Customer Reviews

Cyrus the Great

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Cyrus the Great is Harold Lamb's narrative of the life of the King of Persia who conquered the Medes, Lydians and Babylonians and marched into those mysterious lands to the east forging the largest empire of the time. Some of the book is, of course, informed speculation about everything from Cyrus's childhood to his motivations as an adult. The book was originally written in 1960 and I have a 1976 printing from Pinnacle Books. Lamb wrote an entire series of history and historical fiction books, writing mostly between World War I and II, on historical figures from Genghis Khan to Alexander the Great. At the time I bought this one, I missed the opportunity to buy about a dozen others of his works at a used bookstore and have been kicking myself ever since. I check the shelves every time I'm there and keep an eye out on Amazon but these books are really hard to come by especially in good condition with paperbacks this old.

Harold Lamb explains that "this book ... is not history" (p. 297). It is a dramatic imagining, rather, of the life, death and legacy of Cyrus the Great, the obscure Persian who conquered the Medes, Anatolia, Transoxiana, and Babylonia; who ended the era of Semitic petty kingdoms forever; and who founded what was at the time the largest empire the world had ever seen. That makes Cyrus an intriguing figure, but because the actual evidence of his background and reign is so thin, Lamb has a lot of room to invent whatever he wants -- about psyche, motivations, mood, statements, anything at all -- and he does precisely that.

So the book isn't history. It's still a lot of fun to read. My favorite parts are about Babylon and the Jewish captivity, casting the writings of Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel in a new and interesting light. The book isn't worth much as a history, because the author makes almost no effort to differentiate for the reader which parts are fabrication and which are fact. I recommend it to all readers, with or without a background in Persia or the wider Middle East (although readers with such a background will enjoy it more), with just the one caveat.