Harpagus, the Median noble who turned Cyrus the Great’s revolt into an empire’s westward stride, is remembered for iron discipline joined to cold strategic patience. Wronged by Astyages in the tale Herodotus preserves, he quietly shifted nobles and regiments to Cyrus’s side, toppling Median power (c. 550 BCE) without wrecking the state it would become. As Cyrus’s general in Anatolia he favored sieges, terms, and calculated pressure: city by city Ionia bent, Phocaea emptied its ships and fled rather than yield, and in Lycia the tragic last stand at Xanthos gave way to Persian rule. Harpagus did not seek the stage—he secured it, knitting coastlands and valleys into Achaemenid order so that Persian sovereignty met the Aegean. In the imperial memory he is the quiet edge of conquest: the commander who won by resolve and method more than spectacle, a servant of a larger design whose victories gave Cyrus both frontiers and time.