is contrary to all tradition, and there can be no doubt that
Cyrus was a genuine Persian and a true believer in the Zoroastrian
religion. In Herodotus vii. 11 the genealogy of Cyrus is given
in exactly the same way as in the proclamation of Cyrus himself;
Teispes is called here the son of the eponym Achaemenes.
The Pasargadian kings of Anshan were vassals of the Median empire. Their kingdom cannot have been of large extent, as Nabonidus in a contemporary inscription (Cylinder from Abu Habba, VR. 64, Schrader, Keilinschriftl. Bibliothek, iii. 2, 96), where he mentions his rebellion against Astyages, calls Cyrus “king of Anshan, his (i.e. Astyages’) small servant (vassal).” From this inscription we learn that the rebellion of Cyrus (who seems to have become king in 558 B.C., as Herod. i. 214 gives him a reign of 29 years) began in 553 B.C., and from the annals that in 550 Astyages marched against Cyrus, but was defeated; his troops revolted against him, he was taken prisoner, and Cyrus occupied and plundered Ecbatana. The relation of Ctesias (preserved by Nic. Dam. fr. 66; Anaximenes of Lampsacus in Steph. Byz. s.v. Πασαργάδαι, Strabo xv. p. 729; Polyaen. vii. 6. 1, 9, 45. 2) that Cyrus was three times beaten by Astyages and that the decisive battle took place in the mountains of Pasargadae, is certainly in the main historical although Herodotus (i. 127 ff.) only mentions the treason of the Median general Harpagus and the defeat and captivity of Astyages. In the rebellion the Persian tribes of the Maraphians and Maspians joined the Pasargadae (Herod. i. 125), while the other tribes appear not to have acknowledged Cyrus till after his victory (see Persis). From then he calls himself “king of the Persians.”
The history of Cyrus very soon became involved and quite overgrown with legends. Herodotus (i. 95) tells us that he knew four different traditions about him. One makes him the son of Mandane, a daughter of Astyages (originally evidently by a god), who is exposed in the mountains by his grandfather on account of an oracle, but suckled by a dog (a sacred animal of the Iranians) and educated by a shepherd; i.e. the myth which we know from the stories of Oedipus, Perseus, Telephus, Pelias and Neleus, Romulus, Sargon of Agade, Moses, the Indian hero Krishna, and many others, has been transferred to the founder of the Persian empire. At the same time, the rule of Cyrus and the Persians is legitimated by his family connexion with Astyages. This account is partly preserved in Justin i. 4. 10 (probably from Charon of Lampsacus) and in Aelian, Var. Hist. xiv. 42, and alluded to by Herodotus i. 95 and 122. The second account, which Herodotus follows, is a rationalized version of the first, where the dog is changed into a woman (the wife of the shepherd) named Spako (bitch). In the later part of his story Herodotus is dependent on the family traditions of Harpagus, whose treason is justified by the cruelty with which Astyages had treated him (the story of Atreus and Thyestes is transferred to them). Harpagus afterwards stood in high favour with Cyrus, and commanded the army which subdued the coasts of Asia Minor; his family seems to have been settled in Lycia. In a third version, preserved from Ctesias in Nicolaus Damasc. p. 66 (cf. Dinon ap. Athen. xiv. 633 C), Cyrus is the son of a poor Mardian bandit Atradates (the Mardians are a nomadic Persian tribe, Herod. i. 125), who comes as a voluntary slave to the court of Astyages, and finds favour with the king. A Chaldaean sage prophesies to him his future greatness, and another Persian slave, Oebares, becomes his associate. He flies to Persia, evades the pursuers whom Astyages sends after him, and begins the rebellion. After the victory Oebares kills Astyages against the will of Cyrus, and afterwards kills himself to evade the wrath of Cyrus. Parts of this story are preserved also in Strabo xv. p. 729, and Justin i. 6. 1-3; 7. 1; cf. Ctesias ap. Photium 2-7; many traces of it were afterwards transferred to the story of Ardashir I. (q.v.), the founder of the Sassanid empire. With this version Ctesias and Nicolaus have connected another, in which Cyrus is the son of a Persian shepherd who lives at Pasargadae, and fights the decisive battle at this place. The didactic novel of Xenophon, the Cyropaedia, is a free invention adapted to the purposes of the author, based upon the account of Herodotus and occasionally influenced by Ctesias, without any independent traditional element. The account of Aeschylus, Pers. 765 ff., is a mixture of Greek traditions with a few oriental elements; here the first king is Medos (the Median empire); his nameless son is succeeded by Cyrus, a blessed ruler, beloved by the gods, who gave peace to all his friends and conquered Lydia, Phrygia, Ionia. Then comes his nameless son, then Mardos (i.e. Smerdis, to whom the name of the Mardians is transferred) who is killed by Artaphrenes (i.e. Artaphernes, Herod. iii. 78, one of the associates of Darius), then Maraphis (eponym of the Maraphian tribe), then another Artaphrenes, then Darius.
The principal events of the later history of Cyrus are in the main correctly stated by Herodotus, although his account contains many legendary traditions. The short excerpt from Ctesias, which Photius has preserved, contains useful information, although we must always mistrust him. Of great value are a short notice in the fragments of Berossus and another in the Old Testament. The original sources are very scanty, besides the cylinder containing his proclamation to the Babylonians we possess only a great many dated private documents from Babylon. These serve to fix the chronology, which is here as everywhere quite in accordance with the dates of the canon of Ptolemy.
Soon after the conquest of the Median empire, Cyrus was attacked by a coalition of the other powers of the East, Babylon, Egypt and Lydia, joined by Sparta, the greatest military power of Greece. In the spring of 546 Croesus of Lydia began the attack and advanced into Cappadocia, while the other powers were still gathering their troops. But Cyrus anticipated them; he defeated Croesus and followed him to his capital. In the autumn of 546 Sardis was taken and the Lydian kingdom became a province of the Persians. The famous story of Herodotus, that the conqueror condemned Croesus to the stake, from which he was saved by the intervention of the gods, is quite inconsistent with the Persian religion (see Croesus).
During the next years the Persian army under Harpagus suppressed a rebellion of the Lydians under Pactyas, and subjugated the Ionian cities, the Carians and the Lycians (when the town Xanthus resisted to the utmost). The king of Cilicia (Syennesis) voluntarily acknowledged the Persian supremacy. Why the war with Babylon, which had become inevitable, was delayed until 539, we do not know. Here too Cyrus in a single campaign destroyed a mighty state. The army of Nabonidus was defeated; Babylon itself attempted no resistance, but surrendered on the 16th Tishri (10th of October) 539, to the Persian general Gobryas (Gaubaruva, see the chronicle of the reign of Nabonidus; the name Gobryas is preserved also by Xenophon, Cyrop. vii. 4. 24); it is possible that the Chaldaean priests, who were hostile to Nabonidus, betrayed the town. In a proclamation issued after his victory Cyrus guarantees life and property to all the inhabitants and designates himself as the favourite of Marduk, the great local god (Bel, Bel-Merodak) of Babel. It is very odd that modern authors have considered this proclamation as inconsistent with the Zoroastrian creed.
From the beginning of 538 Cyrus dates his years as “king of Babylon and king of the countries” (i.e. of the world). With the capital, the Babylonian provinces in Syria fell to the Persians; in 538 Cyrus granted to the Jews, whom Nebuchadrezzar had transported to Babylonia, the return to Palestine and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple (see Jews, § 19). It is probable that Cyrus had fought more than one war against the peoples of eastern Iran; according to Ctesias he had, before the war with Croesus, defeated the Bactrians and the Sacae (in Ferghana; their king Amorges is the eponym of the Amyrgian Sacae, Herod. vii. 64, called by Darius Haumavarkā); and the historians of Alexander mention a march through Gedrosia, where he lost his whole army but seven men (Arrian vi. 24. 2; Strabo xv. 722), a tribe Ariaspae on the Etymandros (in Sijistan), who, on account of the support which they gave him against the Scythians, were called Euergetae (Arrian iii. 27. 4; Diod. xvii. 81; Curt. vii. 3. 1), and a town Cyropolis, founded by him
