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Updated: June 22, 2025
According to traditions current among its people, it had been established more than seven hundred years at the time when Cyaxares pushed his conquests to its borders. Three dynasties of native kings Atyadse, Heraclidse, and Mermnadae had successively held the throne during that period.
At length Cyaxares got rid of them by treachery; he invited the greater number of them to a banquet, intoxicated, and massacred them.
THE FALL OF ASSYRIA. The first important blow at the Assyrian imperial rule was struck by the Medes. In 640 B.C., they rose in revolt, under Phraortes, one of their native chiefs, who fell in battle. The struggle was continued by his son, Cyaxares. His plans were interrupted, however, by
The only difference was that Cyaxares gained a friend and an ally where he had previously had a jealous enemy; since it was agreed that the two kings of Media and Lydia should swear a friendship, and that, to cement the alliance, Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis in marriage to Astyages, the son of Cyaxares.
Cyaxares gladly accepted the terms offered; the young persons were betrothed; and Nabopolassar immediately led, or sent, a contingent of troops to join the Medes, who took an active part in the great siege which resulted in the capture and destruction of the Assyrian capital. A division of the Assyrian Empire between the allied monarchs followed.
The overtures of the Median monarch seem to have been favorably received; and it was agreed that an army from the south should march up the Tigris and threaten Assyria from that quarter, while Cyaxares led his Medes from the east, through the passes of Zagros against the capital.
Cyaxares may perhaps have, declared war specially against the Lydians, and have crossed the Halys professedly in order to chastise them; but he could only reach Lydia through the territories of other nations, which he was evidently intending to conquer on his way; and it was thus apparent that he was activated, not by anger against a particular power, but by a general design of extending his dominions in this direction.
"By no means," said Cyaxares, "your grandfather would be very much displeased to know what you had done. He would not only condemn you for acting thus, but he would reprove us too, severely, for allowing you to do so." "Let him punish me," said Cyrus, "if he wishes, after I have shown him the stag and the boar, and you may punish me too, if you think best; but do let me show them to him."
The boar fell, and lay upon the ground in dying struggles, while Cyrus's heart was filled with joy and triumph even greater than before. When Cyaxares came up, he reproved Cyrus anew for running such risks. Cyrus received the reproaches meekly, and then asked Cyaxares to give him the two animals that he had killed; he wanted to carry them home to his grandfather.
If the invasion really took place in the reign of Cyaxares, and not in the lifetime of his father, where Eusebius places it, we must suppose that within eight years of its occurrence Cyaxares found himself sufficiently strong, and his hands sufficiently free, to resume his old projects, and for the second time to march an army into Assyria.
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