As Cambyses the father of Cyrus is a contemporary of Astyages of Media, Teispes the father of Cambyses must be reckoned a contemporary of Cyaxares, and Achæmenes, the father of Teispes, as a contemporary of Phraortes.[522] We must therefore assume either that Achæmenes was at the head of the Persians, at the time when they joined Media, or that he was established by Phraortes as the chief of Persia and his vassal-king, and that his throne passed with the duties of vassalage to his descendants Teispes and Cambyses. It is not very probable that the traditions of the Persians should have accorded signs of divine favour to the youth of a man, who had been placed over them after their subjugation as viceroy of Media. Moreover, we find among the Persians, according to this tradition, a form of constitution, such as a Median viceroy would hardly have established, even for the object of overthrowing the Median power. The race of the Achæmenids belonged to the tribe of the Pasargadae; we may therefore assume that Achæmenes was the first to become chief of this tribe. Aeschylus enumerates the seven men who stand at the side of the king of the Persians.[523] Josephus says that the "seven houses" of the Persians had named Darius as king. As a fact we see that when Darius, after the extinction of the older line of the descendants of Achæmenes, sets himself to ascend the throne, six men stand at his side, whom Herodotus distinguishes as the "first of the Persians." The Laws ascribed to Plato say that the empire was then divided into seven parts between Darius and the Six, and that a relic of this division was still in existence.[524] In regard to the privileges of the Six and their descendants we find that they consisted in the right of free access to the king, and that the king could choose his chief wife only from their families;[525] the descendants of the Six had also the right to wear the head-dress of the king, the upright _kidaris_, which was the symbol of royal dignity. In the kingdom of the Sassanids, we find seven hereditary princes under the king; these princes, like the king, wear crowns, but their crowns are lower than that of the king; the "sons of the houses," _i.e._ the members of these seven families, form the highest rank of the nobility. Hence in these six chieftains of the Persians standing at the side of and beneath the seventh, who is the prince of the Pasargadae, we may suppose that we have the princes of the remaining tribes.[526] And in respect of the privileges of the six co-chieftains in the kingdom of the Achæmenids we may assume that they originally occupied a position close to the king, and formed the council and court of the chief tribal prince. These privileges the Greeks ascribe to the services which the Six rendered at the time when Darius ascended the throne. But as the seven houses existed before, and the Six had previously been "the first of the Persians," their privileged position must have been of an older