Looking at the monarchs who have been dubbed
‘the great’, it is easy to become desensitized by its overuse, but one of the few ancient
‘greats’ to truly deserve this lofty title was the founder and first ‘King of Kings’
of the mighty Achaemenid Persian Empire - Cyrus II - otherwise known as Cyrus the Great. Welcome to our video covering the ascent to
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HERE! Following the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian
Empire in 612BC, four powers dominated the region: Egypt, Lydia, Babylon and the Median
Empire, whose territories stretched from eastern Iran to Cappadocia. One of its provinces was Persis - mountainous
home to the subordinate Kingdom of Anshan. Its rulers were the Achaemenid clan, said
to be descended from an eponymous founder - Achaemenes. In myth, the Median prince Astyages1 had a
prophetic dream that his pregnant daughter Mandana exuded water that would soon flood
all Asia, so he wed her to one of these kings of Anshan, knowing that no son of a mere Persian
would ever rule the great Median Empire. But he had another dream soon after, in which
vines grew from Mandana’s womb to engulf the entire world. Terrified, paranoid Astyages decided to kill
her child when it was born. This boy, known as Kourosh by Old Persian
pronunciation, but to us as Cyrus, came into the world at the royal palace of Ecbatana
in 600BC. Astyages immediately ordered one of his senior
men - Harpagus - to take the baby, kill him and dispose of the body far away. Harpagus said that he would do as ordered,
and took the boy home. Unwilling to kill the child, but fearing Astyages’
wrath, Harpagus ordered a shepherd Mithridates to do the deed for him. However, rather than killing the young Cyrus,
Mithridates and his wife secretly raised him as their own son. Harpagus had no idea and neither did Astyages. One day Cyrus, then known in his secret existence
as Agradates, was playing ‘king and court’ with a few other boys, one of whom was the
son of a Median magnate. As a part of the game, ‘king’ Cyrus ended
up whipping the noble boy, who then subsequently complained to his father about the incident. The perpetrator was summoned to answer before
Astyages, who quickly discerned that he was the boy Harpagus had been ordered to kill. Astyages feigned calm, explaining to Harpagus
that he had often felt remorse for the order and that his actions were actually to be celebrated
with a feast. At Astyages’ order, Harpagus sent his thirteen
year-old son to the palace and then arrived later himself as a guest. During the feast, Astyages made Harpagus eat
his own son and although the courtier claimed “ Whatever you do sire, is agreeable to
me”, he would forever bear a grudge. Meanwhile, Cyrus was spared and even went
on to become royal cup bearer, a position of considerable prestige. The young Persian also served as a royal envoy
and advisor becoming indispensable to Astyages. Cyrus also wed Cassandana - a fellow Achaemenid
and the love of his life. At the same time, Harpagus had been gathering
the anti-Astyages nobles and befriending Cyrus. In 552BC, they decided to act. The prince, who was now in his forties, made
his way back to his homeland and raised it in revolt. After winning an initial battle there and
another on the border between Persia and Media, Cyrus and his allies crushed Astyages’ army
outside Pasargadae after Harpagus betrayed Astyages, taking Ecbatana soon thereafter. Almost immediately, Median governors in Hyrcania,
Parthia and Bactria submitted as well. The Achaemenid Empire, which was at its beginning
a collaboration between Persia and Media, was born. In the aftermath, Cyrus dutifully administered
this newly won domain. His territories were divided into semi-autonomous
provinces known as satrapies, and were governed by satraps, drawn initially from Persians
and Medes alike. Overseers were sent to supervise these lesser
rulers and 10,000 of Cyrus’ greatest warriors were instituted as the notorious, spear-wielding
Immortals, whose ranks never went below that number. The ‘King of Kings’ did all of this under
the cover of friendship treaties enacted with his powerful neighbors Babylon and Lydia. However, buoyed in confidence by a famously
deceptive answer from the oracle at Delphi , Lydian king Croesus began mobilising forces
to assault this upjumped Persian usurper. By 548BC, likely informed by expertly employed
spies as to the military buildup at the Halys River, Cyrus sent envoys to the Ionian Greeks,
asking them to stay out of the upcoming war, however cities loyal to Lydia, refused outright,
with the exception of Miletus. This decision among the Aegean Greeks would
eventually, over half a century later, trigger the legendary Greco-Persian Wars of Salamis
and Thermopylae. Crossing the Halys and therefore the Achaemenid
frontier by bridge in 547, Croesus and his large army approached Pteria and put it under
siege. Hearing of the invasion at his capital of
Ecbatana, Cyrus marched west to confront the Lydians joined at multiple stages by loyal
armies from the satrapies. The core of his force consisted of Persians
and Medes, but there were also Hyrcanians, Sakae and many others. Pteria had already fallen and its people sent
to Lydia as slaves when the Achaemenid army, probably lesser in size than the Lydian one,
arrived. Sure in his ability to defeat Cyrus, the Lydian
king drew up for battle, but in the clash that lasted the full day, the Persian centre
smashed straight through and badly bloodied his army, leading Croesus to withdraw to Sardis. The Lydian king expected that winter would
stop the hostilities, so he sent emissaries to the allied Babylon, Egypt and Sparta, calling
on them to send armies in five months to assist him. Crucially, he also sent all his mercenaries
away with similar orders. However, bucking the trend of warfare in this
period, Cyrus pushed into Lydia and encamped in sight of Sardis. Croesus sent a formidable cavalry army out
to face the Persians. Harpagus advised that their own cavalry to
be mounted on camels and form the vanguard in order to spook the Lydian horses. When the battle was joined, this maneuver
succeeded and Croesus, despite heavy losses, was able to retreat into the fortress of Sardis. Before the Persians encircled the city, Croesus
managed to send out please for assistance now. However, after just a fourteen day siege,
one of the greatest near-eastern capitals fell. After that one lightning campaign, Sardis
and all of Asia Minor was now Achaemenid territory. Croesus himself was eventually spared and
brought to advise Cyrus. The oracle was correct, but he had destroyed
his own mighty empire, rather than that of the Persians. Although expansion via conquest does not seem
to have been a priority for the Persian king before the Lydian invasion of his territory,
it is all but certain that he would’ve set out to dominate the region at some point. Following the annexation of Croesus’ kingdom,
Cyrus and his generals2 set about creating a great new capital at Pasargadae, in addition
to subduing resistance in peripheral territories such as Bactria and Urartu. By 542BC, Cyrus’ attention was focused on
another great power ripe for conquest - the so-called Neo-Babylonian Empire. Far from the ‘good old days’ of Nebuchadnezzar
II, the current Babylonian king Nabonidus wasn’t a good ruler. He diverted favour and funding away from Babylonian
priests, neglected the common people, stopped renovation works on the city and even cancelled
the new years festival of the great god Marduk. Discontent was rife and loyalty to the king,
and his son Belshazzar, was at an all time low, and Cyrus was all too aware of this state
of affairs. Persian infiltrators began spreading word
throughout Nabonidus’ Empire that Cyrus intended to restore Marduk’s supremacy in
Babylon. In 540, sensing that the time was right, Cyrus
dispatched his army to seize Babylon-dominated Elam with the help of a native revolt. This blow brought Nabonidus back from his
retirement3 and to Babylon, where he took control of the army. Notoriously, he seized the sacred statues
of his many domains in order to ensure their obedience. The next year, Cyrus and his increasingly
powerful army marched south to invade the Babylonian Empire, but he would do it as a
liberator. However, their progress was blocked for weeks
by a swollen tributary of the Tigris River just north of Opis. Although the obstacle was overcome by Persian
troops digging many channels around the river to divert its course, this delay allowed Nabonidus
to assemble a large army and advance north. The king himself, however, remained ensconced
at Sippar, while general Gubara conducted the war. The battle took place in the last days of
September near Opis. What we do know is that Cyrus’ forces, fighting
under the gold and red Shahbaz standard, won yet another crushing victory. Opis was plundered, while Gubara surrendered,
earning a place in the Persian hierarchy. Nabonidus went south by river. Rather than facing another hostile army in
the field, Cyrus instead arrived with his vast host outside the massive, sprawling city
of Babylon to find Nabonidus’ armies bivouacked inside, braced for an extensive siege. It would, even to the indomitable Cyrus, have
been a truly daunting sight. Its defences included multiple layers of moat,
the great Euphrates River itself and two colossal walls - inner and outer, eighty feet high
or more, stretching for fifteen miles around the city’s near-triangular circumference. Tidy, grid-pattern districts were criss-crossed
with streets and occupied by grand-scale residences, temples, palaces and, mostly sturdy of all,
the great citadel of the royal guard next to Ishtar Gate. As he usually did, King Cyrus called together
his advisors for a council of war immediately upon arrival and debated upon how to best
gain the city. A full-scale assault, they decided, would
result in massive casualties, and so they decided on a complex strategy relying on subtlety,
intelligence and timing. First, to maintain the illusion of a conventional
siege, the Achaemenid king split his army in two, stationing one on the eastern bank
of the Euphrates where the river entered Babylon, in the north, and the other downstream, where
the river left it. Cyrus himself took every noncombatant, including
servants, slaves and attendants north, arriving soon thereafter at a basin, which had been
excavated years earlier to temporarily redirect the river. Putting his men to work for a similar end,
Cyrus had a wide channel dug from the disused basin to the river and chopped giant palm
trees down to act as levys to redirect the water. When the earth was removed, a great portion
of the Euphrates’ flow was diverted into the basin rather than flowing towards Babylon. While Xenophon informs that the water level
before this ingenious work was over two men deep, Herodotus states that after, the Euphrates
was only waist deep. The ‘impassable’ river was now a viable
entry route into the city. That very night, carefully timed because it
marked the advent of a great festival of music, drinking and revelry in Babylon, Cyrus had
Gubara infiltrate the city via the diminished river, which the celebratory citizens or guards
of Nabonidus’ capital don’t seem to have noticed. The defenders, lulled into a false sense of
security by their great strength of defence and enfeebled by drink, were unable to resist
the Persian infiltration. By daybreak, prince Belshazzar was dead, the
gates were opened and the city was under Achaemenid control. Nabonidus, who had actually been in nearby
Borsippa, was surrendered to the Persian monarch and then allowed to take a comfortable and
by all accounts happy exile in Carmania. Two weeks after he captured the city and dealt
with all the necessary formalities, on October 26th 539, Cyrus entered the Babylon to a rapturous
welcome, restoring Marduk’s priesthood to its elevated position and tending to the needs
of the people. To further show his benevolence, the new ruler
kept taxes to a minimum, completed several public works and returned idols seized by
Nabonidus. The Verse Account of Nabonidus sums up what
the people, or at least the favoured priests may have felt: ‘They are like prisoners
when the prisons are opened. Liberty is restored to those who were surrounded
by oppression. All rejoice to look upon him as king.’ In a famous act that would gain him unabashed
plaudits within the pages of the Hebrew bible, Cyrus the Great returned thousands of Jews,
who had previously been deported as part of Nebuchadnezzar’s so-called Babylonian Exile,
to Jerusalem. Not only did he restore the Jews to their
homeland, but it is also said that Cyrus ordered the construction and state funding of what
eventually became Jerusalem’s Second Temple. For this generosity, he was the only foreigner
ever to be named a Messiah in the Jewish religion. Without this, it is possible that Judaism
would’ve died out, while Christianity and Islam might never have existed at all. Following the Persian annexation of Babylon
and its rich empire, the only possible rival remaining to Cyrus was Egypt, but that particular
issue of imperial expansion would wait until after the founder’s death. There is a gap in the ancient sources after
about 539 during which the Great King probably administered his provinces, stabilised the
empire and laid down building blocks that would provide a strong foundation for centuries
of prosperous rule. Xenophon tells us that when the king wasn’t
out on campaign with the army, he would reside for seven months of the year in Babylon, where
there was a warm and sunny climate. When spring came, Cyrus moved to Susa for
three months and in summer climbed to Ecbatana in the Median highlands, where the cooler
climate was more tolerable. He would only visit Pasargadae seven times
during his reign, while Persepolis was a later construction. The famine in our sources ends with the multifaceted
and intensely debated matter of Cyrus the Great’s death. Soldier-historian Xenophon, writing over a
century later, believed that the first Persian king died in his bed, while the Greek physician
Ctesias claimed Cyrus’ death was due to wounds received in battle. Herodotus, however, tells us undoubtedly the
most fantastic and epic tale of how the first King of Kings came to an end. In the late Autumn of 530BC, with his new
hegemonic empire organised and set to rights, Cyrus took his army to confront a deadly new
foe. After a long march across Iran, the Persian
force came to the northeastern steppe frontier of the empire, in what is today Kazakhstan
and Uzbekistan. There, a ferocious Scythian tribe known as
the Massagetae were gathering a massive army of both infantry and the famous nomadic cavalry. Arriving in the vicinity of the Oxus River,
where the Massagetae were located at the time, Cyrus, who seems to have become arrogant from
all his successes, was informed that the previous chieftain of this bothersome people was dead. In his place ruled the daunting, Amazon-esque
Scythian queen known to us as Tomyris. Cyrus readied his forces, but also dispatched
an offer of marriage to the queen in hopes of a diplomatic conquest. This was swiftly rebuffed. The savvy queen knew that Cyrus only had an
eye for her domain, rather than her. While the Persians were in the process of
constructing a pontoon over the Oxus, messengers arrived from Tomyris bearing an offer of her
own. “Cease, king of the Medes, from that on
which you are intent; for you cannot know if the completion of this work will be to
your advantage. Cease, and be king of your own country; and
be patient to see us ruling those whom we rule.” Having made this brazen decree, Tomyris decreed
that the bridge was unnecessary. Either she would retreat three days from the
river and willingly fight the Persians there, on open ground, or the Persians could let
the Massagetae cross instead, whichever was to their liking. Gathering his advisors, all but one of them
recommended that Cyrus withdraw and then break Tomyris against the river. The one dissenter was Croesus - deposed king
of the Lydians, who counselled the Achaemenid ruler to cross onto the far side. Cyrus took his advice and did just that. Then, after setting up a luxurious camp and
then feigning a retreat, the Persians lured a third of the Massagetae army, who feasted
and drank the ‘spoils’. Then this force, led by Tomyris’ son, was
set upon by the whole Persian army and destroyed. Tomyris’ son killed himself, and his mother
swore to avenge him by giving Cyrus the blood he clearly desired. On December 4th 530BC, the armies of Cyrus
and Tomyris clashed. At long range, the nomads and their Persian
foes were evenly matched, both peoples being brilliant archers. However, when the Massagetae got in close,
their heavy bronze armour and brutal battle-axes ripped the Achaemenid army to ribbons. Almost all of it was annihilated and Cyrus
was killed, either on the field or from his wounds a few days later. Tomyris fulfilled her vow by finding the Persian
king’s head and drenching it in blood from an animal skin. Somehow, by negotiation or daring deed which
we know nothing about, Cyrus’ remains came to rest at the Tomb of Cyrus in Pasargadae,
a remnant of the ancient world that still exists more or less intact to this day. At the time of Alexander’s conquest 200
years later, there was an inscription on the tomb that read “I am Cyrus, son of Cambyses,
who founded the empire of Persia, and ruled over Asia. Do not grudge me my monument.” More videos on the history of Iran are on
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