Croesus On Cyrus

In Pasargadae, 542 BC, Manson Everard of the Time Patrol, posing as Meander from Athens, dines alone with the legendary Croesus. Soon, he will meet Cyrus the Great. Later in his career, a fellow Patrolman will introduce Everard to Hiram of Tyre. He will also meet King Roger of Sicily and the Emperor Frederick. Thus easily do Patrol members interact with historical VIPs.

Croesus tells Meander how the gods favored and sheltered their Chosen One, Cyrus. The Median Astyages wed his daughter Mandane to Cambyses, his vassal in Anshan. If Cambyses, having become ill, were to die while his son Cyrus was an infant, there would then be a difficult Persian regency so Astyages ordered his kinsman Harpagus to kill Cyrus but the kinsman replaced Cyrus with a stillborn baby and the prince grew up as a herdsman.

Cambyses survived for another twenty years but, when he was definitely about to die without an heir, which again would have caused trouble in Anshan, Cyrus came forth and Astyages acknowledged him as Cambyses' heir. Later, helped by Median nobles led by Harpagus, Cyrus revolted, conquered the Medians, then built an empire.

Everard already knows that this story - a hero who would have been killed in infancy if he had not been removed and brought up elsewhere so that he could return in triumph as an adult - had been told of Cyrus as of "...Moses, Romulus, Sigurd, a hundred great men." -Time Patrol, p. 73. We can add other names to the list. Everard does not expect the hero myth to be true yet it is "...sworn to by eyewitnesses!" (ibid.)

Has Everard traveled into myth, not history? It is a mystery. But there is a clue. Cyrus came forth when Time Patrol Specialist Keith Denison disappeared.