Explanation: Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, was a wildly successful military leader and reformer. After defeating the Neo-Babylonian Empire, he came across many exiled Jews, who had been held from their homeland by Babylonian captivity for several decades. In-line with his standing policy of religious tolerance and support for all faiths under his rule, he not only released the captive Jews from their exile, but also declared the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was core to pre-Rabbinic Judaism, and furthermore returned all the treasures looted by the Babylonians from Israel to the hands of the returning exiles and paid the cost of rebuilding the Temple from the Persian royal treasury.

For this reason, he is highly honored by biblical tradition, notably granted the title of ‘messiah’ (’annointed one’), the only non-Jew so named by the Hebrew biblical authors, and is noted in Hebrew writings as a model of righteousness.

In addition, this was not simply a matter of favoritism, but of general policy - it was noted by the Greeks, whom were often threatened in later years by the Persian Empire, that Cyrus, exceptionally amongst conquerors, remained honored as ‘Father’ to many of the nations he conquered (or liberated, depending on your point of view) even long after his death.

Cyrus certainly pursued an expansionist foreign policy, but clearly he understood that it’s better to make friends of one’s subjects than enemies!

That is neat, I didn’t know any of this

Reminds me of Sun Tsuz’s concept of “taking whole”. 

It’s a lot easier to rule over people if they find you fair and accommodating. But to destroy and rebuild is slow and expensive, and fighting insurgencies is incredibly difficult. 

Sun Tsu :

It’s a lot easier to rule over people if they find you fair and accommodating.

Europeans :

I’m going to divide and conquoer, and rule with an iron fist.

tbf, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Sun Tzu also emphasized the power of discipline - up to and including executions to provide examples. By the same line, the Romans, with whom divide et impera (’divide and rule’) is associated, were radical in that they regarded the Res Publica as for the good of all people under its power, not just the privileged elite or just the citizens, or even just the members of the polity’s preferred ethnicities.

Res Publica

Public beef?