CYRUS, the Latinized form of a Persian name borne by two prominent members of the Achaemenid house (Gr. Kupos; Pers. Kuru-sh; Babyl. Kurash; Hebr. Koresh).
I. CYRUS THE GREAT, the founder of the Persian empire, was the son of Cambyses I. of the clan of the Achaemenidae, the principal clan of the Persian tribe of the Pasargadae (q.v.). In his proclamation to the Babylonians Cyrus calls his ancestors, Teispes, Cyrus I. and Cambyses I., "kings of Anshan." But, as we know from Jer. xlix. 34 ff. (cf. Ezek. xxxii. 24 ff.) , Elam, of which Anshan is a district, suffered a heavy defeat in 596 B.C., and it is probable that the Pasargadian dynast Teispes con quered Anshan in this year.
The Pasargadian kings of Anshan were vassals of the Median empire until the rebellion of Cyrus (who seems to have become king in 558 B.C., as Herod. i. 214 gives him a reign of 29 years) which began in 553 B.C. and ended with Astyages being taken prisoner and Ecbatana plundered. From then Cyrus called himself "king of the Persians." The history of Cyrus soon became overgrown with legends. He rodotus (i. 95) gives four traditions about him. One makes him the son of Mandane, a daughter of Astyages (originally evidently by a god), who is exposed in the mountains, suckled by a dog and educated by a shepherd. At the same time, the rule of Cyrus and the Persians is legitimated by his family connection with Astyages. This account partly preserved in Justin i. 4. (prob ably from Charon of Lampsacus) and in Aelian, Var. Hist. xiv. 42, is alluded to by Herodotus i. 95 and 12 2. The second account, which Herodotus follows, rationalizes the first by changing the dog into a shepherd's wife. In the later part of his story Herod otus uses the family traditions of the Median general Harpagus, whose treason is justified by the cruelty of Astyages. Harpagus afterwards stood in high favour with Cyrus, and commanded the army which subdued the coasts of Asia Minor. In a third ver sion, preserved from Ctesias in Nicolaus p. 66 (cf. Dinon ap. Athen. xiv. 633 C), Cyrus is the son of a poor Mardian bandit Atradates (the Mardians are a nomadic Persian tribe, Herod. i. 125), who later, as a servant, found favour with Asty ages. After a Chaldaean sage prophesied his future greatness, he fled to Persia and began the rebellion. Parts of this story are preserved also in Strabo xv., p. 729, and Justin i. 6. 1-3 ; 7. I ; cf. Ctesias op. Photium 2-7. With this version Ctesias and Nicolaus have connected another, in which Cyrus is the son of a Persian shepherd of Pasargadae where he fights the decisive battle. The didactic novel of Xenophon, the Cyropaedia, is an invention based upon the account of Herodotus and occasionally influenced by Ctesias, without any independent tradition. The account of Aes chylus, Pers. 765 ff., combines Greek traditions and a few orien tal elements; here the first king is Medos (the Median empire) ; his nameless son is succeeded by Cyrus, a blessed ruler, who con quered Lydia, Phrygia, Ionia.
The principal events of the later history of Cyrus are in the main correctly stated by Herodotus. The short excerpt from Ctesias, preserved by Photius, contains useful information, and there is a brief notice in the fragments of Berossus and another in the Old Testament. The original sources are scanty ; besides the cylinder containing his proclamation to the Babylonians we possess only a number of dated private documents from Babylon. These serve to fix the chronology, which agrees with the dates of the canon of Ptolemy.
Soon after the conquest of the Median empire, Cyrus was attacked by a coalition of Babylon, Egypt and Lydia, joined by Sparta, the greatest military power of Greece. But in 546, he took Sardis, thereby making the Lydian kingdom a Persian prov ince. During the next years the Persians under Harpagus sup pressed a rebellion of the Lydians under Pactyas, and subjugated the Ionian cities, the Carians and the Lycians. The king of Cilicia (Syennesis) voluntarily acknowledged the Persian suprem acy. When Cyrus defeated the army of Nabonidus, Babylon it self surrendered, in Oct. 539, to the Persian general Gobryas.
From the beginning of 538 Cyrus dates his years as "king of Babylon and king of the countries" (i.e., of the world). With the capital, the Babylonian provinces in Syria fell to the Persians; in 538 Cyrus granted to the Jews, whom Nebuchadrezzar had transported to Babylonia, the return to Palestine and the rebuild ing of Jerusalem and its temple. (See JEWS, § According to Ctesias he defeated the Bactrians and the Sacae; and the his torians of Alexander mention a march through Gedrosia, where he lost his whole army but seven men (Arrian vi. 24. 2 ; Strabo xv. 722), a tribe Ariaspae on the Etymandros (in Sijistan), who on account of their support against the Scythians, were called Euergetae (Arrian iii. 27. 4; Diod. xvii. 81; Curt. vii. 3. I), and a town, Cyropolis, founded by him on the Jaxartes (Arrian iv. 2. 3; Curt. vii. 6. 16; Strabo xi. 517, called Cyreskhata by Ptolem. vi. 12. 5) . In S3o, having appointed his son Cambyses king of Babel, he set out for a new expedition against the East. In this war he was killed (Herod.) or mortally wounded (Ctesias) in 528 B.C.
In his native district Cyrus built a city with a palace, called after his tribe Pasargadae (now Murghab), and here he was buried. (See PASARGADAE.) In a short time he, the petty prince of an almost unknown tribe, had founded a mighty empire, which extended from the Indus and Jaxartes to the Aegaean and the borders of Egypt. Cyrus was a great warrior and statesman, hu mane in his treatment of the vanquished, in Babylonia behaving like a constitutional monarch. By the Persians his memory was cherished as "the father of the people" (Herod. iii. 89), and the Greek tradition preserved by Aeschylus (cf. above) shows that his greatness was acknowledged also by his enemies.
2. CYRUS THE YOUNGER, son of Darius II. and Parysatis, was born after the accession of his father in 424. When, after the victories of Alcibiades, Darius II. decided to continue the war against Athens and give support to the Spartans, he sent, in 408, the young prince into Asia Minor, as satrap of Lydia and Phrygia Major with Cappadocia, and commander of the Persian troops. He gave strenuous support to the Spartans in the hope that their general, Lysander, would help him to gain the throne against his elder brother, Artaxerxes. He assisted Lysander in the Pelopon nesian war, and by exerting his influence in Sparta he brought it about that, after the battle of Arginusae, Lysander was sent out a second time as the real commander (though under a nominal chief) of the Spartan fleet in 405 (Xen. Hell. ii. 1. 14). After the accession of Artaxerxes II. in 404, Tissaphernes denounced the plans of Cyrus against his brother (cf. Plut. Artax. 3); but by the intercession of Parysatis he was pardoned and sent back to his satrapy. Meanwhile Lysander by the victories of Aegospot ami and Sparta was supreme in the Greek world. Cyrus man aged to gather a large army by beginning a quarrel with Tissa phernes, satrap of Caira, about the Ionian towns, and pretended to prepare an expedition against the Pisidians, a troublesome mountainous tribe in the Taurus. In the spring of 401, Cyrus started from Sardis with his forces and, joining with the Spartans, advanced into Babylonia where he met the army of Artaxerxes. Here ensued, in Oct. 401, the battle of Cunaxa in which Cyrus was slain. Afterwards Artaxerxes pretended to have killed the rebel himself, with the result that Parysatis took cruel vengeance upon the slayer of her favourite son. The Persian troops dared not attack the Greeks, but decoyed them into the interior, be yond the Tigris, and tried to annihilate them by treachery. But after their commanders had been taken prisoners the Greeks forced their way to the Black sea. By this achievement they had demonstrated the internal weakness of the Persian empire and the absolute superiority of the Greek arms.
The history of Cyrus and of the Greek retreat is told by Xeno phon in his Anabasis (where he tries to veil the actual participa tion of the Spartans). Another account, probably from Sophae netus of Stymphalus, was used by Ephorus, and is preserved in Diodor. xiv. 19 ff. See also the excerpts from Ctesias by Phatius, and Plutarch's life of Artaxerxes. Cyrus is highly praised by the ancients, especially by Xenophon (cf. also his Oeconomics, c. iv.) ; and certainly as a general and statesman he was much superior to his weak brother, under whom the empire decayed. (See also PERSIA : Ancient History.) See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Altertums, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1921) ; J. D. Prasek, Gesch. der Meder and Perser (Gotha, 1906) and "Kyros der Grosse" in Der Alte Orient (1912) .