I was watching a show about Persian Empire or the Achaemenid Empire and I was at awe when i Heard all his accomplishments, then a historian said that he is one of the very few to be called the Great. What do you guys think and does he deserve it?
The main sources we have about Cyrus come from Greek historians, as they were the only ones who really had a written language that could be extensively used by its (wealthy) civilians. And, out of the historians that we currently study, only two studied a lot about Cyrus' rule; Herodotus and Xenophon. Herodotus was born 50 years after Cyrus' death, and visited Persia to get more info about his history. Of course, some believe he isn't the most reliable source, and believed he embellished some of his "discoveries" for the sake of bias or intrigue for the people back home. Xenophon was a military commander long after Herodotus died. After conducting some military campaigns, he dedicated the later years of his life to writing something called the Cyropaedia, where we get a lot of our current knowledge of Cyrus the Great. Whether or not he's really great kinda comes from your interpretation of their writings, and how far you believe their stories. In the real world, Cyrus was influential, but he wouldn't have been remembered in the same light as he does today without the books written by Greek historians. Here's what we know about Cyrus' life:
Before Cyrus became the King of the Achaemenids, there were three main kingdoms in Eastern Asia; Assyria, Media, and Persia. Media and Persia were kinda synonymous with one another. A man named Astyages was the King of Media, and Cambyses was the Prince of Persia. Cambyses married Astyages' daughter, and Cyrus was born in 598 BC from their marriage. During his childhood, Cyrus was pretty "kingly". As he grew up, he was somewhat confrontational with the people who disagreed with him. The kingdom of Media was in a pretty average place at the time, so much so that the king had time to respond and argue against the parents of the kids Cyrus quarreled with. He was really smart for his age, and reached higher stages of Persian education by the time he was twelve. In 578, he was married to Cassandane, his first wife who gave birth to his son, Cambyses II.
After the death of Cambyses in 558 BC, he ascended to the Persian throne. After that, he used his military genius to take over Media, capturing his grandfather Astyages and the Median capitol of Ecbatana. Only a year after taking over Media, he took over the regions of Hyrcania and Parthia (both regions in northeastern Iran), who were formerly Median puppets. After he really finished securing the lands most people know as Persia, Cyrus made his first really big military campaign. He marched against the Kingdom of Lydia, and ended up capturing their capital of Sardis after a two-year war. This was all in the first decade of his rule, and he spent until 543 BC crushing any real rebellion in his new empire. Not much is known about how frequent and how large his military campaigns were, as his empire would have fallen apart if he wasn't at the capital for too long. Still, he ended up spending a lot of time managing his army directly, as shown in his conquest of south-central Asia. He ended up marching through modern-day Afghanistan, and moved south into India. Not all of his conquests were successful, and he ended up losing a large portion of his army after reaching Baluchistan.
However, by 540 BC, Herodotus claims that Cyrus held essentially all of "Asia" by the time he marched on Babylon. This can be confirmed by a quote from Cyrus himself, where he claimed that "The kings of the Westland dwelling in tents, all those brought heavy tribute to me in Babylon and kissed my feet". In 540 BC, he ended up attacking Babylon for the first time. Xenophon claims this point in history to be the height of Cyrus' military might, as he had extended his empire from a minor kingdom in Persia to an empire bringing down one of the richest cities in the Near East. The king of Babylon had formerly been an ally to Cyrus, and his final invasion caused a lot of power shifts across Mesopotamia. He ended up essentially puppetizing the Palestinians and Syrians, and actually promoted the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in an effort to repopulate the area with anti-Babylonian Jews. He ended up peacefully entering Babylon in 539 BC, and enforced Achaemenid rule.
An interesting feature of Cyrus' rule was his religious tolerance, and modern historians call him liberal for his time. He rebuilt a lot of the temples destroyed by the religiously intolerant Neo-Babylonian Empire, and almost tried to promote religious diversity. Herodotus records Cyrus burning his enemies at the stake, but this story is doubted, as doing this went against the Persian religion. Another historian, Baccylides, claims that he actually helped his enemies after he captured them, treating them nicely until they ended up dying from other causes. He introduced coins and built a strong capital, setting up invasions on Egypt and Libya carried out by Cambyses II. He finally died thirty years after he became king, his third and final decade on the throne mostly spent strengthening his empire. His son continued his conquests, and introduced the peak of the Achaemenid dynasty.
So, is he great? I think so, but whether or not he is is always up for discussion. The world was a divisive place at the time, so it could be argued that all he did was think ahead and plan well. Others might claim he was a genius, and one of the best generals of all time. The books I used as sources were possibly a bit biased towards Cyrus, but it's difficult to find a neutral secondary source as all primary sources are biased as well. Herodotus tended to make up stories to make Cyrus seem like a villain to the Greek readers, while Xenophon exaggerated his greatness due to them both being military generals. Whether or not you think he's great is how you interpret the evidence of the past. But still, going by his sheer number of successful campaigns and smart decisions, I'm going to go ahead and say he's pretty damn great.
TLDR:
Sources: Abbott, Jacob. Cyrus the Great. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900. Print.
Mallowan, Max. "Cyrus the Great (558-529 B.C.)." Iran 10 (1972): 1-17. Web.
Sorry if there are any grammatical errors, I didn't have time to check it all over! D: