Cyrus the Great: The Greatest King of Persia
- Davit Grigoryan
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
He created the first empire, where hundreds of people spoke different languages but believed in one ruler. Cyrus the Great is a paradox of history: a nomadic chieftain who conquered Babylon with mercy, not fire. The Jews wrote his name in the Bible as the "Anointed of God," the Persians called him "Father," and the Greeks saw him as a model of wisdom.
He did not build palaces—his monument became the tomb in Pasargadae, where Alexander the Great sought the secret of greatness. He left no memoirs, but his "Manifesto" became the first decree in the world on the rights of the conquered. From the Indus to the Aegean Sea, Cyrus sowed not fear, but hope, turning enemies into allies.
Why, 2,500 years later, does his name still echo in the speeches of presidents and sacred texts? Because he proved that empires may crumble, but the memory of justice is eternal.
How a Nomadic Chief Became an Emperor
Ancient chroniclers left us a puzzle, not a biography. Herodotus, Babylonian clay tablets, and scattered inscriptions in Pasargadae are like pieces of a broken amphora, from which we try to piece together the image of a man who changed the map of the world. Even the date of his rise to the throne—559 BC—seems more like a historians’ agreement than an undeniable fact.
The Persian leader, who called himself the "King of Anshan," seemed to emphasize his connection to the land of his ancestors. His family, the Achaemenids, had ruled the Pasargadae for centuries, nomads whose tents stretched at the foot of the Zagros Mountains. But how did a boy from a tribe that paid tribute to Media dare challenge the region's most powerful empire?
The answer may lie in one story. According to Herodotus, Cyrus gathered his tribesmen and tested their patience for two days: first, he made them cut thorny bushes, then he held a feast. “Do you want freedom or a well-fed slavery?” he asked the exhausted but satisfied warriors. This dramatic gesture shows him not only as a commander but also as a psychologist who knew how to play on contrasts.
When the Persians rebelled in 553 BC, the Median king Astyages only laughed. His army was considered unbeatable, and his allies—loyal. But Cyrus turned the war into a series of betrayals. Harpagus, Astyages’ resentful advisor, won over the nobles. Spitama, the rightful heir to the Median throne, fell out of favor. Even Astyages’ troops, according to the Babylonian chronicle, “seized the king and handed him over to Cyrus like a trophy.”
The final battle became surrounded by legends. It is said that the women of Pasargadae went onto the battlefield, shaming the men for their cowardice. The victors supposedly swore to forever honor them—every king visiting the city would throw coins into the crowd. Is this true or just a beautiful tale? Historians debate, but the very existence of this custom proves one thing: Cyrus understood the power of symbols.
After capturing Ecbatana, the Persian leader did not destroy the enemy’s capital. Instead, he declared himself the heir of the Median kings, kept their titles, and left the local nobles in power. The wisdom of this decision became clear later, when the Greeks called Persia “Media,” it was not a mistake but a recognition of continuity.
Cyrus seemed to assemble a puzzle from the people he conquered. Parthia, Armenia, Hyrcania—each land became not just a province but part of a complex mosaic. Even Elam, whose armies once crushed Babylon, joined the empire almost without bloodshed. “He ruled not with a whip, but with the promise of order,” Xenophon would later write.
Cyrus vs. Croesus: When the Smell of Camels Decided the Fate of an Empire
The Lydian king Croesus sought war—and he got it. But how do you fight an opponent whose weapon is not swords, but cunning? In the spring of 547 BC, two armies met by the river Halys. Croesus' gold against Cyrus' camels. Yes, those smelly, humped creatures.
When the Lydian cavalry charged, the Persians sent forward their camel "battalion." The horses, overwhelmed by the smell and roar, panicked and fled, throwing off their riders. "They fought like heroes, but with feet, not hooves," Herodotus later joked. Sardis fell not by swords, but by the unfamiliar scent of the desert.
But Cyrus knew: capturing the city does not mean conquering the people. He did not execute the captured Croesus, but made him an advisor. An act of mercy? Or cold calculation? After all, as long as the former king was alive, the rebels lacked a symbol.
The treasures of Croesus became poison for Pactyas, a Lydian who led a rebellion. Mercenaries, bribed with gold, Greek cities dreaming of independence… But betrayal is a chain reaction. Chios handed over the fugitive for a piece of land, as if bargaining in a market.
Harpagus, the "engineer of victories" for Cyrus, turned the siege into a spectacle of horror. Mounds at the walls, refugees on ships, burning acropolises. The Lycians in Xanthos chose death over slavery, burning together with their families. "Their ashes mixed with the dust of history," wrote the chronicler.
By 540 BC, Asia Minor had quieted down. Miletus, the first to surrender, retained its privileges. The Ionian Greeks, once proud sailors, now paid tribute. Lydia, Caria, Lycia—all became threads in the empire’s tapestry.
Cyrus knew how to forgive, but he never forgot. His satraps ruled, relying on the fear of some and the hope of others. And the smell of camels haunted those who dared to challenge the "King of Anshan" for a long time.
Cyrus and Babylon
When the Persians approached Babylon in the spring of 539 BC, the Euphrates seemed to sigh deeper. Its waters, like a protective cloak, surrounded the legendary city. But Cyrus knew: to defeat a civilization, you must become its heir, not its destroyer.
The story of the execution of the River Gyndes was not the whim of a tyrant. By diverting the water through 360 channels, Cyrus turned myth into a weapon. The Babylonian priests whispered, "He has tamed the river, just as Marduk tames chaos." While Nabonidus waited for the attack at Opis, the Persians went around the wall from the west, like a snake sliding through the sand.
The capture of Sippar on October 10th was a bloodless spectacle. The city surrendered so quietly that the chroniclers suspected a conspiracy with the priests. And when Ugbaru entered Babylon on October 12th, the townspeople greeted him... with branches. Not with swords, not with stones—palm leaves.
Cyrus entered the city a month later, like an actor stepping onto the stage after an intermission. His "Manifesto" read like a sacred text: "The gods have returned to their temples, and the prisoners to their native lands." Jews, Phoenicians, and Elamites—all were given the right to remember the scent of their homeland.
The promise to restore the Jerusalem Temple sounded especially touching. "Return the vessels!" commanded Cyrus, as if he were not a conqueror, but a restorer of history. The priests of Marduk rejoiced: their god had "chosen" the Persian, just as he had once chosen Hammurabi.
While Cyrus was crowned king of Babylon, the former ruler spent his days in Carmania—not a cell, not an execution—an honorable exile. Wisdom? No, calculation. A dead tyrant becomes a martyr, but a living one is a living reproach to the rebels.
Babylon kept its temples, officials, and even taxes. But now, through its gates, caravans carrying tribute came from Phoenicia to Egypt. "King of the Four Corners of the World"—this was not a metaphor, but a new reality. The Persian governor Gobryas ruled without disturbing local customs, while the gold of Lydia and Media flowed into Babylon's treasuries.
Tomyris vs. Cyrus: Death in the Desert
Cyrus was aging, but the empire craved new borders. Egypt, with its armies, could wait—the nomads of Central Asia bit like horseflies. Their steppe winds howled at the empire’s edges, reminding him: “You have conquered thrones, but not the sands.”
Queen Tomyris became his final mirror. In her warriors, who drank kumis instead of wine, he saw his younger self—hungry, unstoppable. The battle at the Jaxartes began with victory: the Persians seized the camp, intoxicated by their easy success. But at night, the steppe came to life.
“They struck like a samum—invisible, roaring,” the survivors wrote. Cyrus, always playing on contrasts, lost this time. According to legend, Queen Tomyris placed his head in a wineskin filled with blood. A poetic gesture, but untrue—Cyrus's body found rest in Pasargadae, beneath an unadorned stone slab.
His tomb is a whisper of stone among the mountains. No cuneiform hymns of praise, no lists of conquered nations. Only a winged figure on the wall, blending Elamite patterns with an Egyptian crown. “I am Cyrus, the king” — nothing more was needed.
When Alexander the Great stormed the tomb, expecting mountains of treasure, he found only a shield and a pair of bracelets. “How simply you have left,” he is said to have murmured, touching the cracked sarcophagus. But isn’t simplicity the highest form of greatness?
Cyrus the Great in the Memory of Nations
He entered history as an anomaly. Between the blood-soaked Assyrian reliefs and Persian palace intrigues lay a brief era when a conqueror became a liberator. Cyrus did not merely build an empire—he crafted a legend where even the defeated found their place.
The Persians called him "Father," the Jews "the Anointed of Yahweh," and the Greeks a wise ruler. How did a nomadic chieftain become a symbol for such diverse cultures? The secret lay in the art of being indispensable. He restored the gods to Babylon, the Temple to Judea, and trade routes to the Greek cities. His humanity was not softness—it was the cold calculation of an architect who knew that nations are conquered more easily with promises than with swords.
Xenophon invented Cyrus's dialogues, Herodotus the bloody wineskin of Tomyris, and the Bible the prophecy of Isaiah. But why? Because the world longed for an ideal. Even Alexander the Great, who crushed Persia, bowed at his tomb. "Father of nations"—this is how Mohammad Reza Pahlavi would call him 2,000 years later, attempting to wear Cyrus’s glory like a mantle.
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