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Updated: June 22, 2025
Xenophon, moreover, represents his hero as deceiving his maternal grandsire Cyaxares, king of the Medians, in a variety of ways; giving it to be understood that without such deceit he could not have reached the greatness to which he came.
Accordingly he sent an embassy to Cyaxares, with proposals for a close alliance to be cemented by a marriage. Such a proposition arriving at such a time was not likely to meet with a refusal. Cyaxares gladly came into the terms; the marriage took place; and Nabopolassar, who had now practically assumed the sovereignty of Babylon, either led or sent a Babylonian contingent to the aid of the Medes.
But the Scythians, who invaded Media, defeated the king, Cyaxares, and became masters of the country, and spread as far as Palestine, and enjoyed their dominion twenty-eight years, until they were finally driven away by Cyaxares.
We shall thus prepare the way for our proper subject, while at the same time we shall link on the history of the Fourth to that of the First Monarchy, and obtain a second line of continuous narrative, connecting the brilliant era of Cyaxares and Nebuchadnezzar with the obscure period of the first Cushite kings.
Arimanius would therefore have come from the north-west, that is, from Germania and Sarmatia, through the territory of the Alani and Massagetae, to raid the dominions of one Ormisdas, a great king in Upper Asia, just as other Scythians did in the days of Cyaxares, King of the Medes, according to the account given by Herodotus.
But little credit can be attached to these statements, the former of which contradicts Herodotus, while the latter is wholly unsupported by any other writer. The character which Cyaxares bore among the Greeks was evidently that of an unwarlike king.
Gyges had been slain in the contest with those fierce barbarians, called in the Old Testament Gomer. At first he had sought help from the Assyrians, but he broke away from this dependence. Liberated from the troubles of the Scythian irruption, Cyaxares formed an alliance with Nabopolassar, the viceroy in Babylon, who had revolted, and gained his independence.
It is not yet certain whether the Babylonians under Nabopolassar actively assisted Cyaxares and the Medes in the siege and in the subsequent capture of Nineveh in 606 B.C. but this newly discovered reference to the Assyrians by Nabopolassar may possibly be taken to imply that the Babylonians were passive and not active allies of Cyaxares.
A body of the nomad Scyths probably belonging to the great invasion, though Herodotus thought otherwise had taken service under Cyaxares, and for some time served him faithfully, being employed chiefly as hunters.
Cyaxares on his part, was not content to bring against the confederates merely the power of Media. He requested and obtained a contingent from the Babylonian monarch, Nabopolassar, and may not improbably have had the assistance of other allies also. With a vast army drawn from various parts of inner Asia, he invaded the territory of the Western Powers, and began his attempt at subjugation.
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