nt labors for a subsistence, and were therefore--that is, the
ordinary people--frugal, industrious, and temperate, it will be seen
that what we have said of Persia equally applies to Media, except the
possession by the latter of political power as wielded by the sovereign
of a larger State.

Before a central power was established in Media, the country had
been--as in all nations in their formative state--ruled by chieftains,
who acknowledged as their supreme lord the King of Assyria, who reigned
in Nineveh. Among these chieftains was a remarkable man called Deioces,
so upright and able that he was elected king. Deioces reigned
fifty-three years wisely and well, bequeathing the kingdom he had
founded to his son Phraortes, under whom Media became independent of
Assyria. His son and successor Cyaxares, who died 593 B.C., was a
successful warrior and conqueror, and was the founder of Median
greatness. With the assistance of Nabopolassar, a Babylonian general who
had also revolted against the Assyrian monarch, Cyaxares succeeded,
after repeated failures, in taking Nineveh and destroying the great
Assyrian Empire which had ruled the Eastern world for several centuries.
The northern and eastern provinces were annexed to Media, while the
Babylonian valley of the Euphrates in the south fell to the share of
Nabopolassar, who established the Babylonian ascendency. This in its
turn was greatly augmented by his son Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most
famous conquerors of antiquity, whose empire became more extensive even
than the Assyrian. He reigned in Babylon with unparalleled splendor, and
made his capital the wonder and the admiration of the world, enriching
and ornamenting it with palaces, temples, and hanging gardens, and
strengthening its defences to such a marvellous degree that it was
deemed impregnable.

Cyaxares the Median meanwhile raised up in Ecbatana a rival power to
that of Babylon, although he devoted himself to warlike expeditions more
than to the adornment of his capital. He penetrated with his invincible
troops as far to the west as Lydia in Asia Minor, then ruled by the
father of Croesus, and thus became known to the Ionian cities which the
Greeks had colonized. After a brilliant reign, Cyaxares transmitted his
empire to an unworthy son,--Astyages, the grandfather of Cyrus, whose
loss of the throne has been already related. With Astyages perished the
Median Empire, which had lasted only about one hundred years, and