1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Arbaces

by Eduard Meyer

ARBACES, according to Ctesias (Diodor. ii. 24 ff. 32), one of the generals of Sardanapalus, king of Assyria and founder of the Median empire about 830 B.C. But Ctesias’s whole history of the Assyrian and Median empires is absolutely fabulous; his Arbaces and his successors are not historical personages. From the inscriptions of Sargon of Assyria we know one “Arbaku Dynast of Arnashia” as one of forty-five chiefs of Median districts who paid tribute to Sargon in 713 B.C. See Media.  (Ed. M.)