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The Many Deaths of Cyrus the Great

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Daniel Beckman
Daniel Beckman*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

This article uses narratives of the death of Cyrus the Great as a test case in order to examine the use of propaganda in the Achaemenid empire. By comparing the accounts found in Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon, it is shown that these Greek historians have captured propagandistic messages created in the courts of contemporary Achaemenid kings. While the Greek works were very much the product of their authors’ literary imagination, nevertheless they preserved substantial evidence about the role of propaganda during the Achaemenid period.

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Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 1 - 21
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Copyright © 2017 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

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