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Updated: June 22, 2025
He waited till Astyages was advanced in years, and so disqualified for command; till the veterans of Cyaxares were almost all in their graves; and till the Babylonian throne was occupied by a king who was not likely to afford Astyages any aid. Ho may not at first have aspired to do more than establish the independence of his own country.
While Cyaxares claimed for his own share Assyria Proper and the various countries dependent on Assyria towards the north and the north-west, Nabopolassar was rewarded by his timely defection, not merely by independence but by the transfer to his government of Susiana on the one hand and of the valley of the Euphrates, Syria, and Palestine on the other.
After a brilliant reign, Cyaxares transmitted his empire to an unworthy son, Astyages, the grandfather of Cyrus, whose loss of the throne has been already related. With Astyages perished the Median Empire, which had lasted only about one hundred years, and Media was incorporated with Persia.
We have no sufficient materials from which to draw out a complete character of Cyaxares. He appears to have possessed great ambition, considerable military ability, and a rare tenacity of purpose, which gained him his chief successes.
His son, Phraortes, reduced the Persians to his yoke overran Asia advanced to Nineveh and ultimately perished in battle with a considerable portion of his army. Succeeded by his son Cyaxares, that monarch consummated the ambitious designs of his predecessors.
It would be improper in this place to anticipate the account of this struggle, which must be reserved for the historical chapter; but the well-known result the speedy and complete success of the Persians must be adduced among the proofs of a rapid deterioration in the Median character between the accession of Cyaxares and the capture less than a century later of Astyages.
Deioces reigned fifty-three years wisely and well, bequeathing the kingdom he had founded to his son Phraortes, under whom Media became independent of Assyria. His son and successor Cyaxares, who died 593 B.C., was a successful warrior and conqueror, and was the founder of Median greatness.
Cyaxares consented, and Cyrus made arrangements to have the bodies of the beasts and the bloody javelins carried home. Cyrus then presented the carcasses to his grandfather, saying that it was some game which he had taken for him. The javelins he did not exhibit directly, but he laid them down in a place where his grandfather would see them.
More than a century before, these wandering Asiatic tribes had begun to make predatory incursions into Asia Minor. When Cyaxares was before Nineveh, they came down in greater force, and a horde of them, moving southward from the river Halys, invaded Syria. Jerusalem and the stronger cities held out against them, but the open country was devastated.
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.
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