Cyaxares
and his court invited a number of the Scythian chiefs to a grand
banquet, and, having induced them to drink till they were completely
drunk, set upon them when they were in this helpless condition, and
remorselessly slew them all.

This deed was the signal for a general revolt of the nation. The Medes
everywhere took arms, and, turning upon their conquerors, assailed them
with a fury the more terrible because it had been for years repressed.
A war followed, the duration and circumstances of which are unknown; for
the stories with which Ctesias enlivened this portion of his history can
scarcely be accepted as having any foundation in fact. According to him,
the Parthians made common cause with the Scythians on the occasion, and
the war lasted many years; numerous battles were fought with great loss
to both sides; and peace was finally concluded without either party
having gained the upper hand. The Scyths were commanded by a queen,
Zarina or Zarinsea, woman of rare beauty, and as brave as she was
fair; who won the hearts, when she could not resist the swords, of her
adversaries. A strangely romantic love-tale is told of this beauteous
Amazon. It is not at all clear what region Ctesias supposes her to
govern. It has a capital city, called Koxanace (a name entirely unknown
to any other historian or geographer), and it contains many other towns
of which Zarina was the foundress. Its chief architectural monument was
the tomb of Zarina, a triangular pyramid, six hundred feet high, and
more than a mile round the base, crowned by a colossal figure of the
queen made of solid gold. But--to leave these fables and return to
fact--we can only say with certainty that the result of the war was the
complete defeat of the Scythians, who not only lost their position of
pre-eminence in Media and the adjacent countries, but were driven across
the Caucasus into their own proper territory. Their expulsion was
so complete that they scarcely left a trace of their power or their
presence in the geography or ethnography of the country. One Palestine
city only, as already observed, and one Armenian province retained in
their names a lingering memory of the great inroad which but for them
would have passed away without making any more permanent mark on the
region than a hurricane or a snowstorm. How long the dominion of the
Scyths endured is a matter of great uncertainty. It was no doubt
the belief of Herodotus that from their defeat of