Herodotus's accounts of Persia cannot be trusted in their particulars, yet historians cannot do their work without relying on him because the Persians themselves left almost no narrative histories.

38:59tell their own story in the light of history.  The historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones puts the dilemma for historians bluntly. We cannot believe  much of what Herodotus says, and yet we cannot do without him. Some historical truths about  the Persians may well lie hidden in Herodotus, but one needs to dig deep through the  layers of fantasy and fiction to find them. In the end, trying to glean the truth  about this very ancient past can feel

39:35like exploring the depths of the deep  ocean, where a single beam of light might illuminate a whole ecosystem or an  undiscovered species living down in the depths, but elsewhere in all  directions, there is only darkness. Like many momentous figures of this time, such  fantasy and fiction completely shrouds the early life of Cyrus the Great. What we know for sure  is that Cyrus was born into a royal family.

40:20He was the son of a Persian ruler named  King Cambyses I of Anshan and possibly his wife Mandane, who was reportedly a Mede.  As such, Cyrus may have grown up speaking both Old Persian and his mother's tongue of  Median. His mother Mandane was also royalty. She was the daughter of the ruling king of the  Medes, a man named Astyages, who all the tribes of the Persians swore loyalty to. As such, Cyrus was  likely born the immediate heir to the province of