The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cyrus the Great, by Jacob Abbott

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Title: Cyrus the Great
Makers of History

Author: Jacob Abbott

Release Date: December 18, 2009 [EBook #30707]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Makers of History

Cyrus the Great

BY

JACOB ABBOTT

WITH ENGRAVINGS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

1904

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and fifty, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.

Copyright, 1878, by JACOB ABBOTT.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.]

PREFACE.

One special object which the author of this series has had in view,
in the plan and method which he has followed in the preparation of
the successive volumes, has been to adapt them to the purposes of
text-books in schools. The study of a _general compend_ of history,
such as is frequently used as a text-book, is highly useful, if
it comes in at the right stage of education, when the mind is
sufficiently matured, and has acquired sufficient preliminary
knowledge to understand and appreciate so condensed a generalization
as a summary of the whole history of a nation contained in an ordinary
volume must necessarily be. Without this degree of maturity of mind,
and this preparation, the study of such a work will be, as it too
frequently is, a mere mechanical committing to memory of names, and
dates, and phrases, which awaken no interest, communicate no ideas,
and impart no useful knowledge to the mind.

A class of ordinary pupils, who have not yet become much acquainted
with history, would, accordingly, be more benefited by having their
attention concentrated, at first, on detached and separate topics,
such as those which form the subjects, respectively, of these volumes.
By studying thus fully the history of ind