BABYLON AND PERSIA

294 MEDIA, BAB'YLON, AND PERSIA.and foreigner, and at the same time looking downon his father as being " much inferior to a Mede ofeven middle condition!" But the inconsistencieswhich grow out of this perversion of facts are veryglaring. This objection, for one, is unanswerable :if Kyros was Astyages' natural heir, as this storymakes him out to be, why should the, old king be in¬censed at the prospect of his accession to power, to.the extent of seeking his life ? Is it not unnaturalto madness for him to cut off his own line, contraryto the instinct common to all mankind, let alonesovereigns, who are always so ambitious to found orcontinue dynasties, that they are much more likelyto .supply the want of heirs by adoption, or evenfraud, than to destroy those given them by nature?As to the story of Kyros' exposure, providentialescape, and obscure bringing up, it is an old, old bitof Aryan, folk-lore,* which has been told varioustimes of almost every national hero. Of coursesvery nation that repeats it stamps it with somenational peculiarity. In its application to Kyros,we detect the Eranian touch in the name of thewoman, Spaka. The real story was that the childwas saved and suckled by a dbg, Ahura-Mazda's ownsacred animal (see pp. 139-141), to intimate miracu¬lous preservation, divine protection. Indeed He¬rodotus in one place tells us as much. But theGreeks, who had not the remotest comprehension oftheir own myths, let alone other people's, were* Not confined to the Aryan race, however, but turning up also inthe treasury of Semitic tradition. Compare the legends of the firstSargon of Agade (" Story of Chaldea," pp. 205, 20&), and of Moses.