Cyrus. I. The Elder, the Koresh of the Hebrew Scriptures (supposed to be from the Persian kolir, the sun), the founder of the Persian empire, reigned from about 558 to 529 B. C. He was grandson of Astyages, king of Media. Most of the particulars of his life are differently related in the histories of Ctesias and Herodotus, and in the Cyropsedia of Xenophon. But as Ctesias is in general untrustworthy, and as Xenophon seems to have written his book, a kind of philosophical romance, without much regard for history, the story of Herodotus, in spite of its legendary character, has been generally adopted by modern historians down to Grote. According to this narrative, Cyrus was the son of Cambyses, a Persian noble, and of Mandane, the daughter of Astyages. This king commanded him to be put to death immediately after his birth, in consequence of dreams which were explained by the magi as presages of the future royal greatness of the child. Saved by the humanity of Harpagus, an officer of the court, and of a herdsman, who was to expose him to death in the wilderness, he was brought up by the latter as his son in a secluded mountain region, where he soon became the leader of his playfellows, who chose him as their king.

Having in this capacity ordered the son of a distinguished Median to be scourged for disobedience, he was brought before Astyages, to whom his bold answers and his features soon betrayed his origin. The herdsman was pardoned, Harpagus cruelly punished in the person of his son, and Cyrus, whom the magi declared to have already attained the threatening greatness predicted by the dreams, was sent to Persia to his parents. When he grew up, following the secret advice of Harpagus, he prepared to dethrone his grandfather. The hardy and warlike Persians were easily induced to shake off the yoke of Media. Harpagus betrayed the first army, sent under his command against the rebels; and with a second the king himself was defeated near Pasargadse, and made prisoner. Cyrus was acknowledged by the Medes as ruler of the new empire of Persia and Media, of which they became the second nation. He now marched against Croesus, king of Lydia, who crossed the Halys to revenge his fallen ally and brother-in-law As-tyages. A bloody but indecisive battle was fought in Cappadocia. Croesus thought it wiser to return to his own country, hoping to recommence the campaign with reinforcements from his allies, the kings of Egypt and Babylonia, and the Lacedaemonians. But before these arrived Cyrus had in his turn crossed the Halys, vanquished the celebrated Lydian cavalry on the plain before Sardis, taken that city, and made Croesus prisoner.

The Greeks of Asia Minor, who had rejected the previous invitations of Cyrus to revolt against the Lyd-ians, were now conquered by an army under Harpagus. A part of the Phocaeans, however, preferred emigration to the distant regions of the west. The Carians, Caunians, Lycians, and others were next subdued by the same general, while Cyrus himself was preparing and partly executing his more important eastern conquests. For the reduction of Babylonia, the second great empire of western Asia, by Cyrus, we have the concurring testimony of the three above mentioned Greek historians, as well as of the Scriptures, though according to Xenophon he acted only as general of his uncle Cyaxares II., son of Astyages, king of Media. Herodotus describes how, on his march from the northeast against Babylon, Cyrus chastised the river Gyndes, an affluent of the Tigris, for drowning one of his sacred white horses, by digging 360 channels, " so that women in future should cross it without wetting their knees;" how he turned the Euphrates by a canal into the artificial lake made by the Babylonian queen Nitocris, "on which the river sank to such an extent, that the natural bed of the stream became ford-able;" how through this bed the Persians entered the city and took it by surprise; and how, ""owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents at Babylon declare), long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had chanced, but, as they were engaged in a festival, continued dancing and revelling until they learned the capture but too certainly." Confirming these statements, the Hebrews dwell on the exploits of their deliverer from the Babylonish captivity; on the "one from the north" and "from the rising of the sun," who comes " upon princes as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth clay;" who executes "on Babylon the vengeance of the Lord;" "that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers; that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid" (Isaiah). They relate how "the mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they have remained in their holds, their might hath failed; they became as women;" how one post runs " to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end " (Jeremiah). After the fall of the capital (538), which seems to have been greeted by many oppressed nations of Asia as the commencement of an era of justice and freedom, all the provinces of the Babylonian empire speedily surrendered to the conqueror, who was now master of nearly all the countries between the Indus and the AEgean, the Oxus and the Red sea.

Satisfied with this vast dominion, which he ruled wisely and justly, Xenophon makes him die in peace and in his bed with a Socratic speech on his lips; but Arrian attributes to him afterward an invasion of India across the desert of Arachosia; Ctesias, an expedition against the Derbices, a people in the Caucasian regions, in which he is slain; and Herodotus, an attack upon the Massagetae, northern nomads ruled by a queen, Tomyris, and greatly resembling the Scythians, in whose country he was defeated and slain in a bloody battle. There is, however, some testimony that he was buried in Pasargadas in his native province, " where his tomb was honored and watched until the breaking up of the empire, while his memory was held in profound veneration among the Persians." "There is much reason to believe," says Rawlinson, "that the tomb of Cyrus still exists at Murgab, the ancient Pa-sargadae. On a square base, composed of immense blocks of white marble, rising in steps, stands a structure so closely resembling the description of Arrian, that it seems scarcely possible to doubt that it is the tomb which in Alexander's time contained the body of Cyrus. It is a quadrangular edifice or chamber, built of blocks 5 ft. thick, which are shaped at the top into a sloping roof.

Internally the chamber is 10 ft. long, 7 wide, and 8 high. There are holes in the marble floor, which seem to have admitted the fastenings of a sarcophagus. The tomb stands in an area marked out by pillars, where occurs repeatedly the inscription (written both in Persian and the so-called Median), 'I am Cyrus the king, the Achaeme-nian.' It is called by the natives the tomb of the mother of Solomon." II. The Younger, second son of Darius Nothus, king of Persia, received from his father at an early age the satrapy of Lydia, Phrygia, and other parts of Asia Minor (407 B. C.). When his elder brother, Artaxerxes II., ascended the throne, he formed a plot against his life, which was discovered by Tissaphernes, and pardoned on the intercession of Parysatis, widow of Darius. Reinstated in his satrapy, Cyrus collected a powerful army, including 13,000 Greek mercenaries (one of whom was Xeno-phon, their leader in the subsequent retreat), and marched from Sardis in the spring of 401 toward Babylonia, with the secret purpose of dethroning his brother.

Having crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, he met the king at the head of an immense army, near Cunaxa. The battle was nearly won, especially by the valor of the Greeks on the right wing, when, perceiving Artaxerxes in the centre, the ambitious prince furiously rushed to assail him, and fell pierced by a javelin, after having wounded his brother. The character and accomplishments of this prince are described by Xenophon, in the first book of the Anabasis.