Histories

Very soon on the way I learned the whole story from the servant who brought me out of the city and gave the child into my custody: namely, that it was the son of Mandane the king's daughter and Cambyses the son of Cyrus, and that Astyages gave the command to kill him. And now, here he is.”

And as he said this the cowherd uncovered it and showed it. But when the woman saw how fine and fair the child was, she began to cry and laid hold of the man's knees and begged him by no means to expose him. But the husband said he could not do otherwise; for, he said, spies would be coming from Harpagus to see what was done, and he would have to die a terrible death if he did not obey.

Being unable to move her husband, the woman then said: “Since I cannot convince you not to expose it, then, if a child has to be seen exposed, do this: I too have borne a child, but I bore it dead.

Take this one and put it out, but the child of the daughter of Astyages let us raise as if it were our own; this way, you won't be caught disobeying our masters, and we will not have plotted badly. For the dead child will have royal burial, and the living will not lose his life.”

Thinking that his wife advised him excellently in his present strait, the cowherd immediately did as she said. He gave his wife the child whom he had brought to kill, and his own dead child he put into the chest in which he carried the other,

and dressed it with all the other child's finery and left it out in the most desolate part of the mountains. Then on the third day after leaving the child out, the cowherd left one of his herdsmen to watch it and went to the city, where he went to Harpagus' house and said he was ready to show the child's dead body.