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This chapter examines the looser type of legend and story patterns familiar to Herodotus' audience. It considers the possibility of legends and stories that seem to belong primarily to the Persian or Near Eastern sphere and which Herodotus uses himself, taking two examples as case studies: Pythius and Lydian (7.38–40) and Deioces the Mede (1.96–101). It uses these to examine the sorts of truth, understanding, and interpretation that a Greek writer might derive from a foreign logos or tale — supposing that these might derive from, or be related to some Persian or Median tales. It then goes on to examine how such tales might be taken, understood or misunderstood, and re-used in the Greek and specifically Herodotean schema. The chapter is thus in part related to the problem of the ‘unintelligibility’ of one society's tales, and indeed customs, to members of another society.

This chapter considers the rich set of traditions Herodotus reports about the origins of the Medes and the Persians. It first investigates the traditions regarding Perseus and his descendants, and highlights the important role played by the genealogical link between Perseus and the Persians in the propaganda against Argos in the aftermath of the Persian wars. It next considers the great army list of book 7, in which the origins the Persians are presented in detail. After illustrating the phenomenon evident elsewhere in the Histories of the double-root of traditions about the origins of a people, with a distinction between the people and their eponymous hero on the one hand, and the ancestor of the royal dynasty on the other, it addresses the possibility of a similar double-root to Herodotus' traditions about the origins of the Persians and their kings. Various passages of the Histories indeed supply two different approaches to the origins of the Persian Kings, one of which contains Persian elements (a linear genealogy going back to Achaemenes: 7.11.2; cf. 3.75.1), while the other is purely Greek and connects them with Perseus (on Perseus: 1.125.3; cf. 7.220.4).

Still waiting on Joy’s baby, Lovie and the narrator do yard work together. Lovie reflects on her past dream to work in Alaska and reminisces about her mother and the songs she used to sing, including the ballad “Barbry Allen.” On Sunday the narrator reluctantly accompanies Lovie once again to church, where the narrator enjoys watching Lovie interact with a baby. Back at Lovie’s, Lovie wants to figure out what contemporary nation the Medes (mentioned in church earlier in the day) occupied, and the narrator spends half the day in her room, desperate for time alone.

In this chapter Diodorus himself gets the stage. The story is about the rise and decline of the Assyrian empire, starting with the reigns of Ninus and Semiramis and the construction of subsequently Nineveh and Babylon and ending with the reign of Sardanapallus and the fall of Nineveh. Next follows an account on the rule of the Medes, in which features amongst others also Queen Zarinaea of the Scythians. Finally, attention is paid to the Chaldeans and their importance for astronomy.

The Achaemenid Persian Empire was history’s first hyperpower, ruling much of the known earth from the reign of Cyrus the Great in the mid-sixth century to the defeat of Darius III by Alexander of Macedon in 331 BCE. The Achaemenid Empire’s evident debt to its predecessors in Elam, Assyria, and Babylonia may be contrasted with a deconstruction of the so-called Median Empire’s influence, to the point that several scholars question whether the Medes ever ruled a centralized empire in the traditional sense of the term. The Achaemenid Empire’s scale and durative power went beyond conquest. The royal court, satraps, elites, and administrative apparatus combined to substantiate a compelling ideology based upon the centrality of the king. The conquest of the empire by Alexander conjoins the Macedonian’s military success with a necessary reliance on Achaemenid imperial architecture and traditions.

An influx of groups with a nomadic background occurred in the late second or early first millennium bc when the earliest Iranian speakers entered the Iranian plateau from the north, whether via the Caucasus or Central Asia. The use of the horse was particularly important among these groups and evidence suggests that, while there is sporadic evidence of horse use in parts of western Iran prior to the first millennium, horse breeding increased markedly with the coming of the Iranians. Assyrian sources confirm the presence of groups and individuals with etymologically Iranian names in western Iran beginning in the ninth century bc These were ancestral to the groups identified as nomads by Herodotus.

Cyrus the Great’s first major conquest involved that of the Medes in northern Iran. The question of whether the “Median Empire,” as described in Greek sources, ever existed as a centralized, bureaucratic state continues to be debated. When contemporaneous Assyrian and Babylonian evidence is compared to the later Greek evidence, it seems unlikely. Nonetheless, the Medes were a formidable power, and Cyrus’ victory not only made the Persians the dominant power in Iran but also paved the way for his subsequent campaigns. Cyrus’ subsequent conquest of the Lydian kingdom in the 540s stretched his empire throughout Anatolia, including several Greek city-states on the western coast, and brought the wealth and resources of Croesus’ Sardis under Persian control. As recorded in the Greek and Babylonian traditions, Cyrus’ victories were heralded by several dreams and portents, which reinforced the idea of divine favor associated with him.