If Crœsus really began the war, he assuredly did so not frivolously but deliberately, in order to anticipate the inevitable attack. A fierce struggle seems to have taken place in Cappadocia (Herod., I, 76, and especially Polyænus, VII, 8, 1 et seq.), which already belonged to Cyrus. Crœsus retreated to prepare for another campaign, but Cyrus followed hard after him, routed him when he offered battle, and captured his capital Sardis after a short siege. Not only Herodotus, but also apparently his contemporary Xanthus the Lydian, quite independently of Herodotus, told how Cyrus would have burned Crœsus alive. However, Crœsus was pardoned, after all, perhaps because some external circumstance interposed (because a sudden shower prevented the fire from burning?), or because the conqueror changed his mind before it was too late. The pious and believing saw in the event a direct intervention of Apollo on behalf of the man who had honoured the Delphic shrine so highly.
The date of Crœsus’ fall is not quite certain. It may have been 547 or 546. When Cyrus had marched away, the Lydian Pactyas, whom Cyrus had appointed guardian of the treasures, raised a revolt, but it was speedily put down by the king’s generals. From that time forwards the Lydians never made the slightest attempt to shake off the Persian rule.
But now began that struggle of the Persians with the Greeks which has had so much importance for the history of the world. The Lydian kings had subdued a number of Greek cities in Asia Minor; but even these latter shrank from submitting to the still barbarous Persians, whose rule was far more oppressive, inasmuch as they ruthlessly required military service. But Harpagus, and other Persian leaders, quickly took one Greek town after the other; some, like Priene, were razed to the ground. Some of the Ionians, such as the Teians, and most of the Phocæans, avoided slavery by emigrating. Miletus alone, the most flourishing of all these cities, had early come to an understanding with Cyrus, and the latter pledged himself to lay no heavier burden on it than Crœsus had before him. In most of the cities the Persians seem to have set up tyrants, who gave them a better guarantee of obedience than democratic or aristocratic governments. In other respects they left the Greeks alone, just as they left their other subjects alone, not meddling with their internal affairs so long as they paid the necessary contributions, and supplied men and ships for their wars. Most of the other peoples in the west of Asia Minor submitted without much resistance, except the freedom-loving Lycians. Driven into Xanthus, the capital, they perished in a body rather than surrender. Some Carian cities also defended themselves stoutly. This may have given a Persian here and there an inkling, even then, that the little peoples on the western sea were, after all, harder to manage than the nations of slaves in the interior of Asia. Sardis became and remained the mainstay of the Persian rule in western Asia Minor. The governorship was one of the most influential posts in the empire, and the governor seems to have exercised a certain supremacy over some neighbouring governorships.
Though Cyrus had made, and continued to make, conquests in the interior of Asia, he was still without the true capital of Asia, Babylon, the seat of primeval civilisation, together with the rich country in which it lay, and the wide districts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and the border-lands over which it ruled. Before the capture of the city, in the summer of 539, a great battle took place, in consequence of which Cyrus occupied the capital without any further serious fighting, since the Babylonian troops had mutinied against their king. Late in the autumn of 539 Cyrus marched into Babylon, Nabonidus, the king, having previously surrendered himself. The entrance of Cyrus took place on the 3rd Marsheshwan, which month corresponds nearly to our month of November. If, as the strict rule requires, we make the small remainder of the year after the taking of the city to be the first year of Cyrus’ reign, then the events in the text fall in 538. According to Berosus, Cyrus appointed Nabonidus governor of Karmania, east of Persis; but in the annals inscribed on the tablet it is said to be recorded that Nabunaid died when the city was taken. Cyrus certainly did not put down the Babylonian worship, as the Hebrew prophets expected; he must even have been impressed by the magnificence of the service in the richest city of the world, and by the vast antiquity of the rites. But he was no more an adherent of the Babylonian religion, because the priests said he was, than Cambyses and the Roman emperors were worshippers of the Egyptian gods, because Egyptian monuments represent them as doing reverence to the gods exactly in the style of Egyptian kings. Sayce doubts whether Cyrus could read their documents; we doubt whether Cyrus understood their language at all, and regard it as inconceivable that he learned their complicated writing; indeed, on the strength of all analogies, we may regard it as scarcely probable that he could read and write at all.
[538-529 B.C.]
The countries subject to Babylon seem to have submitted without resistance to the Persians. The fortress of Gaza alone, in the land of the Philistines, perhaps defended itself for a time. On the other hand, some of the Phœnician cities, which offered a sturdy resistance to other conquerors, submitted immediately, and remained steadily obedient to the Persians down almost to the end of the empire. It seems, however, that, as the real prop of the naval power of Persia, they were almost always treated with special consideration by the latter. In the very first year of his reign in Babylon (538) Cyrus gave the Jewish exiles in Babylon leave to return home. Comparatively few availed themselves of this permission, but these few formed the starting-point of a development which has been of infinite importance for the history of the world.
How far to the east Cyrus extended his dominion we do not know, but it is probable that all the countries to the east which are mentioned in the older inscriptions of Darius as in subjection or rebellion were already subject in the time of Cyrus. In this case Chorasmia (Kharezm, the modern Khiva) and Sogdiana (Samarcand and Bokhara) belonged to him. Agreeably with this, Alexander found a city of Cyrus (Cyropolis) on the Jaxartes, in the neighbourhood of the modern Khokand. He doubtless ruled also over large portions of the modern Afghanistan, though it is hardly likely that he ever made his way into the land of the Indus. The story of his unsuccessful march on India seems to have been invented by way of contrast to Alexander’s fortunate expedition.
THE DEATH OF CYRUS
[529 B.C.]
Different accounts of Cyrus’ death were early current. Herodotus gives the well-known didactic story of the battle with Tomyris, queen of the Massagetæ, as the most probable of many which were told.[b] His account is much too picturesque to be omitted here, notwithstanding its somewhat doubtful authenticity.