Thus Media and Babylonia took the place of Assyria; and Babylon, as Herodotus says, was now the chief city of the Assyrians. When the kingdom had fallen which for three centuries had ruled in the East and West, Cyaxares might indulge the thought of making his empire more complete on the table-land of Iran. According to the story which Ctesias has preserved for us from the Medo-Persian Epos of the fall of Assyria (III. 249), the Bactrians had been prevailed upon to join the Medes and Babylonians in the course of the war against Assyria, and the Persian songs which describe the contest of Cyrus and Astyages, represent the Hyrcanians, Parthians, Bactrians, and other nations of the East, as ruled by viceroys of the Median king.[484] We may regard it as certain that Cyaxares succeeded in subjugating the table-land of Iran to a considerable extent. No slight proof is afforded of the increase and greatness of the Median kingdom in his reign by the unusual care and extraordinary efforts of the successor of Nabopolassar to protect Babylonia and Babylon by fortifications against the event of a struggle between the two powers, whose united exertions had destroyed Assyria (III. 366). The position which the Medo-Persian poems assign to the chief of the Babylonians beside the chief of the Medes, during and after the common struggle, has been already explained. The Babylonian is the astrologer, the adviser, the helper; the Mede is the man of action. In the event of success against Assyria he promises the Babylonian the viceroyalty of Babylon, and has already given it to him, free of tribute, when the fraud is discovered by which the cunning Babylonian has acquired the most valuable part of the spoil of Nineveh. For this offence the chief is condemned to death; but the Mede pardons him, and in consideration of his former services and the promise made, leaves him the viceroyalty. So eager were the Median minstrels to conceal the independence of Babylonia beside Media, and represent a power as great as Babylon was under Nebuchadnezzar as a satrapy of their kings. This fiction is maintained in other episodes of the Medo-Persian Epos which have come down to us. We are told of the stubborn resistance which the Cadusians made to the Medes; and an explanation is given how this unimportant nation on the shore of the Caspian (p. 268) could withstand the mighty kingdom of the Medes. This episode has come to us in the Persian form. It is the fault of the Median king that the Cadusians have become stubborn and successful enemies. He failed to help to his rights a brave warrior in his service; this warrior betook himself to the Cadusians, and became their chief, led them well, and bequeathed his thirst for vengeance to his descendants. From such a point of view even a Median minstrel could lament the perversity of the Median king, and the power of Babylonian gold, the abundance of which is strongly marked in the narrative, could