W HEREVER he went, Cyrus had found collaborators: Baby-
lonian priests; Miletos and the oracle of Branchidai; the
unnamed Hebrew who hailed him as the Lord's Anointed;
many Medes, against their own king. To Jews and Babylonians he
brought religious freedom; to the trading cities, peace and open roads.
Phoenicia and Cilicia did not resist, and kept their local self-govern-
ment; in Lydia, disarmed after one brief rebellion, Sardis continued to
flourish, and Lydian military spirit disappeared overnight.

Some of this may be put down to Cyrus' powerful character,
evidently also a character of great charm. The Persians remembered
him as 'a father', a gentle ruler, very different from his despotic son. ¹ Some, too, may be put down to the errors of Persia s opponents.
Astyages is said to have been cruel. Babylon especially, under the
doctrinaire Nabonidus, had interfered too much. But much, too, must
be attributed to the fact that Persian rule, if stern, was just and construc-
tive. Persian governors had a sense of responsibility for the economic
well-being of their people. Darīus commends 'his servant Gadatas' for
introducing fruit-trees from 'beyond the Euphrates' (translating the
Persian name of the province of Syria) into Asia Minor. ² If this was
self-interest, it was also enlightened. But it was also in accord with the
teaching of the Iranian religion, as reformed under the influence of the
prophet Zoroaster. In the ethics of this religion, attention to agriculture
(quaintly, to our ears; not merely attention to duty in general) figures
as a cardinal virtue; and servants of the Achaemenid Empire acted on
this principle. A duty of the soldier and nobleman was to protect agri-
culture; and at the very end of the empire we find the principle being
practised, even imprudently. In face of Alexander's invasion, Memnon
of Rhodes, the Greek professional soldier in Persian service, advised

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