Cyrus the Great

Substantial advances in tactics and doctrine of land warfare were made in the middle of the 6th Century BC by Cyrus the Great of Persia, but he used the same cold weapons as listed above with only slight modifications (Ref 69, p 16). 

CYRUS THE GREAT (sixth century). Founder of the Persian Empire and king 559-529. Xenophon s Cyropaedia The Education of Cyrus), an edifying and fictional version of his life, was said to be the favorite book of Scipio Aemilianus. 

India has known little peace. Invaded from both land and sea, it has seen many conquerors and has witnessed many empires come and go. Cyrus and Darius of Persia sent their armies there. On the heels of the Persians came Alexander the Great. After Alexander came more Greeks, then Parthians from Iran, Kushans from beyond the mountains in the north, then Arabs, followed by Europeans. Unlike China, which remained remote and isolated from the rest of the world for much of its history. India was known to all the great nations of the ancient world. 

Torrey s attempt to restore Second Isaiah (which for him comprised chapters 34-35 + 40-66) to its former condition as one of the great literary masterpieces of the Hebrew Bible, before modern critics had reduced it to an incomprehensible scrap-heap and its author to a spineless and morally deficient sky-gazer,involved the excision of all references in it to Cyrus, Babylon, the Chaldeans, and the return from exile. Apart from his radical textual srugery, which few commentators have accepted, his approach seems to have been based on a fundamental misconception about the role of prophecy in ancient Israel and early Judaism. The point may be made by citing Max Weber s view on the prophetic role, stated in typically apodictic fashion in the section on Prophet and Lawgiver in his magisterial treatise Economy and Society. 

A signal instance of this, in a fulfilment of some prophetic declarations of Isaiah with respect to Cyrus, and instrumental to his final success, was displayed in the first great battle that took place at Thymbria, in which Neriglissar was slain, and Croesus put to flight... 

Cyrus, who is uniformly represented to have paid great deference to Cyaxares, who is called Darius in Scripture, consented to his assumption of the government. 

C. R. B. Fellow, University of Brussels 1928-1929. An acknowledgment of an expression of appreciation for a grant from the Cyrus M. Warren Fund of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which facilitated this work greatly, is hereby made. 

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