Cyrus the Great

Do you know the story of Cyrus the Great and what happened to him when he was a baby? They say that his grandfather was jealous of him. Whoever heard of such a thing?—a grandfather jealous of a baby, and his own grandchild! But the grandfather was king of a great nation of , and he wanted to keep the throne for himself. (He must have forgotten that he must die some day.) And so he was jealous even of the baby, for fear he would take the throne when he became a man.

He called a servant one day and told him he wanted the child killed. But servants are sometimes kinder than kings. Instead of killing the boy, the good man took him to a distant province and gave him to a shepherd who had no child. The lad grew up supposing that the shepherd was really his father. He taught him to tend the sheep, and he grew up expecting to be always a shepherd. Of course, he couldn’t think of anything else. But one day he learned who he was; that his father had been a prince, and that the throne would some day be his. After that there was no more shepherding for him! He began to fit himself to rule as a King. That is how he became Cyrus the Great, the king of . He found out whose child he was.