a prey to the ambitious successors of Belesis; nor did those of Arbaces fail to push their conquests: they brought several of the neighboring nations under tribute, and particularly Persia; so that the kings of Mcdia and Babylon became the two great potentates of the east. Such was the state of Asia when Cyrus was born: His father Cambyses was king of Persia; Mandane his mother was daughter of Astyages, king of the Medes.

He was educated from his tender years after the manner of ancient Persia, where the youth were inured to hardship and fatigue; hunting and war were their only exercises; but confiding too much in their natural courage, they neglected military discipline. The Persians were hitherto rough, but virtuous. They were not versed in those arts and sciences which polish the mind and manners: but they were great masters in the sublime science of being content with simple nature, despising death for the love of their country, and flying all pleasures which emasculate the mind, and enervate the body. Being persuaded that sobriety and exercise prevent almost every disease, they habituate themselves to a rigorous abstinence and perpetual labor.* The lightest indispositions proceeding from intemperance were thought shameful. The youth were educated in the public schools, where they were early instructed in the knowledge of the laws, and accustomed to hear causes, pass sentence, and mutually to do one another the most exact justice; and hereby they discovered their dispositions, penetration, and ca

* Xen. Cyr. p. 18. Ed. Oxon. Turpe enim apud Persas habetur expuere, nasum emungere, &c.

pacity for employment in a riper age. The virtues, which their masters were principally careful to inspire into them, were the love of truth, humanity, sobriety and obedience: The two former make us resemble the gods; the two latter are necessary to the preservation of order. The chief aim of the laws in ancient Persia was to prevent the corruption of the heart : and for this reason the Persians punished ingratitude ;† a vice against which there is no provision made by the laws of other nations. Whoever was capable of forgetting a benefit, was looked upon as an enemy to society.

Cyrus had been educated according to these wise maxims; and though it was impossible to conceal from him his rank and birth, yet he was treated with the same severity as if he had not been heir to a throne; he was taught to practise an exact obedience, that he might afterwards know how to command. When he arrived at the age of fourteen, Astyages desired to see him. Mandane could not avoid complying with her father's orders, but the thought of carrying her son to the court of Ecbatana exceedingly grieved her.

For the space of three hundred years the kings of Media had by their bravery extended their conquests; and conquests had begot luxury, which is always the forerunner of the fall of empires. Valor, conquests, luxury, anarchy, this is the fatal circle, and these are the different periods of the politic life, in almost all States. The court of Ecbatana was then in its splendor; but this splendor had nothing in it of solidity. The days were spent in effeminacy, or in flattery; the

† Cyrop. Xen. p. 10.

love of glory, strict probity, severe honor, were no longer in esteem; the pursuit of solid knowledge was thought to argue a want of taste; agreeable trifling, fine-spun thoughts, and lively sallies of imagination, were the only kinds of wit admired there. No sort of writings pleased, but amusing fictions, where there was a perpetual succession of events, which surprised by their variety, without improving the understanding, or ennobling the heart. Love was without delicacy; blind pleasure was its only attractive charm. The women thought themselves despised, when no attempts were made to ensnare them. That which contributed to increase this corruption of mind, manners, and sentiments, was the new doctrine spread every where by the ancient Magi, that pleasure is the only moving spring of a man's heart. For as each man placed his pleasure in what he liked best, this maxim authorised virtue or vice, according to every one's taste, humor, or complexion. This depravity, however, was not then so universal as it became afterwards. Corruption takes its rise in courts, and extends itself gradually through all the parts of a state. Military discipline was yet in its vigor in Media; and there were in the provinces many brave soldiers, who not being infected by the contagious air of Ecbatana, preserved in themselves all the virtues, which flourished in the reigns of Dejoces and Phraotes.

Mandane was thoroughly sensible of all the dangers to which she should expose young Cyrus, by carrying him to a court, the manners of which were so different from those of the Persians; but the will of Cambyses, and the orders of Astyages, obliged her, whether she would or not, to undertake the journey. She set out, attend

ed by a body of the young nobility of Persia, under the command of Hystaspes, to whom the education of Cyrus had been committed. The young prince was seated in a chariot with her, and it was the first time that he had seen himself distinguished from his companions. Mandane was a princess of uncommon virtue, a well-cultivated understanding, and a superior genius. She made it her business, during the journey, to inspire Cyrus with the love of virtue, by entertaining him with fables according to the eastern manner. The minds of young persons are not touched by abstracted ideas; they have need of agreeable and familiar images; they cannot reason, they can only feel the charms of truth; and to make it lovely to them, it must be presented under sensible and beautiful forms.

Mandane had observed that Cyrus was often too full of himself, and he discovered some tokens of a rising vanity, which might one day obscure his great qualities. She endeavored to make him sensible of the deformity of his vice, by relating to him the fable of Sozares, a prince of the ancient empire of Assyria. It resembles the story of the Grecian Narcissus, who perished by the foolish love of himself. For thus it is that the gods punish; they only give us over to our own passions, and we immediately commence unhappy.She then painted forth the beauty of those noble virtues which lead to heroism, by the generous forgetting of one's self, and related to him the fable of the first Hermes. This was a divine youth, who had wit and beauty without knowing it, and was unacquainted with his own virtue, because he knew not that there were any vices. The gods, to reward this happy ignorance, endowed him with such sublime wisdom as made him the oracle

of all Egypt. It was thus that Mandane instructed her son during the journey: one fable gave rise to another. The questions of the prince furnished the queen with new matter to entertain him, and with opportunities of teaching him the hidden meaning of the Egyptian fables, the taste for which had prevailed very much in the east, since the conquests for Sesostris.

As they passed one day by a mountain, consecrated to the great Oromazes,* Mandane stopped her chariot, alighted, and drew near to the sacred place. It was the day of a solemn festival, and the high-priest was already preparing the victim, crowned with flowers; he was of a sudden seized with the divine spirit, and interrupting the silence and solemnity of the sacrifice, cried out in a transport, "I see a young laurel rising; it will soon spread its branches over all the east, the nations will come in crouds to assemble together under its shadow." Mandane made deep reflections upon this oracle; and when she was got up again into her chariot, said to her son, "The gods give sometimes these happy presages to animate heroic souls but the event of such predictions, as far as they are personal, depends upon our virtue: The designs of the great Oramazes never fail of their accomplishment; but he changes the instrument of them, when those whom he had chosen render themselves unworthy of his choice."

As soon as they arrived upon the frontiers of Media, Astyages with all his court came out to meet them. He was a prince of great beneficence and humanity,

*The great god of the Persians. See the discourse.

+ Isaiah's prophecy may be supposed to have been spread abroad in the east.