This final defeat of the Cimmerians was carried out by the joint forces of Madyes, whom Strabo credits
with expelling the Treres and Cimmerians from Asia Minor, and of the son of Sadyattes and the great-
grandson of Gyges, the Lydian king Alyattes, whom Herodotus of Halicarnassus and Polyaenus claim
finally defeated the Cimmerians.[110][119] In Polyaenus' account of the defeat of the Cimmerians, he
claimed that Alyattes used "war dogs" to expel them from Asia Minor, with the term "war dogs" being a
Greek folkloric reinterpretation of young Scythian warriors who, following the Indo-European passage
rite of the kóryos, would ritually take on the role of wolf- or dog-warriors.[120]
Scythian power in West Asia thus reached its peak under Madyes, with the territories ruled by the
Scythians extending from the Halys river in Anatolia in the west to the Caspian Sea and the eastern
borders of Media in the east, and from Transcaucasia in the north to the northern borders of the Neo-
Assyrian Empire in the south.[50][48][51]
The Median king CyaxaresA Scythian group might have left Media and migrated into the region between the Don and Volga rivers,
near the Sea of Azov in the North Caucasus, during this period in the 7th century BC, after which they
merged with Maeotians who had a matriarchal culture and formed the Sauromatian tribe.[41]
Decline
Revolt of Media
By the 620s BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire began unravelling after the death of Ashurbanipal in 631 BC: in
addition to internal instability within Assyria itself, Babylon revolted against the Assyrians in 626 BC
under the leadership of Nabopolassar;[105] and the next year, in 625 BC, Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes
and his successor to the Median kingship, overthrew the Scythian yoke over the Medes by inviting the
Scythian rulers to a banquet and then murdering them all, including Madyes, after getting them
drunk.[121][122][123][43][100]