oyal burial and the
surviving one will not lose his life."
113. To the herdsman it seemed that, the case standing thus, his wife
spoke well, and forthwith he did so. The child which he was bearing
to put to death, this he delivered to his wife, and his own, which was
dead, he took and placed in the chest in which he had been bearing the
other; and having adorned it with all the adornment of the other child,
he bore it to the most desolate part of the mountains and placed it
there. And when the third day came after the child had been laid forth,
the herdsman went to the city, leaving one of his under-herdsmen to
watch there, and when he came to the house of Harpagos he said that he
was ready to display the dead body of the child; and Harpagos sent the
most trusted of his spearmen, and through them he saw and buried the
herdsman's child. This then had had burial, but him who was afterwards
called Cyrus the wife of the herdsman had received, and was bringing him
up, giving him no doubt some other name, not Cyrus.
114. And when the boy was ten years old, it happened with regard to him
as follows, and this made him known. He was playing in the village in
which were stalls for oxen, he was playing there, I say, with other boys
of his age in the road. And the boys in their play chose as their king
this one who was called the son of the herdsman: and he set some of them
to build palaces and others to be spearmen of his guard, and one of them
no doubt he appointed to be the eye of the king, and to one he gave the
office of bearing the messages, 12401 appointing a work for each one
severally. Now one of these boys who was playing with the rest, the son
of Artembares a man of repute among the Medes, did not do that which
Cyrus appointed him to do; therefore Cyrus bade the other boys seize him
hand and foot, 125 and when they obeyed his command he dealt with the
boy very roughly, scourging him. But he, so soon as he was let go, being
made much more angry because he considered that he had been treated with
indignity, went down to the city and complained to his father of the
treatment which he had met with from Cyrus, calling him not Cyrus, for
this was not yet his name, but the son of the herdsman of Astyages. And
Artembares in the anger of the moment went at once to Astyages, taking
the boy with him, and he declared that he had suffered things that were
unfitting and said: "O king, by thy slave, the son of a herdsman, we
have be
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