of these regions, and was analogous to those invasions which were undertaken under the wisest of the Roman Emperors, across the Rhine and Danube, against Germans, Goths, and Sarmatae.  The object of such inroads was not to conquer, but to alarm—­it was hoped by an imposing display of organized military force to deter the undisciplined hordes of the prolific North from venturing across the frontier and carrying desolation through large tracts of the Empire.  Defensive warfare has often an aggressive look.  It may have been solely with the object of protecting his own territories from attack that Cyrus made his last expedition across the Jaxertes, or towards the upper Indus.

The character of Cyrus, as represented to us by the Greeks, is the most favorable that we possess of any early Oriental monarch.  Active, energetic, brave, fertile in stratagems, he has all the qualities required to form a successful military chief.  He conciliates his people by friendly and familiar treatment, but declines to spoil them by yielding to their inclinations when they are adverse to their true interests.  He has a ready humor, which shows itself in smart sayings and repartees, that take occasionally the favorite Oriental turn of parable or apologue.  He is mild in his treatment of the prisoners that fall into his hands, and ready to forgive even the heinous crime of rebellion.  He has none of the pride of the ordinary eastern despot, but converses on terms of equality with those about him.  We cannot be surprised that the Persians, contrasting him with their later monarchs, held his memory in the highest veneration, and were even led by their affection for his person to make his type of countenance their standard of physical beauty.

The genius of Cyrus was essentially that of a conqueror, not of an administrator.  There is no trace of his having adopted anything like a uniform system for the government of the provinces which he subdued.  In Lydia he set up a Persian governor, but assigned certain important functions to a native; in Babylon he gave the entire direction of affairs into the hands of a Mede, to whom he allowed the title and style of king; in Judaea he appointed a native, but made him merely “governor” or “deputy;” in Sacia he maintained as tributary king the monarch who had resisted his arms.  Policy may have dictated the course pursued in each instance, which may have been suited to the condition of the several provinces; but the variety allowed was fatal to consolidation, and the monarchy, as Cyrus left it, had as little cohesion as any of those by which it was preceded.

Though originally a rude mountain-chief, Cyrus, after he succeeded to empire, showed himself quite able to appreciate the dignity and value of art.  In his constructions at Pasargadae he combined massiveness with elegance, and manifested a taste at once simple and refined.  He ornamented his buildings with reliefs of an ideal character.  It is probably to him that we owe the conception of the light tapering stone shaft, which is the glory of Persian architecture.  If the more massive of the Persepolitan buildings are to be ascribed to him, we must regard him as haying fixed the whole plan and arrangement which was afterwards followed in all Persian palatial edifices.