Discovering Cyrus
The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World
(Iran's Age of Empire)
by Reza Zarghamee
Mage Publishers 

Discovering Cyrus: The Persian Conqueror Astride the Ancient World is a remarkable feat of portraiture. In his vast sweep, Reza Zarghamee draws on sources of every kind, painstakingly assembling detail, and always weighing evidence carefully where contradictions arise. He describes the background of the Persian people, the turbulence of the times, and the roots of Cyrus' policies. His account of the imperial era itself delves into religion, military methods, commerce, court life, and much else besides. The result is a living, breathing Cyrus standing atop a distant world that played a key role in shaping our own. Cyrus the Great, Persian Empire.

Reza Zarghamee brings multiple perspectives and deep knowledge to his account of the life of Cyrus the Great. Born in London in 1978 to Iranian parents, Zarghamee grew up in Boston. He attended Columbia University, pursuing a double-major in history and biology, studying Persian language and literature, and graduating with honors in 2000. Three years later, he received a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School, where his writings included a comparison of ancient Near Eastern legal systems. 

PROLOGUE

Democracy and globalization – these are, perhaps, the two most important sociopolitical issues of the present day. Democracy is the legacy of the ancient Greeks. The origins of globalization lie farther to the east. One of the earliest and most successful attempts at establishing a global community occurred in the sixth century bce. It resulted from the coming together of ethnically diverse nations and tribes within the Iranian plateau. This political and ideological union set the stage for the creation of a diverse empire extending from India to the Aegean Sea, in which each nation was more or less free to live according to its own customs and a high premium was placed upon intellectual and commercial exchange. The visionary founder of this empire, the largest the world had yet seen, was Cyrus II of Persia, better known as Cyrus the Great. A scion of the ruling dynasty of the Achaemenids, one of the leading clans in the Persian migration to southwestern Iran, Cyrus was born around 590 bce and died in 530 bce.

The Persian Empire that Cyrus founded maintained its far-flung borders for nearly two centuries with an impressively modest exertion of force. This was largely due to Cyrus' open-minded cultural outlook and policy of tolerance, which his successors followed in varying degrees. During these years, the Near East benefited from the institution of the Pax Achaemenica, or “Achaemenid Peace.” The relative tranquility of the Persian period distinguished it from the dominion of earlier monarchies, as well as the later era of Macedonian hegemony. Less than a century before Cyrus sat upon the Persian throne, much of the Near East lay prostrate before the vaunted Assyrian Empire. The kings of this warlike state believed that their mandate was to destroy and enslave the various nations of the world, so the three centuries of Assyrian domination (911–612 bce) stand out as one of the most brutal in history, replete with episodes of mass execution, torture, and population displacement.

Of course, the harsh treatment of foreign peoples had been commonplace since the dawn of civilization. Living in today's interconnected world, we might easily underestimate how completely alien foreign peoples appeared to one another in ancient times. Most ancient peoples had little concept of what lay beyond the proverbial mountains, and whatever did had to be strange, dangerous, and hardly deserving of mercy. Thus, the clemency that Cyrus demonstrated toward his foreign subjects – many of whom had no prior contacts with the Persians – ran counter to what most of his contemporaries would have considered to be human nature.

Relative to his imperial predecessors, Cyrus achieved his conquests with less cruelty and bloodshed. He could be harsh, no doubt, but his general policy was to avoid inflicting harm upon civilian populations and to spare enemy leaders, often allowing them to retain a princely lifestyle after their defeat. His attitude toward ancient civilizations was one of respect and admiration, and this mindset made Persian rule acceptable to many of the empire's subjects.

One of Cyrus' outstanding attributes was his ability to maintain order between the various peoples that he ruled, many of whom had long-standing ethnic rivalries. He set great stock in presiding over a structured state apparatus and, to this end, organized his empire into provinces interconnected by a vast network of roads that facilitated communications, troop movements, and commerce. This administrative system underwent several modifications during the long years of Persian rule, but its fundamental features never changed.

In view of the above, it is no wonder that the fourth century bce Athenian writer Xenophon made the Persian conqueror the subject of his didactic novel on statecraft, entitled the Cyropaedia, or “Education of Cyrus.” For Xenophon, Cyrus was the paragon of chivalry, a man of his word so valorous and mighty that none could resist him. Consider Xenophon's assertion that “Cyrus did indeed eclipse all other monarchs, before or since, and . . . not only those who have inherited their power, but those who have won empire by their own exertions.” These are powerful words coming from a man who spent much of his life fighting the Persians.

Nor was Xenophon the only foreigner to sing Cyrus' praises. The Greeks were generally enthralled by him, despite their cultural biases and the wars they fought against Cyrus' successors. The fifth century bce Athenian playwright Aeschylus, a veteran of the so-called Persian Wars (490–479 bce), offered Cyrus the following encomium:

Cyrus by fortune graced,
Adorned the throne and blessed his grateful friends'
With peace. He to his mighty
Monarchy joined Lydia and the Phrygians. To his power
Ionia bent reluctant; but the gods
With victory his gentle virtues crowned.

An even more positive appraisal of the Persian conqueror occurs in the Old Testament. The ancient Jews, who feared outsiders and decried the various nations that routinely threatened their autonomy, anointed Cyrus as their chosen prince, or Messiah, making him the only Gentile to bear that venerable title.

What made Cyrus so popular? According to Xenophon, it was his strength of character:

It is obvious that among the congeries of nations [that Cyrus ruled] few, if any, could have spoken the same language as himself, or understood one another, but nonetheless Cyrus was able so to penetrate that vast extent of country by the sheer force of his personality that the inhabitants were prostrate before him: not one of them dared lift hand against him. And yet he was able, at the same time, to inspire them all with so deep a desire to please him and win his favor that all they asked was to be guided by his judgment and his alone.

The sources for the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 bce provide a somewhat different explanation for Cyrus' success: he was able to intertwine his own ambitions with the needs and wants of his subjects. On the eve of its destruction, Babylonia was a kingdom rife with social problems. Its ruler, Nabonidus (reigned 556–539 bce), had attempted an unpopular reform of the state religion, and the imperial capital itself was divided along ethnic lines. The city of Babylon and its surroundings contained an enormous community of exiles, whom the Babylonian kings had forcibly relocated from the countries they had conquered. Many of these peoples, among them a large number of Jews, longed to return home. Cyrus' sophisticated propaganda campaign succeeded in bringing these disaffected groups within Babylonian society to his side in advance of his military expedition. He portrayed himself as the champion of the Babylonian national religion, while promising reparations and a return home for the Jews and other exiles, and he followed through on his promises. Thus, the authors of the Book of Isaiah, one of the most moving parts of the Old Testament, properly saw in Cyrus' coming the revival of Israel:

Shine, shine Jerusalem; for thy light is come,
And the glory of Yahweh is risen upon thee.
 . . .
Lift up thine eyes, look round, and see thy children assembled;
All thy sons are come from afar, and thy daughters carried on their shoulders.
Then thou shalt see and tremble, and be transported at heart,
That the wealth of the sea is turned to thee,
And of nations and peoples.

Meanwhile, the priests of Marduk, the chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon, praised Cyrus in terms of the earlier Mesopotamian kings whom they venerated for laying the foundations of the great god's cult. Cyrus seems to have understood that people are driven by certain basic needs: the preservation of social order and local autonomy.

How Cyrus arrived at this understanding is itself an interesting story. Conquest was the calling of royalty in his age, and, born the heir apparent to two Iranian kingdoms, Media and Persia, Cyrus was well steeped in the warrior's way. His policy of benevolence started, ironically, with an act of treason. Because his father was Persian, certain noble Medes, reluctant to see their kingdom pass to a Persian prince, prevailed upon his maternal grandfather, the Median king Astyages, to select another heir. This perceived betrayal outraged Cyrus, who responded by leading the Persians to war. When after three years of harsh combat he found himself master of all Media, he faced an important decision: should he allow the Persians, who had suffered under Median rule, to vent their anger upon the conquered, or should he behave like a legitimate Median king, which is all he had wanted to be in the first place? Cyrus chose the latter course and thus set the tone for his subsequent conquests.

With Media under control, he occupied the powerful kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor, which had foolishly goaded him into war. He then solidified his rule over eastern Iran, western India, and parts of Central Asia. Wherever he went, he respected the traditions of local cults, heard petitions, and secured the allegiance of influential groups or segments of the population. News of his deeds spread far and wide, such that, by the time he descended upon Babylonia, his last major conquest, his reputation as a chivalrous prince had preceded him. The people of Babylon surrendered their city to him without a fight, not just to avoid a protracted siege, but also, seemingly, in anticipation of a better tomorrow.

In the eyes of his own people, too, Cyrus was larger than life. The Persians well understood that without him they would have been just another highland tribe, perhaps always destined for subservience to a foreign power. Not only did Cyrus preserve their identity and liberty, but he bestowed upon them the greatest empire the world had then seen. So much did Cyrus give the Persians that they remembered him as their “Father.” And like a father, he educated them in the ways of the world; Cyrus impressed upon the Persians the need to cooperate with foreigners and so created the powerful ideology of the Persian Empire: one world, united, containing “all kinds of men,” on equal footing beneath the almighty ruler known simply as “the King.” Democracy it was not, and for this the Greeks derided it; but it was also, perhaps, less hypocritical than most ancient democracies.

Across the ruined walls of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of Cyrus' successors, the ideology of the empire's ruling race is still on display: standing upright, dressed in native garb and bearing gifts, the representatives of each subject nation march toward the King, all the while grasping in friendship the hands of their Persian ushers. Such scenes represent a far cry from the images of war and conquest that the Assyrians used in their royal art.

It was Cyrus' ability to bring various peoples together in the grand venture of empire that made him one of history's great nation builders. It is unfortunate, then, that of the three great conquerors of the ancient world – Cyrus, Alexander, and Julius Caesar – Cyrus is the least well understood. In part, this has to do with the failure of the ancient Persians to preserve their history in a meaningful written form that has survived. One might be surprised to learn that the Iranians themselves had all but forgotten Cyrus' name by the third century ce. They became reacquainted with him only relatively recently, beginning in the nineteenth century, due to their increased familiarity with Western scholarship.

Another factor in our poor understanding of Cyrus is the common perception within this scholarship that the ancient Persians failed to leave behind a substantive cultural legacy for the West. The tendency among scholars has been to treat the ancient Persians as able conquerors that contributed little to the advancement of civilization. As a result, little attention has been paid to the development of a comprehensive account of Cyrus' life and times.

The irony is that Cyrus and the Persians did, in fact, leave their mark on Western civilization and at a very fundamental level. The cultural ferment of the Persian period resulted in Judaism's development of several important religious doctrines, such as God's creation of the universe, the coming of the apocalypse, and a final judgment. These concepts had not been intrinsic to the Semitic religious tradition from which Judaism first sprang, but they had served an integral function in Zoroastrianism, the Iranian religion that Cyrus and his successors followed. It was these concepts that eventually defined the ethical system of Christianity, and although direct evidence is lacking, a strong case can be made that the development of these doctrines within Judaism reflects Iranian influence.

Furthermore, Cyrus and his Achaemenid successors set a new standard for future states. Conquerors, such as Alexander, adopted, to varying degrees, the same methods of political administration employed by the Persians, and the territorial scope and efficiency of Persian rule made clear to the West that it was possible to establish a large, multi cultural state, in which diverse ethnic and religious groups might live side by side. Indeed, it was interaction with the Persians and the civilizations they ruled that expanded the horizons of early Western thought beyond the level of the city-state.

Cyrus thus represents the most important historical personage to bridge the gap between East and West in ancient times. Both biblical and classical authors recognized Cyrus as the paragon of princely virtue. His rule was based on tolerance and order and provided a much needed respite to a world that had suffered through long years of violence and oppression. In sum, he was a monumental figure well ahead of his time.

A number of scholars have recently challenged the historical traditions asserting a dynastic connection between Cyrus and the Medes. It is certainly possible that these tales, intended as propaganda, evolved to legitimize Cyrus' later claims to the Median throne, but the circumstances of his rise to power strongly indicate otherwise. See page 53 and Chapter 4.

Discovering Cyrus is available on Amazon.com