Titans of History Read Free Page B

King of Babylon, Nabonidus (556–539 BC )—who left the city for ten years to live in Arabia—who was said to have gone mad before losing his empire to Persia. Nebuchadnezzar died in 562; his son and heir was a failure, assassinated after two years—and his empire scarcely outlived him by twenty years. Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon in 539.
    Despite his many benevolent achievements, Nebuchadnezzar is indelibly associated with unbridled conquest and the brutal treatment of subject peoples—the Destroyer of Nations who fulfilled the vision of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah: “He has gone out from his place, to make your land a waste. Your cities will be ruins, without inhabitant.”

CYRUS THE GREAT
    590/580–530 BC
    I am Cyrus, the Great, the King
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    Inscription from Pasargadae
    Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, was the founder of a powerful empire that dominated western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean for two centuries. He was a peerless ruler: a bold soldier andconqueror but also a tolerant monarch who recognized the human rights of his subjects, permitted religious freedom and liberated the Jews from slavery. In the ancient world he was lauded as the model of the ideal king, even by the Greeks, and was something of a role model for Alexander the Great. Cyrus’ realm stretched from modern Israel, Armenia and Turkey in the west to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the fringes of the Indian subcontinent in the east.
    Cyrus—Kourosh—was born in Persis, in modern-day Iran. His mother was the daughter of Astyages, king of the Medes in western Iran. As with other great heroes, such as Moses or Romulus and Remus, a legend was passed down about Cyrus’ birth (recorded by Greek historian Herodotus amongst others). Astyages had a dream that he interpreted as a sign that Cyrus would grow up to overthrow him: his daughter urinated a golden stream that squirted out his entire kingdom. Then he dreamed that a vine was growing out from between his daughter’s thighs. Clearly his grandson was a threat so he ordered that the infant be put to death. But Astyages’ adviser Harpagus could not bring himself to murder a newborn child, so he gave the baby to a shepherd. By the time Cyrus was ten, his precocious gifts had brought him to the court of Astyages, where his identity was discovered. Astyages allowed the child to live, but had his brutal revenge on Harpagus by tricking him into eating his own son.
    Whether true or not, the legend shows that from the start Cyrus was seen as the anointed redeemer of his people. In 559 BC he succeeded his father Cambyses I as head of the Achaemenid dynasty that ruled Persia, which was then restricted to an area of southwest Iran and subject to the Medes. In 554 Cyrus allied himself with Harpagus and led a rebellion against his cruel grandfather Astyages. The revolt gathered momentum during the next four years, and when Cyrus marched against Astyages in 550, the Median soldiers defected. Cyrus captured the land of the Medes and made its capital, Ecbatana, his own.
    In 547 he conquered the kingdom of Lydia, (in today’s Turkey) deposing the fabulously wealthy king, Croesus. This extended his domain throughout all Asia Minor, and drew in the Greek cities along the coast of the Aegean Sea. Having secured the western frontiers of his empire, Cyrus turned his attention to Babylonia.
    Babylon was the most splendid of the ancient cities, but it was governed by a tyrannical and unpopular king, Nabonidus. Cyrus was welcomed as a liberator when, in 539, he dug a canal to divert the River Euphrates and marched his army into the thousand-year-old capital. With Babylon came vast territories including Syria and Palestine, which gave Cyrus control over most of the Near East.
    Within twenty years Cyrus had assembled the greatest empire the world had ever seen. He realized that keeping his vast new domain together would require peaceful diplomacy, rather than