Astyages - Reign

Reign

Astyages succeeded his father in 585 BCE, following the Battle of Halys, which ended a five-year war between the Lydians and the Medes. He inherited a large empire, ruled in alliance with his two brothers-in-law, Croesus of Lydia and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whose wife, Amytis, Astyages' sister, was the queen for whom Nebuchadnezzar was said to have built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Married to Aryenis, the sister of King Croesus of Lydia, to seal the treaty between the two empires, Astyages ascended to the Median throne upon his father's death later that year. By her he had perhaps a daughter Amytis (same as Amytis above married to Nebuchadnezzar?) married to Cyrus the Great. The reign of Astyages was noted for its both its stability and for the growth of the eastern prophet-based religion, Zoroastrianism, throughout his empire, at the same time that Croesus was patronizing notable western philosophers (Thales, Solon, Aesop, etc.), and Nebuchadnezzar was busily turning his city of Babylon into the greatest metropolis the world had yet seen. After thirty-two years of relative stability, Astyages lost the support of his nobles during the war to his grandson Cyrus, as attested to at length in the Cyropaedia of Xenophon, resulting in the formation of the Persian empire, which can be considered therefore a dynastic successor of the Medes.