with this miraculous circumstance, went in search of the body and gave
it a magnificent burial.* Another legend asserted, on the contrary,
that Cyrus was closely connected with the royal line of Cyaxares; this
tradition was originally circulated among the great Median families who
attached themselves to the Achaemenian dynasty.**

* The passage in Herodotus leads Marquart to believe that
the murder of Astyages formed part of the primitive legend,
but was possibly attributed to Cambysos, son of Cyrus,
rather than to OEbaras, the companion of the conqueror's
early years.

** This is the legend as told to Herodotus in Asia Minor,
probably by the members of the family of Harpagus, which the
Greek historian tried to render credible by interpreting the
miraculous incidents in a rationalising manner.

[Illustration: 042.jpg REMAINS OF THE PALACE OF ECBATANA]

Drawn by Boudier, from Coste and Flandin.

According to this legend Astyages had no male heirs, and the sceptre
would have naturally descended from him to his daughter Mandanê and
her sons. Astyages was much alarmed by a certain dream concerning his
daughter: he dreamt that water gushed forth so copiously from her
womb as to flood not only Ecbatana, but the whole of Asia, and the
interpreters, as much terrified as himself, counselled him not to give
Mandanê in marriage to a Persian noble of the race of the Achæmenids,
named Cambyses; but a second dream soon troubled the security into which
this union had lulled him: he saw issuing from his daughter's womb a