The histories of Herodotus;

105-108] THE SCYTHIANS IN ASIA 43
and that in Cythera was erected by Phoenicians
selves confess ;
who came from the same part of Syria. However, the goddess
inflicted on the Scythians who robbed her temple at
Ascalon, and on all their posterity, a female disease ; so that
the Scythians confess that they are afflicted with it on this
account, and those who visit Scythia may see in what a state
they are whom the Scythians call Enarees. For twenty-eight
years, then, the Scythians governed Asia, and everything was
overthrown by their licentiousness and neglect ; for besides
the usual tribute, they exacted from each whatever they chose
to impose, and, in addition to the tribute, they rode round
the country and plundered them of all their possessions. Now
Cyaxares and the Medes invited the greatest part of them to
a feast, and having made them drunk, put them to death ; and
so the Medes recovered their former power, and all they had
possessed before; and they took Nineveh (how they took it,
I will relate in another work 1
), and reduced the Assyrians
into subjection, with the exception of the Babylonian district.
Having accomplished these things, Cyaxares died, after he
had reigned forty years, including the time of the Scythian
dominion.
Astyages, the son of Cyaxares, succeeded him in the kingdom.
He had a daughter, to whom he gave the name of
Mandane. He dreamed that she made so great a quantity
of water as not only filled his own city, but overflowed all Asia.
And having communicated this dream to those of the Magi
who interpret dreams, he was exceedingly alarmed when informed
by them of every particular; and he afterward gave
this Mandane, when she had arrived at a marriageable age,
to no one of the Medes who was worthy of her, through dread
of the vision, but to a Persian, named Cambyses, whom he
found descended of a good family, and of a peaceful disposition,
deeming him far inferior to a Mede of moderate rank.
In the first year after Mandane was married to Cambyses,
Astyages saw another vision : it appeared to him that a vine
grew up from his daughter's womb, and that the vine covered
all Asia. Having seen this and communicated it to the interpreters
of dreams, he sent to Persia for his daughter, who was
then near her time of delivery; and upon her arrival he put
her under a guard, resolving to destroy whatever should be
born of her ; for the Magian interpreters had signified to him
from his vision that the issue of his daughter would reign
1 Several passages of our author seem to prove that Herodotus wrote
other histories than those which have come down to us. In this book he
speaks of his Assyrian history ; in the second of the Libyan.