He is mild in his treatment of the prisoners that fall into his hands, and ready to forgive even the heinous crime of rebellion.

He has none of the pride of the ordinary eastern despot, but converses on terms of equality with those about him.

We cannot be surprised that the Persians, contrasting him with their later monarchs, held his memory in the highest veneration, and were even led by their affection for his person to make his type of countenance their standard of physical beauty.
The genius of Cyrus was essentially that of a conqueror, not of an administrator.

There is no trace of his having adopted anything like a uniform system for the government of the provinces which he subdued.
In Lydia he set up a Persian governor, but assigned certain important functions to a native; in Babylon he gave the entire direction of affairs into the hands of a Mede, to whom he allowed the title and style of king; in Judaea he appointed a native, but made him merely "governor" or "deputy;" in Sacia he maintained as tributary king the monarch who had resisted his arms.

Policy may have dictated the course pursued in each instance, which may have been suited to the condition of the several provinces; but the variety allowed was fatal to consolidation, and the monarchy, as Cyrus left it, had as little cohesion as any of those by which it was preceded.
Though originally a rude mountain-chief, Cyrus, after he succeeded to empire, showed himself quite able to appreciate the dignity and value of art.