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Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3831/A Footnote to Herodotus

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Punch, Volume 147, Issue 3831 (December 9th, 1914)
A Footnote to Herodotus
4260783Punch, Volume 147, Issue 3831 (December 9th, 1914) — A Footnote to Herodotus

It has been discovered by a Berlin research student that "Germany" is a mere corruption of "Cyrmania," and that the Kaiser is descended from Cyrus, King of Persia.

We are inclined to agree as to the "mania" part, and we think the "corruption" must be that of the modern representatives of the ancient Orientals, whose education consisted in riding, shooting—and telling the truth.

The Almanack de Bouverie Street, however, informs us that the ever-frowning War Lord derives from the monarch of the rocky brow, who counted his men by nations at break of day, and when the sun set where were they? If the Hohenxerxes family are still on the look-out for places in the sun, they will find their ancestral homes for the most part unoccupied in the sufficiently arid regions around Ecbatana and Persepolis, now crying aloud for Kultur and Kraut.

We are still waiting to hear that von Hafiz and Omar zu Kahyyam, as well as Shakspeare, have been proved to be Germans, and that the Herr Wolff of the Berlin Lie Bureau traces back to the foster-mother of Romulus—and Romance.