[10] Xen. Anab. i, 9, 3-5. Compare Cyropædia, i, 2, 4-6; viii, 1, 16, etc. [11] Plutarch, Artaxerx. c. 2-6; Xen. Anab. _ut sup._ [12] See Vol. VIII. ch. lxiv, p. 135. An energetic and ambitious youth like Cyrus, having once learnt from personal experience to appreciate the Greeks, was not slow in divining the value of such auxiliaries as instruments of power to himself. To coöperate effectively in the war, it was necessary that he should act to a certain extent upon Grecian ideas, and conciliate the good will of the Ionic Greeks; so that he came to combine the imperious and unsparing despotism of a Persian prince, with something of the regularity and system belonging to a Grecian administrator. Though younger than Artaxerxes, he seems to have calculated from the first upon succeeding to the Persian crown at the death of his father. So undetermined was the law of succession in the Persian royal family, and so constant the dispute and fratricide on each vacancy of the throne, that such ambitious schemes would appear feasible to a young man of much less ardor than Cyrus. Moreover he was the favorite son of queen Parysatis,[13] who greatly preferred him to his elder brother Artaxerxes. He was born after the accession of Darius to the throne, while Artaxerxes had been born prior to that event; and, as this latter consideration had been employed seventy years earlier by queen Atossa[14] in determining her husband Darius son of Hystaspes to declare (even during his lifetime) her son Xerxes as his intended successor, to the exclusion of an elder son by a different wife, and born before his accession,—so Cyrus, perhaps, anticipated the like effective preference to himself from the solicitations of Parysatis. Probably his hopes were farther inflamed by the fact that he bore the name of the great founder of the monarchy; whose memory every Persian reverenced. How completely he reckoned on becoming king, is shown by a cruel act performed about the early part of 405 B.C. It was required as a part of Persian etiquette that every man who came into the presence of the king should immerse his hands in certain pockets or large sleeves, which rendered them for the moment inapplicable to active use; but such deference was shown to no one except the king. Two first cousins of Cyrus,—sons of Hieramenês, (seemingly one of the satraps or high Persian dignitaries in Asia Minor), by a sister of Darius,—appeared in his presence without thus concealing their hands;[15] upon which Cyrus ordered them both to be put to death. The father and mother preferred bitter complaints of this atrocity to Darius; who was induced to send for Cyrus to visit him in Media, on the ground, not at all fictitious, that his own health was rapidly declining. [13] Darius had had thirteen children by Parysatis; but all except Artaxerxes and Cyrus died young. Ktesias asserts that he heard this statement from Parysatis herself (Ktesias, Persica, c. 49). [14] Herodot. vii, 4.