ahencyclopedia:PEOPLE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD: Cyrus the Great (First King of the Achaemenid Empire) CY
ahencyclopedia:PEOPLE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD: Cyrus the Great (First King of the Achaemenid Empire) CYRUS II (d. 530 BCE), also known as Cyrus the Great, was the fourth king of Anshan and the first king of the Achaemenid Empire. Cyrus led several military campaigns against the most powerful kingdoms of the time, including Media, Lydia, and Babylonia. Through these campaigns, he united much of the Middle East under Persian hegemony while keeping the local administration mostly intact. By guaranteeing some continuity and thus winning the loyalty of the elite, he laid the foundations for the Achaemenid Empire. Not much is known about the early life of Cyrus. The various oral traditions relating to his birth and youth are preserved only in the works of Greek authors like Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon, who present contradictory accounts of a mostly legendary nature. According to the most well-known account of Herodotus, Cyrus was the son of the Persian king Cambyses (c. 580-559 BCE) and the Median princess Mandane, daughter of the Median king Astyages (585-550 BCE). Ctesias explicitly contradicts Herodotus, however, claiming instead that Cyrus was the son of a Persian brigand named Artadates and his wife, the goatherd Argoste. Read More -- source link