The source for this crucifixion of Cyrus by
Tomyris may simply be Wikipedia:
According to Herodotus, Cyrus was killed and Tomyris had his corpse beheaded and then crucified,* and shoved his head into a wineskin filled with human blood.
* Mayor, Adrienne. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World. New York, Overlook Duckworth, 2003; pp. 157-159.
The footnote is to a book by Adrienne Mayor, which I happen to have read before. The relevant pages have this:
It is notable that in the historical accounts of using wine in warfare, the victims were identified as barbarians, considered inferior to the civilized cultures of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Carthaginians. (Similar justifications were expressed in British decisions to use chemical poisons against ignorant and uncivilized tribespeople in Asia and Africa in the early twentieth century.) The Greek and Roman tacticians who recounted the stories consistently stressed the barbarians’ inordinate passion for alcohol, as though to justify a biological treachery that would not be employed against more cultured, noble enemies. For example, Polyaenus advised the emperors on how to defeat Asian barbarians by turning their “propensity” for trickery and terrorism and love of intoxicants against them.
Polyaenus, it seems, was rather enamored of the method of defeating enemies with intoxicants. He also described how Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae (a tribe of Scythians), was said to have lured the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, to an ignominious death in 530 BC. But Polyaenus, writing nearly seven hundred years after the event, garbled the story. In his version, Tomyris pretended to flee in fear from the Persians, leaving casks of wine in her camp. The Persians consumed the wine all night long, celebrating as if they had won a victory. When they lay sleeping off their wine and wantonness, Tomyris attacked the Persians, who were scarcely able to move, and killed them all, including the king.
In fact, Cyrus did die an ignoble death during the conflict with Tomyris, but according to the Greek historian Herodotus, it was Cyrus who had tricked the milk-drinking nomads with strong wine. Herodotus’s version was based on information he gained from personal interviews with Scythians about one hundred years after the event, so his story is considered more credible.
According to Herodotus, the Massagetae were a tribe of nomadic Scythians living east of the Caspian Sea. These formidable warriors were unfamiliar with wine—their favored intoxicants were hashish and fermented mare’s milk. When Cyrus began a war to annex their territory to his empire, his advisors recommended a clever stratagem. Since the Massagetae “have no experience with luxuries [and] know nothing of the pleasures of life,” they could be easily liquidated by setting out a tempting banquet for them, complete with “strong wine in liberal quantities.”
The Greek historian Strabo, who also discussed the event, made the important point that Cyrus was in retreat after losing a battle with the nomads and therefore had to resort to underhanded trickery. Herodotus also stressed the moral aspect of the story, that Cyrus used biological treachery because his men lacked the skill and bravery necessary for a fair fight.
Cyrus ordered a fancy banquet to be set out under the Persian tents and withdrew, leaving behind a contingent of his most feeble, expendable soldiers. Tomyris’s army arrived and in quick order killed the weak men that were sacrificed to the ruse by Cyrus. Congratulating themselves, the nomads then took their seats at the splendid feast laid out for them and drank so much wine that they fell into a stupor. Cyrus returned and slew the drunken Massagetae. He also captured Tomyris’s son, but the youth killed himself as soon as he sobered up the next morning.
Enraged by the bloodshed achieved through such base bio-sabotage, Tomyris sent a message to Cyrus equating wine with poison. “Glutton that you are for blood, you have no cause to be proud of this day’s work, which has no hint of soldierly courage. Your weapon was red wine, with which you Persians are wont to drink until you are so mad that shameful words float on the fumes. This is the poison you treacherously used to destroy my men and my son.” Leave my country now, she demanded, “or I swear by the Sun to give you more blood than you can drink.” Cyrus ignored the message. The battle that ensued was one of the most violent ever recorded, wrote Herodotus. According to his informants, the two sides exchanged volleys of arrows until there were no more, and then there was a long period of vicious hand-to-hand fighting with spears and daggers. By the end of the day, the greater part of the Persian army lay destroyed where it had stood. Tomyris sent her men to search the heaps of dead Persians for Cyrus’s body. Hacking off his head, she plunged it into a kettle of blood drawn from the king’s fallen men, crying, “I fulfill my threat! Here is your fill of blood!”
Queen Tomyris’s milk-drinking warriors from the steppes were unfamiliar with the effects of wine, which made Cyrus’s strategy seem especially odious. In other instances, however, taking advantage of an enemy’s careless overindulgence in food or liquor did not seem unfair, since it was assumed that a commander should be able to restrain his men’s behavior, and also because of the element of free choice in the decision to indulge or not. Contaminating wine with poisonous substances was particularly treacherous, however, because it eliminated free choice, and offering poisoned wine as a gift was even more devious because it violated the ancient principles of trust and fair gift exchange. And yet, ever since the Trojan Horse trick took down Troy, vigilant generals and their armies should have been on guard against accepting “gifts” from enemies.
There is nothing about a crucifixion here, and Mayor's whole focus is upon underhanded tactics in ancient warfare, not upon the history proper of Cyrus or the Medes or Persians. Nor is there anything about Cyrus being crucified in
book 1 of Herodotus (though Darius has other people crucified at one point). Xenophon has him recognizing that his death is at hand, making the appropriate sacrifices, giving lengthy speeches, shaking hands (!) with his comrades, and then dying peacefully in
Cyropaedia 8.7.1-28. And, as Mayor indicates, Polyaenus attributes Cyrus' underhanded tactic to Tomyris in
Stratagems of War 8.28; but he says nothing there about the manner of Cyrus' death.
Mayor also has a book about female warriors (
The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World) which recounts more briefly this clash between Tomyris and Cyrus, but again, she says nothing about a crucifixion.
I confess I cannot yet seem to find a source for Wikipedia's claim that Tomyris had Cyrus' corpse crucified. It may simply be a mistake; if so, it is one which has been replicated across the internet. A Google search for
cyrus crucified by tomyris produces quite a few relevant hits.