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The birth of Cyrus
November 14, 2006 at 11:07 am by mahud
The Median King Astyages, according to Herodotus, had a dream that a vine grew from his daughters vagina and entirely overshadowed Asia. Astyages had the dream interpreted by his magi, who told him that his daughter’s unborn child, who would become Cyrus the great, was destined to replace him.
As soon as the foretold future king was born, Astyages handed him over to his steward Harpagos with instructions to murder the child. Harpagos, anxious to disassociate himself from the misdeed, passed the problem on to the herdsman Mithradates and told him to kill the child instead.
Mithradate’s wife, who was called spaco (meaning ‘dog’) had just given birth to a stillborn baby, so rather than murder an innocent child, she and her husband decided to raise Cyrus as their own.
And so, Cyrus reached boyhood ignorant to his royal lineage, with the social status of a slave. Cyrus’ majestic nature, however, was eventually to outshine his adopted subordinate nature, and came to the attention of Astyages, who, full of remorse for his earlier paranoia, was delighted to discover his grandson alive, and restored him to his original parents. Cyrus the great conquered the kingdom of the Medes, overthrowing Astyages, in the middle of the 6th century B.C.
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