Books: The Shepherd

CYRUS THE GREAT (309 pp.)—Harold Lamb—Doubleday—($4.50).

The wily moneylender was puzzled by his casual conversation with the two strange horsemen who had ridden into Babylon that day in 539 B.C. One of the men was dressed as a servant, the other as master; yet the servant spoke like a lord, and the questions he asked were odd for an ordinary visitor. He seemed intrigued by the River Euphrates, and when he rode on. he said to the moneylender: “I am much indebted to you today, for you have shown me the way that I can open into your city.” A few months later, :he waters of the Euphrates began to lower as if by a miracle. When they were only knee-high, the army of the erstwhile ‘servant” appeared, marching down the river bed to take Babylon without a fight, instead of attacking the thick city walls, the invaders had cleverly diverted the river into an abandoned reservoir.

Thus, according to Author Harold Lamb in his ninth excursion into what he calls “biographical narrative.” did Cyrus the Great of. Persia find a way to conquer Babylon while disguised as a servant. No one can be sure how much of the story is true, for as Lamb himself says, “all the verified historical data about Cyrus could be published in no more than six pages.” Lack of evidence has never bothered Lamb before: by combining the sparse clues available with a high sense of drama and a thorough knowledge of the ancient world, he has become master of the plausible what-might-have-been.

The Small King. The great King would have been a fascinating subject for any historian. Xenophon himself, though he had no direct knowledge of the man. fashioned an Education of Cyrus (Cyropaedia], which many students of the art rank as the world’s first historical novel. Cyrus’ name meant “shepherd.” and his father was Cambyses. “the small King of the Persians’ who ruled the Three Tribes living around the settlement called Parsagard, about 250 miles west of the Persian Gulf. Under Cambyses, the Persians were a peaceable lot. They kept few slaves, dutifully paid tribute to Astyages the Spear Thrower. King of the Medes, and lived by five things: “The seed grain, the tools that plant it, the water that gives growth, the tame animals that cultivate it, and the human labor that garners its harvest.”

Not so under Cyrus. As soon as he succeeded to his father’s throne, the fledgling King whose “close-cropped hair was tawny as a lion’s” threw off the yoke of the luxury-loving Medes, but tolerantly let Astyages live out his life in a pleasant alcoholic haze. When fabulously rich Croesus of Lydia rashly decided to march against the upstart, he did so on the ambiguous advice of an oracle: “If you cross the river Halys, you will destroy a great empire.” The empire Croesus destroyed was his own. but he too found himself quite content to serve his new master.

The People’s King. Of all Cyrus’ conquests, none was more deserving of its fate than Babylon, where the sick and the crippled were at the mercy of a ruthless Sanitation Guard, and men were skinned alive for stealing a sheep. When Cyrus came, the people rejoiced, for he was already known as the Shepherd and “the people’s King.” He ruled the greatest empire the world had ever seen through satraps and informers (“the King’s eyes and ears”), but his laws were just, and only once—when he ordered the slaying of two delinquent young guards with their own spears—was he guilty of an impulsive act of cruelty.

To Lamb, Cyrus was something new in the ancient world—a ruler who ruled for his people. The secret of his success can be found in one of the few documents that now exist—a personal record he kept on a clay cylinder. “My soldiers,” said Cyrus, “went about peacefully, widespread through the extent of Babylon. In all Sumer and Akkad I let no man be afraid.

I devoted myself to the internal conditions of Babylon and of all the other cities. I freed the dwellers from the yoke that was ill placed upon them.”