纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 026奥克瑟斯战车模型（6）

"When my soldiers in great numbers peacefully entered Babylon ... I did not allow anyone to terrorize the people ... I kept in view the needs of the people and all their sanctuaries to promote their well-being ... I freed all slaves."

The most famous beneficiaries of Cyrus' shrewd political decision after the conquest of Babylon were the Jews. Taken prisoner a generation before by Nebuchadnezzar, they were now allowed to return home to Jerusalem and to re-build the temple. It was an act of generosity that they never forgot. In the Hebrew scriptures, and especially by the prophet Isaiah, Cyrus is hailed as a divinely inspired benefactor and hero. And in 1917, when the British government declared that it would establish in Palestine a national home to which Jews could once again return, images of Cyrus were displayed with photographs of George V throughout eastern Europe. Not many political ploys are still paying dividends like that, two and a half thousand years later.

One of the perplexing things about the Persian Empire is that the Persians themselves wrote very little about how they managed it. Most of our information comes from Greek sources and, as the Greeks were for long the enemies of the Persians, it's rather as though we knew the history of the British Empire only through documents written by the French. But modern archaeology has provided new sources of information, and in the last 50 years the Iranians themselves have rediscovered and re-appropriated their great imperial past. Any visitor to Iran today feels it at once. Here's Michael Axworthy, Director of the Centre for Persian and Iranian studies at the University of Exeter, and the author of 'Empire of the Mind' - a history of the enduring ideal of the ancient Persian Empire: