User:Chronic2/Draft for Cyaxares II
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Cyaxares II was said to be a king of the Medes whose reign is described by the Greek historian Xenophon. Some theories have equated this figure with the "Darius the Mede" named in the Book of Daniel. However, the fact that he is not mentioned at all in the history of Herodotus, nor in the very different history of Ctesias, has caused many scholars to debate whether such a king ever actually existed. If he did exist, there are implications beyond any relevance to the Book of Daniel. It would imply that the kingdom of the Medes merged quite peacefully with that of the Persians in about 537 B.C., as narrated by Xenophon (8.6.22, 8.7.1), rather than being subjugated in the rebellion of the Persians against Cyrus’s grandfather in 559 B.C., a date derived from Herodotus (1.214) and almost universally accepted by current scholarship. The history and chronology of the early Achaemenid kings would have to be rewritten.