Cyrus THE GREAT (Kurus, perhaps from kur, 'a mountain'), the founder of the Persian empire. He was the fourth in a line of kings of Anzan or Susiana (called by the Hebrews Elam) who formed a branch of the royal dynasty of the Achaemenides (q.v.). According to Herodotus, Cyrus was the son of Mandane, daughter of Astyages, king of Media, and the Persian Cambyses. Moved by superstitious fears, Astyages attempted to destroy him in his infancy, but the child was saved by a herdsman, who brought him up as his own son. Being recognised in his boyhood by Astyages, he was sent to his parents in Persia. Cyrus in course of time rose against Astyages and conquered him. This narrative and the greatly varying accounts of Xenophon, Ctesias, Nicolais of Damascus, Diodorus, and Trogus Pompeius, formerly regarded as the authorities for the life of Cyrus, have been superseded by the evidence of recently discovered monuments. A new light has been thrown on his history by the discovery of his own cuneiform records on a clay tablet and cylinder recently brought from Babylon to England. Cyrus was the son of Cambyses I., grandson of Cyrus I., and great-grandson of Teispes, conqueror of Elam, who was also the great-grandfather of Hystaspes, the father of Darius (q.v.). From the tablet-inscription we learn that in the sixth year of Nabonidus, king of Babylon (549 B.C.), Cyrus, 'king of Elam,' conquered Astyages, king of Media, made him a prisoner, and took his capital, Ecbatana. By the year 546 he had become 'king of Persia.' Year after year was idly spent by Nabonidus at Tema, a suburb of Babylon, while his son (doubtless Belshazzar) was with his army in Akkad (Northern Babylonia). In 538 Cyrus, favoured by a revolt of the tribes on 'the Lower Sea,' or Persian Gulf, advanced on Babylon from the south-east, and, after giving battle to the army of Akkad, took Sippara (Sepharvaim) and Babylon itself 'without fighting.' The account of the siege of Babylon by Cyrus recorded by Herodotus must therefore be erroneous. The Greek historian seems to have transferred to the reign of Cyrus events which took place in the reign of Darius. On the eighth day after Cyrus entered Babylon in person, he appointed Gobryas its governor, and that very day Nabonidus died. Nabonidus in his distress had brought the images of many local gods to Babylon, so as to protect it from the invader; and the cylinder-inscription shows very clearly that Cyrus was a polytheist and an idolater, for he there says, 'the gods dwelling within them left their shrines in anger when [Nabonidus] brought them to Babylon,' and, after telling how he had restored them all to their sanctuaries, prays them to intercede before Nebo and 'Merodach my lord,' for himself and Cambyses his son. Cyrus at once began a policy of religious conciliation. The nations who had been carried into captivity in Babylon along with the Jews were restored to their native countries, and allowed to take their gods with them. The empire of Lydia had fallen before the army of Cyrus two years before (in 540), and after the conquest of Babylonia he was master of all Asia from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. The conqueror's hold over Asia Minor and Syria was much strengthened by his friendly relations with the Phoenicians and also with the Jews, who received the news of his triumphs with enthusiastic sympathy as the confirmation of the prophetic aspirations for their national deliverance. In the
Old Testament he is called the Shepherd and the Anointed of Jehovah, because in 538 he gave the Jews who were living in captivity in Babylon permission to return; yet it is expressly said of him: 'For Jacob My servant's sake, and Israel My chosen . . . I (Jehovah) have surnamed (or titled) thee, though thou hast not known Me . . . I will gird thee, though thou hast not known Me' (Isa. xlv. 4, 5). The favour which he showed to the Jewish people awoke the hope that he might be won over to faith in Jehovah as the one true God; but doubtless he was less moved by religious than by political motives to allow the Jews to return to their own land. After the great king had extended the boundaries of his empire from the Arabian desert and the Persian Gulf in the south, to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian in the north, he died in 529—according to Herodotus and Diodorus, during an unsuccessful struggle with Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae, on the Jaxartes; according to Ctesias, of a wound which he had received while conquering the Derbici on the upper Oxus. The empire of Cyrus was organised under satraps and minor governors, after the manner of the second empire of Assyria. Three years before his death, Cyrus, made his son and successor Cambyses 'king of Babylon.' His own title was 'king of the world.' The chief seat of his court was Ecbatana; during the spring months it was held at his old capital, Susa, or Shushan, in Elam. Cyrus takes a high rank among Asiatic conquerors; he was a wise and considerate ruler, whose aim was to soften by his clemency the despotism which he was continually extending by the sword. But he did little to consolidate the empire which he founded, contenting himself with a declaration of allegiance, and leaving the government nearly everywhere in the hands of native rulers. He brought the greater part of the Old World (Egypt excepted) under his sway, but left the organisation of his conquests to his successors. The Cyropædia of Xenophon is obviously an historical romance. See Professor Sayce's Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther (2d ed. Lond. 1887); also his Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments (1883).