Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 29
the Median empire of Kyaxares, and making them-
selves masters of Ekbatana, the Median capital.
All
this seems to have been a confused echo of the actual
history of events. It is probable that under the name
of Manda the Assyrians and Babylonians included
both the Cimmerians and the Scyths of classical
story; at all events Ekbatana remained in the possession
of the Manda, and Istuvegu or Astyages,
instead of being a Median monarch, was really a chief
of the Manda. His alleged relationship to Cyrus,
however, is not at all impossible, since Teispes, as we
have seen, was a leader of the Manda, and Teispes is
a Persian name. It may be, therefore, that between
the Persians and the Cimmerians there was an affinity
of race.
Having united the "Medes and Persians," Cyrus
at once contemplated making his empire the fore-
most in Asia ; and for the first steps he took he had
pretext enough to satisfy the conscience of any
Asiatic chieftain. Without going into details on a
portion of history well known to all readers of
Herodotus and Xenophon, it is enough to state
here that, owing to the invasion and ultimate
repression of the horde of Cimmerian nomads from
the North, a war of considerable dimensions had
taken place a few years before between Asia Minor
and " Media," in which the final struggle is said to
have been stopped by the eclipse predicted by Thales.
The conquests of Cyrus naturally tended to fan the
flame, and so much alarmed the then chief ruler in
Asia Minor, Croesus of Lydia, that he was induced
to seek the alliance of Greece, Egypt, and Babylon,