[529 B.C.] distance; when these were all spent, they fought with their swords and spears, and for a long time neither party gained the smallest advantage: the Massagetæ were at length victorious, the greater part of the Persians were slain, Cyrus himself also fell; and thus terminated a reign of twenty-nine years. When after diligent search his body was found, Tomyris directed his head to be thrown into a vessel filled with human blood, and having insulted and mutilated the dead body, exclaimed, Survivor and conqueror as I am, thou hast ruined my peace by the successful stratagem against my son but I will give thee now, as I have threatened, thy fill of blood.' This account of the end of Cyrus seems to me most consistent with probability, although there are many other and different relations." c If we accept Herodotus' statements, we must look for the Massagetæ beyond the Jaxartes. In Ctesias Cyrus is mortally wounded in battle with the Derbices, who probably dwelt near the Middle or Upper Oxus. A fragment of Berosus says that Cyrus fell in the land of the Dai (Dahæ), i.e., in the modern Turkoman desert, perhaps in the southern or southwestern portion of it; this account may very well be derived from contemporary Babylonian records. Be that as it may, Cyrus met his death in battle with a savage tribe of the northeast. The battle was probably lost, but the Persians rescued his body, which was buried at Pasargada, in the ancient land of his race. To this day there is to be seen at Murghab, north of Persepolis (on the telegraph line from Abushehr to Teheran), the empty tomb and other remains of the great mausoleum, which Aristobulus, a companion of Alexander, described from his own observation; and on some pillars there the inscription is to be read: "I am Cyrus, the king, the Achæmenian." Till lately the same inscription was also to be found high on the pillar which bears in bas-relief a winged figure of a king. This figure is furnished with a "pshent," i.e., such an ornamented crown as is worn by kings and gods on Egyptian monuments. This was no doubt meant by Cambyses as a special mark of honour to his father, whose monument must have required years to finish. It is quite natural that the ancient art of Egypt should have made a deep impression even upon those of its conquerors who in other respects had little liking for Egyptian ways.b CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF CYRUS Cyrus played too great a part in the world and did too much for the progress of humanity that we should leave him without some account of the character and influence on history of a man of whom even so cynical a historian as Eduard Meyer has said, tersely but in words that demand special emphasis, "To honour and spare an adversary of equal birth, once he had been conquered, remained a privilege of all his successors." After this we must indeed expect eulogy, but the short extracts given here, the first ancient and the last modern, are both founded on careful and loving study of the man's character.a Xenophon's Estimate of Cyrus The reflection once occurred to me, how many democracies have been dissolved by men who chose to live under some other government rather than a democracy; how many monarchies, and how many oligarchies, have been overthrown by the people; and how many individuals, who have tried to establish tyrannies, have, some of them, been at once entirely destroyed, while others, if they have continued to reign for any length of time, have been admired as wise and fortunate men. I had observed, too, I thought, many masters, in their own private houses, some indeed having many servants, but some only very few, and yet utterly unable to keep those few entirely obedient to their commands. While I was reflecting upon these things, I came to this judgment upon them; that to man, such is his nature, it was easier to rule every other sort of creature than to rule man. But when I considered that there was Cyrus the Persian, who had rendered many men, many cities, and many nations, obedient to him, I was then necessitated to change my opinion, and to think that to rule men is not among the things that are impossible, or even difficult, if a person undertakes it with understanding and skill. I knew that there were some who willingly obeyed Cyrus, that were many days' journey, and others that were even some months' journey, distant from him; some, too, who had never seen him, and some who knew very well that they never should see him; and yet they readily submitted to his government; for he so far excelled all other kings, as well those that had received their dominion from their forefathers, as those that had acquired it by their own efforts, that the Scythian, for example, though his people be very numerous, is unable to obtain the dominion over any other nation, but rests satisfied if he can but continue to rule his own; so it is with the Thracian king in regard to the Thracians, and with the Illyrian king in regard to the Illyrians; and so it is with other nations, as many as I have heard of; for the nations of Europe, at least, are said to be independent and detached from each other. But Cyrus, finding, in like manner, the nations of Asia independent, and setting out with a little army of Persians, obtained the dominion over the Medes by their own choice, and over the Hyrcanians in a similar manner; he subdued the Syrians, Assyrians, Arabians, Cappadocians, both the Phrygians, the Lydians, Carians, Phonicians, and Babylonians; he had under his rule the Bactrians, Indians, and Cilicians, as well as the Sacians, Paphlagonians, and Magadidians, and many other nations of whom we cannot enumerate even the names. He had dominion over the Greeks that were settled in Asia; and, going down to the sea, over the Cyprians and Egyptians. These nations he ruled, though they spoke neither the same language with himself nor with one another; yet he was able to extend the fear of himself over so great a part of the world that he astonished all, and no one attempted anything against him. He was able to inspire all with so great a desire of pleasing him, that they ever desired to be governed by his opinion; and he attached to himself so many nations as it would be a labour to enumerate, which way soever we should commence our course from his palace, whether towards the east, west, north, or south.d A Modern Estimate of the Character and Importance of Cyrus The giant figure of Cyrus the Great appears all the more splendid in the sunlight [by contrast with the surrounding gloom]. He is fitly called the Great, as belonging to the small number of the immortals to whom humanity cannot deny this highest title. If he be great, it is because he attained unheard-of success with insignificant means. With the assistance of his son and his comrades he founded an empire such as the Assyrians never possessed even in the day of their highest power: an empire which stretched from the Pontus Euxinus to Meroë, from Cyrene to the Öxus and the Indus; the first world-empire, the realm of Alexander before Alexander's time. But he was not, like the latter, opposed to a huge and crumbling monarchy, already in the death agony, an easy prey to any leader of mercenaries, and proved to be so by Agesilaus in Asia Minor, and by Amyntas in Egypt; he was not, like Alexander, victorious over a small, dominant nation, which, in recompense for its narrow-minded policy, stood alone in the last decisive struggle, while he himself had an army of better morale and greater skill, with better weapons and superior numbers-a really overwhelming force. On the contrary, he led a handful of Persians against four nations, the largest and most powerful of their time; against the two powers which had overcome the greatest of all military states, the powers which had destroyed Asshur. The two rising kingdoms of Media and Lydia were in the full vigour of their youth, and had hurried from victory to victory, from conquest to conquest; the power and prosperity of the two ancient civilised peoples of the Nile and Euphrates dated from the very beginning of history and had risen anew and more formidable from every defeat; but he flung them all in the dust forever. He was great, too, if it be great to fight and even to fall for the sake of justice. He is no proconsul, to turn, like a matricide, against the republic the sword with which she had entrusted him; no Albanian chief, Frankish king, or Mongolian khan to fall on foreign countries for the purpose of satisfying the greed for prey and lust of war proper to his race; but a king who, attacked by Media, attacked by the coalition of Lydia with Babylon and Egypt, only draws the sword in defence of the double crown of his ancestors the most legitimate of all conquerors. More than this, he was the most humane. His shield is stained by no horrible deeds of blood, of frightful revenge and cruelty, such as disgrace the son of Olympias. He spared, and made gifts to conquered enemies. Even after the second subjugation of the treacherous Lydians, he would not permit them to be destroyed by thousands, as Alexander did in the case of the heroes of Tyre, of the Pasargada who were faithful even unto death, of the nobility of Persia, or of the Sogdianians in revenge for their victory, as even the great Roman slaughtered his enemies at Thapsus and the betrayed Usipetii, and as the Franks slew the Saxons at the massacre on the Aller. He did not, like the Macedonian at Persepolis, burn and destroy hostile capitals; he did not mutilate captive kings and leaders, nor drag them round the walls as the latter did Bessus and the lion of Gaza; nor send them to the scaffold as the Roman sent the chivalrous king of the Arvernians; he did not basely murder his own countrymen as the "crazy god," Alexander, murdered the Branchidæ, Clitus, and the grey-haired Parmenio. Oriental as he was, and belonging to a savage people and a far earlier period, he is still always far more humane. Thus he was the greatest, far beyond the spirit of his nation and his age, anticipating the remotest future both as man and statesman. Because no wide stream of blood separated him from the vanquished, he found the only possible basis for his giant structure in the raising of conquerors and conquered to equal privileges. With the certainty of victory, the daring trust which belongs to the greatest, he could see and spare the subject in the enemy, raise the conquered at once to the rank of citizen, entrust his army to Mazares the Mede, and to Harpagus the Median grandee, prince, and general; in the newly conquered Lydia he could venture to invest the Lydian dynasts, with the civil power, and to set up as rulers in Ionia the native aristocracy, in Judea the descendant of the ancient kings and high priests. It was in accordance with his teachings that his son marched in the festive procession of the people in newly conquered Babylon, and after the conquest of Egypt entrusted the civil administration, with the capital Sais, to an Egyptian, Psamthek's admiral, Uzahorsem, the son of the high priest of Saïs, who held it as "the king's cousin," i.e., viceroy, and on whose withdrawal the Egyptian prince Aahmes was associated with the Persian Aryandes. Thus Cyrus divided the civil and military administration, a new departure amongst orientals, and long uncomprehended and unimitated. The military power he reserved to his faithful Medes and Persians; the civil he bestowed on native princes, and so arranged an automatic system which created the best bulwark against the loss of the border provinces, a bulwark which all the mistakes and crimes and all the cowardice of his successors destroyed only after the expiration of two hundred years a result different indeed from the ephemeral creation which Alexander cemented with the blood of whole nations. - But gentleness and mercy constituted also the best policy. For defeating opponents without a battle they were the sharpest of weapons, carried by a commanding personality who not only compelled the admiration of his own people, but also brought his enemies to their knees, and showed his victory in the light of an inevitable decree of fate, thus infusing dejection and treachery into the ranks of the enemy. Who is there that approaches him? He is not only beloved by his own people as a father incomparable in every way, not only does all the splendour of story play round him as round Alexander and Charlemagne, but legends also have clustered about him, and the poetry of Xenophon and Antisthenes glorifies and idealises him. The Median prince and the Egyptian admiral, the nobility and priesthood of Babylon, as well as the Greek captains of the kings of the Lydians and Egyptians, with Eurybates of Ephesus and Phanes of Halicarnassus, throw themselves at his feet voluntarily, and to the betrayal of their own rulers; without a struggle the greatest empires, the two conquerors of Nineveh, surrender to him both themselves and their own kings in chains, as had been done to none other; even Tyre, that proud and mighty city, unconquered and unconquerable, with whose lion courage his predecessor and his successor, Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander alike, wrestled so fiercely and so long, did homage to him of her own free will, as did the sea-king of Samos, which was as far beyond reach as Tyre herself. Above all, the little people of the Jews hailed him at the waters of Babylon as they have done no mortal before or since, as the victor and rescuer, the liberator and saviour, the favoured of God and lord of the earth. He rewarded them for it and so purchased for himself the most exalted, the most undying greatness: amongst all the rulers of the East whom we see conquering, destroying, murdering, and deporting, he is the only one who raised a downtrodden people from the dust, snatched it from its brethren's fate of annihilation, restored it to its existence as a nation under princes of its own race, to its own peculiar development and its mission in the history of the world. He saved it, as he did his own people, which owed to him its consecration to eternal youth in history; so that, in spite of all the storms which have raged over it, it has escaped the fate of the thousand tribes which traversed the wide country of Iran before and after it, and are now vanished and forgotten. Thus the consequences of his achievements are lasting, though in the course of thousands of years these achievements themselves have vanished, [529-525 B.C.] like all earthly things. He was not the product and child of his age, like the son of Philip, the nephew of Marius, the son of Pepin, or the offspring of the Revolution: but he was its creator and father, solitary and unique in the world's history; he took firmer grip of the wheel of time than any other mortal; in the term of his life he brought an epoch to its close, snatched the lordship of the earth from the Semites and Egyptians, and won it for the Aryans for all time.S CAMBYSES Cyrus bequeathed the crown to his eldest child, Kambujiya, called by the Greeks Cambyses, and the government of several provinces to Bardius (Smerdis), his second son. He thought that this pre-settlement of the succession would prevent the disputes usually accruing to the succession of a new king in the East. But this hope was disappointed. Cambyses had hardly ascended the throne when he murdered his brother; but the crime was committed with such care and secrecy that it passed unnoticed by the people, and it was thought by the subjects and court that Bardius was shut up in some distant palace in Media, from whence he would shortly reappear. Freed from a rival who might have been dangerous, Cambyses then gave his full attention to war. Alone among the great nations of the old world, Egypt, protected by the desert and the marshes of the Delta, was able to withstand the power of the Persians, and followed in peace the course of her development. Since his unfortunate intervention in Lydia, Aahmes had always avoided any ground for strife with his neighbours. His ambition went no further than the establishment of the old suzerainty of Egypt in Cyprus. Thanks to this prudence, he lived on amicable terms with Cyrus, and profited by twenty-five years of tranquillity to develop the natural resources of his country. The course of the canals was repaired and enlarged, agriculture was encouraged, and commerce extended. But it was impossible to withstand the hatred of his subjects, and it compassed his ruin. Cyrus dead, Aahmes resigned himself to war. There was no lack of serious counts against him: he had made an alliance with Lydia ; he had intrigued with Chaldea; and Cambyses, being young, was more disposed to excite than to calm the warlike spirit of his compatriots. According to the Persians, Cambyses asked the daughter of the old king in marriage, hoping that his refusal would furnish him with an insult to avenge. But Aahmes substituted Nitetis the daughter of Uah-ab-Ra for his own daughter. Sometime afterwards, when Cambyses was with her, he called her by the name of her pretended father; whereupon she said: "I see, O king! that thou dost not suspect how thou hast been deceived by Amasis [Aahmes]; he took me, loaded me with jewels, and sent me to thee as his own daughter. It is true I am the child of Apries [Uah-ab-Ra] who was his lord and master, until he rebelled and was put to death with the other Egyptians." The anger of Cambyses, son of Cyrus, was thus roused, and he took up arms against Egypt. In Egypt the story was different: Nitetis was sent to Cyrus, and she was the mother of Cambyses, and the conquest was only the re-establishment of the legitimate family against the usurper Aahmes; and thus Cambyses ascended the throne, less in the character of a conqueror, than in that of Uah-ab-Ra's grandson. It was by an equally puerile fiction that the Egyptians in their decadence consoled themselves for their weakness and disgrace. Always proud of their past glory, but henceforth powerless to |