Herodotus’ version and the myth of the birth of the hero

Herodotus’ biographical narrative of Cyrus (1.107–22) constitutes the first linear and targeted treatment of the motif of the exposed hero in Greek literature.Footnote ³ According to the Histories, Cyrus was a descendant of Cambyses, a Persian man of noble origin, and of Mandane, the daughter of the Median king Astyages, who dreamed a recurring dream which was interpreted by the Magi to mean that the child yet to be born would unseat him from the royal throne. Fearing that the dream would come true, Astyages ordered his courtier Harpagus (also a kinsman of the royal house) to kill the child as soon as he was born.Footnote ⁴ The latter secretly gave the infant to Mitradates, one of Astyages’ cowherds, who was supposed to leave Cyrus to die in the forest. Fortunately, the cowherd and his wife, who had just lost their newborn son, decided to raise Cyrus as if they were his biological parents, and exposed their own dead infant as proof of fulfilling Astyages’ command. At the age of ten, following an incident during which Cyrus had displayed authoritative, seemingly regal behaviour towards the son of the Median noble Artembares, he was summoned to Astyages’ palace where, thanks to his physical resemblance to his grandfather and, as Herodotus puts it, his way of speaking like a free man, his true origin was discovered. The story ends happily and Cyrus is sent to his real parents in Persia.Footnote ⁵

Herodotus affirms that his source is so reliable as to assure that this account of Cyrus is the most likely to be true of all the versions that he had heard, mainly because it was related by Persians who had no vested interest in deliberately contributing to the Cyrus legend, and were simply telling the truth (τὸν ἐόντα λέγειν λόγον, 1.95.1).Footnote ⁶ In the same passage Herodotus also notes the existence of three other accounts of Cyrus which he did not incorporate into his work because of their bias in ‘glorifying Cyrus’, as he declared. The content of these traditions is not known, nor whether they included the story of the birth of Cyrus and the element of his exposure.

Herodotus’ choice of narrative detail does not immediately indicate that he believed that Cyrus was a hero in the standard Hellenic model of mythological semi-divine beings, particularly because he also chose to include an ignominious version of Cyrus’ death during his last campaign against the wild Massagetai.Footnote ⁷ However, one cannot rule out the possibility that the narrative, which employs both pre-existing folktales and mythical patterns, appealed to both Herodotus and his audience because it incorporated well-known biographical characteristics pertaining to heroes destined for an unconventional fate, many of them kings or founders of nations and dynasties, in Greek as well as in Eastern folk narratives.Footnote ⁸ The motif of the infant prince exposed to die in the wild, far from civilisation, is common in such narratives.Footnote ⁹ However, against all odds the child miraculously survives, often having been suckled by an animal and then rescued by a person of lower socio-economic status than that of his own family, usually a shepherd.Footnote ¹⁰ The child is brought up in a place far from his homeland, unaware that he is supposititious.Footnote ¹¹ Later, the prince returns to his birthplace, his true origins and identity are recognised, and he regains his birthright as the legitimate heir to the throne.Footnote ¹² Usually he performs famous heroic deeds, either before or after succeeding to the throne; so Cyrus’ deeds in life were commemorated after his death.Footnote ¹³

Significantly, such narratives present two main reasons for the decision to dispose of a royal child. The first, generally acted upon in response to a divine warning, is to prevent the infant from ousting the ruler from the throne (this is Astyages’ motive in Herodotus) or even from life.Footnote ¹⁴ In such cases it was necessary that the infant die (cf. Hdt. 1.110, 113.2). The second, more common, reason for exposing a newborn is that his or her father (usually in fact a god or semi-god) is unknown, so that the child is illegitimate.Footnote ¹⁵ This issue will be of significance as we turn to interpreting Isocrates’ account of Cyrus’ exposure.

Cyrus exposed in Isocrates’ version

The second reference in the Greek sources to Cyrus’ exposure appears in the form of two brief passages in Philippus, a treatise which Isocrates composed near the conclusion of the Peace of Philocrates, at a time when Philip's hegemony over Greece was virtually undisputed.Footnote ¹⁶ In this discourse, structured as an open letter to Philip II, Isocrates speaks primarily to the Macedonian ruler, although his appeal is also directed towards the citizens of his city, the Athenians, and to other Greek states;Footnote ¹⁷ his purpose is to persuade and encourage Philip's campaign for Greek unity and crusade against the Persian Empire.Footnote ¹⁸

Exposure is first mentioned in the opening part of the speech (1–80), in which Isocrates tells Philip that it is his duty to bring about a reconciliation of the Hellenic states, and emphasises the power of the Macedonian king to do so (66):

Isocrates, asserting the metabolē of Cyrus, presents his exposure as an exemplum of the ability to acquire a large empire though starting from the humblest beginnings, as part of his illustration of Philip's inborn suitability for easily subduing the Persian Empire (cf. esp. 57 and 67).

However, a further reference to Cyrus’ exposure in the second part of the treatise (81–147) may indicate an additional purpose for the use of this biographical item. In the course of his appeal to Philip to emulate the glorious deeds of his ancestors by going to war against Persia, Isocrates says in section 132:

Here Isocrates subordinates the exposure to the issue of historical justice, which he thinks has been distorted. He repeats and clarifies the concept of European precedence over Asia which he had already expressed in Panegyricus (380 BCE), contrasting the origins of the founders of the royal dynasties – the humble beginnings of mortal Cyrus versus the divine ancestry of Temenus the Heraclid, King of Argos and founder of the Macedonian dynasty.Footnote ²⁰ The emphasis on Philip's origins, here as elsewhere in the speech (32, 105–6, 115, 127), is yoked to an encomium to Heracles (109–12), which presents him as a model for Philip, so that Philip (whom Isocrates here accepts as Greek)Footnote ²¹ might redeem himself through fulfilling the dual purpose of gaining glory and reputation for himself and for Hellas (113–15; cf. 153), thus reproducing the glorious deeds of his ancestors.Footnote ²²

The topic of Cyrus’ humble origins, and the suggestion that he was born Persian also on his mother's side, had already been mentioned in Ctesias’ account in Persica, known through Nicolaus of Damascus. There, however, it was nuanced with a different tone and had a contradictory purpose. According to Ctesias, whose work was probably produced in the first half of the fourth century, Cyrus experienced the vagaries of fate.Footnote ²³ He was born into a low status and started his life at the social nadir, the son of a bandit and gooseherd from the nomadic Persian tribe of the Mardians. He became a servant to a Median man, and advanced in social and political power until he achieved the kingship.Footnote ²⁴ Ctesias seems to be relying on the birth and succession stories of the Assyrian Sargon, who was not born into the royal family and was said to have been exposed soon after birth because of illegitimacy, and to have become king through his own achievements.Footnote ²⁵

There are grounds to suppose that Isocrates was acquainted with Ctesias’ version.Footnote ²⁶ However, he did not adopt it in full despite the metabolē element, probably because the narrative of a self-made man without noble origins would have appeared strange within the Greek reality of a socially stratified society, while the act of exposure was more common within Athenian discourse. Furthermore, exposure per se was taken by Isocrates, according to his account in the Panathenaicus (12.121–2), as excessively evil, unholy and terrible – a phenomenon similar to matricide and incest, which was perhaps customary only among the non-Athenians in the remote past. As such, exposure is used by Isocrates as a rhetorical tool, essential to exaggerating Cyrus’ low origin, while the topic is repeated, and handled briefly without delineating the sequence of events which led to Cyrus’ successful status in adulthood. In any case, Isocrates probably knew at least two Greek stories about Cyrus’ origins – those of Herodotus and Ctesias – but he adopts neither, nor does he synthesise them, since he does not identify Cyrus’ parents.

Illegitimacy at Athens and Isocrates’ representation

Four details of the narrative vary significantly in the versions of Isocrates and Herodotus. They are: (1) the paramount question of Cyrus’ royal ancestry, (2) the identity of his parents, (3) the location in which the act of exposure was performed, and (4) the intention to dispose of the child. These differences not only distance Isocrates’ story from the mythological motif found in Herodotus’ account, but call into question Cyrus’ alleged royal origin and social status. Elucidation of these interconnected issues will show that Isocrates hints that Cyrus’ illegitimacy was of the least respectable category defined in Athens.

While Herodotus does not cast any doubt on Cyrus’ royal lineage, Isocrates ignores one of the most basic components of the mythological topos, i.e. the royal maternal ancestry of the abandoned baby. In all such cases the mother is a royal princess, and the father of her child is either a hero or a god. No such mention is found in Isocrates, though he was certainly aware that Cyrus was accepted as a grandson of Astyages on his maternal side. Indeed, this appears in the Greek sources on which he probably relied in his Euagoras, where he juxtaposes the character of Cyrus with that of Euagoras, and goes so far as to condemn the former for killing his maternal grandfather.Footnote ²⁷ Most of the Greek authors are inclined to emphasise the assertion that Astyages was Cyrus’ grandfather, insisting on continuity between the Median and Persian kingdoms. This may well be a post eventum fabrication to justify Cyrus’ power in Media as a result of inter-dynastic marriage.Footnote ²⁸

Furthermore, within a single sentence Isocrates invests considerable effort in emphasising the divine origin of Heracles on his father's side, and through it that of Philip, whereas Cyrus’ royal paternal ancestry is dismissed, as is the very existence of his father, despite the latter being identified in Greek as well as in Persian sources. Briefly, these Persian sources include two Akkadian inscriptions from Babylonia – one from Uruk and one from Ur – dating from the sixth century BCE, which mention that Cyrus is the king of Anshan and son of Cambyses, who was also the king of Anshan;Footnote ²⁹ and three inscriptions discovered in Pasargadae and dating from the reign of Darius I, which are thought to be revisionist justifications of Darius’ connection to Cyrus, showing Cyrus’ affiliation to the Achaemenid dynasty of Persian heritage.Footnote ³⁰ These constitute an official ‘dynastic’ discourse congruent with the official Persian concept and ideology of kingship, portraying Persian kings, and Cyrus among them, as heroic rulers. As for the Greek sources, although Herodotus does not note the royal lineage of Cambyses in the ‘Cyrus logos’, and merely indicates his noble status (1.107.2), he does elucidate it in Xerxes’ genealogy (7.11.2).Footnote ³¹ In other Greek sources, the royal origins of Cyrus, both maternal and paternal, are indicated in Xenophon's Cyropaedia (1.2.1), which was composed around 360 BCE:Footnote ³² It makes no mention of exposure, but describes Cyrus as a Persian prince, descendant of kings, son of Cambyses and grandson of Astyages. According to Diodorus of Sicily (9.22), whose source is the fourth-century historian Ephorus, a disciple of Isocrates, Cyrus was the son of Cambyses and Mandane, daughter of Astyages. In Justin's Epitome of the Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, which possibly relied on Deinon's Persica from the second half of the fourth century BCE, Cyrus is also said to be Astyages’ grandson, i.e. of royal lineage on the mother's side; the origin of his Persian father, Cambyses, is presented as humble (1.4), and Cyrus was exposed soon after his birth.Footnote ³³ Although it is difficult to assess the extent to which Isocrates was familiar with non-Greek sources, it seems plausible that he was aware of the official versions of the genealogy of the Persian royal family, and would have known through the Greek authors’ versions something of Cyrus’ ancestry.

The deliberate omission of Cyrus’ parents’ identity, together with the absence of most of the details characteristic of the myths of the birth of the hero, effectively undermines the heroic image of the historic leader, and transfers the motif from the heroic sphere implied in the Histories to that of quotidian human reality. Within this framework, Isocrates also places on the road Cyrus’ exposure by his mother, who probably hoped for his rescue rather than intending to kill him.Footnote ³⁴ Examining these third and fourth points of divergence from Herodotus’ narrative, by briefly reviewing the child's legal status in classical Athens and the socio-historical context of exposure, including its representation in Athenian dramatic discourse, will serve to illuminate and clarify the social reality which Isocrates presented to his audience.

In Athens, from the Archaic period onwards, marriage was a vehicle for the reproduction of citizens. A descendant who was considered a legitimate child (gnēsios), and as such entered the next-of-kin chain (anchisteia) and partook in the civil polity (politeia), was an individual born to an Athenian citizen and a freeborn woman in a marriage contracted by the procedure of engyē.Footnote ³⁵ A child born of a mixed or unequal parental union was perceived to be less legitimate, or rather inappropriately born, and was termed a νόθος (nothos), i.e. a ‘father's bastard’ as defined by Ogden (Reference Ogden, Hübner and Ratzan2009);Footnote ³⁶ the lower status of the mother seems in most cases to be an essential element in determining such illegitimacy. In most textual examples nothos refers to the child of a concubine.Footnote ³⁷ The social and legal status of these children in archaic and classical Athens (from Solon onwards) is problematic. They were allowed a patronymic and were not completely cut off from the paternal oikos, but from infancy such a child would have been subject to economic, social and ritual separation from it, and in adulthood, de jure at least, was not entitled to the rights and privileges of citizens’ legal descendants.Footnote ³⁸ Following the Periclean citizenship law in 451/450 BCE, the Athenian definition of nothos in political contexts also applied formally to offspring born within a marriage of a male citizen to a foreign woman who was not an astē (mētroxenoi).Footnote ³⁹ An additional category of infants born outside a legitimate marital union were those for whom no man admitted paternity and who therefore had no master (kyrios), i.e. the ‘mother's bastards’. This category is not considered in the sources as noteworthy as ‘father's bastards’, and no exclusive noun defines them as a distinct category of bastardy.Footnote ⁴⁰ Given the stringent conditions defining legitimacy and the marginal status of the ‘father's bastard’, it is conceivable that the ‘mother's bastard’, a child whose father was unknown and whose birth was also perceived as a consequence of promiscuous girlish behaviour was at the bottom of the social and moral ladder, and as such destined to be exposed.Footnote ⁴¹

This group suffered a higher risk of exposure when weighing the various factors which led to the abandonment of neonatals as described in Greek sources.Footnote ⁴² The absence of legitimacy is often reflected in mythological narratives which relate the birth of heroes,Footnote ⁴³ and was integrated into some of Sophocles’ and Euripides’ tragedies.Footnote ⁴⁴ In the absence of historical documentation, Attic drama is the primary Greek source for the association between illegitimacy and exposure in the Classical period. In such narratives, the heroine is generally a mortal princess, an unmarried adolescent (a parthenos), made pregnant by a god or a semi-divine hero, following a single act of sexual intercourse not initiated by herself – that is, following rape or seduction.Footnote ⁴⁵ After she manages to hide her pregnancy from her parents, shame and the fear of being blamed for behaviour involving promiscuity force her to expose her baby, again not always by her own free will or initiative, while the baby's father is absent as a kyrios of the newborn.Footnote ⁴⁶

This tragic and mythological motif appears repeatedly, in refashioned form, in Attic comedies mainly of the Hellenistic period. A well-preserved and detailed instance is Menander's Epitrepontes.Footnote ⁴⁷ During a night-time celebration, a young Athenian citizen rapes and impregnates an unmarried free Athenian female of a lower social class. The unwanted child is reluctantly exposed or given away, then is found and adopted, and eventually recognised and acknowledged; the action of the play focuses on resolving the consequences of the illicit encounter.Footnote ⁴⁸ As is conventional in these plays, there is a happy ending, consisting of the marriage or reunion of the parents, and reconciliation between them and the exposed child, who now achieves legitimacy. Later comedies thus share several characteristics with the tragic and mythological traditions, omitting the heroic and supernatural elements events in favour of a depiction of the normal domestic life of ordinary Athenians who are neither heroes nor princesses.Footnote ⁴⁹

The continuity of the exposure theme in two genres which addressed a wide audience is an acknowledgement of the existence of the phenomenon in Greek social reality.Footnote ⁵⁰ But it is most probable that in historical reality, unlike in fictive genres of mythical narratives and dramatic plots, abandoned children had extremely slim chances of survival, and no chance at all of finding their biological parents and acquiring legitimacy. Certainly it was unlikely that such foundlings should perform great deeds in the manner of a destined-to-be mythological hero. Were exposed children to be rescued, as was Cyrus by the anonymous Persian woman in Isocrates’ version, they would probably have been sold into slavery or reared by a marginal individual, in poor houses, (mainly but not exclusively) to help with menial jobs.Footnote ⁵¹ In these cases adoption was probably very rare; in classical Athens illegitimate children were technically excluded from adoption.Footnote ⁵² According to extant legal speeches and dramatic evidence, the only way for these infants to achieve legitimacy was to be adopted in secret so that the child would be reared as though born to the married woman who had adopted him or her.Footnote ⁵³ However, such stealthy adoption was not without risk because a supposititious child could face public prosecution in adulthood.Footnote ⁵⁴ The Athenians’ social anxiety over legitimacy, familiar to Isocrates’ audience, is also manifest in rhetoric used to attack personal and political opponents in legal agones;Footnote ⁵⁵ similarly in Third Philippic (9.31), delivered in 341 BCE a few years after Isocrates’ Philippus, Demosthenes called Philip – the same Philip to whom Isocrates granted heroic origins – a ‘slave or supposititious child’ (δοῦλος ἢ ὑποβολιμαῖος).

In the light of the evidence presented, there is a strong basis for assuming that Cyrus’ exposure in Philippus reflects to Isocrates’ audience the situation where under particular constraints a mother exposes her newborn infant. For, whereas in Herodotus’ version Cyrus is exposed in the wild forest, definitely in order to die, following the royal order of Astyages grounded in the latter's fear of a successor, the mother in Isocrates exposes her baby on the roadside – a space which indicates the intention, or at least the hope, that the newborn would be rescued and survive. This accords with the wishes of mythical heroines and comic female characters in similar circumstances.Footnote ⁵⁶ Although Isocrates does not mention the reason for abandoning Cyrus, there is adequate cause to believe that his aim was to emphasise, without explicitly stating, Cyrus’ legal status by birth as a child born within an illegitimate framework without the social and economic recognition of the father, a ‘mother's bastard’. In other words, in order to assert the absolute inferiority of Cyrus’ origin, Isocrates imputed to him the lowest degree of bastardy.

To conclude the discussion: ignoring Cyrus’ royal origins and maintaining the anonymity of his parents eliminates the heroic flavour of the motif of the exposed infant, and enables Isocrates to present Cyrus as a marginal persona, who has been conceived in promiscuity, born to an individual of inferior origins, raised as a foundling or saved thanks to an adoption which would not have been permitted in Athens. By virtue of these facts such a foundling in an Athenian contemporary perspective was unlikely ever to gain legitimacy, and indeed might not even have been counted as a freeman in the Hellenic world. He certainly could not be destined to perform great deeds in the manner of a legendary hero. Contrast this with Herodotus’ Cyrus, whose royal characteristics are inherent in the facts of his birth; Herodotus’ narrative commends a Cyrus who is extricated from his humble beginnings as an exposed infant and set on the path which is his birthright – the path to becoming the founder of an empire.

Conclusion: heroicity versus bastardy

We have seen that the matter of infant exposure in classical Greek written discourse can communicate contradictory messages, alleging and implying both heroicity and bastardy in the same individual. Herodotus in describing Cyrus’ exposure delineates the heroic features, and bases himself on and is influenced by mythological traditions wherein the birth of a pre-destined ruler constituted a danger to the current ruler. In this way Cyrus’ birth and infancy conform to the mould of great leaders, as befits the founder of an empire, without casting doubt on or destabilising his royal origins and qualities. Herodotus believed he was not glorifying Cyrus but simply telling the truth. Conversely Isocrates sets himself the goal of demolishing Cyrus and challenging his greatness by undermining his origins, thus heightening the contrast between Cyrus and Philip, the latter being considered to belong in a line of kings descended from Heracles. The two authors tendentiously choose from among the current narratives about Cyrus’ early life the particular version of his exposure suited to furthering their own various ends.

Neither author states his goal explicitly, yet neither is particularly delicate in advancing his position. Herodotus asserts heroicity, while Isocrates manipulates the features which might indicate heroicity and Cyrus’ royal origins, transmuting them to the quotidian reality of life in classical Athens. In that reality illegitimate children of unknown fathers were perceived as being born twisted and crooked by nature;Footnote ⁵⁷ they were destined to be abandoned and excluded from citizenship, and were not even acknowledged as freemen. These two contradictory versions of abandoned infants – one of the harsh and gloomy phenomena in the history of human children – clearly show the paramount importance of family lineage in bestowing civil status.