Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/593

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 565 that Cyrus was of royal blood. A cylinder with an in scription of his, found lately at Babylon, 1 affords us fuller information. Cyrus s father was, just as Herodotus tells us, Cambyses (Kambujiya), his grandfather Cyrus, his great-grandfather Sispis (i.e., the Persian Chaispi, Greek Teispes). We can combine the contents of this cylinder, on the one hand with the list of Darius s ancestors in Herodotus (vii. 11), and on the other hand with Darius s own statements in the great Behistun inscription. The last list is shorter by three than that of Herodotus ; but, as Darius says that eight of his family were kings, and that they reigned in two lines, while neither he nor his successors in their inscriptions give the title of king to his immediate predecessor, we must assume that the Be histun list of ancestors is somewhat curtailed ; and we can with some probability draw out the complete list in exact harmony with Herodotus. 2 We shall indicate the kings by figures and give the names in the ordinary Greek form. Achremeues. 1. Teispes. I 2. Cambyses. 3. Cyrus. 4. Teispes. .g 7. Cyrus (great king). Ariaramnes. I Arsames. Hystaspes. 18. Cambyses (great king). 9. Darius (great king), j Achaemenes (Persian Hakhdmani), ancestor of the whole family, is perhaps not an historical personage, but a heros eponymus. According to our calculation Teispes, the first king, flourished about the year 730, therefore somewhat earlier than the foundation of the Median empire, but somewhere about the time which Herodotus assigns for the beginning of the independence of Media. Perhaps the rise of the provincial dynasty is connected with the weakening of the Assyrian power in Iran. Now on the cylinder Cyrus calls himself and his forefathers up to Teispes not kings of Persia but kings &quot;of the city Anshan.&quot; Similarly on a lately-discovered monument of still greater importance, a Babylonian tablet, 3 he is called &quot;king of Anshan,&quot; but also &quot;king of Persia.&quot; Anshan has been looked for, without sufficient grounds, in the direction of Susiana. Even if it be true that Anshan, written as here in two ways, elsewhere means Susiana and this Oppert emphatically denies we should still have to regard this only as a Babylonian inexactitude of expression. It is far more likely that Anshan was a place in Persis, the proper family seat of the Achaemenians, therefore perhaps near Pasargadae or identical with it. An attempt has even been made, in consequence of this designation, to deny that Cyrus was a Persian at all, although Darius calls himself an Aryan and a Persian, and therefore regarded Cyrus and Cambyses as such ; indeed he expressly desig nates them members of his family. It may be that the Achaamenians ruled in a part only of Persis ; but we have just as good a right to assume that, as Herodotus and Ctesias assert, Cyrus s father at least was governor of the whole province. His mother, according to Herodotus, was the daughter of Astyages. This may very well be historical, 1 Trans, of the Roy. As. Soc., N. S., xii. 70 sq. (Sir H. Rawlinson). 2 See Biidinger, Die neuentdeckten Inschriften iiber Cyrus, p. 7 (Vienna, 1881). The pedigree is almost certain, though possibly it may be incomplete and may not contain all &quot; kings. &quot; 3 Transactions of the Soc. of Bible Arch., vii. 139 sq. (Pinches). though the confirmation by the oracle which describes him 550-547. as a &quot;mule&quot; (Herod., i. 55) does not go for much, since these oracles are tolerably recent forgeries, and it is con ceivable that we have here nothing more than an exam ple of the well-known tendency of lords of new empires in the East to claim descent, at least in the female line, from the legitimate dynasty. Ctesias indeed tells us that Cyrus afterwards married a daughter of the dethroned Astyigas, Amytis (which was also the name of Astyages s sister, wife of Nebuchadnezzar). Of course this does not absolutely exclude the possibility of Cyrus being the son of another daughter of the king. Stripped of its romantic features, Herodotus s narrative Cyrus s of the rise of Cyrus is in fundamental harmony with conquest the new document which we possess on the subject, i n ofMedia - the shape of annals inscribed on a Babylonian tablet. According to Herodotus, Cyrus and the Persians revolted ; Harpagus the Mede, who was in league with him, was despatched against him. A part of the Median army fought, but another part went over to Cyrus or fled. In a second battle Astyages was defeated and taken prisoner. Now the tablet tells us among other things : &quot; and against Cyrus king of Anshan,. . . went and. . . Ishtuvigu, his army revolted against him and in hands took, to Cyrus they gave him.&quot; Thereupon, it proceeds, Cyrus took Ecbatana and carried off rich booty to Anshan. This summary account of the Babylonian annalist by no means excludes the supposition that Cyrus had fought a previous battle against Astyages. Both accounts say that the treachery and faithlessness of the army procured Cyrus the victory. We might even harmonize the Babylonian document with Ctesias s narrative that Cyrus was at first hard pressed and driven back as far as Pasargadae, if there were not other grounds, quite apart from its fabulous embellishments, which render this account improbable. The date of the overthrow of Astyages and the taking of Ecbatana is, according to the Babylonian tablet, the sixth year ; and, as it is in the highest degree probable that the years in this memorial are those of the Babylonian king Nabunaid, we must place these events in the year 550. Hitherto it has been supposed, following Herodotus, that the reign of Cyrus (559-530) was to be reckoned from the fall of the Median empire, and that accordingly the latter event was to be placed in 559. But now we see that Cyrus numbered his years from the time when he ascended the throne in Persia. Whether the revolt against Astyages began when he ascended the throne, we do not know. We may very well believe Herodotus (i. 130), that Cyrus treated Astyages well down to his death. On this point Ctesias agrees with Herodotus. After the taking of Ecbatana, which made Cyrus the great king, he must have had enough to do to subdue the lands which had belonged to the Median empire. Little reliance can be placed on Ctesias s account of these struggles. Herodotus (i. 153) states that the Bactrians, who accord ing to Ctesias were soon subdued, were, like the Sacae, not subjugated until after the conquest of Babylon. The next war was against the powerful and wealthy king War Crcesus of Lydia, who ruled over nearly the whole western a s aiu!;t; half of Asia Minor. It was a continuation of the war be tween the Medes and Lydians which had been broken off in 585. Here again the story in Herodotus is embellished with many marvellous incidents, and is employed to exem plify moral doctrines. If Croesus really began the war, he assuredly did so not frivolously but deliberately, in order to anticipate the inevitable attack. A fierce struggle seems to have taken place in Cappadocia (Herod., i. 76, and especially Polyaenus, vii. 8, 1 sq.), which already be longed to Cyrus. Crcesus retreated to prepare for another campaign, but Cyrus followed hard after him, routed him