(REIGNED 558-529 B.C.)
[Footnote 2: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Cyrus the Great.]
The early life of Cyrus the Persian, like that of many another famous
conqueror, is lost in a cloud of fable. According to Herodotus, to
whom we owe the earliest account, Astyages the King of Media was
warned in a dream that some danger threatened the kingdom from the
offspring of his daughter Mandane, who as yet was unmarried. In order
to remove the danger, whatever it might be, as far as possible from
his throne, Astyages married his daughter to a Persian named Cambyses,
who took her with him to his own country. But after his daughter's
marriage Astyages had another dream, which was interpreted by the
priests to mean that his daughter's child was destined to reign in his
stead. Alarmed by this prophecy he sent for his daughter, and when in
course of time she bore a son, he ordered his trusty lieutenant
Harpagus to carry the child to his own house and kill it. Harpagus
took the infant as he had been ordered to do, but moved by the
pleadings of his wife he determined to commit the rest of his bloody
instructions to other hands. He therefore called one of his herdsmen,
and ordered him to expose the child on the bleakest part of the
mountain and leave it to perish, threatening him with the most
terrible penalties in case of disobedience. But the herdsman and his
wife were no more proof against pity than Harpagus and his wife had
been, and while they stood swayed between their wish to save the child
and their fear of disobeying Harpagus, fortune happily provided an
escape for them. The wife of the herdsman brought forth a dead child,
and this they determined to substitute for the living infant, and to
bring up the grandson of Astyages as their own. The exchange was
accomplished, and after some days the servants of Harpagus, sent to
inquire if their master's commands had been obeyed, were shown by the
herdsman the body of a dead child exposed on the rocks and still
wearing the rich clothes and ornaments in which it had been brought to
his house. Harpagus was thus enabled to assure Astyages that he was
safe from the threatened danger, and might enjoy his throne in peace.
When the child of Mandane was ten years old an accident brought him to
the knowledge of the king, and restored him to his birthright. One day
he was playing with the children of his neighbors, and in a certain
game where it was necessary to make one of the players king, Cyrus was
chosen, and all the others, as his subjects, promised to obey his
commands. But one of the boys, the son of a rich noble of the court of
Astyages, refused to do as he was bid by Cyrus, and according to the
rule of the game, he had to submit to a beating at the hand of the
boy-king. Angry at this treatment, he complained to his father, who,
indignant in his turn, went to Astyages, and reproached him with the
blows his son had received at the hands of the son of one of the
king's slaves. Cyrus was brought before the king; but when he was
asked how he had dared to treat the son of a nobleman in such a way,
the boy, nothing daunted, answered that he had done only what was
right: the rules of the game were known to all who had joined in it:
the other boys had submitted to the penalties: the son of the nobleman
alone had refused, and he had been punished as he deserved. "If any
wrong has been done by me," he said, "I am ready to suffer for it."
Struck by the boldness of the lad, and by something in his looks,
Astyages dismissed him for a time, and promised the nobleman that he
should be satisfied for the insults offered to his son. He then sent
for the herdsman Mitridates and wrung from him a confession of what he
had done; and learning how Harpagus had deceived him he acquitted
Mitridates, and turned all his vengeance upon Harpagus as the chief
offender. How cruelly he punished him must not be told here, for pity,
but it was such a barbarous revenge as could never be forgiven; and
though Harpagus pretended to make light of it, yet it was only that by
keeping fair with the king he might bide his time, and repay cruelty
with cruelty.
But now, as Cyrus in our story has grown to man's estate, and is ready
to show the world of what stuff he is made, it will be well to explain
in a few words, what was the state of things in that part of the
world where he was to play his part.
The mighty Kingdom of Assyria in its greatest estate had stretched
from the Indus on the east, to the Mediterranean on the west. But when
Nineveh, the capital and chief city of the empire, had been destroyed
by the Medes--a subject people living on the north-eastern borders of
the kingdom, but who had risen in rebellion against their
rulers--Assyria was broken in pieces, and several minor kingdoms rose
on her ruins.
Of these the chief were Media and Babylonia in the east, and Lydia in
the west. Babylonia rose to a great height of power and splendor under
Nebuchadnezzar, as we have seen in our sketch of that king's life. The
Medes, a brave and warlike people, never attained to so high a degree
of civilization as the Babylonians, nor did they ever have a monarch
whose fame equalled that of Sardanapalus, the King of Assyria; of
Nebuchadnezzar; or of Croesus, King of Lydia; but under a succession
of astute and hardy warriors, who held the throne for something over
one hundred and fifty years, their dominion was gradually extended
until it stretched from the Indus to the centre of Asia Minor. Their
greatest achievement had been the destruction of Nineveh in B.C. 606.
Lydia, the remaining province, touched the Median kingdom on the east,
and on the west was only separated, in the beginning, from the
Mediterranean by the narrow strip of territory occupied by the Greek
colonies, which for a time acted as a bar to the encroachments of the
Lydian monarchs and their conquerors.
When Cyrus came to manhood, these kingdoms, the successors of the
Assyrian monarchy, were all flourishing in wealth and power. Media was
ruled by Astyages, his grandfather--to accept the legendary history as
it has come down to us; Babylonia the greatest of the three was
governed by Nebuchadnezzar, while Lydia was ruled by Croesus, a
monarch wise above his peers, whose name has long been a synonym for
unbounded wealth, and whose story, though not beyond the bounds of
credibility, reads more like a fable of romance than a tale of sober
fact.
Croesus was the brother-in-law of Astyages, and in close alliance not
only with the Medes, but with the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the
Greeks; and he was at the height of his power and was looking forward
to still greater increase of his dominions, when in an evil hour he
struck against the growing greatness of Cyrus, and was crushed in the
encounter. Had he been less arrogant, the doom he wrought for himself
might have been delayed, but it could not have been wholly averted.
Nothing could have long withstood the greed of Cyrus for universal
dominion.
We have seen what good cause Harpagus had to hate Astyages. But he
nursed his revenge with crafty wisdom, and knowing himself powerless
to act openly and alone, he tried what stratagem might do to bring
about his aim, which was no less than the overthrow of Astyages by
means of the tyrant's grandson, Cyrus. He did not take open measures
until he knew he had allies enough at his back, and could strike with
a sure aim. He worked with the great Median chiefs in private,
stirring them up against Astyages by appeals of all sorts: to their
ambition, their greed, their discontent, their private wrongs; and
when he had secured the consent of enough nobles to his plans, he
called upon Cyrus, as one who had chiefly suffered from the tyranny
and cruelty of the king, to lead the proposed revolt in person. He
knew that Cyrus had been gradually strengthening his own kingdom of
Persia in preparation for the ambitious schemes of conquest he was
nursing, but there was danger in correspondence with one who stood to
Astyages in the double relation of a feared and hated grandson, and
the chief of a rival people; and if we may believe Herodotus, Harpagus
had recourse to a strange expedient to communicate his design to
Cyrus. Disembowelling a dead hare, he inserted a letter in the cavity,
and sent the animal to Cyrus as a present. When the letter came to the
hands of Cyrus he eagerly accepted the offers it contained of
leadership in the proposed revolt, and joined his forces with those of
the disaffected Medes. Astyages was overthrown and his kingdom taken
possession of by Cyrus. Herodotus draws a striking picture of the
exultation of Harpagus over the success of his revengeful projects,
and of the disdain with which Astyages reproached him for having
called on another to do what, trusted and confided in as he was by his
monarch, he might have accomplished for himself, and reaped the
harvest which he had surrendered to another. Cyrus had the wisdom to
spare the life of Astyages, and to attach him to his person as
councillor and friend. Harpagus he made his lieutenant, and much of
his success was owing to this man's wisdom and bravery. After the
defeat of Astyages, Cyrus advanced against the lesser tribes that had
owed allegiance to the Median king, and having reduced them one by one
to submission, the power of the once mighty empire of the Medians
passed to the inheritance of the Persians in the year 559 B.C.
When Croesus heard of the overthrow of his brother-in-law by the hands
of Cyrus, and of the setting up a great new monarchy on the ruins of
the fallen kingdom, his own ambitious projects were blown into fresh
activity by the desire for private revenge. Misled by his own
interpretation of the oracle he consulted as to the likelihood of
success in an expedition against the Persians, he advanced to
withstand the conquering march of Cyrus; and his first success was
against the Syrians of Cappadocia, a people subject to Cyrus, as
having formed a part of the Median Kingdom. Cyrus, with a powerful
army, came at once to the assistance of his new subjects, and meeting
the forces of Croesus on the plain of Cappadocia, a fiercely fought,
but indecisive battle took place, which resulted in the retreat of
Croesus to his capital, Sardis, to seek the assistance of his allies
and prepare to meet Cyrus with a larger force. In overweening
confidence in his own success, he dismissed his mercenary troops, and
sent messengers to Babylon, to Egypt, and to Sparta, calling on them
to come with troops to his assistance within five months. No sooner
had he shut himself up in Sardis, and dismissed his mercenaries,
depending upon his own forces until assistance should come from his
allies, than Cyrus advanced against him so swiftly that there was no
escape from a battle. Croesus, believing in his fortune, and trusting
to the excellence of his cavalry, boldly took the field; but Cyrus,
using stratagem where perhaps courage would not have availed, put his
camels in front of his line, and massed his own horsemen behind them.
The horses of Croesus, maddened by the unaccustomed smell of the
camels, refused to advance; but the Lydians, dismounting, fought so
bravely on foot with their spears, that it was not until after a long
and fierce combat that they were forced to retreat and seek safety
within the walls of Sardis. The army of Cyrus invested the city, but
it was so strongly fortified on all sides but one as to be impregnable
by assault and the side left unprotected by art was supposed to be
amply protected by nature, since it abutted on the very edge of a
steep precipice. But, after the siege had lasted fourteen days, a
Persian sentinel saw one of the garrison descend the precipice to
recover his helmet that had rolled down; and no sooner had he thus
unwittingly showed the way, than the sentinel followed with a number
of his fellow-soldiers and, reaching the top of the cliff in safety,
attacked the guards, all unsuspicious, and gained an entrance to the
city. The gates were opened to the Persians, and Croesus with all his
vast store of treasure became the prey of the conqueror. The fall of
Sardis and the Lydian monarchy was followed by the subjection of the
Greek cities of Asia Minor, a task which Cyrus left to the hands of
Harpagus, while he himself turned eastward to pursue his conquests in
Upper Asia and in Assyria. His greatest achievement in this quarter
was the taking of Babylon. This he accomplished in the reign of
Belshazzar, one of the successors of Nebuchadnezzar, perhaps his son,
by turning the Euphrates, which ran through the middle of the city,
out of its course; and when its bed was dry he entered the city by
this road and captured it with little resistance.
Cyrus was now the sole master of the vast Assyrian Kingdom, once more
in his hands brought back to something like the unity it had before
the great Median revolt. But he was not content, nor was it perhaps
possible for him to rest in the enjoyment of power and possessions
extorted by force, and dependent on force to hold. The new empire,
like the old one, was destined to break in pieces by its own weight.
Cyrus was kept in constant activity by the necessity of resisting the
inroads on his empire of the tribes in the north and farther east; and
it was in endeavoring to repel invasion and to maintain order in the
regions he had already conquered, that he met his death. After a reign
of thirty years he was slain, in 529 B.C., in battle with the
Massagetae, a tribe of Central Asia. He left his kingdom to his son
Cambyses.
[Signature of the author.]