The Old and the Restless - The Egyptians and the Scythians in Herodotus' Histories by Robert J. Hagan

41
marked by a cunning craftiness, sophiê, which is not necessarily a term of admiration. 27 The
Persians use such craft to aggrandize the image and power of the crown within their own lands,
and on their own people. Herodotus describes a Babylonian queen, Nitocris, who in order to
protect her city against the rising Median empire, diverts the river to build a defensive structures
and a bridge, then lets the water fill to its original bed (1.185-6). When Cyrus comes to besiege
Babylon, he does the same engineering, instead letting his troops sneak through the drained
riverbed into the city, neutralizing the Babylonians (1.91). The close juxtaposition of these two
rulers’ engineering of the same river brings the marriage of craftiness towards nature and war
into focus. This union will come to define the character of the Persians throughout the Histories,
as one of determined and crafty militarism.
We see this sophiê take on a vengeful quality in an incident that is mirrored several times
throughout the Histories. Before he reaches Babylon, Cyrus comes to the Gyndes River and upon
their arrival, one of his sacred horses charges into the river and drowns. He is so enraged by this
that he warns the Gyndes directly that he will “reduce its strength to such an extent that in the
future even women would easily be able to cross it without getting their knees wet” (1.189).
Having “abandoned his expedition against Babylon” he spends the entire summer digging canals
and dividing the river into 360 channels, and resumes his campaign. The detail Herodotus shows
in the separation of the river greatly overshadows the subsequent battle outside Babylon, which
consists of a single sentence. The episode is illustrative of the Persians’ all-consuming desire to
dominate and conquer, extending to the natural world as an end result. The desire for vengeance
Cyrus exhibits when the Gyndes, of its own volition “submerged [his horse] in its current and
swept it away” is comparable to that of Tomyris when her son kills himself as Cyrus’ prisoner
27 Romm, J., “Herodotus and the Natural World” in Cambridge Guide to Herodotus, 189.