50 Fun Facts About Cyrus the Great

Plutarch wrote that Persians admired which facial feature because Cyrus the Great had it?

A hooked nose marked Cyrus, so Persians went on calling such noses the most handsome. Plutarch recorded the taste some six centuries after the king died.

Which animals did Cyrus the Great place before his army so their smell would panic the Lydian cavalry?

Camels from the baggage train went to the front at Thymbra, and the Lydian mounts bolted from the unfamiliar smell. With the charge scattered, Cyrus went on to take the Lydian capital.

Which American Founding Father owned two copies of the Cyropaedia, an ancient Greek book about Cyrus the Great?

Thomas Jefferson kept one copy with Greek and Latin on facing pages, and it survives in the Library of Congress. Enlightenment thinkers read the book as a portrait of a tolerant ruler.

Which European collection holds the Cyrus Cylinder, the clay record of the Persian conquest of Babylon found in 1879?

The British Museum paid for the dig that unearthed it in the ruins of Babylon. The barrel-shaped cylinder had lain buried as a foundation deposit for about 2,400 years.

Which Lydian king, whose name became a byword for fabulous wealth, lost his kingdom to Cyrus the Great?

Croesus gave English the phrase 'rich as Croesus', yet Herodotus says Cyrus spared him after the defeat and kept him on as an adviser.

Cyrus the Great is the only non-Jew given which title in the Hebrew Bible, for freeing the Jewish exiles?

Messiah, meaning 'anointed one', is the title the Book of Isaiah gives Cyrus, even though the same passage says he did not know Israel's God.

Herodotus says Cyrus the Great left what in a camp to trap the Massagetae, nomads who were unused to it?

Wine was the bait: the nomads feasted at the banquet he had laid out, got drunk and were overrun. Their captured commander was the son of the queen, who swore revenge.

Which later conqueror visited the tomb of the Persian king Cyrus II, found it looted, and ordered it restored?

Alexander the Great had admired Cyrus since his boyhood reading and was appalled to find the tomb robbed. He set his officer Aristobulus to repair it.

In which modern country does the tomb of Cyrus the Great stand, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Iran is home to the tomb, a limestone chamber on a stepped base that has stayed largely intact for some 2,500 years while the city around it fell into ruin.

Which English word comes from an ancient Avestan term for a walled park, like the royal gardens of Cyrus the Great?

Paradise began as a word for a wall around a garden, and Greeks borrowed it for the huge parks that Persian nobles loved to build. Bible translators later used it for Eden.

What name do historians give the first Persian empire, founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BC?

Achaemenid comes from Achaemenes, the ancestor the royal house traced itself to. By the death of Cyrus the realm was the largest the world had yet seen.

The Cyrus Cylinder is often described, though historians dispute it, as the first charter of what?

Human rights are a modern reading of the text: historians note that Mesopotamian kings had long opened their reigns with similar lists of reforms.

Herodotus says the army of Cyrus the Great entered Babylon by diverting which river and wading along its bed?

Euphrates water was drained off until it stood thigh-deep, letting soldiers slip under the walls at night. Babylonian records, though, describe the city falling without a fight.

Cyrus the Great let Jewish exiles leave Babylon and go home to rebuild their temple in which city?

Jerusalem had lain in ruins since Babylonian armies destroyed its first temple about fifty years earlier. The rebuilt temple was finished under a later Persian king.

According to Herodotus, which warrior queen of the Massagetae defeated and killed Cyrus the Great in battle?

Tomyris led the attack herself after losing her son, in what Herodotus judged the fiercest battle ever fought between non-Greeks. Other ancient writers tell different stories, including a peaceful death at home.

In the account of Herodotus, how was the Median king Astyages related to Cyrus the Great, who overthrew him?

His grandfather is the answer Herodotus gives: the mother of Cyrus, Mandane, was the daughter of Astyages, who had dreamed that her child would take his throne.

Cambyses II, the son and heir of Cyrus the Great, went on to conquer which ancient land?

Egypt fell to Cambyses within five years of his father's death, giving Persia the Nile and the one great power of the day that Cyrus had left unconquered.

Which Greek oracle told the king of Lydia that attacking Cyrus the Great would destroy a great empire?

Delphi's answer came true, but not as hoped: the empire destroyed was the Lydian king's own. The reply became one of the best-known oracles of the ancient world.

After taking Babylon, Cyrus the Great styled himself king of the four what of the world?

Corners of the world was a boast Mesopotamian kings had made for many centuries, and Cyrus was the last ruler ever to claim it.

A replica of the Cyrus Cylinder has been kept since 1971 at the headquarters of which organisation?

United Nations staff keep the copy on show in New York; a Persian princess had presented it to Secretary-General U Thant.

Which later Persian king, not Cyrus the Great, founded the grand ceremonial capital of Persepolis?

Darius I raised the terrace and first palaces there in the generation after Cyrus, whose own capital lay about 40 kilometres away.

What title was held by the provincial governors who ran the empire of Cyrus the Great in his name?

Satrap comes from Old Persian words meaning 'protector of the province'; the governors Cyrus appointed were viceroys ruling for him, never kings themselves.

Which city did Cyrus the Great found as his first capital, where his tomb and palace gardens lie?

Pasargadae rose near the field where Cyrus beat the Medes. It lost its place as capital to a grander city under a later king.

In the legend told by Herodotus, which humble worker took in the infant Cyrus after the Median king ordered him killed?

A herdsman called Mitradates and his wife passed off their own stillborn son as the prince. Her name meant 'dog', which Herodotus says started a tale that a dog had reared Cyrus.

Which Greek city-state sent a herald warning Cyrus the Great to leave Greek cities alone, drawing his scorn?

Sparta's herald got a question for an answer: Cyrus turned to the Greeks at his court and asked who these people were and how many they numbered.

Before a visiting diplomat identified it in 1812, the tomb of Cyrus the Great was credited to whose mother?

Solomon's mother was named as its owner in legends that grew up after the Muslim conquest, and the nearby town is called Madar-e-Soleyman, meaning 'Mother of Solomon'.

Which Athenian soldier and student of Socrates wrote the Cyropaedia, an admiring life of Cyrus the Great?

Xenophon made the book part history and part fiction, a portrait of the ideal ruler that later helped shape Machiavelli's The Prince.

The Cyrus Cylinder says which god of Babylon chose Cyrus the Great to rule the city?

Marduk, the text says, abandoned Babylon and went looking for a more righteous ruler after the last Babylonian king had neglected his worship.

Which last native king of Babylon, blamed for neglecting its gods, was captured when Cyrus the Great took the city?

Nabonidus had spent about ten years away at an oasis in Arabia, leaving his son to run Babylon, which did nothing for his standing at home.

Ancient Greek writers describe the royal standard of Cyrus the Great as which creature raised on a tall shaft?

An eagle stayed the official banner of the Persian kings who came after Cyrus, down to the end of his dynasty.

Which ancient script, pressed into wet clay with a cut reed, covers the surface of the Cyrus Cylinder?

Cuneiform spells out the text in Akkadian, the old language of Babylon, not in the Persian of its conqueror.

Which biblical figure, taken to Babylon as a youth, is said to have served at court until Cyrus the Great?

Daniel is best known for surviving a den of lions. The Bible's last dated mention of him falls in the third year of Cyrus.

The tomb of Cyrus the Great is said to be the oldest structure in the world engineered to survive what?

Earthquakes have not brought it down in 2,500 years, and engineers credit a base that works like modern base isolation, letting the chamber ride out the shaking.

Ancient writers say the body of Cyrus the Great lay inside his tomb in a coffin made of what?

Gold covered the supports of the couch beneath it too, and the riches drew robbers, who stripped the chamber about two centuries after the burial.

Which priestly caste guarded the tomb of Cyrus the Great for generations, son succeeding father?

The Magi, the caste behind the wise men of the Christmas story, lived in a small house beside the tomb and were paid a sheep a day for their trouble.

The kingdom of Lydia, conquered by Cyrus the Great, lay in the west of which modern country?

Turkey's western provinces of Uşak, Manisa and İzmir cover the old Lydian heartland, a land known for striking the world's first coins.

The Massagetae, nomads Herodotus says Cyrus the Great fought in his last campaign, lived east of which sea?

The Caspian Sea lay to the west of their range, which ran across steppe and desert in what is Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on a modern map.

By the death of Cyrus the Great, his empire ran from Asia Minor in the west to which river in the east?

The Indus became the eastern edge after Cyrus annexed the lands west of it late in his reign. A later Persian king carried the border across the river.

Which book of the Bible opens with the decree of Cyrus the Great sending the Jewish exiles home?

Ezra begins with the king's proclamation, and its opening sentence is the same one that closes the Second Book of Chronicles.

Which ruler opened a lavish 1971 festival by paying homage at the tomb of Cyrus the Great?

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi cast himself as heir to Cyrus at the event, which marked 2,500 years of Persian monarchy and housed royal guests in a tent city.

Herodotus says Cyrus the Great spent a summer splitting the river Gyndes into channels after it drowned what?

A sacred white horse was swept away trying to cross, and the furious king swore to make the river so weak that women could wade it without wetting their knees.

The ancient writers Ctesias and Plutarch claimed that the name Cyrus came from the Persian word for what?

The Sun is only one guess: modern scholars have proposed meanings ranging from 'the young one' to an Elamite phrase for 'he who bestows care'.

A Greek oracle told the king of Lydia to flee once which animal became king of the Medes, a riddle about Cyrus?

A mule is a cross of two kinds, and so was Cyrus: half Mede and half Persian by birth, which made the 'impossible' sign come true.

Which capital of Lydia fell to Cyrus the Great after a brief siege that left a burn layer archaeologists have traced?

Sardis lost its fortifications to a huge fire that spread into the houses beside them, then became the seat of the Persian governor of the region.

Which daughter of Cyrus the Great became the mother of Xerxes, the king who invaded Greece?

Atossa became queen to a later Persian king, and the Greek playwright Aeschylus put her on stage as a central figure of his tragedy The Persians.

Which royal city on the site of modern Hamadan did Cyrus the Great capture when he overthrew the Median king?

Ecbatana fell after the Median army revolted and delivered its own king to Cyrus in fetters, as a Babylonian chronicle records.

Which Median general defected to Cyrus the Great and later conquered the Greek cities of Asia Minor for him?

Harpagus took walled cities by piling up earthworks against them, a siege method that was unknown to the Greeks who faced him.

For which beloved wife did Cyrus the Great order public mourning, which Babylon observed for six days?

Cassandane was the mother of his heir. Herodotus says Cyrus mourned her greatly and told everyone he ruled to mourn her too.

Before he ruled an empire, Cyrus the Great inherited the title of king of which city in Persis?

Anshan had been an Elamite capital long before the Persians held it, and Cyrus kept using its royal title on his cylinder even after taking Babylon.

Which younger son of Cyrus the Great was said to have been impersonated by a usurper who seized the throne?

Bardiya, known to the Greeks as Smerdis, or an impostor using his name, held the throne for seven months before a rival killed him and took the crown.