The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

Of the war itself but little is known, except the important fact that it came to an end in a remarkable way. The opposing armies were drawn up for a battle, when an eclipse of the sun took place, which caused both sides to shrink from the engagement. It is calculated that such eclipses took place in Asia Minor in the years 610 and 585, of which the latter seems to be the more probable date of this unfought fight. H. i. 74. A peace was concluded through the mediation of a Babylonian whose name Herodotus gives as Labynetos; but in what capacity he acted as mediator is not known. The celebrated Nebuchadrezzar was ruling in Babylon at the time. Lydia apparently sacrificed Pteria and the region east of Halys, and that river became the definite frontier between the two States.

The story of this Median kingdom has come down to posterity in a form so imperfect that it is difficult to extract the small historical from the large mythical element contained in it. Its chief importance in history is that its kings are the first of that series of Iranian dynasties which, whether Median, Persian, or Parthian, were paramount in the eastern world for many centuries. From this time forward the Iranian took the place of the Semite as the suzerain of the East; for the Babylonian realm of Nebuchadrezzar was but of comparatively brief splendour, and was soon absorbed by the less civilized but more virile power which became heir to its partner in the destruction of Assyria.

The Median king Cyaxares, who had warred with the Lydians on the Halys, lived but one year after the close of the campaign, and was succeeded by his son Astyages, whose chief claim to fame is that he was the last of the brief line of Median kings. Little is known of him. For the Greek the truth concerning him and his was lost in that mirage of legends which accumulated round the personality of the man who overthrew him, Cyrus the Great.

The myths, fables, and legends which the ever lively imagination of the East invented with regard to the founder of the Persian dynasty, have crowded the greater part of the real story of his life out of the pages of history. Their adoption by Greek historians was all but complete; though some, like Herodotus, sought to rationalize a few of the incidents reported. Did there exist no other records of his life than those which have survived in the Greek historians, it would be difficult to assert with confidence which of the reported details are true. Comparatively recent discoveries in the East have brought to light, however, certain annals of a Babylonian king, Nabonidus, a successor of Nebuchadrezzar, and a contemporary of Cyrus. From these records it is possible to reconstruct the story of some of the main events of what must have been a very stirring time in that part of the world.

Astyages the Mede had reigned a quarter of a century, when Cambyses, the prince of one of the vassal principalities of the Median empire, died, and was succeeded by his son Kurush, the Cyrus of the Greeks. This was about the year 559. The name of the principality appears in the records as Anshan. Its inhabitants were the Persians of history.

MEDE AND PERSIAN.

This people, which was destined to play so great a part in the two following centuries, were of the same race as the Medes. The only possible deduction to be drawn from subsequent events is that the connection between the two nations was very close. Its exact nature can only be guessed at. Any difference between the two must have been rather nominal than real; for the supremacy of the one race does not appear to imply the subjection of the other; and when, somewhere about 552, Cyrus revolted, and defeated Astyages, the Median army came over immediately to his side. It is hardly credible that such a thing should have taken place, had not the Medes regarded Cyrus and his family as being in some very real sense a part of themselves, and as possessed of some title to be their rulers. Both races were certainly Iranian. They were alike in religion and very near akin in language. It may even have been that the Persian was a tribesman of the nation to which the name Mede was given. Their nearest neighbours, the Babylonians, recorded the change of ruler, but not in language which could lead to the supposition that they regarded it as an event of great magnitude. They seem to have looked upon it as more or less of a domestic matter, an internal revolution.

The Persian empire was indeed the empire of the Mede under a new name; stronger and more vigorous than its forerunner, because the helm of government passed into abler hands. The Greeks themselves hardly recognized the distinction between the two, and used the names Mede and Persian in a general sense as synonymous terms. Nor has the perspective of centuries sensibly altered the nature of the picture as it presented itself to those who regarded it from a nearer point of view. The two nations, one in religion, one in civilization, one in social system, appear as one in the making of the history of the three centuries during which they played the foremost part in Western Asia.

During the thirty years of Astyages’ rule in Media, the Lydian kingdom enjoyed a continuous career of expansion. Whether owing to troubles at home, or to the severity of the check administered in the campaign on the Halys before 585, Astyages made no attempt to extend the Median frontier towards the West. It is probable that he had his hands full with the work of consolidating the wide dominion which his race had so recently won, and the revolt of Cyrus may have been but the last of a series of insurrections on the part of his subordinate rulers. Be that as it may, Lydia was given a breathing space from attack, which, under the energetic rule of Alyattes, she used to the full.

The renewal of the assault on the liberties of the Greek towns of the Ægean coast followed immediately upon the close of the fighting with the Medes. Before five years had elapsed, the Troad and Mysia, with the Æolian Greek cities of the Hellespontine region, had been reduced. Even Bithynia seems to have been invaded about this time, and part of it secured by strongholds built at important strategical points. In the south-west Caria proved a harder conquest. Its population, from which the earliest professional soldiery in the Levant had been drawn, did not give up the struggle until about the year 566, well-nigh at the close of Alyattes’ reign. The Dorian cities on the coast seem to have shared its fate. On this occasion, at any rate, they were partners in its adversity.