How Cyrus the Great Built the Persian Empire
Cyrus built the Achaemenid Empire in three great conquests: Media in 550 BCE, Lydia in 547 BCE, and Babylon in 539 BCE. The empire held together because, after each conquest, Cyrus treated the defeated ruling house with deliberate clemency, restored local cults, and incorporated the local aristocracy into his own administration. The pattern is the empire, and the pattern is what is unusual. The standard modern account is Briant (2002), chapter 7; for the Babylonian context, Brosius (2020).
The starting point
Cyrus came to the throne of Anshan in 559 BCE as a vassal of the Median Empire. Anshan was small, in the corridor between the Iranian plateau and the Mesopotamian lowland, and the Median king Astyages was Cyrus’s grandfather on his mother’s side. The kingdom was strategically placed but politically marginal. The capital, Pasargadae, was founded by Cyrus in the years that followed, on a fertile plain watered by the Pulvar River, and the garden, the palace, and the tomb there are all part of the same statement: that the king of Anshan is the king of Persia.
The first conquest: Media, 550 BCE
The Median Empire, founded in the late seventh century and consolidated by Cyaxares, had been the dominant Iranian state of the century before Cyrus. By the 550s it was in decline: the elderly Astyages had lost control of his court, the Median nobility was divided, and the subject peoples on the periphery were restive. Herodotus (1.108–130) attributes the fall of the Median empire to a court intrigue, in which Astyages’ minister Harpagus — offended by the king’s treatment of his son — secretly went over to Cyrus and helped him to overthrow the Median dynasty. The story is suspiciously neat. Modern historians, starting with Wiesehöfer (1996), treat it as the Greek version of what was probably a more complicated set of court manoeuvres.
The outcome, however, is clear. The Median army was defeated, Astyages was taken prisoner and not killed, Cyrus was acclaimed as the successor of the Median kings, and the transition was remarkably smooth. Cyrus married a daughter of the Median royal family and incorporated the Median nobles into his own court. The Median capital Ecbatana became a seasonal residence of the Achaemenid dynasty, and the Median tradition of statecraft — its use of the horse, its developed administration, its close ties with the Mesopotamian world — became part of the inheritance.
The second conquest: Lydia, 547 BCE
The second great conquest was Lydia, the wealthy kingdom of western Anatolia ruled by Croesus. Croesus, alarmed by the rise of Persia and egged on by the Delphic oracle, attacked the new Achaemenid state in 547 BCE, crossed the Halys River, and met Cyrus in a battle at an unknown location in eastern Anatolia. Croesus was defeated, Sardis was captured, and the Lydian kingdom was incorporated into the empire. Croesus was spared — the Greek tradition turned the survival into a piece of moral theatre, with Croesus at Cyrus’s fireside advising the great king — and the Greek cities of the Aegean coast, formerly subject to Lydia, were brought under Persian rule. Cyrus delegated the conquest of Ionia to Harpagus the Mede, who completed the subjugation of the Ionian Greek cities without, according to Herodotus, sacking the towns or destroying the temples.
The conquest of Lydia was of strategic and economic importance. The gold of the Lydian mines gave Cyrus access to the resources of the most monetised economy of the ancient world. (Coinage in Lydia begins under Alyattes c. 600–561 BCE with electrum; Croesus is credited with introducing the bimetallic gold and silver series.) The Greek cities of the Aegean gave the new empire a commercial and naval reach across the eastern Mediterranean, and a source of administrative talent, mercenary soldiers, and cultural prestige. The relationship between Persia and the Greek world would shape the subsequent history of the region for centuries.
The third conquest: Babylon, 539 BCE
The most consequential conquest was Babylon in 539 BCE. The Neo-Babylonian Empire, founded by Nabopolassar in 626 BCE, was the dominant power of Mesopotamia, and Babylon itself was the largest and most magnificent city of the ancient world. The last Babylonian king, Nabonidus, had alienated the priesthood of Marduk by his promotion of the moon god Sin — though modern scholarship (Beaulieu, Waerzeggers) is more divided on Nabonidus’ religious policies than the older accounts suggested.
Cyrus entered Babylon, by his own account in the Cyrus Cylinder, “without battle or bloodshed.” The cylinder is a document of Achaemenid imperial ideology at its most explicit: the new ruler is presented as the legitimate heir of the ancient kingship of Mesopotamia, chosen by the supreme god of the conquered people, and committed to the restoration of shrines, the return of deportees, and the rebuilding of city walls. The cylinder is best read as a Mesopotamian-style proclamation of royal piety, not — as the UN General Assembly’s 1971 citation of it as “the first declaration of human rights” suggested — a precursor bill of rights. Finkel (2013) is the most important recent reading.
The conquest of Babylon brought the Achaemenid state into possession of the wealthiest and most populous region of the ancient world, and gave it a long tradition of Mesopotamian learning as part of the inheritance. The Jewish exiles in Babylon, deported from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BCE, now found themselves under a king whom the Hebrew Bible presents as the divinely chosen instrument for ending the captivity.
The eastern frontier
The final phase of Cyrus’s imperial project was the consolidation of the eastern frontier, including the conquests of Bactria, Sogdiana, Gandhara, and the Indus Valley. The eastern campaigns extended the Achaemenid frontier to the Indus, opened the way to the lapis lazuli and gold of Afghanistan, and brought Indian mercenaries and elephants into the Achaemenid military establishment. The eastern frontier would remain a vital region of the Achaemenid state for the next two centuries, supplying troops, horses, and precious goods to the imperial centre.
The last campaign of Cyrus, against the Massagetae of Central Asia, ended in disaster: Cyrus was killed in battle c. 530 BCE, and his body was brought back to Pasargadae for burial. The death of the founder was a major blow, but the institutions that Cyrus had built were strong enough to survive. His son Cambyses II added Egypt to the empire, and his successors Darius and Xerxes consolidated and expanded what Cyrus had founded.
The methods
The methods by which Cyrus built his empire have been the subject of admiration since antiquity. Xenophon idealised Cyrus as the model of the just and wise king in the Cyropaedia, and the Hebrew Bible presents him as the divinely chosen liberator of the Jewish exiles. Modern historians emphasise several features. First, Cyrus was willing to treat the conquered peoples with clemency, sparing the Median royal family, sparing Croesus, and presenting himself to the Babylonians as the liberator of Marduk. Second, he was willing to adopt the religious and political traditions of the conquered peoples, presenting himself in turn as the legitimate heir of the Median, Lydian, and Babylonian kings. Third, he was willing to delegate authority to local rulers, using governors who could operate within the existing political traditions of the subject peoples.
I think the right reading is that the clemency was not a philosophy but a technique of rule. It was the cheapest and most efficient way to govern a large and diverse empire, and Cyrus was the first of the Achaemenid kings to use it consistently. The Cyrus of the Greek and Jewish traditions is a more romantic figure, and the modern reading is less flattering. The empire that Cyrus built lasted two centuries, and the method of clemency was one of the reasons.
Reading
- Briant, Pierre. From Cyrus to Alexander (2002), chapter 7
- Brosius, Maria. The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I (2020)
- Kuhrt, Amélie. The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period (2007), for the Cyrus Cylinder
- Wiesehöfer, Josef. Ancient Persia (1996), chapter 3
- Finkel, Irving. “The Cyrus Cylinder: The Babylonian Perspective” (2013)
- Stronach, David. Pasargadae (1978)