Trump and Cyrus?

HISTORY AND POLITICS: Israelis are hailing Trump as Cyrus returned – but who was Cyrus the Great, anyway? (Peter Edwell, The Conversation).

With both parties agreeing to terms, the first stages of a peace plan in Gaza are in motion. US President Donald Trump is credited (especially in Israel and the US) with having played a vital role in this development.

But why have banners appeared in Israel depicting Trump with the caption “Cyrus the Great is alive”?

Who was Cyrus and what is he renowned for?

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This comparison has been around for a while. For many PaleoJudaica posts on Cyrus the Great, start here and follow the links.

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Trump and Cyrus - the coin

NUMISMATICS? Israeli group mints Trump coin to honor Jerusalem recognition. Mikdash Educational Center creates 1,000 coins with US president's image alongside King Cyrus, in move likely to rile Iranians (AP/Times of Israel). Probably not only them.

Note that this is an AP story. It is also running in Newsweek and it has been around for a while. It isn't a Purim joke.

Various people have compared President Trump to Cyrus the Great at one time or another (cf., e.g., here). I haven't noted any of those stories in past posts, but I did link to a reference to Cyrus by the White House last year. See the links at that post for some reservations about invoking Cyrus in modern political contexts.

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President Trump invokes Cyrus the Great

THE WHITE HOUSE has published a statement wishing a happy Persian New Year (Nowruz) to those who are celebrating it: Statement by President Donald J. Trump on Nowruz. Cyrus the Great is mentioned:

Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian Empire, famously said that “[f]reedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity. If you bequeath all three to your people, their love for you will never die.”

The quotation is from p. 119 of Larry Hedrick's book, Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War, which appears to be a very free paraphrase of Xenophon's Cyropaedia. I have poked around a fair bit in online translations of the original work and I can find nothing like this quotation or even this episode. If you know what passage inspired Hedrick's quote (I assume there's one that did somewhere), please drop me a note and let me know.

Meanwhile, over at The Forward, Sam Kestenbaum has some ideas about what the reference to Cyrus may have meant in the context of the White House statement: Did Trump Just Compare Himself To King Cyrus?

This is far from the first time that Cyrus has been invoked in a political context. I have commented on the rather overblown picture of him as a pioneer of human rights here and links. For other past posts on Cyrus the Great, see here and many links, as well as here and here.