Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [15]
More fundamentally, most modern historians agree that Cyrus's tolerance was a matter of strategy and expediency, not a matter of principle. Embracing local deities—whether Marduk for the Babylonians or Yahweh for the Jews—gave Cyrus legitimacy. Respecting local traditions and practices decreased the likelihood of resistance and rebellion among conquered peoples. The modern concept of freedom of religion as a “human right” was foreign to Cyrus and his successors. For the Achaemenids, tolerance was simply good politics.19
THE MADMAN AND HIS CHAIR
Cyrus left the massive empire he established to his son Cambyses, who ruled for just eight years (roughly 530-522 BC). According to Greek sources, Cambyses did not share his father's even temperament. Indeed, Herodotus opined: “I have no doubt whatever that Cambyses was completely out of his mind.” Herodotus recorded a particularly charming episode involving Cambyses's efforts to enforce the rule of law: “One judge, Sisamnes, had given an unjust judgment in return for a bribe; Cambyses slaughtered him like a sheep and flayed him. Then from the skin he caused leather strips to be tanned and with them covered the judgment seat of the son Otanes, who was appointed to the father's office with the grim admonition to remember on what he sat.”20
If Cambyses was a madman, he was an effective one. He invaded Egypt soon after becoming king, and by 525 had captured Heliopolis, where he continued his father's policy of respecting local customs and religions.
In Egypt, Cambyses declared himself a “son of Ra” and “beloved of [the goddess] Wajet.” At the urging of his Egyptian advisor Udjahorresnet, Cambyses went to the town of Sais and prostrated himself at the altar of Neith, an Egyptian goddess. He embraced the rites and rituals of Egyptian tradition, made offerings to the local gods, and helped restore their temples. In the famous Serapeum stele, excavated in Egypt in 1851, Cambyses is dressed in Egyptian royal garb, with uraeus—the sacred Egyptian rearing cobra—around his neck. As the historian Pierre Briant puts it, Cambyses permitted himself to be “Egyptianized” in Egypt. Rather than imposing Persian culture on his subjects, Cambyses presented himself as a devotee of the Egyptian deities and the legitimate successor to the Egyptian pharaohs.21
In addition to Egypt, Cambyses also subjugated Phoenicia, Libya, and many Greek cities in Asia Minor. With these conquests, the Achaemenid Empire not only had swallowed every major kingdom in the Near East and central Asia, but also, by incorporating the Phoenician and Egyptian fleets, had become the world's greatest naval power, controlling a vast maritime front from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Cambyses died in 522 BC, of gangrene or suicide, depending on the source. Later that year, a distant relative of his named Darius took the throne.22
DARIUS THE GREAT
The Achaemenid Empire reached its zenith under Darius the Great, who ruled for nearly forty years (roughly 522-486 BC). Darius expanded Persian dominion into India, strengthened its foothold in Greece, and even made forays into eastern Europe, marching past the Danube in a failed effort to conquer the Scythian peoples. (The Scythians were helmeted, expert horseback riders from the steppes of southern Russia, who, as part of their funerary rituals, toasted marijuana seeds on red-hot stones and inhaled the fumes.) At the outset of his reign, Darius also had to contend with a rash of opportunistic rebellions brought about by the questionable nature of his ascent to the throne. He suppressed all of them, some quite ruthlessly, “smother[ing] them in a sea of blood,” in his own words.23
Darius was by all accounts an exceptional