Cyrus the Great c.600-529BC
Founder of the Persian Empire

He was a cousin of Darius I. In c.550BC, he made Astyages, last King of Media, a prisoner, and took his capital, Ecbatana. By 548BC he was King of Persia (Iran), and with the support of the tribes on 'the Lower Sea', or Persian Gulf, he took Sippara (Sepharvaim) and Babylon itself (539BC). Cyrus, a polytheist, at once began a policy of religious conciliation, restoring enslaved nations, including the Jews, to their native countries, and granting them religious freedom. The empire of Lydia had fallen to Cyrus (c.546BC), and by 539BC he ruled Asia from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. His friendliness towards the Phoenicians and Jews led to his being called, in the Old Testament, the 'Shepherd' and the 'Anointed of Jehovah'. He extended his empire from the Arabian desert and the Persian Gulf in the south, to the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian in the north. He became the epitome of the heroic conqueror: brave, magnanimous and tolerant. Cambyses II became King of Babylon. The Cyropaedia of Xenophon is a historical romance drawn from his life.

Bibliography: Harold Lamb, Cyrus the Great (1976)