umber of elephants, this people engaged Cyrus,
and defeated him in a battle, wherein he received a mortal wound.
Reinforced, however, by a body of Sacae, the Persians renewed the
struggle, and gained a complete victory, which was followed by the
submission of the nation. Cyrus, however, died of his wound on the third
day after the first battle.

This conflict of testimony clouds with uncertainty the entire closing
scene of the life of Cyrus. All that we can lay down as tolerably well
established is, that instead of carrying out his designs against Egypt,
he engaged in hostilities with one of the nations on his north-eastern
frontier, that he conducted the war with less than his usual success,
and in the course of it received a wound of which he died (B.C. 529),
after he had reigned nine-and-twenty years. That his body did not fall
into the enemy's hands appears, however, to be certain from the fact
that it was conveyed into Persia Proper, and buried at Pasargadae.

It may be suspected that this expedition, which proved so disastrous to
the Persian monarch, was not the mere wanton act which it appears to be
in the pages of our authorities. The nations of the north-east were at
all times turbulent and irritable, with difficulty held in check by the
civilized power that bore rule in the south and west. The expedition
of Cyrus, whether directed against the Massagetae or the Derbices, was
probably intended to strike terror into the barbarians of these regions,
and was analogous to those invasions which were undertaken under the
wisest of the Roman Emperors, across the Rhine and Danube, against
Germans, Goths, and Sarmatae. The object of such inroads was not to
conquer, but to alarm--it was hoped by an imposing display of organized
military force to deter the undisciplined hordes of the prolific North
from venturing across the frontier and carrying desolation through large
tracts of the Empire. Defensive warfare has often an aggressive look. It
may have been solely with the object of protecting his own territories
from attack that Cyrus made his last expedition across the Jaxertes, or
towards the upper Indus.

The character of Cyrus, as represented to us by the Greeks, is the
most favorable that we possess of any early Oriental monarch. Active,
energetic, brave, fertile in stratagems, he has all the qualities
required to form a successful military chief. He conciliates his people
by friendly and familiar treatment, but decl