THE BIRTH OF CYRUS.
B.C. 599-588
The three Asiatic empires.--Marriage of Cambyses.--Story of
Mandane.--Dream of Astyages.--Astyages' second dream.--Its
interpretation.--Birth of Cyrus.--Astyages determines to destroy
him.--Harpagus.--The king's command to him.--Distress of Harpagus.--His
consultation with his wife.--The herdsman.--He conveys the child to
his hut.--The herdsman's wife.--Conversation in the hut.--Entreaties
of the herdsman's wife to save the child's life.--Spaco substitutes
her dead child for Cyrus.--The artifice successful.--The body
buried.--Remorse of Astyages.--Boyhood of Cyrus.--Cyrus a king
among the boys.--A quarrel.--Cyrus summoned into the presence
of Astyages.--Cyrus's defense.--Astonishment of Astyages.--The
discovery.--Mingled feelings of Astyages.--Inhuman monsters.--Astyages
determines to punish Harpagus.--Interview between Artyages and
Harpagus.--Explanation of Harpagus.--Dissimulation of Astyages.--He
proposes an entertainment.--Astyages invites Harpagus to a grand
entertainment.--Horrible revenge.--Action of Harpagus.--Astyages
becomes uneasy.--The magi again consulted.--Advice of the
magi.--Astyages adopts it.--Cyrus sets out for Persia.--His parents'
joy.--Life at Cambyses's court.--Instruction of the young men.--Cyrus
a judge.--His decision in that capacity.--Cyrus punished.--Manly
exercises.--Hunting excursions.--Personal appearance of
Cyrus.--Disposition and character of Cyrus.--A universal favorite.
There are records coming down to us from the very earliest times of
three several kingdoms situated in the heart of Asia-Assyria, Media,
and Persia, the two latter of which, at the period when they first
emerge indistinctly into view, were more or less connected with and
dependent upon the former. Astyages was the King of Media; Cambyses
was the name of the ruling prince or magistrate of Persia. Cambyses
married Mandane, the daughter of Astyages, and Cyrus was their son. In
recounting the circumstances of his birth, Herodotus relates, with all
seriousness, the following very extraordinary story:
While Mandane was a maiden, living at her father's palace and home in
Media, Astyages awoke one morning terrified by a dream. He had dreamed
of a great inundation, which overwhelmed and destroyed his capital,
and submerged a large part of his kingdom. The great rivers of that
country were liable to very destructive floods, and there would have
been nothing extraordinary or alarming in the king's imagination being
haunted, during his sleep, by the image of such a calamity, were
it not that, in this case, the deluge of water which produced such
disastrous results seemed to be, in some mysterious way, connected
with his daughter, so that the dream appeared to portend some great
calamity which was to originate in her. He thought it perhaps
indicated that after her marriage she should have a son who would
rebel against him and seize the supreme power, thus overwhelming his
kingdom as the inundation had done which he had seen in his dream.
To guard against this imagined danger, Astyages determined that his
daughter should not be married in Media, but that she should be
provided with a husband in some foreign land, so as to be taken away
from Media altogether. He finally selected Cambyses, the king of
Persia, for her husband. Persia was at that time a comparatively small
and circumscribed dominion, and Cambyses, though he seems to have been
the supreme ruler of it, was very far beneath Astyages in rank and
power. The distance between the two countries was considerable, and
the institutions and customs of the people of Persia were simple and
rude, little likely to awaken or encourage in the minds of their
princes any treasonable or ambitious designs. Astyages thought,
therefore, that in sending Mandane there to be the wife of the king,
he had taken effectual precautions to guard against the danger
portended by his dream.
Mandane was accordingly married, and conducted by her husband to her
new home. About a year afterward her father had another dream. He
dreamed that a vine proceeded from his daughter, and, growing rapidly
and luxuriantly while he was regarding it, extended itself over the
whole land. Now the vine being a symbol of beneficence and plenty,
Astyages might have considered this vision as an omen of good; still,
as it was good which was to be derived in some way from his daughter,
it naturally awakened his fears anew that he was doomed to find a
rival and competitor for the possession of his kingdom in Mandane's
son and heir. He called together his soothsayers, related his dream to
them, and asked for their interpretation. They decided that it meant
that Mandane would have a son who would one day become a king.
Astyages was now seriously alarmed, and he sent for Mandane to come
home, ostensibly because he wished her to pay a visit to her father
and to her native land, but really for the purpose of having her in
his power, that he might destroy her child so soon as one should be
born.
Mandane came to Media, and was established by her father in a
residence near his palace, and such officers and domestics were put
in charge of her household as Astyages could rely upon to do whatever
he should command. Things being thus arranged, a few months passed
away, and then Mandane's child was born.
Immediately on hearing of the event, Astyages sent for a certain
officer of his court, an unscrupulous and hardened man, who possessed,
as he supposed, enough of depraved and reckless resolution for the
commission of any crime, and addressed him as follows:
"I have sent for you, Harpagus, to commit to your charge a business of
very great importance. I confide fully in your principles of obedience
and fidelity, and depend upon your doing, yourself, with your own
hands, the work that I require. If you fail to do it, or if you
attempt to evade it by putting it off upon others, you will suffer
severely. I wish you to take Mandane's child to your own house and
put him to death. You may accomplish the object in any mode you
please, and you may arrange the circumstances of the burial of the
body, or the disposal of it in any other way, as you think best; the
essential thing is, that you see to it, yourself, that the child is
killed."
Harpagus replied that whatever the king might command it was his duty
to do, and that, as his master had never hitherto had occasion to
censure his conduct, he should not find him wanting now. Harpagus then
went to receive the infant. The attendants of Mandane had been ordered
to deliver it to him. Not at all suspecting the object for which the
child was thus taken away, but naturally supposing, on the other hand,
that it was for the purpose of some visit, they arrayed their
unconscious charge in the most highly-wrought and costly of the robes
which Mandane, his mother, had for many months been interested in
preparing for him, and then gave him up to the custody of Harpagus,
expecting, doubtless, that he would be very speedily returned to their
care.
Although Harpagus had expressed a ready willingness to obey the cruel
behest of the king at the time of receiving it, he manifested, as soon
as he received the child, an extreme degree of anxiety and distress.
He immediately sent for a herdsman named Mitridates to come to him. In
the mean time, he took the child home to his house, and in a very
excited and agitated manner related to his wife what had passed. He
laid the child down in the apartment, leaving it neglected and alone,
while he conversed with his wife in a harried and anxious manner in
respect to the dreadful situation in which he found himself placed.
She asked him what he intended to do. He replied that he certainly
should not, himself, destroy the child. "It is the son of Mandane,"
said he. "She is the king's daughter. If the king should die, Mandane
would succeed him, and then what terrible danger would impend over me
if she should know me to have been the slayer of her son!" Harpagus
said, moreover, that he did not dare absolutely to disobey the orders
of the king so far as to save the child's life, and that he had sent
for a herdsman, whose pastures extended to wild and desolate forests
and mountains--the gloomy haunts of wild beasts and birds of
prey--intending to give the child to him, with orders to carry it into
those solitudes and abandon it there. His name was Mitridates.
While they were speaking this herdsman came in. He found Harpagus and
his wife talking thus together, with countenances expressive of
anxiety and distress, while the child, uneasy under the confinement
and inconveniences of its splendid dress, and terrified at the
strangeness of the scene and the circumstances around it, and perhaps,
moreover, experiencing some dawning and embryo emotions of resentment
at being laid down in neglect, cried aloud and incessantly. Harpagus
gave the astonished herdsman his charge. He, afraid, as Harpagus had
been in the presence of Astyages, to evince any hesitation in respect
to obeying the orders of his superior, whatever they might be, took up
the child and bore it away.
He carried it to his hut. It so happened that his wife, whose name was
Spaco, had at that very time a new-born child, but it was dead. Her
dead son had, in fact, been born during the absence of Mitridates. He
had been extremely unwilling to leave his home at such a time, but the
summons of Harpagus must, he knew, be obeyed. His wife, too, not
knowing what could have occasioned so sudden and urgent a call, had to
bear, all the day, a burden of anxiety and solicitude in respect to
her husband, in addition to her disappointment and grief at the loss
of her child. Her anxiety and grief were changed for a little time
into astonishment and curiosity at seeing the beautiful babe, so
magnificently dressed, which her husband brought to her, and at
hearing his extraordinary story.
He said that when he first entered the house of Harpagus and saw the
child lying there, and heard the directions which Harpagus gave him to
carry it into the mountains and leave it to die, he supposed that the
babe belonged to some of the domestics of the household, and that
Harpagus wished to have it destroyed in order to be relieved of a
burden. The richness, however, of the infant's dress, and the deep
anxiety and sorrow which was indicated by the countenances and by the
conversation of Harpagus and his wife, and which seemed altogether too
earnest to be excited by the concern which they would probably feel
for any servant's offspring, appeared at the time, he said,
inconsistent with that supposition, and perplexed and bewildered him.
He said, moreover, that in the end, Harpagus had sent a man with him a
part of the way when he left the house, and that this man had given
him a full explanation of the case. The child was the son of Mandane,
the daughter of the king, and he was to be destroyed by the orders of
Astyages himself, for fear that at some future period he might attempt
to usurp the throne.
They who know any thing of the feelings of a mother under the
circumstances in which Spaco was placed, can imagine with what
emotions she received the little sufferer, now nearly exhausted by
abstinence, fatigue, and fear, from her husband's hands, and the
heartfelt pleasure with which she drew him to her bosom, to comfort
and relieve him. In an hour she was, as it were, herself his mother,
and she began to plead hard with her husband for his life.
Mitridates said that the child could not possibly be saved. Harpagus
had been most earnest and positive in his orders, and he was coming
himself to see that they had been executed. He would demand,
undoubtedly, to see the body of the child, to assure himself that it
was actually dead. Spaco, instead of being convinced by her husband's
reasoning, only became more and more earnest in her desires that the
child might be saved. She rose from her couch and clasped her
husband's knees, and begged him with the most earnest entreaties and
with many tears to grant her request. Her husband was, however,
inexorable. He said that if he were to yield, and attempt to save
the child from its doom, Harpagus would most certainly know that
his orders had been disobeyed, and then their own lives would be
forfeited, and the child itself sacrificed after all, in the end.
The thought then occurred to Spaco that her own dead child might be
substituted for the living one, and be exposed in the mountains in
its stead. She proposed this plan, and, after much anxious doubt and
hesitation, the herdsman consented to adopt it. They took off the
splendid robes which adorned the living child, and put them on the
corpse, each equally unconscious of the change. The little limbs of
the son of Mandane were then more simply clothed in the coarse and
scanty covering which belonged to the new character which he was now
to assume, and then the babe was restored to its place in Spaco's
bosom. Mitridates placed his own dead child, completely disguised as
it was by the royal robes it wore, in the little basket or cradle in
which the other had been brought, and, accompanied by an attendant,
whom he was to leave in the forest to keep watch over the body, he
went away to seek some wild and desolate solitude in which to leave
it exposed.
[Illustration: THE EXPOSURE OF THE INFANT.]
Three days passed away, during which the attendant whom the herdsman
had left in the forest watched near the body to prevent its being
devoured by wild beasts or birds of prey, and at the end of that time
he brought it home. The herdsman then went to Harpagus to inform him
that the child was dead, and, in proof that it was really so, he said
that if Harpagus would come to his hut he could see the body. Harpagus
sent some messenger in whom he could confide to make the observation.
The herdsman exhibited the dead child to him, and he was satisfied. He
reported the result of his mission to Harpagus, and Harpagus then
ordered the body to be buried. The child of Mandane, whom we may call
Cyrus, since that was the name which he subsequently received, was
brought up in the herdsman's hut, and passed every where for Spaco's
child.
Harpagus, after receiving the report of his messenger, then informed
Astyages that his orders had been executed, and that the child was
dead. A trusty messenger, he said, whom he had sent for the purpose,
had seen the body. Although the king had been so earnest to have the
deed performed, he found that, after all, the knowledge that his
orders had been obeyed gave him very little satisfaction. The fears,
prompted by his selfishness and ambition, which had led him to commit
the crime, gave place, when it had been perpetrated, to remorse for
his unnatural cruelty. Mandane mourned incessantly the death of her
innocent babe, and loaded her father with reproaches for having
destroyed it, which he found it very hard to bear. In the end, he
repented bitterly of what he had done.
The secret of the child's preservation remained concealed for about
ten years. It was then discovered in the following manner:
Cyrus, like Alexander, Caesar, William the Conqueror, Napoleon, and
other commanding minds, who obtained a great ascendancy over masses of
men in their maturer years, evinced his dawning superiority at a very
early period of his boyhood. He took the lead of his playmates in
their sports, and made them submit to his regulations and decisions.
Not only did the peasants' boys in the little hamlet where his reputed
father lived thus yield the precedence to him, but sometimes, when the
sons of men of rank and station came out from the city to join them
in their plays, even then Cyrus was the acknowledged head. One day the
son of an officer of King Astyages's court--his father's name was
Artembaris--came out, with other boys from the city, to join these
village boys in their sports. They were playing _king_. Cyrus was the
king. Herodotus says that the other boys _chose_ him as such. It was,
however, probably such a sort of choice as that by which kings and
emperors are made among men, a yielding more or less voluntary on the
part of the subjects to the resolute and determined energy with which
the aspirant places himself upon the throne.
During the progress of the play, a quarrel arose between Cyrus and the
son of Artembaris. The latter would not obey, and Cyrus beat him. He
went home and complained bitterly to his father. The father went to
Astyages to protest against such an indignity offered to his son by a
peasant boy, and demanded that the little tyrant should be punished.
Probably far the larger portion of intelligent readers of history
consider the whole story as a romance; but if we look upon it as in
any respect true, we must conclude that the Median monarchy must have
been, at that time, in a very rude and simple condition indeed, to
allow of the submission of such a question as this to the personal
adjudication of the reigning king.
However this may be, Herodotus states that Artembaris went to the
palace of Astyages, taking his son with him, to offer proofs of the
violence of which the herdsman's son had been guilty, by showing the
contusions and bruises that had been produced by the blows. "Is this
the treatment," he asked, indignantly, of the king, when he had
completed his statement, "that my boy is to receive from the son of
one of your slaves?"
Astyages seemed to be convinced that Artembaris had just cause to
complain, and he sent for Mitridates and his son to come to him in the
city. When they arrived, Cyrus advanced into the presence of the king
with that courageous and manly bearing which romance writers are so
fond of ascribing to boys of noble birth, whatever may have been the
circumstances of their early training. Astyages was much struck with
his appearance and air. He, however, sternly laid to his charge the
accusation which Artembaris had brought against him. Pointing to
Artembaris's son, all bruised and swollen as he was, he asked, "Is
that the way that you, a mere herdsman's boy, dare to treat the son
of one of my nobles?"
The little prince looked up into his stern judge's face with an
undaunted expression of countenance, which, considering the
circumstances of the case, and the smallness of the scale on which
this embryo heroism was represented, was partly ludicrous and partly
sublime.
"My lord," said he, "what I have done I am able to justify. I did
punish this boy, and I had a right to do so. I was king, and he was my
subject, and he would not obey me. If you think that for this I
deserve punishment myself, here I am; I am ready to suffer it."
If Astyages had been struck with the appearance and manner of Cyrus
at the commencement of the interview, his admiration was awakened far
more strongly now, at hearing such words, uttered, too, in so exalted
a tone, from such a child. He remained a long time silent. At last he
told Artembaris and his son that they might retire. He would take the
affair, he said, into his own hands, and dispose of it in a just and
proper manner. Astyages then took the herdsman aside, and asked him,
in an earnest tone, whose boy that was, and where he had obtained him.
Mitridates was terrified. He replied, however, that the boy was his
own son, and that his mother was still living at home, in the hut
where they all resided. There seems to have been something, however,
in his appearance and manner, while making these assertions, which led
Astyages not to believe what he said. He was convinced that there was
some unexplained mystery in respect to the origin of the boy, which
the herdsman was willfully withholding. He assumed a displeased and
threatening air, and ordered in his guards to take Mitridates into
custody. The terrified herdsman then said that he would explain all,
and he accordingly related honestly the whole story.
Astyages was greatly rejoiced to find that the child was alive. One
would suppose it to be almost inconsistent with this feeling that he
should be angry with Harpagus for not having destroyed it. It would
seem, in fact, that Harpagus was not amenable to serious censure, in
any view of the subject, for he had taken what he had a right to
consider very effectual measures for carrying the orders of the king
into faithful execution. But Astyages seems to have been one of those
inhuman monsters which the possession and long-continued exercise of
despotic power have so often made, who take a calm, quiet, and
deliberate satisfaction in torturing to death any wretched victim whom
they can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can
invent some new means of torment to give a fresh piquancy to their
pleasure. These monsters do not act from passion. Men are sometimes
inclined to palliate great cruelties and crimes which are perpetrated
under the influence of sudden anger, or from the terrible impulse of
those impetuous and uncontrollable emotions of the human soul which,
when once excited, seem to make men insane; but the crimes of a tyrant
are not of this kind. They are the calm, deliberate, and sometimes
carefully economized gratifications of a nature essentially malign.
When, therefore, Astyages learned that Harpagus had failed of
literally obeying his command to destroy, with his own hand, the
infant which had been given him, although he was pleased with the
consequences which had resulted from it, he immediately perceived
that there was another pleasure besides that he was to derive from
the transaction, namely, that of gratifying his own imperious and
ungovernable will by taking vengeance on him who had failed, even in
so slight a degree, of fulfilling its dictates. In a word, he was glad
that the child was saved, but he did not consider that that was any
reason why he should not have the pleasure of punishing the man who
saved him.
Thus, far from being transported by any sudden and violent feeling of
resentment to an inconsiderate act of revenge, Astyages began, calmly
and coolly, and with a deliberate malignity more worthy of a demon
than of a man, to consider how he could best accomplish the purpose
he had in view. When, at length, his plan was formed, he sent for
Harpagus to come to him. Harpagus came. The king began the
conversation by asking Harpagus what method he had employed for
destroying the child of Mandane, which he, the king, had delivered to
him some years before. Harpagus replied by stating the exact truth. He
said that, as soon as he had received the infant, he began immediately
to consider by what means he could effect its destruction without
involving himself in the guilt of murder; that, finally, he had
determined upon employing the herdsman Mitridates to expose it in the
forest till it should perish of hunger and cold; and, in order to be
sure that the king's behest was fully obeyed, he charged the
herdsman, he said, to keep strict watch near the child till it was
dead, and then to bring home the body. He had then sent a confidential
messenger from his own household to see the body and provide for its
interment. He solemnly assured the king, in conclusion, that this was
the real truth, and that the child was actually destroyed in the
manner he had described.
The king then, with an appearance of great satisfaction and pleasure,
informed Harpagus that the child had not been destroyed after all, and
he related to him the circumstances of its having been exchanged for
the dead child of Spaco, and brought up in the herdsman's hut. He
informed him, too, of the singular manner in which the fact that the
infant had been preserved, and was still alive, had been discovered.
He told Harpagus, moreover, that he was greatly rejoiced at this
discovery. "After he was dead, as I supposed," said he, "I bitterly
repented of having given orders to destroy him. I could not bear my
daughter's grief, or the reproaches which she incessantly uttered
against me. But the child is alive, and all is well; and I am going to
give a grand entertainment as a festival of rejoicing on the
occasion."
Astyages then requested Harpagus to send his son, who was about
thirteen years of age, to the palace, to be a companion to Cyrus, and,
inviting him very specially to come to the entertainment, he dismissed
him with many marks of attention and honor. Harpagus went home,
trembling at the thought of the imminent danger which he had incurred,
and of the narrow escape by which he had been saved from it. He called
his son, directed him to prepare himself to go to the king, and
dismissed him with many charges in respect to his behavior, both
toward the king and toward Cyrus. He related to his wife the
conversation which had taken place between himself and Astyages, and
she rejoiced with him in the apparently happy issue of an affair
which might well have been expected to have been their ruin.
The sequel of the story is too horrible to be told, and yet too
essential to a right understanding of the influences and effects
produced on human nature by the possession and exercise of despotic
and irresponsible power to be omitted. Harpagus came to the festival.
It was a grand entertainment. Harpagus was placed in a conspicuous
position at the table. A great variety of dishes were brought in and
set before the different guests, and were eaten without question.
Toward the close of the feast, Astyages asked Harpagus what he thought
of his fare. Harpagus, half terrified with some mysterious
presentiment of danger, expressed himself well pleased with it.
Astyages then told him there was plenty more of the same kind, and
ordered the attendants to bring the basket in. They came accordingly,
and uncovered a basket before the wretched guest, which contained, as
he saw when he looked into it, the head, and hands, and feet of his
son. Astyages asked him to help himself to whatever part he liked!
The most astonishing part of the story is yet to be told. It relates
to the action of Harpagus in such an emergency. He looked as composed
and placid as if nothing unusual had occurred. The king asked him if
he knew what he had been eating. He said that he did; and that
whatever was agreeable to the will of the king was always pleasing to
him!!
It is hard to say whether despotic power exerts its worst and most
direful influences on those who wield it, or on those who have it to
bear; on its masters, or on its slaves.
After the first feelings of pleasure which Astyages experienced in
being relieved from the sense of guilt which oppressed his mind so
long as he supposed that his orders for the murder of his infant
grandchild had been obeyed, his former uneasiness lest the child
should in future years become his rival and competitor for the
possession of the Median throne, which had been the motive originally
instigating him to the commission of the crime, returned in some
measure again, and he began to consider whether it was not incumbent
on him to take some measures to guard against such a result. The end
of his deliberations was, that he concluded to send for the magi, or
soothsayers, as he had done in the case of his dream, and obtain their
judgment on the affair in the new aspect which it had now assumed.
When the magi had heard the king's narrative of the circumstances
under which the discovery of the child's preservation had been made,
through complaints which had been preferred against him on account of
the manner in which he had exercised the prerogatives of a king among
his playmates, they decided at once that Astyages had no cause for any
further apprehensions in respect to the dreams which had disturbed him
previous to his grandchild's birth. "He has been a king," they said,
"and the danger is over. It is true that he has been a monarch only in
play, but that is enough to satisfy and fulfill the presages of the
vision. Occurrences very slight and trifling in themselves are often
found to accomplish what seemed of very serious magnitude and moment,
as portended. Your grandchild has been a king, and he will never reign
again. You have, therefore, no further cause to fear, and may send him
to his parents in Persia with perfect safety."
The king determined to adopt this advice. He ordered the soothsayers,
however, not to remit their assiduity and vigilance, and if any signs
or omens should appear to indicate approaching danger, he charged them
to give him immediate warning. This they faithfully promised to do.
They felt, they said, a personal interest in doing it; for Cyrus being
a Persian prince, his accession to the Median throne would involve the
subjection of the Medes to the Persian dominion, a result which they
wished in every account to avoid. So, promising to watch vigilantly
for every indication of danger, they left the presence of the king.
The king then sent for Cyrus.
It seems that Cyrus, though astonished at the great and mysterious
changes which had taken place in his condition, was still ignorant of
his true history. Astyages now told him that he was to go into Persia.
"You will rejoin there," said he, "your true parents, who, you will
find, are of very different rank in life from the herdsman whom you
have lived with thus far. You will make the journey under the charge
and escort of persons that I have appointed for the purpose. They will
explain to you, on the way, the mystery in which your parentage and
birth seems to you at present enveloped. You will find that I was
induced many years ago, by the influence of an untoward dream, to
treat you injuriously. But all has ended well, and you can now go in
peace to your proper home."
As soon as the preparations for the journey could be made, Cyrus set
out, under the care of the party appointed to conduct him, and went to
Persia. His parents were at first dumb with astonishment, and were
then overwhelmed with gladness and joy at seeing their much-loved and
long-lost babe reappear, as if from the dead, in the form of this tall
and handsome boy, with health, intelligence, and happiness beaming in
his countenance. They overwhelmed him with caresses, and the heart of
Mandane, especially, was filled with pride and pleasure.
As soon as Cyrus became somewhat settled in his new home, his parents
began to make arrangements for giving him as complete an education as
the means and opportunities of those days afforded.
Xenophon, in his narrative of the early life of Cyrus, gives a minute,
and, in some respects, quite an extraordinary account of the mode of
life led in Cambyses's court. The sons of all the nobles and officers
of the court were educated together, within the precincts of the royal
palaces, or, rather, they spent their time together there, occupied in
various pursuits and avocations, which were intended to train them for
the duties of future life, though there was very little of what would
be considered, in modern times, as education. They were not generally
taught to read, nor could they, in fact, since there were no books,
have used that art if they had acquired it. The only intellectual
instruction which they seem to have received was what was called
learning justice. The boys had certain teachers, who explained to
them, more or less formally, the general principles of right and
wrong, the injunctions and prohibitions of the laws, and the
obligations resulting from them, and the rules by which controversies
between man and man, arising in the various relations of life, should
be settled. The boys were also trained to apply these principles and
rules to the cases which occurred among themselves, each acting as
judge in turn, to discuss and decide the questions that arose from
time to time, either from real transactions as they occurred, or from
hypothetical cases invented to put their powers to the test. To
stimulate the exercise of their powers, they were rewarded when they
decided right, and punished when they decided wrong. Cyrus himself was
punished on one occasion for a wrong decision, under the following
circumstances:
A bigger boy took away the coat of a smaller boy than himself, because
it was larger than his own, and gave him his own smaller coat instead.
The smaller boy complained of the wrong, and the case was referred to
Cyrus for his adjudication. After hearing the case, Cyrus decided that
each boy should keep the coat that fitted him. The teacher condemned
this as a very unjust decision. "When you are called upon," said he,
"to consider a question of what fits best, then you should determine
as you have done in this case; but when you are appointed to decide
whose each coat is, and to adjudge it to the proper owner, then you
are to consider what constitutes right possession, and whether he who
takes a thing by force from one who is weaker than himself, should
have it, or whether he who made it or purchased it should be protected
in his property. You have decided against law, and in favor of
violence and wrong." Cyrus's sentence was thus condemned, and he was
punished for not reasoning more soundly.
The boys at this Persian court were trained to many manly exercises.
They were taught to wrestle and to run. They were instructed in the
use of such arms as were employed in those times, and rendered
dexterous in the use of them by daily exercises. They were taught to
put their skill in practice, too, in hunting excursions, which they
took, by turns, with the king, in the neighboring forest and
mountains. On these occasions, they were armed with a bow, and a
quiver of arrows, a shield, a small sword or dagger which was worn at
the side in a sort of scabbard, and two javelins. One of these was
intended to be thrown, the other to be retained in the hand, for use
in close combat, in case the wild beast, in his desperation, should
advance to a personal re-encounter. These hunting expeditions were
considered extremely important as a part of the system of youthful
training. They were often long and fatiguing. The young men became
inured, by means of them, to toil, and privation, and exposure. They
had to make long marches, to encounter great dangers, to engage in
desperate conflicts, and to submit sometimes to the inconveniences of
hunger and thirst, as well as exposure to the extremes of heat and
cold, and to the violence of storms. All this was considered as
precisely the right sort of discipline to make them good soldiers in
their future martial campaigns.
Cyrus was not, himself, at this time, old enough to take a very active
part in these severer services, as they belonged to a somewhat
advanced stage of Persian education, and he was yet not quite twelve
years old. He was a very beautiful boy, tall and graceful in form and
his countenance was striking and expressive. He was very frank and
open in his disposition and character, speaking honestly, and without
fear, the sentiments of his heart, in any presence and on all
occasions. He was extremely kind hearted, and amiable, too, in his
disposition, averse to saying or doing any thing which could give pain
to those around him. In fact, the openness and cordiality of his
address and manners, and the unaffected ingenuousness and sincerity
which characterized his disposition, made him a universal favorite.
His frankness, his childish simplicity, his vivacity, his personal
grace and beauty, and his generous and self-sacrificing spirit,
rendered him the object of general admiration throughout the court,
and filled Mandane's heart with maternal gladness and pride.