r is hailed with acclamations from millions. It
mattered nothing to the bulk of Astyages' subjects whether they were
ruled from Ecbatana or Pasargadae, by Median or Persian masters. Fate
had settled that a single lord was to bear sway over the tribes and
nations dwelling between the Persian Gulf and the Euxine; and the
arbitrament of the sword had now decided that this single lord should be
Cyrus. We may readily believe the statement of Nicolaus that the nations
previously subject to the Medes vied with each other in the celerity
and zeal with which they made their submission to the Persian conqueror.
Cyrus succeeded at once to the full inheritance of which he had
dispossessed Astyages, and was recognized as king by all the tribes
between the Halys and the desert of Khorassan.

He was at this time, if we may trust Dino, exactly forty years of age,
and was thus at that happy period in life when the bodily powers
have not yet begun to decay, while the mental are just reaching their
perfection. Though we may not be able to trust implicitly the details of
the war of independence which have come down to us, yet there can be no
doubt that he had displayed in its course very remarkable courage and
conduct. He had intended, probably, no more than to free his country
from the Median yoke; by the force of circumstances he had been led on
to the destruction of the Median power, and to the establishment of a
Persian Empire in its stead. With empire had come an enormous accession
of wealth. The accumulated stores of ages, the riches of the Ninevite
kings--the "gold," the "silver," and the "pleasant furniture" of those
mighty potentates, of which there was "none end"--together with all the
additions made to these stores by the Median monarchs, had fallen into
his hands, and from comparative poverty he had come per saltum into the
position of one of the wealthiest--if not of the very wealthiest--of
princes. An ordinary Oriental would have been content with such a
result, and have declined to tempt fortune any more. But Cyrus was
no ordinary Oriental. Confident in his own powers, active, not to say
restless, and of an ambition that nothing could satiate, he viewed,
the position which he had won simply as a means of advancing himself to
higher eminence. According to Ctesias, he was scarcely seated upon the
throne, when he led an expedition to the far north-east against the
renowned Bactrians and Sacans; and at any rate, whether this be t