When Cyaxeres expelled the Scythians, [[409]] some of them made their peace with him, and staid in Media, and presented to him daily some of the venison which they took in hunting: but happening one day to catch nothing, Cyaxeres in a passion treated them with opprobrious language: this they resented, and soon after killed one of the children of the Medes, dressed it like venison, and presented it to Cyaxeres, and then fled to Alyattes King of Lydia; whence followed a war of five years between the two Kings Cyaxeres and Alyattes: and thence I gather that the Kingdoms of the Medes and Lydians were now contiguous, and by consequence that Cyaxeres, soon after the conquest of Nineveh, seized the regions belonging to the Assyrians, as far as to the river Halys. In the sixth year of this war, in the midst of a battel between the two Kings, there was a total Eclipse of the Sun, predicted by Thales; [[410]] and this Eclipse fell upon the 28th of May, Anno Nabonass. 163, forty and seven years before the taking of Babylon, and put an end to the battel: and thereupon the two Kings made peace by the mediation of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and Syennesis King of Cilicia; and the peace was ratified by a marriage, between Darius the son of Cyaxeres and Ariene the daughter of Alyattes: Darius was therefore fifteen or sixteen years old at the time of this marriage; for he was 62 years old at the taking of Babylon.
In the eleventh year of Zedekiah's Reign, the year in which Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, Ezekiel comparing the Kingdoms of the East to trees in the garden of Eden, thus mentions their being conquered by the Kings of the Medes and Chaldæans: Behold, saith he, the Assyrian was a Cedar in Lebanon with fair branches,—his height was exalted above all the trees of the field,—and under his shadow dwelt all great nations,—not any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty:—but I have delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen,—I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to the grave with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth: they also went down into the grave with him, unto them that be slain with the sword, and they that were his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the heathen, Ezek. xxxi.
The next year Ezekiel, in another prophesy, thus enumerates the principal nations who had been subdued and slaughtered by the conquering sword of Cyaxeres and Nebuchadnezzar. Asthur is there and all her company, viz. in Hades or the lower parts of the earth, where the dead bodies lay buried, his graves are about him; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused their terrour in the land of the living. There is Elam, and all her multitude round about her grave, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which are gone down uncircumcised into the nether parts of the earth, which caused their terrour in the land of the living: yet have they born their shame with them that go down into the pit.—There is Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude [[411]]; her graves are round about him: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword, though they caused their terrour in the land of the living.—There is Edom, her Kings, and all her Princes, which with their might are laid by them that were slain by the sword.—There be the Princes of the North all of them, and all the Zidonians, which with their terrour are gone down with the slain, Ezek. xxxii. Here by the Princes of the North I understand those on the north of Judæa, and chiefly the Princes of Armenia and Cappadocia, who fell in the wars which Cyaxeres made in reducing those countries after the taking of Nineveh. Elam or Persia was conquered by the Medes, and Susiana by the Babylonians, after the ninth, and before the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar: and therefore we cannot err much if we place these conquests in the twelfth or fourteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar: in the nineteenth, twentieth, and one and twentieth year of this King, he invaded and [[412]] conquered Judæa, Moab, Ammon, Edom, the Philistims and Zidon; and [[413]] the next year he besieged Tyre, and after a siege of thirteen years he took it, in the 35th year of his Reign; and then he [[414]] invaded and conquered Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya; and about eighteen or twenty years after the death of this King, Darius the Mede conquered the Kingdom of Sardes; and after five or six years more he invaded and conquered the Empire of Babylon: and thereby finished the work of propagating the Medo-Persian Monarchy over all Asia, as Æschylus represents.
Now this is that Darius who coined a great number of pieces of pure gold called Darics, or Stateres Darici: for Suidas, Harpocration, and the Scholiast of Aristophanes> [[415]] tell us, that these were coined not by the father of Xerxes, but by an earlier Darius, by Darius the first, by the first King of the Medes and Persians who coined gold money. They were stamped on one side with the effigies of an Archer, who was crowned with a spiked crown, had a bow in his left hand, and an arrow in his right, and was cloathed with a long robe; I have seen one of them in gold, and another in silver: they were of the same weight and value with the Attic Stater or piece of gold money weighing two Attic drachms. Darius seems to have learnt the art and use of money from the conquered Kingdom of the Lydians, and to have recoined their gold: for the Medes, before they conquered the Lydians, had no money. Herodotus [[416]] tells us, that when Crœsus was preparing to invade Cyrus, a certain Lydian called Sandanis advised him, that he was preparing an expedition against a nation who were cloathed with leathern breeches, who eat not such victuals as they would, but such as their barren country afforded; who drank no wine, but water only, who eat no figs nor other good meat, who had nothing to lose, but might get much from the Lydians: for the Persians, saith Herodotus, before they conquered the Lydians, had nothing rich or valuable: and [[417]] Isaiah tells us, that the Medes regarded not silver, nor delighted in gold; but the Lydians and Phrygians were exceeding rich, even to a proverb: Midas & Crœsus, saith [[418]] Pliny, infinitum possederant. Jam Cyrus devicta Asia [auri] pondo xxxiv millia invenerat, præter vasa aurea aurumque factum, & in eo folia ac platanum vitemque. Qua victoria argenti quingenta millia talentorum reportavit, & craterem Semiramidis cujus pondus quindecim talentorum colligebat. Talentum autem Ægyptium pondo octoginta capere Varro tradit. What the conqueror did with all this gold and silver appears by the Darics. The Lydians, according to [[419]] Herodotus, were the first who coined gold and silver, and Crœsus coined gold monies in plenty, called Crœsei; and it was not reasonable that the monies of the Kings of Lydia should continue current after the overthrow of their Kingdom, and therefore Darius recoined it with his own effigies, but without altering the current weight and value: he Reigned then from before the conquest of Sardes 'till after the conquest of Babylon.
And since the cup of Semiramis was preserved 'till the conquest of Crœsus by Darius, it is not probable that she could be older than is represented by Herodotus.
This conquest of the Kingdom of Lydia put the Greeks into fear of the Medes: for Theognis, who lived at Megara in the very times of these wars, writes thus, [[420]]
Πινωμεν, χαριεντα μετ' αλληλοισι λεγοντες,
Μηδεν τον Μηδων δειδιοτες πολεμον.
Let us drink, talking pleasant things with one another,
Not fearing the war of the Medes.