Herodotus' HISTORY BOOK 1 (CLIO) Complete

Translated by G. Macaulay.

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106. For eight-and-twenty years then the Scythians were rulers of Asia, and by their unruliness and reckless behaviour everything was ruined; for on the one hand they exacted that in tribute from each people which they laid upon them, [120] and apart from the tribute they rode about and carried off by force the possessions of each tribe. Then Kyaxares with the Medes, having invited the greater number of them to a banquet, made them drunk and slew them; and thus the Medes recovered their power, and had rule over the same nations as before; and they also took Nineveh,—the manner how it was taken I shall set forth in another history, [121]—and made the Assyrians subject to them excepting only the land of Babylon.

107. After this Kyaxares died, having reigned forty years including those years during which the Scythians had rule, and Astyages son of Kyaxares received from him the kingdom. To him was born a daughter whom he named Mandane; and in his sleep it seemed to him that there passed from her so much water as to fill his city and also to flood the whole of Asia. This dream he delivered over [122] to the Magian interpreters of dreams, and when he heard from them the truth at each point he became afraid. And afterwards when this Mandane was of an age to have a husband, he did not give her in marriage to any one of the Medes who were his peers, because he feared the vision; but he gave her to a Persian named Cambyses, whom he found to be of a good descent and of a quiet disposition, counting him to be in station much below a Mede of middle rank.

[120] {khoris men gar phoron}: many Editors substitute {phoron} for {phoron}, but {phoron} may stand if taken not with {khoris} but with {to ekastoisi epeballon}.

[121] Cp. ch. 184, "the Assyrian history."

[122] {uperthemenos}, a conjectural emendation of {upothemenos}, cp. ch. 108 where the MSS. give {uperthemenos}, (the Medicean with {upo} written above as a correction).

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