Histories

So when the cowherd came in haste at the summons, Harpagus said: “Astyages wants you to take this child and leave it in the most desolate part of the mountains so that it will perish as quickly as possible. And he wants me to tell you that if you do not kill it, but preserve it somehow, you will undergo the most harrowing death; and I am ordered to see it exposed.”

Hearing this, the cowherd took the child and went back the same way and came to his dwelling. Now as it happened his wife too had been on the verge of delivering every day, and as the divinity would have it, she did in fact give birth while the cowherd was away in the city. Each of them was anxious for the other, the husband being afraid about his wife's labor, and the wife because she did not know why Harpagus had so unexpectedly sent for her husband.

So when he returned and stood before her, she was startled by the unexpected sight and asked him before he could speak why Harpagus had so insistently summoned him. “Wife,” he said, “when I came to the city, I saw and heard what I ought never to have seen, and what ought never to have happened to our masters. Harpagus' whole house was full of weeping; astonished, I went in;