When _Cyaxeres_ expelled the _Scythians_, [409] some of them made their peace with him, and staid in _Media_, and presented to him daily some of the venison which they took in hunting: but happening one day to catch nothing, _Cyaxeres_ in a passion treated them with opprobrious language: this they resented, and soon after killed one of the children of the _Medes_, dressed it like venison, and presented it to _Cyaxeres_, and then fled to _Alyattes_ King of _Lydia_; whence followed a war of five years between the two Kings _Cyaxeres_ and _Alyattes_: and thence I gather that the Kingdoms of the _Medes_ and _Lydians_ were now contiguous, and by consequence that _Cyaxeres_, soon after the conquest of _Nineveh_, seized the regions belonging to the _Assyrians_, as far as to the river _Halys_. In the sixth year of this war, in the midst of a battel between the two Kings, there was a total Eclipse of the Sun, predicted by _Thales_; [410] and this Eclipse fell upon the 28th of _May_, _Anno Nabonass._ 163, forty and seven years before the taking of _Babylon_, and put an end to the battel: and thereupon the two Kings made peace by the mediation of _Nebuchadnezzar_ King of _Babylon_, and _Syennesis_ King of _Cilicia_; and the peace was ratified by a marriage, between _Darius_ the son of _Cyaxeres_ and _Ariene_ the daughter of _Alyattes_: _Darius_ was therefore fifteen or sixteen years old at the time of this marriage; for he was 62 years old at the taking of _Babylon_. In the eleventh year of _Zedekiah's_ Reign, the year in which _Nebuchadnezzar_ took _Jerusalem_ and destroyed the Temple, _Ezekiel_ comparing the Kingdoms of the East to trees in the garden of _Eden_, thus mentions their being conquered by the Kings of the _Medes_ and _Chaldæans: Behold_, saith he, _the_ Assyrian _was a Cedar in_ Lebanon _with fair branches,--his height was exalted above all the trees of the field,--and under his shadow dwelt all great nations,--not any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty:--but I have delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen,--I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to the grave with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees of _Eden_, the choice and best of _Lebanon_, all that drink water, shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth: they also went down into the grave with him, unto them that be slain with the sword, and they that were his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the heathen,_ Ezek. xxxi.