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Why Did Cyrus Keep His Rivals' Institutions? - Cyrus the Great and the Architecture of Empire | Sleepy Facts About History
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In the middle of the sixth century BCE, a regional king named Cyrus transformed a small Persian kingdom into an empire stretching from the Aegean Sea to Central Asia in roughly two decades. This episode examines how he achieved this rapid expansion not by inventing a new system of rule, but by mastering the political structures his rivals had already assembled. From the Median networks of the Iranian plateau to the wealth of Lydia and the ancient institutions of Babylon, Cyrus absorbed…
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