ary 1658. However, following this move, his health de-
clined, and he died suddenly on 3 September 1658.
Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey, but
when Charles II took power in 1661, the body was dis-
interred, beheaded, and thrown into the Thames River.
Cromwell’s head, placed on a spike on the Tower Bridge,
was recovered years later by his daughter and buried in the
20th century at Cambridge University, his alma mater.
One of his intimates wrote of Cromwell: “His body
was wel [sic] compact and strong, his stature under 6
foote (I beleeve [sic] about 2 inches)[,] his head a store-
house and shop both of vast treasury of natural parts.
His temper exceeding fyery [sic]... but the flame of it
kept down... yet did he exceed in tenderness towards
sufferers... A larger soul, I thinke [sic], hath seldome
[sic] dwelt in a house of clay than his was.”
References: Cromwell, Oliver, The Very Interesting Life
of the Famous Oliver Cromwell, With Accounts of the Civil
Wars in Those Kingdoms, to Which are Added, Memoirs of
major Desborough, and Henry Ireton (Manchester, U.K.:
William Wills, 1840); Bruce, George, “Marston Moor,”
in Collins Dictionary of Wars (Glasgow, Scotland: Harp-
erCollins Publishers, 1995), 157; The Overthrow of the
Scottish Army: Or, a Letter Sent from Lieutenant General
Cromwell, to the Committee of Lancashire sitting at Man-
chester, shewing the utter Routing of the Scottish Forces (Lon-
don: Printed for John Bellamy, 1648); “Oliver Cromwell
Writes to his Brother-in-Law after the Battle of Marston
Moor, 2 July 1644,” in Eyewitness to History, edited by
John Carey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1987), 177–178.
Cyrus the Great (Kuru-sh, Kurash) (ca. 590/585–
529 b.c.) Persian king
Much of Cyrus’s life is clothed in mystery and, as histo-
rians have found, myth. Born between 590 and 585 b.c.
in what is now Persis, Iran, he was the son of Camby-
ses I of the clan of the Achaemenidae, the predominate
clan of the Persian Pasargadae tribe. In either 559 or 558
b.c., Cyrus rose to become the king of the Persians when
his father died.
Soon after taking power, Cyrus went to war against
the Medes, in another part of Persia, and took captive
their king, Astyages; in 550 b.c., he incorporated the
Median Empire into his own, then proclaimed himself
the king of all Persians. This upset the Babylonians, who
shared a border with Persia, and they joined with the
Lydians and Spartans to fight him. In 546 b.c., Cyrus
marched on Lydia and took control of it, and he fought
and defeated Babylon in 539 b.c. In 11 short years,
Cyrus had conquered three of the mightiest powers in
the world at that time. After he defeated Babylon, he
issued his Charter of the Rights of Nations, in which he
laid out a plan for respecting human rights, the first such
declaration in the history of man. In it, he explained,
“When my soldiers in great numbers peacefully entered
Babylon... I did not allow anyone to terrorize the peo-
ple.... I kept in view the needs of people and all its
sanctuaries to promote their well-being.... [I] freed all
the slaves. I put an end to their misfortune and slavery.”
Cyrus also allowed the Jews to return from their exile in
Babylon to their homes in what is now Israel. He was
now master of an empire that extended from the Medi-
terranean to the Hindu Kush and from the Black Sea to
the Persian Gulf.
In 529 b.c., while fighting the Massagetae, a tribe
from near the Caspian Sea, Cyrus was killed; his son,
Cambyses II, succeeded him. After defeating the Mas-
sagetae, Cambyses II took his father’s body back to Persis
and buried it at Pasargadae, formerly the capital of Persia
and now the city of Murghab in modern Iran.References: Abbott, Jacob, Cyrus the Great (New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1900); Xenophon, The Story of Cyrus,
Adapted from Xenophon’s Cyclopaedia, translated by Clar-
ence W. Gleason (New York: American Book Company,
1900); Clarke, Samuel, The Life & Death of Nebuchadnez-
zar, the Great, the first Founder of the Babylonian Empire,
represented by the Golden Head of that Image, Dan. 2.32,
and by the Lion with Eagles Wings, Dan. 7.4.: As also of
Cyrus, the Great, the first Founder of the Empire of Medes
and Persians, Represented by the Breast, and Arms of Sil-
ver in that Image, Dan 2.32, and by a Bear, Dan 7. by
Sa[muel] Clarke... (London: Printed for William Miller,
1664); “Cyrus the Great,” in Command: From Alexander
the Great to Zhukov—The Greatest Commanders of World
History, edited by James Lucas (London: Bloomsbury
Publishing, 1988), 35–36.0 cyRuS the gReAt