The ambition of Cyrus, growing with advanc ing years, led finally, it seems, to his own destruc tion. The vision which Herodotus tells us Astyages beheld in a dream of the figure of the youthful Cyrus adorned with wings that overshadowed all Asia seemed now on the eve of fulfillment. The great conqueror's dominions actually extended almost from the Hellespont to the Indus. But disaster was at hand. Cyrus engaged in an in vading expedition against the Scythian hordes of the north (Herod. i. 204; Ammianns Marcel Thins, 20, 6, 7, 40). In a battle against their Queen, Tomyris, Cyrus is said to have been slain. Ctesias Pers. 6-8), however, states that Cyrus fell in battle against the Derbica'. a tribe bor dering on India. The year of his death was B.C. 530-529, and his age is given as seventy-one years. His body is said to have received a final resting-place at Pasargmbr. A tomb, now empty, still stands there surmounting a series of rising stone steps. Near by is a huge monolith slab that once bore his name: but this is broken and tumbled down, a DI omment, like the empty and lonely mausoleum, silently recording the fall of greatness.
- In estimating the character of Cyrus, after we have considered all the accounts of him, we may judge him to have been not only a man of great personal power, but an ideal king. The Persians called him father (Herod. iii. 89, 160) : the Jews looked upon him as their liberator: the Greeks admired his qualities as a ruler and legislator (,Eschylus, Pers. 764-68) ; and Xenophon chose him as the hero of his famous historic romance, the Cyromedia. Taken for all in all, his claim to be entitled Cyrus the Great, as history has crowned him. remains unchallenged with time. The best short account of Cyrus, with abundant references, is that of Justi, in Geiger and Kuhn, Grundriss der iranischen Philologic (Strassburg, 1897). Consuli also Dnncker, History of An tiquity, Eng. trans. (London. 188)1). Passing mention may be made of Horner, Dania, Darius the Median, Cyrus the Great (Pittsburg, 1901).