or power, and stimulate him to attempt further conquests. In brief but
pregnant words Herodotus informs us that Cyaxares "subdued to himself
all Asia above the Halys." How much he may include in this expression,
it is impossible to determine; but, _prime facie_, it would seem at
least to imply that he engaged in a series of wars with the various
tribes and nations which intervened between Media and Assyria on the one
side and the river Halys on the other, and that he succeeded in bringing
them under his dominion. The most important countries in this direction
were Armenia and Cappadocia. Armenia, strong in its lofty mountains,
its deep gorges, and its numerous rapid rivers--the head-streams of
the Tigris, Euphrates, Kur, and Aras--had for centuries resisted with
unconquered spirit the perpetual efforts of the Assyrian kings to bring
it under their yoke, and had only at last consented under the latest
king but one to a mere nominal allegiance. Cappadocia had not even been
brought to this degree of dependence. It had lain beyond the furthest
limit whereto the Assyrian arms had ever reached, and had not as yet
come into collision with any of the great powers of Asia. Other minor
tribes in this region, neighbors of the Armenians and Cappadocians, but
more remote from Media, were the Ibenans, the Colchians, the Moschi, the
Tibareni, the Mares the Macrones, and the Mosynoeci. Herodotus appears
to have been of opinion that all these tribes, or at any rate all but
the Colchians, were at this time brought under by Cyaxares who thus
extended his dominions to the Caucasus and the Black Sea upon the north,
and upon the east to the Kizil Irmak or Halys.

It is possible that the reduction of these countries under the Median
yoke was not so much a conquest as a voluntary submission of the
inhabitants to the power which alone seemed strong enough to save them
from the hated domination of the Scyths. According to Strabo, Armenia
and Cappadocia were the regions where the Scythic ravages had been most
severely felt. Cappadocia had been devastated from the mountains down
to the coast; and in Armenia the most fertile portion of the whole
territory had been seized and occupied by the invaders, from whom it
thenceforth took the name of Sacassene, the Armenians and Cappadocians
may have found the yoke of the Scyths so intolerable as to have gladly
exchanged it for dependence on a comparatively civilized people. In
the neighboring territory of A