* This episode is regarded as legendary by many modern historians.  Winckler even goes so far as to deny the defeat of the Scythians:  according to his view, they held possession of Media till their chief, Astyages, was overthrown by Cyrus; Rost has gone even further, deeming even Cyaxares himself to have been a Scythian.  For my part, I see no reason to reject the tradition of the fatal banquet.  Without referring to more ancient illustrations, Noldeke recalls the fact that in a period of only ten years, from 1030 to 1040 a.d., the princes reigning over the Iranian lands rid themselves by similar methods of the Turcoman bands which harassed them.  Such a proceeding has never been repugnant to Oriental morality, and it is of a kind to fix itself in the popular mind:  far from wishing to suppress it, I should be inclined to see in it the nucleus of the whole tradition.

The barbarians made a brave resistance, in spite of the treason which had deprived them of their leaders:  they yielded only after a long and bloody campaign, the details of which are unknown to us.  Iranian legends wove into the theme of their expulsion all kinds of fantastic or romantic incidents.  They related, for instance, how, in combination with the Parthians, the Scythians, under the leadership of their queen Zarinsea, several times defeated the Medes:  she consented at last to conclude a treaty on equal terms, and peace having been signed, she retired to her capital of Boxanake, there to end her days.  One body of the survivors re-entered Europe through the Caspian Gates, another wandered for some time between the Araxes and the Halys, seeking a country adapted to their native instincts and customs.* Cyaxares, relieved from the pressure put upon him by the Scythians, immediately resumed his efforts against Assyria, and was henceforward able to carry his plans to completion without encountering any serious obstacle.  It would be incorrect to say that the Scythian invasion had overthrown the empire of the Sargonids:  it had swept over it like a whirlwind, but had not torn from it one province, nor, indeed, even a single city.  The nations, already exhausted by their struggles for independence, were incapable of displaying any energy when the barbarians had withdrawn, and continued to bow beneath the Ninevite yoke as much from familiarity with habitual servitude as from inability to shake themselves free.  Assur-bani-pal had died about the year 625 B.C., after a reign of forty-two years, and his son Assur-etililani had assumed the double crown of Assyria and Babylon without opposition.**

     * Herodotus speaks of these Scythians as having lived at
     first on good terms with Cyaxares.