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Cyrus, on receiving the tidings contained in this letter, set himself
to consider how he might best persuade the Persians to revolt. After
much thought, he hit on the following as the most expedient course: he
wrote what he thought proper upon a roll, and then calling an assembly
of the Persians, he unfolded the roll, and read out of it that
Astyages appointed him their general. "And now," said he, "since
it is so, I command you to go and bring each man his reaping-hook."
With these words he dismissed the assembly.
Now the Persian nation is made up of many tribes. Those which Cyrus
assembled and persuaded to revolt from the Medes were the principal
ones on which all the others are dependent. These are the
Pasargadae, the Maraphians, and the Maspians, of whom the
Pasargadae are the noblest. The Achaemenidae, from which spring all
the Perseid kings, is one of their clans. The rest of the Persian
tribes are the following: the Panthialaeans, the Derusiaeans, the
Germanians, who are engaged in husbandry; the Daans, the
Mardians, the Dropicans, and the Sagartians, who are nomads.
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