to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis.  His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyages, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising, in a south-eastern direction, Persis proper or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the east by the line of Mount Zagros (the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey).  Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Uphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians or Chaldaeans, under their king Labynetus:  a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it afterward in its decline—­but which was then in its most flourishing condition.  The Chaldean dominion under Labynetus reached to the borders of Egypt, including as dependent territories both Judaea and Phenicia.  In Egypt reigned the native king Amasis, powerful and affluent, sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian mercenaries and himself favorably disposed to Grecian commerce and settlement.  Both with Labynetus and with Amasis, Croesus was on terms of alliance; and as Astyages was his brother-in-law, the four kings might well be deemed out of the reach of calamity.  Yet within the space of thirty years, or a little more, the whole of their territories had become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an adventurer as yet not known even by name.

The rise and fall of oriental dynasties have been in all times distinguished by the same general features.  A brave and adventurous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and greedy, acquires dominion; while his successors, abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize the throne.  Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and afterward the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to their general description, as far, at least, as we can pretend to know his history.  For in truth even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of Media, are very imperfectly known, while the facts which preceded his rise up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all:  we have to choose between different accounts at variance with each other, and of which the most complete and detailed is stamped with all the character of romance.  The Cyropaedia of Xenophon is memorable and interesting, considered with reference to the Greek mind, and as a philosophical novel.  That it should have been quoted so largely as authority on matters of history, is only one proof among many how easily authors have