares, married Aryenis, daughter of Alyattes. But according to Herodotus s cal culation the above date does not fall within the time of Cyaxares ; and even with the necessary correction (of nine years ; see below) Astyages ascended the throne in this same year. We might suppose that the battle fell in the father s, the peace in the son s time. But, as we saw above, the dates of these reigns are not of a sort in which we can place much confidence, and it is more likely that the reign of Astyages did not last so long as tradition asserts. Thus Cyaxares probably died after 585. Astyages. Of the reign of his son Astyages (in Ctesias Astyigas, in a Babylonian inscription Ishtuvigu) we have no par ticulars. It is not even certain that he was cruel, for Herodotus s account of him and of the revolt of Cyrus is not impartial, based as it is on the narratives of the de scendants of Harpagus, who had an interest in portraying in unfavourable colours the prince whom their ancestor had betrayed. On the other hand, Ctesias s Median authority (Nicolaus Dam., 64 #/.), which sets Astyages in a very favourable light, has no better claim to credence on this point. State of The Median empire must at this time have reached a Median tolerably high degree of civilization. As remarked above, empire. ^ e p O }^ical and military institutions of the Persians are sub stantially those of the Medes ; even the dress (of the Persian troops) was borrowed from the Medes. 2 Of buildings erected by the Median kings there are, so far as we know, no remains. The colossal lion, still to be seen, though in a sadly mutilated state, at HamadAn, and about which Arabian writers have all sorts of wonderful tales, is perhaps a monument of the Median age. The fortifications of Ecbatana must certainly have been magnificent ; according to Herodotus s description, they showed strong traces of the influence of the star- worship practised by the neighbouring Babylonians, whose civilization was of a much earlier date. 3 It may be that careful explorations in the neighbourhood of Hamaddn or excavations will one day bring to light traces of that distant age, perhaps even some distinct inscriptions of Median kings. Such inscriptions would be of the highest value ; and we might almost conjecture that the language and writing would be identical with those of the Persian kings. Since the Magi are expressly described by Herodotus as a Median tribe, and since in the age of the Achoemenians the Persian priests were drawn as exclusively from the Magi as in later times, it is highly probable that the Median kings established the Zoroastrian religion as the state religion, and appointed this Median tribe to be the priests. The religion itself arose in the far east, probably in Bactria. It is often assumed nowadays to have originated in Media, but the fact that its sacred books know nothing of the Magi tells particularly against this view. How firmly the Median Magi were in posses sion of the priesthood in Persia proper (Persis) about the year 522 we learn from the circumstance that they main tained their position in spite of the catastrophe of the false Smerdis. They must therefore have already held it for some time, and this carries us back almost necessarily to the influence of the Median empire. If this is correct, the Median empire has an extraordinary importance in the history of religions. The consideration enjoyed by the Median monarchy is proved by the fact that in Western lands which never came in contact with it at all its name 1 For the latter Herodotus wrongly substitutes his successor Labynetus (Nabunaid ; Persian Xabunaita). 2 &quot;Herod., vii. 62. 3 See Sir H. Rawlinson, in G. Rawlinson s Herodotus, i. 98, and Joh. Brandis, in Hermes, ii. 264. was so familiar that more than a hundred years after its fall the Persians were still mostly called Medes by the Greeks ; in particular the wars of independence with the Persians still went at a much later date simply by the name TO. M?;8tKa. 4 Nor was the Median empire properly destroyed by Cyrus ; it was only transformed. Another race of the Iranian people and another dynasty stood at the head of the Iranian empire and carried out, as far as it was at all possible, Cyaxares s scheme for the conquest of Asia and the border-lands. That the Persian empire was the direct heir of the Median was known both to the Greeks for only on this supposition were the above-mentioned expres sions possible and to the Hebrews (Isa. xiii. IT; Ezra i. 3, &c.). We possess three accounts of the mode in which the Fall of transition was effected, that of Herodotus, that of Ctesias, Me diai (of which that of Dinon, preserved only in some fragments em P 1K and vestiges, is merely a variation), and that of Xenophon in the Cyropsedia. Though Xenophon had before him the works of both Herodotus and Ctesias, we must, with Niebuhr, 5 regard his book as nothing more than an ex tremely silly romance ; the attempts to employ it as an in dependent historical source have always failed. Herodotus probably got his charming narrative directly or indirectly from the descendants of Harpagus, a man who undoubtedly played a chief part in transferring the supremacy from the Medes to the Persians. Ctesias s narrative, which we are obliged to piece together from Nicolaus Damascenus, Photius, Justin, Polytenus, and Diodorus, is highly coloured, but in parts very pretty, and has, in contradistinction to Xenophon s romance, a genuinely Oriental stamp. It appears to be based on the account of a Mede, Avho gave a marked preference to his own people, and represented the founder of the Persian empire in as unfavourable a light as it was possible for a Persian subject (and probably an official) to do. There was no denying the fact of Cyrus s final victory, but in Ctesias s narrative he achieves his greatest successes by cunning and deceit. He is a genuine herds man s son, takes early to robbery, and discharges menial services, in the course of which, significantly enough, he gets plenty of hard knocks. His accomplice (Ebares is a cowardly rascal. Astyages defeats Cyrus in Persis itself and pursues him to his home, Pasargadse ; he is only saved by the intervention of the women. On the other hand, Astyages magnanimously spares Cyrus s father, who had fallen into his power. It is particularly significant that over the corpse of Astyages, who had been left by stratagem to pine in the wilderness, a royal guard of lions kept watch and ward. Of course all this does not exclude the sup position that this partisan narrative is founded on a genuine Persian legend. For the rest, the narrative of Ctesias agrees in some particulars, and even in some names, with that of Herodotus. That Cyrus (Kuru, nominative Kitrush, or rather Kuru, Cy Kurush ) was not of lowly descent but of a princely house was long ago seen to be a necessary supposition. Popular legend loves the elevation of sons of the people to the throne, but as a matter of fact national kingdoms are not easily founded anywhere, and least of all amongst primitive peoples, except by persons of distinguished birth. A know ledge of the Persian inscriptions has put it beyond a doubt 4 It is noteworthy, however, that ^Eschylus in the Persse says &quot; Persians&quot; almost exclusively, but &quot; Medes &quot; only exceptionally (ver. 236, 791, and so in his epitaph) ; perhaps the poet chose &quot;Persians&quot; as the less usual expression. 5 Lectures on Ancient History, i. 96, Eng. tr. 6 The u is long, as is shown by the agreement of KGpos, ^Eschyl., Pers., 768, and BH13 of the Old Testament. The long u makes it impossible to identify the name with the Indian Kuril, as Spiegel proposes.