a very different manner from that of his great
competitor for historic fame. He was born at Athens, about thirty
years after the birth of Herodotus, so that he was but a child while
Herodotus was in the midst of his career. When he was about twenty-two
years of age, he joined a celebrated military expedition which was
formed in Greece, for the purpose of proceeding to Asia Minor to enter
into the service of the governor of that country. The name of this
governor was Cyrus; and to distinguish him from Cyrus the Great, whose
history is to form the subject of this volume, and who lived about one
hundred and fifty years before him, he is commonly called Cyrus the
Younger.

This expedition was headed by a Grecian general named Clearchus. The
soldiers and the subordinate officers of the expedition did not know
for what special service it was designed, as Cyrus had a treasonable
and guilty object in view, and he kept it accordingly concealed, even
from the agents who were to aid him in the execution of it. His plan
was to make war upon and dethrone his brother Artaxerxes, then king of
Persia, and consequently his sovereign. Cyrus was a very young man,
but he was a man of a very energetic and accomplished character, and
of unbounded ambition. When his father died, it was arranged that
Artaxerxes, the older son, should succeed him. Cyrus was extremely
unwilling to submit to this supremacy of his brother. His mother was
an artful and unprincipled woman, and Cyrus, being the youngest of
her children, was her favorite. She encouraged him in his ambitious
designs; and so desperate was Cyrus himself in his determination to
accomplish them, that it is said he attempted to assassinate his
brother on the day of his coronation. His attempt was discovered, and
it failed. His brother, however, instead of punishing him for the
treason, had the generosity to pardon him, and sent him to his
government in Asia Minor. Cyrus immediately turned all his thoughts to
the plan of raising an army and making war upon his brother, in order
to gain forcible possession of his throne. That he might have a
plausible pretext for making the necessary military preparations, he
pretended to have a quarrel with one of his neighbors, and wrote,
hypocritically, many letters to the king, affecting solicitude for
his safety, and asking aid. The king was thus deceived, and made no
preparations to resist the force which Cyrus was assembling, not
having the remotest