Bruno Bauer[1] comes to the conclusion that the germ of the Cyrus story is found with like significance among different peoples of antiquity, and that the rise of the founder of a kingdom out of obscurity is kept in remembrance by such legendary recitals. There is no historical basis for the statement of Herodotus that Cyrus was the son of a Persian man and a Median woman. If we accept the answer which the Delphic oracle gave to Crœsus (Hdt. I., 55) as a legendary vaticinium post eventum, we can explain in the same way the popular tradition which would make Cyrus a blood relation of the dynasty of Astyages.
The Decline of the Median Power.
After the destruction of Nineveh, as many of the Assyrian provinces as did not become independent fell to the Medes and Babylonians. The Medes took those countries that lay to the north and the east of the Tigris. The Babylonians laid claim to the lands of the Semites, especially Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine. Through further conquest the Median empire was so augmented that the Halys became the western boundary, while in the East all the regions possessed by the Aryan peoples as far as Persia became subject to Media. But that dynasty which had founded this mighty empire was soon destroyed. Herodotus correctly states that in the time of Cyaxares the Scythians invaded the kingdom of the Medes. "For twenty-eight years the Scythians ruled Asia, and every land was waste and
- ↑ Die Kyrossage und Verwandtes. Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, philos-histor. Klasse, 1882, 100 Bd. p. 497 fg.
