The courtier relents, and hands it over to a herdsman, to be exposed on
the mountains. The herdsman relents in turn, and bring the babe up as
his own child.

When the boy, who goes by the name of Agradates, is grown, he is at play
with the other herdboys, and they choose him for a mimic king. Some he
makes his guards, some he bids build houses, some carry his messages. The
son of a Mede of rank refuses, and Agradates has him seized by his guards
and chastised with the whip. The ancestral instincts of command and
discipline are showing early in the lad.

The young gentleman complains to his father, the father to the old king,
who of course sends for the herdsman and his boy. The boy answers in a
tone so exactly like that in which Xenophon's Cyrus would have answered,
that I must believe that both Xenophon's Cyrus and Herodotus's Cyrus
(like Xenophon's Socrates and Plato's Socrates) are real pictures of a
real character; and that Herodotus's story, though Xenophon says nothing
of it, is true.

He has done nothing, the noble boy says, but what was just. He had been
chosen king in play, because the boys thought him most fit. The boy whom
he had chastised was one of those who chose him. All the rest obeyed:
but he would not, till at last he got his due reward. "If I deserve
punishment for that," says the boy, "I am ready to submit."

The old king looks keenly and wonderingly at the young king, whose
features seem somewhat like his own. Likely enough in those days, when
an Iranian noble or prince would have a quite different cast of
complexion and of face from a Turanian herdsman. A suspicion crosses
him; and by threats of torture he gets the truth from the trembling