CTRF8
637
CYRUS
a. a Slavonic) people, who seem to luiye dwelt, or | Irapfl rather roved, along the Oxus, from Bokhara Slliiva ; and that, after alternate socceeses in battle, attached the whole nation to himself in faithful al- i^zice. Their king is called Amorges by Ctesias. e jr are undoabtedlj the same people that Herodotas i, 64) calls Amr/rgUm Sacians ; and it is highly prob- Le that they gaye to the district of Margiana its name. eir women fought in ranks as systematically as the »ii. Strabo has cursorily told us of a tradition (xv, p. 807) that Cyrus escaped with but seven men rough the deserts of Gedrosia, fleeuig from the " In- lets'*— which might denote an unsuccessful war lainst Candahar, etc., a country which certainly was »t reduced to the Persian empire until the reign of eurius Hystaspis.
The closing scene of the career of Cyrus waa in bat- Q -with a people living on one or both banks of the ver laxartes, now the Syr-deria. Herodotus calls le enemy the Massagetans, who roamed along the 3rth bank of the river : according to Ctesias it was le I>erbices, who seem to have been on the south. •otli may, in fact, have combined in the war. In ther respects the narrative of Ctesias is beyond com- ariaon more credible, and more agreeable with other nown facts, except tiiat he introduces the fiction of ndians toUk eUpkanis aiding the enemy. Two battles rere fought on successive days, in the former of which yyros was mortally wounded, but was carried off by lis people (B.C. 629, according to Clinton). In the lext, the Sacian cavalry and the faithful Amorges ame to support liim, and the Derbices sustained a to- al and bloody defeat. Cyrus died the third day after lis wound : his body was conveyed to Pasargade, and juried in the celebrated monument, which was broken >pen by the Macedonians two centuries afterwards ^Strabo, xv, 3). A description is given of the tomb In Arrian (vi, 29) : it was a neat quadrangular edifice, with a low door leading into a little chamber, in which lay a golden sarcophagus, containing the body of Cy- ras. The inscription, reported by Aristobulus, an eye- witness, is this : ** O man, I am Cyrus, who acquired the empire for the Persians, and was king of Asia. Grudge me not, then, this monument." It is gener- ally supposed to have perished, but Sir R. K. Porter has sought to identify it with an extant building known by the natives as that of 'Hhe mother of Suleiman" (TVoreZs, i, 498). His name is found on monuments at Murghab, north of Persepolis (Hdck, Vei, Med. N. Pers, Momtm,),
Sappoeed Tomb of Cyras.
6. C(mdud and RdaHont of Cyrus towards the Jews, — Hitherto the great kings, with whom the Jews had been brought into contact, had been open oppressors or seductive allies ; but Cyrus was a generous libera- tor and a just guardian of their rights. An inspired prophet (Isa. xliv, 28) recognised in him " a shepherd" of the Lord, an " anointed" king (Isa. xlv, 1 ; H*^^,
MesdaK) ; and the title seemed to later writers to in- vest him with the dignity of being in some sense a type of Christ himself (Jerome, Comm. in Isa, xlv, 1). His successes are connected in the prophecy with their religious issue ; and if that appear to be a partial view of history which represents the restoration of a poor remnant of captive Israelites to their own land as the final cause of his victories (Isa. xliv, 28-xlv, 4), it may be answered that the permanent effects which Persm has wrought upon the world can be better traced through the Jewish people than through any other channel. The laws, the literature, the religion, the very ruins of the material grandeur of Persia have passed away, and still it is possible to distinguish the effects which they produced in preparing the Jews for the fulfilment of their last mission. In this respect, also, the parallel, which has already been hinted, holds good. Cyrus stands out clearly as the representative of the East, as Alexander afterwards of the West. The one led to the development of the idea of order, and the other to that of independence. Ecclesiastical- ly the first crisis was signalized by the consolidation of a Church, the second by the distinction of sects. The one found its outward embodiment in " the great synagogue," the other in the dynasty of the Asmona- ans.
The kings of Assyria and Babylon had carried the Jews into captivity, both to remove a disaffected na> tion firom the frontier, and to people their new cities. By tmdoing this work, Cyrus attached the Jews to himself as a garrison at an important post. But we may believe that a nobler motive conspired with this. The Persian religion was primitively monotheistic, and strikingly free firom idolatry ; so little pagan in its spirit that, whatever of the mystical and obscure it may contain, not a single impure, cruel, or otherwise immoral practice was united to any of its ceremonies. It is credible, therefore, that a sincere admiration of the Jewish faith actuated the noble Persian when he exclaimed, in the words of the book of Ezra, '* Go ye up and build in Jerusalem the house of Jehovah, God of Israel; he is GodT — and forced the Babylonian temples to disgorge their ill-gotten spoil. It is the more remarkable, since the Persians disapproved the confinement of temples. Nevertheless, impediments to the fortification of Jerusalem afterwards arose, even during the reign of Cyrus (Ezra iv, 5). See Capttv-