Cyrus

said Cyrus.

said Astyages.

said Astyages.

After this time, the destruction by Cyrus son of Cambyses of the sovereignty of Astyages son of Cyaxares, and the growth of the power of the Persians, distracted Croesus from his mourning;

So Cyrus did this.

for Cyrus, son of Cambyses, had conquered Astyages and held him in subjection.

Here Cyrus remained thirty days;

All these came to Cyrus at Sardis.

With these words he ceased speaking.

"But the brave and humane man, well-disposed to his subjects, honoring virtue and striving lest he be thought inferior in any of the good things, compelling the unjust to repent and aiding the weak—him God, admiring his virtue, for the most part brings on to old age, as we hear of Cyrus and of Deioces the Mede and Idanthyrsus the Scythian and Leucon, and of many of the Laconian kings, and of some …

not even if, imitating Cyrus, you flow in along the river like a water-snake;

but the very rulers of men, men engaged in public life and farming, as it may happen, and simply living — as Cyrus ruled the Persians, and Deioces the Medes, and Hellen those named after him, and Aeolus the Aeolians, and Dorus the Dorians, and Numa the Romans, and Dardanus the Phrygians.

chapter of Xenophon’s history of the Expedition, addresses the soldiers to the following purport, “If I punish any one for his good, I am willing to submit to justice;

An avowal which Xenophon makes the characteristic of a great and wise prince, attributing to Cyrus a declaration of his firm persuasion that the more his subjects feared God, the more obedient he should find them to his laws, and the more attached to his person.

Among innumerable instances of this kind in ancient history, we may select that given by Xenophon in his account of Cyrus, where that prince takes the king of the Indians for arbitrator between himself and the king of Assyria.

and money came to him from Cyrus.

and as for Cyrus, whenever I visited him he invariably put off giving me an audience, and I could not bring myself to dance attendance at his gates.

Meantime he went to Cyrus and asked for money;

Then again, Cyrus (that we may take account of the barbarians also), not withstanding the fact that as a child he was exposed by his mother on the public highway and was picked up by a Persian woman, so completely reversed his fortunes that he became master of all Asia.

Now if Alcibiades in exile, and Conon after a disastrous defeat, and Dionysius, a man of no repute, and Cyrus, with his pitiable start in life, advanced so far and achieved such mighty deeds, how can we fail to expect that you, who are sprung from such ancestors, who are king of Macedonia and master of so many peoples, will effect with ease this union which we have discussed?

and, what is more, to see those who derive their power from Cyrus, who as a child was cast out by his mother on the public highway, addressed by the title of “The Great King,” while the descendants of Heracles, who because of his virtue was exalted by his father to the rank of a god, are addressed by meaner titles than they.

Read the panegyrics, Torquatus — not of those who were praised by Homer, not of Cyrus, not of Agesilaus, not of Aristides or Themistocles, not of Philip or Alexander;

for if he had ever been happy, he would have carried his happy life through even to that pyre built by Cyrus.

And so, though Cyrus that Persian was a most just and most wise king, yet the affair of the people—for that, as I said before, is the commonwealth—does not seem to me to have been most desirable, when it was ruled by the nod and at the will of one man;

For under that king, to name him above all—tolerable, or, if you will, even lovable, Cyrus—there lies, ready for the licence of a mind once changed, that most cruel Phalaris, into whose likeness the rule of one man slips by an easy and downhill course.

since Cyrus both submerged and pressed down Asia.

The bites of beasts are the ornaments of youth, as the scars of the bear in Cyrus.

And the Ionians afterwards had a large navy in the time of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and Cambyses his son;

and in the case of the Ionians, when their power had advanced to a high pitch, Cyrus and the Persian kingdom, having subdued Croesus and all within the Halys to the sea, marched against them, and reduced to bondage their cities on the mainland, as Darius afterwards did even the islands, conquering them by means of the fleet of the Phoenicians.

But even when they had suffered in Sicily the loss of other forces, and of the greater part of their fleet, and were now involved in sedition at home, they nevertheless held out three years, both against their former enemies, and those from Sicily with them, and moreover against the greater part of their allies who had revolted, and Cyrus, the king's son, who afterwards joined them, and who suppli …

and Cyrus the Great became, after his victory, a friend to this very Croesus.

and you, Cyrus, command that the pyre be quenched.

Cyrus too had proclaimed beforehand the restoration of the Hebrews;

Cyrus thirty years, Cambyses nineteen, Darius forty-six, Xerxes twenty-six, Artaxerxes forty-one, Darius eight, Artaxerxes forty-two, Ochus eight, Arses three.

And even that success has not benefited him, but you will find him at one and the same time using the Lacedaemonians to cripple our city, and struggling for his own crown against Clearchus and Cyrus.

For he was manifestly more concerned about the war in Cyprus than about any other, and regarded Evagoras as a more powerful and formidable antagonist than Cyrus, who had disputed the throne with him.

Again, while it is not at all certain from the expedition of Cyrus that he would have endured the dangers of Evagoras, yet it is obvious to all from the deeds of Evagoras that the latter would have readily attempted the exploits of Cyrus.

But while Cyrus with a Persian army conquered the Medes, a deed which many a Greek or a barbarian could easily do, Evagoras manifestly accomplished the greater part of the deeds which have been mentioned through strength of his own mind and body.

And yet, after they had given these pledges both to our allies and to the King and had conquered us in war, they reduced those whom they had sworn to set free to a state of slavery worse than that of the Helots, and they returned the favour of the King in such wise that they persuaded Cyrus, his younger brother, to dispute the throne with him, and collected an army to support Cyrus, placing Clearc …

and that Agesilaus, with the help of the army of Cyrus, conquered almost all the territory this side of the Halys river.

for they were clearly shown by the troops who marched inland with Cyrus to be no better than the King’s soldiers who live on the coast.

But after Cyrus had been killed, and all the people of Asia had joined forces, even under these favorable conditions they made such a disgraceful failure of the war as to leave for those who are in the habit of vaunting Persian valor not a word to say.

Cyrus, however, after he had conquered all the military might of the king, would have gained mastery of the throne had it not been for his rashness, which caused him not only to forfeit that mighty empire, but brought his followers into extreme danger.

and I fancy that, except Cyrus and Xerxes, you think there has never existed a single man who was of any account.

he swore, therefore, that he would reduce that river, which was carrying off the king's retinue, to such a state that it could be crossed and trodden even by women.

And so there perished both time—a great loss in great affairs—and the soldiers' ardour, which useless toil broke, and the opportunity of attacking the unprepared, while he waged against a river the war he had declared against the enemy.

For when, about to besiege Babylon, he was hurrying to a war whose greatest crises lie in opportunities, he tried to cross the river Gyndes, which spreads wide, at a ford—a thing scarcely safe even when it has felt the summer and been brought to its lowest.

Run through Cyrus and Cambyses and the whole line of the Persian kingdom.

Then king Ochus, who was also called Cyrus, reigned twenty-four years.

For in the reign of Cyrus and Darius was Zechariah, at which time Thales, prince of natural philosophers, gave Croesus, when he questioned him, no certain answer about divinity, being troubled, no doubt, by the voices of the prophets.