The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6)Duncker, Max
History
The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6)
Duncker, Max
History, Ancient
We were able to prove that Cyrus, soon after his victory over Astyages
and the Medes, reduced the Parthians and Hyrcanians beneath his
dominion, that the Caducians, the Armenians, and the Cappadocians were
his subjects before the Lydian war, that his empire at this period
extended to the Halys. How far he had already advanced towards the
Bactrians and Sacae must remain uncertain, owing to the contradiction
which exists on this point between the summary narrative of Herodotus
and the excerpt from Ctesias. Afterwards the Lydian war and its sequel
made Cyrus master of the whole of Asia Minor. Between the Lydian and
Babylonian wars Herodotus represents him as conquering the whole of
upper Asia, one nation after the other, and Berosus as conquering the
whole of Asia. When our knowledge is so scanty, it is impossible to fix
the campaigns of Cyrus in the East and the West with greater exactness,
or even to ascertain clearly what successes he achieved in these regions
before and after the Babylonian war. We merely perceive that Elam was
subject to Cyrus before the attack on Babylon (p. 83), and if a
habitation could be allotted to Nabonetus in Carmania, that country
must have been subject before the war which destroyed the Babylonian
kingdom; we may also conclude with great probability that Cyrus would
not have marched against Babylon before he felt himself secure in the
East. Hence we may assume that Iran was subject before the Babylonian
war, and the campaigns which resulted in the conquest of the Gandarians
and their northern neighbours, the Sogdiani and Chorasmians, must be
ascribed to the period after this war. Whether the nations in the north
of Armenia, on the isthmus between the Black and the Caspian Sea, the
Saspeires and Alarodians in the East, and the Colchians and Phasians in
the valley of the Phasis, were reduced by Cyrus or his immediate
successors remains doubtful. In the East he had conquered the Drangians,
Areians, Arachoti, Gedrosians, and Gandarians, to the south of the Cabul
on the Indus,[108] and imposed tribute on the Açvakas to the north of
the Cabul.[109] In the land of the Arachoti he destroyed, as we are
told, the city of Capisa; Darius mentions a city, Kapisakani in
Arachosia, and Capisa is also mentioned elsewhere in later writers.[110]
Nearchus tells us that Cyrus undertook a campaign against the land of
the Indians; on the march thither he lost the greater part of his army
in Gedrosia, owing to the desert and the difficulties of the way;
according to the account of the natives Cyrus and seven men alone
remained out of the whole army.[111] In his account of Alexander of
Macedon, Diodorus remarks that after he had encamped at Drangiana (V.
7), he came to the Ariaspi, who were neighbours to the Gedrosians. These
Ariaspi (whose abodes we have already discovered in the neighbourhood
of the Etymandros) were called "Benefactors" for the following reason.
On one of his campaigns, Cyrus was in the desert, and reduced to extreme
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