[5] Married to Aryenis, the sister of the Lydian king Croesus, to seal the treaty between the two empires, Astyages ascended to the Median throne upon his father's death later that year.

[2] Xenophon's Cyropaedia depicts him as a kindly old gentleman devoted to his grandson Cyrus, but the work is widely regarded as fiction and contains numerous historical inaccuracies which make it an unreliable source.

The account given by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus relates that Astyages had a dream in which his daughter, Mandane, gave birth to a son who would destroy his empire.

[9] Harpagus, unwilling to spill royal blood, gave the infant to a shepherd, Mitridates, whose wife had just given birth to a stillborn child.

When Cyrus was found alive at age ten, Astyages spared the boy on the advice of his Magi, returning him to his parents in Anshan.

Herodotus says that Cyrus kept Astyages at his court during the remainder of his life, while according to Ctesias, he was made a governor of a region of Parthia and was later murdered by a political opponent, Oebares.