Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/940

Rh 922 CYRUS. b^'lonians, he laid siege to the city, and after a long time he took it by diverting the course of the Euphrates, which flowed through the midst of it, so that his soldiers entered Babylon by the bed of the river. So entirely unprepared were the Baby- lonians for this mode of attack, that they were engaged in revelry (eu evtradeiriai)^ and had left the gates which opened upon the river unguarded. This was in b. c. 538. After Cyrus had subdued the Assyrians, he un- dertook the subjugation of the Massagetae, a peo- ple dwelling beyond the Araxes. Cyrus offered to marry' Tomyris, the widowed queen of this peo- ple ; but she refused the offer, saying that he wooed not her, but the kingdom of the Massagetae. The details of the war which followed may be read in Herodotus. It ended in the death of Cyrus in battle. Tomyris caused his corpse to be found among the slain, and having cut off the head, threw it into a bag filled with human blood, that he might satiate himself (she said) with blood. According to Herodotus, Cyrus had reigned 29 years. Other writers say 30. He was killed in B. c. 529. (Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. sub anno.) The account of Ctesias differs considerably in some points from that of Herodotus. According to him, there was no relationship between Cyrus and Astyages. At the conquest of Media by Cy- rus, Astyages fled to Ecbatana, and was there concealed by his daughter Amytis, and her hus- band, Spitamas, whom, with their children, Cyrus would have put to the torture, had not Astyages discovered himself. When he did so, he was put in fetters by Ocbaras, but soon afterwards Cyrus himself set him free, honoured him as a father, and married his daughter Amytis, having put her husband to death for telling a falsehood. [Astv- AGKS.] Ctesias also says, that Cyrus made war apon the Bactrians, who voluntarily submitted to iiim, when they heard of his reconciliation with Astyages and Amytis. He mentions a war with the Sacae, in which Cyrus was taken prisoner and ransomed. He gives a somewhat different account of the Lydian war. (Ctesias, Pers. c. 5 ; Croesus.) Cyrus met with his death, according to Ctesias, by a wound received in battle with a nation called the Derbices, who were assisted by the Indians. Strabo also mentions the expedition against the Sacae, and says, that Cyrus was at first defeated but afterwards victorious. He also says, that Cy- rus made an expedition into India, from which country he escaped with difficulty. The chief points of difference between Xeno- phon and Herodotus are the following : Xenophon represents Cyrus as brought up at his grandfather's court, as serving in the Median army under his uncle Cyaxares, the son and successor of Astyages, of whom Herodotus and Ctesias know nothing ; as making war upon Babylon simply as the general of Cyaxares, who remained at home duxing the latter part of the Assyrian war, and permitted Cyrus to assume without opposition the power and state of an independent sovereign at Babylon ; as marrying the daughter of Cyaxares ; and at length dying quietly in his bed, after a sage and Socratic discourse to his children and friends. The Lydian war of Cyrus is represented by Xenophon as a sort of episode in the Assyrian war, occasioned by the help which Croesus had given to the Assyrians in the first campaign of Cyrus against them. Diodoru3 agrees for the most part with Hero- CYRUS. dotus ; but he says, that Cyrus was taken prisoner by the Scythian queen (evidently meaning To- myris), and that she crucified or impaled him. Other variations, not worth specifying, are given by the chronographers and compilers. To form a complete and consistent life of Cyrus out of these statements is obviously impossible; but the leading events of his public life are made out with tolerable certainty, namely, the dethrone- ment of Astyages, the conquest of the Lydian and Assyrian empires, his schemes to become master of all Asia and of Egypt, and his death in a battle with one of the Asiatic tribes which he wished to subdue. His acquisition of the Median empire was rather a revolution than a conquest. Hero- dotus expressly states, that Cyrus had a large party among the Medes before his rebellion, and that, after the defeat of Astyages, the nation vo- luntarily received him as their king. This was very natural, for besides the harshness of the government of Astyages, Cyrus was the next heir to the throne, the Medes were effeminate, and the Persians were hardy. The kingdom remained, as before, the united kingdom of " the Medes and Persians," with the difference, that the supremacy was transferred from the for- mer to the latter ; and then in process of time it came to be genenilly called the Persian empire, though the kings and their people were still, even down to the time of Alexander, often spoken of as Medes. If Cyrus had quietly succeeded to the throne, in virtue of his being the grandson of the Median king Astyages, it seems difficult to ac- count for this change. The mere fact of Cyrus's father being a Persian is hardly enough to explain it. With regard to the order of Cyrus's conquests in Asia, there seems much confusion. It is clear that there was a struggle for supremacy between Cyrus and the king of Babylon, the latter having become master of Mesopotamia and Syria by the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar. It was in fact a struggle between the Zend tribes, which formed the Medo-Persian empire, and the Semitic tribes under the king of Babylon, for the supremacy of Asia. We can scarcely determine whether Cyrus conquered Lydia before making any attack on Babylon, and perhaps in this matter Xenophon may have preserved something like the true suc- cession of events. That Croesus was in alliance Avith Babylon is stated also by Herodotus, who however, makes Croesus entirely the aggressor in the Lydian war. No clear account can be given of his campaigns in Central Asia, but the object of them was evidently to subdue the whole of Asia as far as the Indus. With respect to the main points of difference between Herodotus and the Cyropaedeia^ besides what has been said above of the historical value of Xenophon's book, if it could be viewed as a his- tory at all, its real design is the great thing to be kept in view ; and that design is stated by Xeno- phon himself with sufficient clearness. He wished to shew that the government of men is not so dif- ficult as is commonly supposed, provided that the ruler be wise ; and to illustrate this he holds forth the example of C}Tus, whom he endows with all virtue, courage, and wisdom, and whose conduct is meant for a practical illustration and his discourses for an exposition of the maxims of the Socratic philosophy, so far as Xenophon was capable of