The Persians, in race, language, and religion, were closely connected with the Medes. They appear first in human records as hardy and warlike mountaineers, noble specimens of the great Aryan race,—simple in their ways of life, noted for truthfulness, keen-witted, generous, and quick-tempered. The language which they brought with them when they migrated is known as the Zend, closely allied to the Sanscrit, and now only existing in the sacred books of the Zendavesta, containing the doctrine of Zoroaster (Persian name, Zarathustra), the founder of the Magian religion.
The Persians were, in their early history, subject to the Medes, but governed by their native princes. The Median supremacy passed to the Persians with the dethronement of Astyages, king of Media, by Cyrus.
FOUNDING OF THE PERSIAN
EMPIRE BY CYRUS
Master of Media, Cyrus came next into collision with the great kingdom of Lydia,[2] in Asia Minor. Crœsus was king of Lydia when Cyrus met his attack and conquered him, in 546 B. C. The rising empire of Persia was thus extended to the western seaboard of Asia Minor. The Greek colonies on the coast next fell a prey to the arms of Cyrus, and in 538 B. C. he captured Babylon, as we have seen, and added the provinces of the later Babylonian Empire to the Persian. Before this he had conquered the territory eastwards between Media and the Indus, and restored the Jews from captivity. His power and life ended in his expedition against the Scythian people, by whom he was defeated and killed, in 529 B. C. Cyrus, the greatest as a king and the best as a man among all the Persian monarchs, had spread the Persian sway from the Hellespont on the west to the Indus on the east.
[2] Lydia, with its capital at Sardis, and extending from the coast of the Ægean Sea eastward to the river Halys, was easily one of the most powerful monarchies of the second class in Asiatic history. The Lydians were a highly civilized, wealthy, and energetic people, great in agriculture, manufactures, commerce and the arts. In music and metallurgy their names are famous as inventors or improvers; they were proverbial in the ancient world for luxury and the softer vices that attend it.
He was succeeded by his son Cambyses who is distinguished by his conquest of Egypt in 525. He died in 522, on his march from Egypt against a Magian pretender to the throne. The usurper reigned for a few months, and was then dethroned and slain in an insurrection headed by Darius, son of Hystaspes, a noble, who succeeded to the throne.
THE GREAT REIGN
OF DARIUS
Darius Hystaspis, or Darius I, reigned from 521 to 485 B. C., and was a great and able monarch. He finished the work which Cyrus had begun, by setting in order the affairs of the vast empire which Cyrus and Cambyses had conquered.
