A.M. 3468. Ant. J.C. 536.
Thus ended the Babylonian empire, after having subsisted two hundred and ten years from the destruction of the great Assyrian empire.
The particular circumstances of the siege, and the taking of Babylon, shall be related in the history of Cyrus.
Chapter III. The History of the Kingdom of the Medes.
A.M. 3257. Ant. J.C. 747.
I took notice, in speaking of the destruction of the ancient Assyrian empire, that Arbaces, general of the Median army, was one of the chief authors of the conspiracy against Sardanapalus: and several writers believe, that he then immediately became sovereign master of Media and many other provinces, and assumed the title of king. Herodotus is not of this opinion. I shall relate what that celebrated historian says upon the subject.
The Assyrians, who had for many ages held the empire of Asia, began to decline in their power by the revolt of several nations.[1062] The Medes first threw off their yoke, and maintained for some time the liberty they had acquired by their valour: but that liberty degenerating into licentiousness, and their government not being well established, they fell into a kind of anarchy, worse than their former subjection. Injustice, violence, and rapine, prevailed everywhere, because there was nobody that had either power enough to restrain them, or sufficient authority to punish the offenders. But all these disorders at length induced the people to settle a form of government, which rendered the state more flourishing than ever it was before.
The nation of the Medes was then divided into six tribes. Almost all the people dwelt in villages, when Dejoces, the son of Phraortes, a Mede by birth, erected the state into a monarchy. This person, seeing the great disorders that prevailed throughout all Media, resolved to take advantage of those troubles, and make them serve to exalt him to the royal dignity. [pg 352] He had a great reputation in his own country, and passed for a man, not only regular in his own conduct, but possessed of all the prudence and equity necessary to govern others.
As soon as he had formed the design of obtaining the throne, he laboured to make the good qualities that had been observed in him more conspicuous than ever: he succeeded so well, that the inhabitants of the village where he lived made him their judge. In this office he acquitted himself with great prudence; and his cares had all the success that had been expected from them; for he brought the people of that village to a sober and regular life. The inhabitants of other villages, whom perpetual disorders suffered not to live in quiet, observing the good order Dejoces had introduced in the place where he presided as judge, began to apply to him, and make him arbitrator of their differences. The fame of his equity daily increasing, all such as had any affair of consequence, brought it before him, expecting to find that equity in Dejoces, which they could meet with nowhere else.