With respect to the position which Cyrus took up in regard to the royal family of Media, and Amytis more especially, Ctesias has preserved a somewhat incredible story. This narrative, which again is obviously taken from a poetical source, ascribes the death of Astyages to Oebares, to whom, according to Trogus, Cyrus had given the government of Persia and his sister in marriage, as a reward for his services, who in the beginning of his reign had been his associate in all his dangers, and whom, according to Ctesias, he had afterwards to thank for the capture of Sardis. The motive of this act, according to the drift of these poems, can only have been anxiety on the part of Oebares lest the influence of Astyages and his friends should endanger the succession of the house of Cyrus in the Persian kingdom and the dominion of the Persians. Oebares had previously murdered the Babylonian who possessed the secret which controlled the future of Persia, against the wishes and without the knowledge of Cyrus (p. 347), and he now acts in a similar manner towards Astyages. Cyrus, so we are told in our excerpt,[562] after the Lydian war sent the eunuch Petesaces to bring Astyages from the Barcanians, as both he and Amytis wished to see him. Oebares advised Petesaces to abandon Astyages on the way in some desert place, to perish by starvation. This was done. The crime was revealed by dreams, and Cyrus, on the repeated entreaty of Amytis, gave Petesaces up to her for punishment. She caused him to be blinded, flayed, and crucified. Oebares, fearing that a similar lot was in store for him, though Cyrus assured him that he should not permit anything of the kind, refused all nourishment for ten days, and so put an end to his life. The corpse of Astyages received a splendid burial. Lions had guarded it in the desert place in which it had been abandoned, until Petesaces returned and carried it away. In the poem in which the singing woman warns Astyages against Cyrus he is compared to a lion (p. 349). Whether the lions performed this service to the corpse of Astyages in the source from which Ctesias copied--it could scarcely by such an incident exhibit him as a man favoured by heaven--or whether the lions dealt with the corpse in a manner more in accordance with the views of Eastern Iran, we must leave out of the question. What is more certain is, that the most zealous Persian could have no real reason for putting Astyages to death, for after the Lydian war he would be in his eightieth year. The importance ascribed to Amytis points to a Median version; the death of Oebares is accounted for in a manner suitable to his life and his fidelity.