nder (Alexander) was the son of Darab
(Darius) and of a daughter of Failakus (Philip of Macedon). When an
oriental crown passes from one dynasty to another, however foreign and
unconnected, the natives are wont to invent a relationship between the
two houses, which both parties are commonly quite ready to accept; as
it suits the rising house to be provided with a royal ancestry, and it
pleases the fallen one and its partisans to see in the occupants of the
throne a branch of the ancient stock--a continuation of the legitimate
family. Tales therefore of the above-mentioned kind are, historically
speaking, valueless; and it must remain uncertain whether the second
Median monarch had any child at all, either male or female.

Old age was now creeping upon the sonless king. If he was sixteen
or seventeen years old at the time of his contract of marriage with
Aryenis, he must have been nearly seventy in B.C. 558, when the revolt
occurred which terminated both his reign and his kingdom. It appears
that the Persian branch of the Arian race, which had made itself a home
in the country lying south and south-east of Media, between the 32nd
parallel and the Persian gulf, had acknowledged some subjection to
the Median kings during the time of their greatness. Dwelling in their
rugged mountains and high upland plains, they had however maintained the
simplicity of their primitive manners, and had mixed but little with
the Medes, being governed by their own native princes of the Achasmenian
house, the descendants, real or supposed, of a certain Achajmenes. These
princes were connected by marriage with the Cappadocian kings; and their
house was regarded as one of the noblest in Western Asia. What the exact
terms were upon which they stood with the Median monarch is uncertain.
Herodotus regards Persia as absorbed into Media at this time, and the
Achsemenidse as merely a good Persian family. Nicolas of Damascus makes
Persia a Median satrapy, of which Atradates, the father of Cyrus, is
satrap, Xenophon, on the contrary, not only gives the Achajmenidae their
royal rank, but seems to consider Persia as completely independent of
Media; Moses of Chorene takes the same view, regarding Cyrus as a great
and powerful sovereign during the reign of Astyages. The native records
lean towards the view of Xenophon and Moses. Darius declares that eight
of his race had been kings before himself, and makes no difference
between his own royalty and theirs. C