The Historians' History of the World 02

But gentleness and mercy constituted also the best policy. For defeating opponents without a battle they were the sharpest of weapons, carried by a commanding personality who not only compelled the admiration of his own people, but also brought his enemies to their knees, and showed his victory in the light of an inevitable decree of fate, thus infusing dejection and treachery into the ranks of the enemy. Who is there that approaches him? He is not only beloved by his own people as a father incomparable in every way, not only does all the splendour of story play round him as round Alexander and Charlemagne, but legends also have clustered about him, and the poetry of Xenophon and Antisthenes glorifies and idealises him. The Median prince and the Egyptian admiral, the nobility and priesthood of Babylon, as well as the Greek captains of the kings of the Lydians and Egyptians, with Eurybates of Ephesus and Phanes of Halicarnassus, throw themselves at his feet voluntarily, and to the betrayal of their own rulers; without a struggle the greatest empires, the two conquerors of Nineveh, surrender to him both themselves and their own kings in chains, as had been done to none other; even Tyre, that proud and mighty city, unconquered and unconquerable, with whose lion courage his predecessor and his successor, Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander alike, wrestled so fiercely and so long, did homage to him of her own free will, as did the sea-king of Samos, which was as far beyond reach as Tyre herself. Above all, the little people of the Jews hailed him at the waters of Babylon as they have done no mortal before or since, as the victor and rescuer, the liberator and saviour, the favoured of God and lord of the earth.

He rewarded them for it and so purchased for himself the most exalted, the most undying greatness: amongst all the rulers of the East whom we see conquering, destroying, murdering, and deporting, he is the only one who raised a downtrodden people from the dust, snatched it from its brethren’s fate of annihilation, restored it to its existence as a nation under princes of its own race, to its own peculiar development and its mission in the history of the world. He saved it, as he did his own people, which owed to him its consecration to eternal youth in history; so that, in spite of all the storms which have raged over it, it has escaped the fate of the thousand tribes which traversed the wide country of Iran before and after it, and are now vanished and forgotten.

Thus the consequences of his achievements are lasting, though in the course of thousands of years these achievements themselves have vanished, like all earthly things. He was not the product and child of his age, like the son of Philip, the nephew of Marius, the son of Pepin, or the offspring of the Revolution: but he was its creator and father, solitary and unique in the world’s history; he took firmer grip of the wheel of time than any other mortal; in the term of his life he brought an epoch to its close, snatched the lordship of the earth from the Semites and Egyptians, and won it for the Aryans for all time.f

CAMBYSES

[529-525 B.C.]

Cyrus bequeathed the crown to his eldest child, Kambujiya, called by the Greeks Cambyses, and the government of several provinces to Bardius (Smerdis), his second son. He thought that this pre-settlement of the succession would prevent the disputes usually accruing to the succession of a new king in the East. But this hope was disappointed. Cambyses had hardly ascended the throne when he murdered his brother: but the crime was committed with such care and secrecy that it passed unnoticed by the people, and it was thought by the subjects and court that Bardius was shut up in some distant palace in Media, from whence he would shortly reappear.

Freed from a rival who might have been dangerous, Cambyses then gave his full attention to war. Alone among the great nations of the old world, Egypt, protected by the desert and the marshes of the Delta, was able to withstand the power of the Persians, and followed in peace the course of her development. Since his unfortunate intervention in Lydia, Aahmes had always avoided any ground for strife with his neighbours. His ambition went no further than the establishment of the old suzerainty of Egypt in Cyprus. Thanks to this prudence, he lived on amicable terms with Cyrus, and profited by twenty-five years of tranquillity to develop the natural resources of his country. The course of the canals was repaired and enlarged, agriculture was encouraged, and commerce extended.