to Herodotus, Reigned 40 years, and his successor 35, and Cyrus, according to Xenophon, seven:  Cyrus died Anno Nabonass. 219, according to the Canon, and therefore Cyaxeres died Anno Nabonass. 177, and began his Reign Anno Nabonass. 137, and his father Astyages Reigned 26 years, beginning his Reign at the death of Phraortes, who was slain by the Assyrians, Anno Nabonass. 111, as above.

Of all the Kings of the Medes, Cyaxeres was greatest warrior. Herodotus [406] saith that he was much more valiant than his ancestors, and that he was the first who divided the Kingdom into provinces, and reduced the irregular and undisciplined forces of the Medes into discipline and order:  and therefore by the testimony of Herodotus he was that King of the Medes whom AEschylus makes the first conqueror and founder of the Empire; for Herodotus represents him and his son to have been the two immediate predecessors of Cyrus, erring only in the name of the son. Astyages did nothing glorious:  in the beginning of his Reign a great body of Scythians commanded by Madyes, [407] invaded Media and Parthia, as above, and Reigned there about 28 years; but at length his son Cyaxeres circumvented and slew them in a feast, and made the rest fly to their brethren in Parthia; and immediately after, in conjunction with Nebuchadnezzar, invaded and subverted the Kingdom of Assyria, and destroyed Nineveh.

In the fourth year of Jehoiakim, which the Jews reckon to be the first of Nebuchadnezzar, dating his Reign from his being made King by his father, or from the month Nisan preceding, when the victors had newly shared the Empire of the Assyrians, and in prosecuting their victory were invading Syria and Phoenicia, and were ready to invade the nations round about; God [408] threatned that he would take all the families of the North, that is, the armies of the Medes,_ and Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon, and bring them against Judaea and against the nations round about, and utterly destroy those nations, and make them an astonishment and lasting desolations, and cause them all to drink the wine-cup of his fury_; and in particular, he names the Kings of Judah_ and Egypt, and those of Edom, and Moab, and Ammon, and Tyre, and Zidon, and the Isles of the Sea, and Arabia, and Zimri, and all the Kings of Elam, and all the Kings of the Medes, and all the Kings of the North, and the King of Sesac; and that after seventy years, he would also punish the King of Babylon_.  Here, in numbering the nations which should suffer, he omits the Assyrians as fallen already, and names the Kings of Elam or Persia, and Sesac or Susa, as distinct from those of the Medes and Babylonians; and therefore the Persians were not yet subdued by the Medes, nor the King of Susa by the Chaldaeans; and as by the punishment of the King of Babylon he means the conquest of Babylon by the Medes; so by the punishment of the Medes he seems to mean the conquest of the Medes by Cyrus.