Cyrus the Great

“ Cyrus was the son of a Persian king and Median princess, and had been so well brought up at home, that when as a little boy he visited his grandfather at Echatana, in Media, he was very much shocked to see the court drinking to intoxication, and said wine must be poison, since it made people lose their senses; and he was much puzzled by the hosts of slaves who would not let people do anything for themselves. He thought only those who were old and helpless could like being waited on, and he kept these hardy, simple ways, even after he was a great king over both nations. ”

“ The first plan which Cyrus formed for the annexation of the realm of the Massagetæ to his own dominions was by a matrimonial alliance. He accordingly raised an army and commenced a movement toward the north, sending, at the same time, embassadors before him into the country of the Massagetæ, with offers of marriage to the queen. The queen knew very well that it was her dominions, and not herself, that constituted the great attraction for Cyrus, and, besides, she was of an age when ambition is a stronger passion than love. ”

“ Favors of such a sort can awaken no permanent gratitude in any heart, and thus it is quite possible that Cyrus might have evinced, during the simple and guileless days of his childhood, a deep veneration and affection for his grandfather, and yet, in subsequent years, when he had arrived at full maturity, have learned to regard him simply in the light of a great political potentate, as likely as any other potentate around him to become his rival or his enemy. ”

“ A brave and adventurous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and greedy, acquires dominion; while his successors, abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and afterward the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to their general description, as far, at least, as we can pretend to know his history. ”

“ I am the king of my people and the father of my son; therefore I am bound to lay before you openly all that I believe to be for the good of both. (23) In the past the nation has done great things for Cyrus by giving him an army and appointing him the leader, and Cyrus, God helping him, has made my Persians famous in all the world by his leadership, and crowned you with glory in Asia. Of those who served with him he has made the bravest wealthy for life, and given sustenance and full pay to numbers. By founding the cavalry he has won the plains for Persia. ”

“ But what was the most popular thing of all among the Persians was the sight of his wife Statira's chariot, which always appeared with its curtains down, allowing her countrywomen to salute and approach her, which made the queen a great favorite with the people.
Yet busy, factious men, that delighted in change, professed it to be their opinion that the times needed Cyrus, a man of a great spirit, an excellent warrior, and a lover of his friends, and that the largeness of their empire absolutely required a bold and enterprising prince. ”

“ In a short time he, the petty prince of an almost unknown tribe, had founded a mighty empire, which extended from the Indus and Jaxartes to the Aegaean and the borders of Egypt. This result shows that Cyrus must have been a great warrior and statesman. Nor is his character without nobility. He excels in the humanity with which he treated the vanquished. ”

“ The pleasure of riding and of hunting in the park was very captivating to Cyrus's mind, and he consented to stay. He represented to his mother that it would be of great advantage to him, on his final return to Persia, to be a skillful and powerful horseman, as that would at once give him the superiority over all the Persian youths, for they were very little accustomed to ride. His mother had some fears lest, by too long a residence in the Median court, her son should acquire the luxurious habits, and proud and haughty manners, which would be constantly before him in his grandfather's example ”

“ Cyrus, a man of great ambition and self-control, came to Asia Minor with a fixed purpose of putting down the Athenian power, which for sixty years had humbled the pride of the Persian kings. He formed a hearty and cordial alliance with Lysander, the Spartan admiral, and the most eminent man, after Brasidas, whom the Lacedæmonians had produced during the war. He was a man of severe Spartan discipline and virtue, but ambitious and cruel. He visited Cyrus at Sardis, was welcomed with every mark of favor, and induced Cyrus to grant additional pay to every Spartan seaman. ”

“ Cyrus marches into the queen's country.
After sending off Hystaspes, Cyrus went on. He followed, in all respects, the plan of Crœsus. He marched his army into the country of Tomyris, and advanced until he reached the point agreed upon. Here he stationed a feeble portion of his army, with great stores of provisions and wines, and abundance of such articles as would be prized by the barbarians as booty. He then drew back with the main body of his army toward the Araxes, and concealed his [Pg 283] forces in a hidden encampment. The result was as Crœsus had anticipated. ”

“ Cyrus, like Alexander, Cæsar, William the Conqueror, Napoleon, and other commanding minds, who obtained a great ascendancy over masses of men in their maturer years, evinced his dawning superiority at a very early period of his boyhood. He took the lead of his playmates in their sports, and made them submit to his regulations and decisions. ”

“ We learn from Cyrus’s proclamation that Teïspes and his successors had become kings of Anshan, i.e. a part of Elam (Susiana) , where they ruled as vassals of the Median kings, until Cyrus the Great in 550 B.C. founded the Persian empire. After the death of Cambyses, the younger line of the Achaemenidae came to the throne with Darius, the son of Hystaspes, who was, like Cyrus, the great-grandson of Teïspes. Cyrus, Darius and all the later kings of Persia call themselves Achaemenides (Hakhāmanishiya) . ”

“ From the mountains of his native land Cyrus had subjugated in thirty years three great kingdoms—Media, Lydia, and Babylonia; he had conquered Asia from the shore of the Ægean Sea to the Indus, and from the brook of Egypt to the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas and the banks of the Jaxartes. None of the conquerors before him—no Pharaoh of Egypt—none of the ancient kings of Elam or Babylon, or of the restless sovereigns of Assyria, nor even the Mede Cyaxares—had achieved results which could be distantly compared with the successes of Cyrus. ”

“ Cyrus said, in reply, that it seemed to him to be very troublesome to have to eat a little of so many separate things. In Persia they managed, he thought, a great deal better. "And how do you manage in Persia?" asked Astyages. "Why, in Persia," replied Cyrus, "we have plain bread and meat, and eat it when we are hungry; so we get health and strength, and have very little trouble." Astyages laughed at this simplicity, and told Cyrus that he might, if he preferred it, live on plain bread and meat while he remained in Media, and then he would return to Persia in as good health as he came. ”

“ In the days of Cyrus the Persians were freemen as well as lords of others, and their soldiers were free and equal, and the kings used and honoured all the talent which they could find, and so the nation waxed great, because there was freedom and friendship and communion of soul. But Cyrus, though a wise general, never troubled himself about the education of his family. He was a soldier from his youth upward, and left his children who were born in the purple to be educated by women, who humoured and spoilt them. ”

“ See at the foot of his image, incense burning and nations lying prostrate; and admire how far the pride and abjection of mortals extend [6] .
The next picture represents the infancy of Cyrus, and the particular moment wherein he gave signs of that intolerable haughtiness, considered by the 106historians as the first sallies of a greatness of soul, which to display itself wants only great occasions. Cyrus, both by right of birth and right of conquest, united Assyria and Media to Persia, and was the founder of the largest empire that ever existed. ”

“ Some had been friends of Cyrus in boyhood, others had hunted with him and learnt to admire his character, others were grateful, feeling he had lifted a load of fear from them, others were flushed with hope, nothing doubting that great things were reserved for the man who had proved so brave and so fortunate already. ”

“ Cyrus ordered him with all his family to be brought to the midst of the army. At that very instant arrived Tigranes, the king's eldest son, who was just returned from a journey. At so moving a scene he could not forbear weeping. Cyrus, addressing himself to him, said: "Prince, you are come very seasonably to be present at the trial of your father." And immediately he assembled the captains of the Persians and Medes, and called in also the great men of Armenia. ”

“ It swelled up among the populations of Asia, between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, about five hundred years before Christ, and rolled on in undiminished magnitude and glory for many centuries. It bore upon its crest the royal line of Astyages and his successors. Cyrus was, however, the first of the princes whom it held up conspicuously to the admiration of the world and he rode so gracefully and gallantly on the lofty crest that mankind have given him the credit of raising and sustaining the magnificent billow on which he was borne. ”

“ At first his sudden appearance with a splendidly equipped force of nine hundred thousand men caused great surprise and confusion among the rebels, who had gained such confidence that they were marching without their arms; and it was not without much shouting and disorder that Cyrus was able to rally them and place them in array. The king moved forward slowly and in silence, so that the Greeks were filled with admiration at the discipline of his army, for they had expected that in such a host there would be disorderly shouts and irregularity and intervals in the line. ”

“ The period of the invasion of Babylonia by Cyrus, and the taking of the city, was during the time while the Jews were in captivity there. Cyrus was their deliverer. It results from this circumstance that the name of Cyrus is connected with sacred history more than that of any other great conqueror of ancient times.
It was a common custom in the early ages of the world for powerful sovereigns to take the people of a conquered country captive, and make them slaves. They employed them, to some extent, as personal household servants, but more generally as agricultural laborers, to till the lands. ”

“ I wish, grandfather, you would let me have the rule over him just for three days."
"Why, what would you do to him?" asked Astyages.
"I would treat him as he treats me now," replied Cyrus. "I would stand at the door, as he does when I want to come in, and when he was coming for his dinner, I would stop him [Pg 82] and say, 'You can not come in now; he is busy with some men.'"
In saying this, Cyrus imitated, in a very ludicrous manner, the gravity and dignity of the Sacian's air and manner. ”

“ The River Halys, a great river of Asia Minor, which flows northward into the Black Sea, was the eastern boundary of the Lydian empire. Crœsus began to entertain the design of raising an army and crossing the Halys, to invade the empire of Cyrus, thinking that that would perhaps be safer policy than to wait for Cyrus to cross the Halys, and bring the war upon him. Still, the enterprise of invading Persia was a vast undertaking, and the responsibility great of being the aggressor in the contest. ”

“ When the first childish feelings of excitement and curiosity had subsided, Cyrus seemed to attach very little value to the fine clothes and gay trappings with which his grandfather was disposed to adorn him, and to all the other external marks of parade and display, which were generally so much prized among the Medes. He was much more inclined to continue in his former habits of plain dress and frugal means than to imitate Median ostentation and luxury. There was one pleasure, however, to be found in Media, which in Persia he had never enjoyed, that he prized very highly. ”

“ To a people of this character, whose conceptions of political society went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a conqueror like Cyrus would communicate the strongest excitement and enthusiasm of which they were capable. He had found them slaves, and made them masters: he was the first and greatest of national benefactors, as well as the most forward of leaders in the field: they followed him from one conquest to another, during the thirty years of his reign, their love of empire growing with the empire itself. ”

“ Will they not think that he announces the murder in order to thrust his brother from the throne? In despair he perceives that he has destroyed the house of Cyrus, and ruined the work of his father, the fruit of thirty years of effort and struggle. He [Pg 200] sees no means of preventing the course of affairs, the ruin of the kingdom of which he is the cause. He acknowledges before the princes of the Persians what he has done, commands them to make good the damage which he has caused, and seals his declaration by taking his own life. Such was the tragical end of the son of the great Cyrus. ”