Histories of Cyrus the Great and Alexander the Great (Chautauqua Edition)

289, 278, xii, 7, [3] pp. Two books in one volume, fold-out map, engraved illustrations. Includes revisions and appendix by Lyman Abbott. Cyrus the Great (born 590 - 580 BCE, Media, or Persis [now in Iran] - died c. 529, Asia) was a conqueror who founded the Achaemenian empire, centred on Persia and comprising the Near East from the Aegean Sea eastward to the Indus River. He is also remembered in the Cyrus legend - first recorded by Xenophon, Greek soldier and author, in his Cyropaedia - as a tolerant and ideal monarch who was called the father of his people by the ancient Persians. In the Bible, he is the liberator of the Jews who were captive in Babylonia. Alexander the Great (born 356 BCE, Pella, Macedonia [northwest of Thessaloniki, Greece] - died June 13, 323 BCE, Babylon [near Al-Ḥillah, Iraq]) was the king of Macedonia (336 - 323 BCE), who overthrew the Persian empire, carried Macedonian arms to India, and laid the foundations for the Hellenistic world of territorial kingdoms. Already in his lifetime the subject of fabulous stories, he later became the hero of a full-scale legend bearing only the sketchiest resemblance to his historical career.