He is buried in the place which he has made his capital, Pasagardae. People succumb to this conqueror partly because they believe it in their interest to do so.Ĭyrus dies in 530, campaigning against nomadic tribesmen in the northeast, near the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers. But Cyrus also uses propaganda more successively than any previous ruler, to spread and reinforce his fame. There is in these actions a genuine basis for his reputation. He allows the Jews to return from their Babylonian captivity to Jerusalem, and encourages the rebuilding of their Temple. He makes a point of respecting the Babylonian religion. He presents himself as liberator of Babylon, releasing the people from the yoke of an unpopular king, and he is received as such. He has earned his title 'the Great'.Ĭyrus is a politician as well as a conqueror. The basis of the first Persian empire (the Achaemenid empire) has been set in place within a mere eleven years of Cyrus defeating the Medes. His armies then continue west to dominate the Greek cities of Ionia, extending his power to the shores of the Aegean.īabylon and Mesopotamia fall to him next, in 539. He seizes the Lydian capital, Sardis, in 546, together with Croesus, its famously rich king. He then presses west to secure and expand his new empire. Three years later he captures their king and their capital city, Ecbatana. The balance between the Medes and the Persians rapidly changes after Cyrus II becomes king of the Persians in 559 BC. This is the heartland of the Parsa or Persians, whose king is a vassal of the Medes - and from whose name the region has until recently been known as Persia in the west. The Medes already control much of Iran including Fars, in the southwest. Their spoils are northern Assyria and much of Anatolia, where the Halys river becomes the border between themselves and Lydia. In 612 they combine with Babylon to sack the Assyrian capital at Nineveh. With a capital at Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), they establish themselves as powerful neighbours of Assyria. Of the two main Indo-European tribes moving south into Iran, it is at first the Medes who play the dominant role.
The Medes and the Persians: from the 9th century BC
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