Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Empire, forged from the Medes and Persians a realm that stretched from the Aegean to the Indus and ruled it with an uncommon blend of military brilliance and clemency; he toppled tyrannies yet honored the gods and laws of each land, pioneered the satrapy system later refined by Darius the Great, and issued the spirit captured in the Cyrus Cylinder—the first order of Human Rights—when he freed captive peoples, including the Jews, to return and rebuild. At Pasargadae he raised a capital of austere elegance and, upon his death on campaign to the northeast, was laid to rest in the plain’s modest stone tomb, a fitting emblem of greatness without ostentation. In Persian memory and far beyond, Cyrus the Great stands as architect of the first durable, multicultural empire—majestic not only in conquest but in the justice that made conquest endure.
