CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT
B.C. 538
GEORGE GROTE
On the destruction of Nineveh three great Powers still stood on the stage of history, being bound together by the strong ties of a mutually supporting alliance. These were Media, Lydia, and Babylon. The capital of Lydia was Sardis. According to Herodotus, the first king of Lydia was Manes. In the semi-mythic period of Lydian history rose the great dynasty of the [Greek: Heraclidæ], which reigned for 505 years, numbering twenty-two kings—B.C. 1229 to B.C. 745. The Lydians are said by Herodotus to have colonized Tyrrhenia, in the Italic peninsula, and to have extended their conquests into Syria, where they founded Ascalon in the territory later known as Palestine.
In the reign of Gyges, B.C. 724, they began to attack the Greek cities of Asia Minor: Miletus, Smyrna, and Priene. The glory of the Lydian Empire culminated in the reign of [Greek: Croesus], the fifth and last historic king, B.C. 568. The well-known story of Solon's warning to [Greek:Crœsus] was full of ominous import with regard to the ultimate downfall of the Lydian Empire: "For thyself, O Crœsus," said the Greek sage in answer to the question, Who is the happiest man?" I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of many nations; but in respect to that whereon thou questionest me, I have no answer to give until I hear that thou hast closed thy life happily."
The Median Empire occupied a territory indefinitely extending over a region south of the Caspian, between the Kurdish Mountains and the modern Khorassan. The Median monarchy, according to Herodotus, commenced B.C. 708. The Medes, which were racially akin to the Persians, had been for fifty years subject to the Assyrian monarchy when they revolted, setting up an independent empire. Putting aside the dates given by the Greek historians, we shall perhaps be correct in considering that the great Median kingdom was established by Cyaxares, B.C. 633; and that in B.C. 610 a great struggle of six years between Media and Lydia was amicably ended, under the terror occasioned by an eclipse, by the establishment of a treaty and alliance between the contending powers. With the death of Cyaxares, B.C. 597, the glory of the great Median Empire passed away, for under his son, Astyages, the country was conquered by Cyrus.
The rise of the Babylonian Empire seems to have originated B.C. 2234, when the Cushite inhabitants of southern Babylonia raised a native dynasty to the throne, liberated themselves from the yoke of the Zoroastrian Medes, and instituted an empire with several large capitals, where they built mighty temples and introduced the worship of the heavenly bodies in contradistinction to the elemental worship of the Magian Medes. The record of Babylonian kings is full of obscurity, even in the light of recent archæological discoveries. We can trace, however, a gradual expansion of Babylonian dominion, even to the borders of Egypt. Nabo Polassar, B.C. 625 to B.C. 604, was a great warrior, and at Carchemish defeated even the almost invincible Egyptians, B.C. 604.
His successor, Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 604, immediately set about the fortification of his capital. A space of more than 130 square miles was enclosed within walls 80 feet in breadth and 300 or 400 in height, if we may believe the record. Meanwhile, with the assistance of Cyaxares, King of Media, he captured Tyre, in Phoenicia, and Jerusalem, in Syria; but fifteen years after Croesus had been taken prisoner and the Persian Empire extended to the shores of the Ægean, the Empire of Babylon fell before the conquering armies of Cyrus, the Persian.
The Ionic and Æolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Croesus: "Down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free." Their conqueror, Croesus, who ascended the throne in 560 B.C., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyages, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising, in a south-eastern direction, Persis proper or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the east by the line of Mount Zagros (the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey). Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Uphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians or Chaldæans, under their king Labynetus: a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it afterward in its decline—but which was then in its most flourishing condition. The Chaldean dominion under Labynetus reached to the borders of Egypt, including as dependent territories both Judæa and Phenicia. In Egypt reigned the native king Amasis, powerful and affluent, sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian mercenaries and himself favorably disposed to Grecian commerce and settlement. Both with Labynetus and with Amasis, Croesus was on terms of alliance; and as Astyages was his brother-in-law, the four kings might well be deemed out of the reach of calamity. Yet within the space of thirty years, or a little more, the whole of their territories had become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an adventurer as yet not known even by name.