Even the shore of the Mediterranean did not stay their progress. They won many of the Greek islands, including Cyprus and Samos. The empires of Egypt and of Babylonia had been great, but this was greater than both of them together. And those two had been rivals. This of Persia seemed to be without a rival. It is little wonder that the Persian ruler assumed the title of King of Kings. He ruled right away into India. He ruled all that seemed to matter or to count for anything; and it had all been accomplished in not much more than twenty years from the time of the first revolt of Cyrus against the lordship of the Medes. How was it done? That is a question which must be answered in different ways. No one answer is enough. There were several causes which worked together for this astounding success of the Persians. But one of the chief causes, if not the chief of all, was Cyrus. We cannot doubt that. Throughout the whole of this greatest of great stories which I am trying to tell you we shall {113} not meet with an actor bigger and more glorious than this Cyrus. I doubt whether we meet with another quite as big. For not only were the extent of country and the power of the nations that he conquered extraordinarily great, but he made a very extraordinary use of his conquests. He must have been a great leader of men, a man whom others were ready to obey and follow; and he must have been a great general, according to the ideas of what generalship and the manœuvring of armies meant at that time; but besides all that he must have been a very wise man and a very good man. There can be little doubt that he was far more merciful to the people that he conquered than any other conqueror that has come into our story yet. He treated them with far greater kindness. That is proof of his goodness. Then he was very content to leave them their own institutions, including their religions, so long as they were obedient to him as their over-lord. That shows his wisdom, for it meant that the people he conquered were content to be under him. Under Cyrus, the Jews who were in exile at Babylon were allowed to go back to Jerusalem, and he gave orders which helped them to the re-building of the Temple there. It is thought that it was partly by the help of these Jews in Babylon that he was able to take that strong city, as he did, without a fight. But it is said that he had to divert part of the stream of the Euphrates in order to do so; and it is certain that he had already broken the Babylonian power before he took the capital.