Assyria in Prominence 8Th Century BCE, Roughly Northern Iraq

Ancient Assyria, Medea, Persia, and Greece
English 241 Spring 09

Information to know:

Fertile Crescent: refers to an ancient area of fertile soil and important rivers stretching in an arc from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates. It covers Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. The Mediterranean in on the outside edge of the arc. To the south of the arc is the Arabian Desert. On the east, the fertile crescent extends to the Persian Gulf. This corresponds with where Iranian, African, and Arabian tectonic plates meet.

Assyria in prominence 8th Century BCE, roughly Northern Iraq

Cruel, barbaric, used policy of emptying conqured lands and replacing with Assyrians

Chief King: Sargon the Great

Wealth from slaves got from war, and horses got from mountainous tribal peoples, made up of Medians—people who were Aryans, unlike the Assyrians. They had stud farms in the mountains, raised the best horses. Assyrian cavalry renowned.

1.  Khorasan Road: begins in the Assyrian realm of Babylon, moves over the Zagros mountains to Ecbatana, home of the Medes, then NNE out towards the Caspian Sea, into Bactria, and into the East. Ancient trade route. Assyrians taxed anything that touched it.

2.  Nineveh: Capitol of the Assyrians

3.  Babylon: Assyrian then Median then Persian city of power in Mesopotamia, between slow Tigris and fast flowing Euphrates.

Medes

615 BCE Medes revolt against cruel Sargon, and surprisingly defeat them, because Medes tought.

Chief King: Astyages.

Medean capital: Ecbatana, in the mountains, “assembly point”

Medians have the Magi…

Astyages, like Sargon before him, expanded, east and west.

610 BCE, Astyages and Medes extended East, through destroyed Assyria and Syria

585 BCE, Fought the Lydians up against the Aegean Sea, to the East. Truce to divide realms at the Halys River.

Headed West into unknowns worlds, and south, where, like the Assyrians before them, they fought a tribe knowns as the Parsua.

Astyages superstitious, bad dreams: his daughter has vine growing from womb that overtakes all of his land—so he marries her off quickly to a prince of the unknown little Parsua tribe. But she reproduces, and Astyages orders the child, Cyrus, killed.

A military leader under Astyages, named Harpagus, given the job of killing boy Cyrus. He spares him. When Astyages finds out, he kills Harpagus’ son, cuts him up, serves him like mutton to the father.

1.  Ecbatana: ringed capitol city of the Medes, up in the Zagros. Great temperature, meeting spot of the differing peoples of the ancient world. Center for horse trading. Medes were the world’s best horsemen and trainers.

Persians

Cyrus, an Achaemenid, head family of the Pasardagae, head tribe of the Parsua people. Aryan, like the Medes. Grows into Persian prince, but grandfather worried about him. Had him at court, as was typical of satraps—satellite groups who had to pay taxes and tribute to the Medes. But Cyrus runs away, back to the Pasargadae.

553 BCE: Astyages the Mede, attacks his grandson, Cyrus, a Persian. Puts Harpagus in charge of his invasion force. Harpagus defects, and Astyages defeated. With Astyages dead, Croesus, rich king of Lydia, heads East.

Cyrus’ army, under Harpagus, defeats Croesus of Lydia, lays claim to tht territory for Persia. Encounteres the Ionians—Greeks of Asia Minor. Cyrus heads east, up the Khorasan Road, defeating everyone as far as he can go.

Stops at river Jaxartes. The Persian Kingdom now is vast, in very short period of time.

529 BCE; Cyrus the Great Dies in battle against an Eastern tribe, age 70.

2.  Pasargadae and Persepolis: Persian centers. The Parsua came from Pasargadae—the chief region of the Pars or Persian people. Cyrus the Great was from the chief clan from this chief city in the chief region of the Parsua. Persepolis, the capitol city.

3.  610 BCE, the Medians defeat their overlords, the Assyrians. Take over their empire.

4.  550 BCE. Cyrus defeats the Median Astyages. Takes over Median empire. Expands.

5.  Cyrus the great—benevolent, mighty, believing in the divine right of the Parsua to govern the world. Became King of the World in 559 BCE, and then died fighting to extend the empire beyond Bactria in the NNW, in 529 BCE, thirty years later, age 70.

6.  The “Yauna,” or Ionians: Greek people who had emigrated from mainland Greece to the coast of Asia-minor centuries before recorded history. Stubborn, tough to govern.

Greeks

Pelopponesus

1.  Lacedaemonians (Sparta) in the SE; Messenians over the mountains, to the SW; Tegeans, central; Argives, to the north.

2.  Lycurgus 700-630 BCE. Great law bringer to Lacedaemon. The Spartans were a defunct people, ages different from those who fought at Troy under Menelaus. Lycurgus brought them together under law, and under the Spartan code of militarism. Preached self denial and suffering as a means to become strong. Purportedly starved himself to death to be a model of toughness.

3.  Hoplites: Spartan foot soldiers. Gained prominence because of all the military groups, they alone were able to prevail against the Messenians, their neighbors over the mountains. Thus all Spartans became Hoplites, and since farmer may fight beside aristocrat beside tanner beside shepherd, Spartan society became egalitarian. All classes were equalized by the line of battle. Named after their long oblong shields, or hoopla, which formed walls behind which the line moved and from which it defended.

4.  Helots: the rest of the Pelopponesus conquered and then enslaved by Sparta to be their lackeys. If Spartans gained strength from self-denial, they encouraged libertinism amongst the helots, whom they also culled to eliminate anyone with leadership potential. Every Spartan who graduated from the Cryptea, or special forces, had to sneak into helot-land and kill an identified leader or problem person, so that they had familiarity with murder, drawing blood. Helots used and abused to extreme degrees, so that Sparta could maintain a state entirely dedicated to military prowess.

Mainland Greece

1.  Athens

2.  Eleusis and Eleusianian Mysteries

3.  Delphi and Oracle of Delphi

4.  Thermopylae

5.  Marathon

6.  Solon: 638-558 BCE: Great constitutional leader of Athenians (Attica). Believed that all Athenians or Atticans should be free. Bought them out of slavery. Gave them legal protection, right to assemble, vote. Set society in order, then left it.

7.  Cleisthenes: in 508 BCE, a powermove by aristocratic clans in league with Cleomenes, a Spartan King, sought to overrun Athens. Cleisthenes, in a bid for power, recalled Solon, and asserted that the people, or demes, should have all freedom, all say, all power. So when Cleomenes invaded Athens, and took residence in the Acropolis, he was surprised when the masses of Athenians attacked him and his small contingent of men. Escaped back to Sparta. Birth of democracy.

Persian Wars: 490 BCE-479 BCE (Darius and Xerxes)

Battle of Marathon: 490 BCE (Darius)

Battle of Thermopylae: 480 BCE (Xerxes)

Naval Battle of Salamis: 480 BCE. Ends War (Xerxes)