hence the story spread until it reached in later times even as far as
the Greeks.*

* According to Ctesias, it was a singing-girl who revealed
the existence of the plot to Astyages; according to Dinon,
it was the bard Angarês. Windischmann has compared this name
with that of the Vedic guild of singers, the Angira.

Astyages, roused to action by the danger, abandons the pleasures of the
chase in which his activity had hitherto found vent, sets out on the
track of the rebel, wins a preliminary victory on the Hyrba, and kills
the father of Cyrus: some days after, he again overtakes the rebels, at
the entrance to the defiles leading to Pasargadse, and for the second
time fortune is on the point of declaring in his favour, when the
Persian women, bringing back their husbands and sons to the conflict,
urge them on to victory. The fame of their triumph having spread abroad,
the satraps and provinces successfully declared for the conqueror;
Hyrcania, first, followed by the Parthians, the Sakae, and the
Bactrians: Astyages was left almost alone, save for a few faithful
followers, in the palace at Ecbatana. His daughter Amytis and his
son-in-law Spitamas concealed him so successfully on the top of the
palace, that he escaped discovery up to the moment when Cyrus was on
the point of torturing his grandchildren to force them to reveal his
hiding-place: thereupon he gave himself up to his enemies, but was at
length, after being subjected to harsh treatment for a time, set at
liberty and entrusted with the government of a mountain tribe dwelling
to the south-east of the Caspian Sea, that of the Barcanians. Later on
he perished through the treachery of OEbaras, and his corpse was left
unburied in the desert, but by divine interposition relays of lions were
sent to guard it from the attacks of beasts of prey: Cyrus, acquainted