"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."
Cyrus carries his game home.
Cyaxares consented, and Cyrus made arrangements to have the bodies of the beasts and the bloody javelins carried home. Cyrus then presented the carcasses to his grandfather, saying that it was some game which he had taken for him. The javelins he did not exhibit directly, but he laid them down in a place where his grandfather would see them. Astyages thanked him for his presents, but he said he had no such need of presents of game as to wish his grandson to expose himself to such imminent dangers to take it.
Distributes it among his companions.
"Well, grandfather," said Cyrus, "if you do not want the meat, give it to me, and I will divide it among my friends." Astyages agreed to this, and Cyrus divided his booty among his companions, the boys, who had before hunted with him in the park. They, of course, took their several portions home, each one carrying with his share of the gift a glowing account of the valor and prowess of the giver. It was not generosity which led Cyrus thus to give away the fruits of his toil, but a desire to widen and extend his fame.
Another hunting party.
When Cyrus was about fifteen or sixteen years old, his uncle Cyaxares was married, and in celebrating his nuptials, he formed a great hunting party, to go to the frontiers between Media and Assyria to hunt there, where it was said that game of all kinds was very plentiful, as it usually was, in fact, in those days, in the neighborhood of disturbed and unsettled frontiers. The very causes which made such a region as this a safe and frequented haunt for wild beasts, made it unsafe for men, and Cyaxares did not consider it prudent to venture on his excursion without a considerable force to attend him. His hunting party formed, therefore, quite a little army. They set out from home with great pomp and ceremony, and proceeded to the frontiers in regular organization and order, like a body of troops on a march. There was a squadron of horsemen, who were to hunt the beasts in the open parts of the forest, and a considerable detachment of light-armed footmen also, who were to rouse the game, and drive them out of their lurking places in the glens and thickets. Cyrus accompanied this expedition.
A plundering party.
When Cyaxares reached the frontiers, he concluded, instead of contenting himself and his party with hunting wild beasts, to make an incursion for plunder into the Assyrian territory, that being, as Zenophon expresses it, a more noble enterprise than the other. The nobleness, it seems, consisted in the greater imminence of the danger, in having to contend with armed men instead of ferocious brutes, and in the higher value of the prizes which they would obtain in case of success. The idea of there being any injustice or wrong in this wanton and unprovoked aggression upon the territories of a neighboring nation seems not to have entered the mind either of the royal robber himself or of his historian.