Rise, Accomplishments, and Fall of Cyrus The Great

Throughout Ancient Persia, there have been various different kings and people that have risen to power. All of them collectively play a part of the history that can be looked back upon today. Many of them obtained varying goals and ideals throughout their separate rulings that help them to stand apart. Their individual political strategies and military tactics are a couple of the most studied areas of specific reigns. Rising to power, holding the power and eventually a downfall and end are a commonality between all of them. It was very common for people of the same family to follow their ancestor’s rule in continuing holding the power through their family. That stayed true for King Cyrus II, or Cyrus the Great as he rose to power after taking it from the Median King of Kings, Astyages. From that moment, Cyrus began his intellectual and powerful reign that would last for multiple decades. It did not take long for him to begin his desire to expand and grow his kingdom, appearing to have been one of his main goals. The inscriptions left behind are one of the ways that the history survived and is able to be interpreted by people now. Being left by different people and kings, attempting to be able to get their stories across about what transpired. Those tools for studying allow us to now be able to analyze and mostly understand more about the events that took place during the development and changes that were occurring of Ancient Persia. Cyrus the Great was a smart, powerful leader with the goal of expanding his kingdom, which ultimately became his downfall.

Cyrus, the son of the local Persian king, came to power after taking the power and spot of the king from his grandfather, Astyages. His grandfather held the Persian background, while his mother was of Median decent. His family lineage enabled him to call himself the King of the Medes and King of Persia. With kings consistently following in their family footsteps of controlling the power, it makes sense that Cyrus would become the king. It seems that he did not want to wait for his grandfather’s reign to come to end before he would take the spot from him, so that he could control the power. Having multiple family backgrounds and connections for Cyrus could have been very beneficial for him. It could have helped him make better relations with those groups of people, saying that he was very similar to them. It tied him to other families and increased the connections he could create. He married Cassandane, an Achaemenid princess, which would only help to enhance his power and connections through his empire. It was very common for people of power to marry into each other’s families to extend the royalty and be able to continue the power in their respective families. Together, Cyrus and Cassandane had five children. One of, their sons, Cambyses II, would eventually succeed Cyrus as king.

In order to continue the family’s reign, Cambyses II would eventually want to be able to have a son of his own, in order to be the successor. That would enable the family to continue their legacy and the power they had. Cyrus and Cassandane also had another son, along with three daughters. That enabled them to continue the family tradition of succeeding each other following his eventual death. It was important for them and their family to be able to retain the power and continue to marry into other strong families to strengthen their own. That allowed them to gain more power and support from different types of people to help them start and continue to grow the amount of people under their rule when the time came. “Cassandane, wife of Cyrus II, and an Achaemenian, sister of Otanes and daughter of Pharnaspes… According to Herodotus, Cyrus loved her dearly and, when she died, ordered all subjects of his empire to observe a “great mourning”. That shows people today, just how much that he cared about his wife and was extremely sad at and after the time of her passing to have everyone in his empire participate in that. That could lead us to believe that his family was very important to him through everything that he was doing.

The online encyclopedia suggests that she was eventually buried in Pasargadae after she had passed away years after their marriage. King Cyrus coming to power was not easy, as it happened with a battle against his own family lineage. It started with his rebellion, along with a small army that would end up defeating and capturing Astyages, leaving him as the new king. That was where Cyrus started to show his smart military tactics being able to defeat a larger army. It did not stop there as he wanted to continue to expand his empire further. That would lead to a series of battles with different groups of people to put them under the reign of the current King of Persia. In some cases, as with other rulers, it would be left up to the people in those areas on if they wanted to voluntarily accept being under his rule. The other option would be going into battle to decide whether it would happen or not. It appears they would not always want to battle if it could be avoided, giving people the option to surrender to their rule. That could relate to Cyrus and the general wanting to keep as many people in their army healthy. It also was that he wanted and expected people to like him from the start and stand down to himself and his large, powerful army. Following the battle with the Medians and change in power, with Cyrus taking over, the Lydian’s king, Croesus, saw an opportunity of his own to expand. He crossed over into the Median territory, which did not result in anything. After that, Cyrus decided to move into their territory, “and in an historic battle defeated the Lydians and captured Sardis”. The battle that was started by Croesus, did not have the result that he wanted to. There can and have been clear consequences in Persian history about trying to start a battle and not ending with the result that was an anticipated.

The choice to try to overthrow Cyrus and his land ended in the opposite way he had wanted, by making him angry enough to follow him back and start a battle. Then, he left some of his people there to make sure they started to follow his rules and conformed to the Persian ideals. It resulted in Cyrus becoming the king of all of his people, and at that point there was nothing he could do. He attempted to start a battle with Cyrus, then he had to make the decision to retreat. Cyrus was not happy about the attempt of battle from the beginning and following the retreat, he must have felt that he could not allow them to walk away from something they started. That ultimately ended with him going into their land and finishing the battle that was started against them, helping the beginning of the growth of Cyrus’ Persian Empire. That added to the Persian empire, which could have led to his desire to have to continue to grow. It started to expand the surrounding areas from that point, with many accepting his positions without a battle. Cyrus and his army were very powerful and not a lot of people who wanted to challenge them.

As Cyrus continued to obtain more land in his empire, growing a number of cities under his rule, he wanted more. He was on his way to enforce the largest empire at the time, at one point even calling himself, “the ruler of the world”. Meanwhile, after sending his general and other parts of his army in various directions in order to expand, he started to head east. While adding different cities to his empire along the way, he was close enough to Babylon that he wanted to attempt to take them over as well. Doing so, would add another prominent area of land his current empire. This battle could potentially continue his trend of adding big areas of land to his current empire that he already had. All of those battles showed some of the things that he had in mind during his time as the King of Persia. He wanted to be able to make it as large as it possibly could, and he was attempting to avoid killing or hurting people. As a king, it would easily understood that he wanted to keep growing the amount of land people that he was in charge of. He wanted to have as many people that were following his rules and under his reign as he could. He let quite a few different cities and areas accept that he was too powerful to hold and peacefully fall under him. Besides, when he first was taking and defending his spot as king against the Medians, and when the Lydians came into his territory first, he did not have the worst intentions expanding his empire. He then neared Babylon, which had a rich overpowering king at the time, Nabonidus.

After a previous battle outside the city, “two days later the Persians took Babylon, which surrendered without a struggle, according to the Babylonian chronicle… Cyrus entered the city in triumph… other sources, however, the account of the fall of Babylon is completely different”. Researchers have records of different accounts noted of what took place when Cyrus originally went into Babylon. In the non-peaceful version, alternate account Cyrus is said to have come into the city with a more violent demeanor. That led into a battle quicker than the usual battle resulting in it now being a part of the Persian Empire. That varied from most of his previous times in battle if the second account were to be true. It could have been that he did not like how the city was being run, or he did not favor with their king. The other possibility could be that it appeared to be an important part of land that he wanted to have and would have it by any means. After that battle occurred and Babylon was his, it led to an inscription that is known as the Cyrus Cylinder. The Cyrus Cylinder is an inscription of a cylinder with writings, from the account of Cyrus himself, as he wished to share some of his stories. This would be the time that he called himself the “ruler of the world”.

The inscriptions on the cylinder exemplify how he wanted to be able to tell the story of this battle from his point of view, along with partially showing all of the power that he had. At that point, he had acquired a great amount of land. He did not want to stop expanding and was looking to continue to get more land. From his account, calling himself that, he could have felt like he did all of that work by himself. Interesting enough, he did not try to change much in their land at all. “Cyrus treated his kingship as a union with the Babylonians… He also attempted to restore the normal economic life of the country”. Babylon had previously been conquered by Nabonidus, and he wanted to control the people and forced people to live there. Once Cyrus was under control, he gave a lot of the freedoms back to those people, allowing them to put statues of their gods and figures back up around the country according to himself on the cylinder.

The Cyrus Cylinder is thought to be the first form of actual documented “human rights,” based off of allowing all of those people to be free. He set the Jewish people that were being forced to live there free, allowing them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple. That is a huge mark of his legacy that he freed all of the Jewish people to return to their land to rebuild and restart their lives after being in captivity for years. Under the previous controlling ruler they had little power and say about how it was going to work. They were not able to live how they wanted and had to follow his strict guidelines. Then as Cyrus took over, they were able to be more free. He did not want to enforce much upon them as their king. He wanted to help them grow and let the people that wanted to live there to be there without being held against their will. “Nevertheless, the generally tolerant character of Cyrus’ reign is borne out by Jewish sources. Chapters 40-55 of the Book of Isaiah were probably written by a witness to the fall of Babylon, and some extended passages are similar in both spirit and context to contemporary Babylonian texts praising Cyrus and condemning Nabonidus. Cyrus’ impact on the Jewish people then was great and is still considered to be a great person in helping their history. Cyrus allowing them to be free was a great choice and shows the type of person that he was by doing that. He allowed everyone to be able to practice their own religion and from looking at that decision, he did not hold people captive. In a changing era of rulers and armies, his character stood out with his decisions made from him as a leader to everyone.

Now, he will always be an example to everyone that has and will read the Bible in their lifetime. As they come across the Book of Isaiah, people will see the decision that he made and the impact that it had on a religion. The fair and correct decision enabled them to be free and restart their lives. He was appreciated greatly by them then when it was written and will continue to be thanked for setting them to be free to achieve their believed purpose. There has recently been a different translation done of the Cyrus Cylinder. The article about the newest translation states was is written about his, “account of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BC, of his restoration to various temples of statues removed by Nabonidus, the previous king of Babylon, and of his own work at Babylon. The cylindrical form is typical of royal inscriptions of the Late Babylonian period, and the text shows that the cylinder was written to be buried in the foundations of the city wall of Babylon”. It appears that he wanted to give his side of the story and had this cylinder’s inscriptions the way that he wanted to tell the story. If his account of the story is accurate, it is very telling to the way he treated the Babylonians once he was their king. Cyrus begins as describing himself with the titles of, “king of the universe, the great king, the powerful king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters of the world”. This starts it off as him describing all of the power that he believed that he had over many different groups of people. At that point of adding Babylon to his Persian Empire, he already had so many different cities and places under his rule, giving him the impression of the power he had. That adds on to the idea that he wanted to keep adding more and more land to add the amount of power that he had.

Cyrus says that he and his army came peacefully into Babylon and he came to treat it better than it previously had been by Nabonidus. They were first unsure about him becoming the ruler, but he took the doubt away from them by being more lenient and freeing them from some of the things they could not do before. He aimed to make them happy by freeing them to places that they wanted to be able to be at, allowing them freedom to practice the religion of their choice and not the one that was being forced upon them. He asked for blessings of the people to their gods in return for allowing them to practice the religion of their choice, wishing him and his son long lives. After that, he went on to build up the walls of the city to add on protection that was never finished. This goes to confirm what Curtis had written about King Cyrus providing freedoms that a lot of people that they did not have before. Curtis then went on to say that it is believed to be the first type of documented human rights that were given to people under a ruler. That shows the peaceful side of Cyrus and how he wanted to have his people give him their support. Treating his people the way that they liked was a good way to get them to be faithful under him and prevent anyone from retaliating against him and his army. It also is a testament to the type of person that he was and a reason that he was such a great leader. He treated his people well and better than many of the other kings and rulers of other empires that had come before him and at the current time as him. That benefited him in another way too, because according to his own record, the people of Babylon were excited when he came to take power over Nabonidus.

The word must have traveled as his empire grew that he was a good, fair leader to his people. It is important to know as we learned in class, there were not many people then that had much academic experience. People were knowledgeable about certain areas where they had to work in, but not many of them were literate. For all of the inscriptions that are on the Cyrus’ Cylinder, it is beneficial to know that Cyrus was the one telling the story, but the odds are that he did not write it himself. He most likely told the story to someone else that knew how to write and then they were the person that wrote it down and inscribed it. That enabled him to be able to tell his story for future people that wanted to know what happened in Babylon. He wanted future generations to see all of the good things that he claimed to do. From his perspective, if the story is completely accurate, we can see now that he was very kind to the people and he was very appreciated in Babylon. Politically, Cyrus was not very enforcing outside of wanting the land and people to be and be aware that they were under his rule. “He preserved traditional methods of administration throughout his domains and in particular is said to have made almost no altercation in the local political structure,” in many of the cities and countries. That shows that while he was taking over, he was not forcing them to do many things different. He could have been trying to be smart about he was doing it, to avoid rebellions from the people.

By showing them respect and trying to help them in different aspects, it might have made the transition easier than expected for everyone. It seems from the records and inscriptions that he was a very reasonable king, very smart with how he wanted to do things with the new land that became his. He gave his people rights and wanted to avoid conflict from within, allowing them a good amount of freedom to live how they wanted. They were just under his rule and the land of all those people were his. He was not very controlling outside of wanting to grow and have a bigger Persian Empire that was his. He helped the people of Babylon and most likely helped other people that were under more controlling kings than he was. He allowed freedom that most of the people in those places had not been able to experience before. “Cyrus was eventually killed in 530 BC while campaigning on his north-east frontier against a tribe called the Massagetae, somewhere to the east of the Aral Sea”.