Historical overview of the Persian Empire – packages of information

1. Historical sources:

  • Unfortunately, several of our most important sources for the Persian Empire are Greek.

The key source is Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), whose Histories records the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus travelled extensively around the Mediterannean world, including to cities that had once been under the control of Persia. Unfortunately, his account is biased towards the Greeks. According to one textbook, Herodotus presents Xerxes as “a somewhat hapless, luxury-loving oriental, lacking in experience and staying power” (Antiquity 2, page 235).

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek playwright, who fought at Marathon and Salamis (480 BC). His play The Persians is set at the court of King Xerxes in Persepolis, with Xerxes as a major character. However, as far as we know Aeschylus never met Xerxes, so his account is entirely from heresay.

Cleias was a Greek historian and physician who lived in the late 5th and 4th centuries BC. Unlike Herodotus and Aeschylus, he actually lived in Persia and knew the Great King, Artaxerxes II (404 – 359 BC), to whom he was personal physician. He produced a detailed history of Persia, based on extensive research in the royal archives. Unfortunately, only fragments of it remain.

  • Persian sources for the period include buildings, royal inscriptions and official archives, but they do not tell us much about some very important events – in particular the wars with Greece. This has meant that our understanding of Xerxes’ reign is tainted by the Greek view of his role in the second Persian War. In fact, Xerxes kept the Persian Empire largely intact, completed the royal palace at Persepolis and carried out many other public works. Other than his defeat in Greece, he was a successful monarch.

2. The expansion of the Persian Empire:

  • In the middle of the 5th century, there were three great empires in the East: the Lydian Empire (in Modern day Turkey), the Babylonian Empire (in modern day Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Iraq) and the Median Empire (in Modern day Iran and Afghanistan).
  • In 559 BC, Xerxes’ grandfather Cyrus (later known as Cyrus the Great) became ruler of Persis, a small kingdom in the south of the Median Empire.
  • In 550 he rebelled against the Medes and conquered the whole of their empire. In 546 he conquered the Lydian Empire and declared himself “King of the Medes and Persians”. In 539 he conquered the Babylonian Empire.
  • Cyrus died in battle in 530, and was replaced by his son Cambyses, who conquered Egypt in 525.
  • Cambyses died in 522 was replaced by Darius, who was one of Cyrus’ and Cambyses’ satraps. Darius put an end to imperial expansion for a decade, concentrating instead on consolidating his empire.
  • The empire reached its zenith under Darius with the conquest of Thrace and Macedonia. However, his campaign against Greece was a failure.
  • Under Darius, the empire stretched from Macedonia and Libya, all the way to the Indus River (in modern-day Pakistan) – a total of 7.5 million square kilometres. It was the first real empire in the world, and was comparable in size to the Roman Empire. It lasted from 550 BC to 330, when it was destroyed by Alexander the Great.
  • One of the reasons the Persian Empire lasted so long was that the Persians were wise administrators who did not try to impose their culture on the peoples they ruled. They used cooperation as the main method of enforcing their rule, though they could be ruthless when required.

3. Geography and resources of the empire:

  • The Persian heartland was an arid, mountainous region. Its economy was based on agriculture and livestock. It also had timber and minerals.
  • With the conquest of other lands, new resources came into the empire:

Media brought grain and horses.

Babylonia brought figs, dates, wine and other agricultural products.

Egypt brought an abundance of grain, as well as artists and craftsmen.

Phoenecia and Ionia brought ships.

  • The Persians encouraged trade across the empire.

4. Persian political, social and military structures:

  • All power in the Persian Empire derived from the Great King. He controlled the political, legal and military levers of the state, and owned the best land in the empire (which he parcelled out to nobles and other favourites). Unlike other eastern potentates, Persian kings did not claim to be divine, though they did claim to rule with divine sanction.
  • The king ruled the Persian heartland via the nobility – high ranking Medes and Persians who were linked to the royal family by marriage. He ruled the wider empire via the satraps – regional governors who were usually, but not always, Persian nobles. The 23 satraps of Xerxes’ time were responsible for tax collection, provision of soldiers and the maintenance of peace.
  • Local dignitaries were often entrusted with power, as long as they gave the king loyalty. Even former enemies like Themistocles were given governorships. (Themistocles was made governor of Magnesia in Asia Minor by Xerxes’ son Artaxerxes, who valued his experience.)
  • Promotion at the royal court was by merit, not by birth, ensuring that the Persian Empire was run efficiently.
  • The Persian army took its traditions and tactics from the Assyrian army, which had been one of the most successful military organisations of the ancient world. Initially, the Persian army consisted mainly of bowmen, who would stand in rows protected by men with spears and large wicker shields. However, when Media was conquered the army incorporated units of cavalry into its ranks. The cavalry became its most potent weapon.
  • Conquest of the eastern Mediterranean brought maritime peoples like the Egyptians, the Phoenicians and the Ionians and into the empire, so the Persians acquired ships. The Persian fleet was crewed and commanded by these subject states, under the overall command of Persian admirals.

5. Religion in the Persian Empire:

  • The Persian religion is often referred to as Zoroastrianism, because of the influence of the 7th century prophet Zoroaster who introduced ethical concepts into existing religious teachings.
  • By the time of King Darius, Ahuramazda had become the predominant god in the religion. Other gods included the sun god Mithras and the fertility goddess Anahita. Ahuramazda and Mithras came to represent truth and justice. They were opposed by evil spirits called daevas. Life was seen as a struggle between good and evil, truth and falsehood.
  • Darius’ successors continued his patronage of Ahuramazda, but tolerated the existence of foreign deities. The Persians respected the pharaonic cult in Egypt (in fact, the Great King became the pharaoh after Egypt was conquered), as well as Judaism in Palestine and the Mesopotamian religions in Babylon. Nevertheless, when rebellions occurred, they were prepared to destroy the temples of those who defied them – as happened in Greece during the Persian Wars. This seems to have been the exception rather than the rule, however.

6. The Persian concept of kingship:

  • The Persian system of government had no succession rule, meaning that the Great King could choose his own successor. For this reason, kings were very keen to establish their legitimacy. Both Darius and Xerxes put up inscriptions setting out their right to rule. This was particularly important for Darius, as he had to kill a pretender to the throne before he could ascend himself. (That pretender had claimed to be Cambyses’ brother Bardiya, whom Cambyses had apparently secretly killed.)
  • In inscriptions, the Great King was presented as a just administrator, rather than a conquering hero. This is in contrast to other eastern regimes like those of Egypt and Assyria.

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