“Such, then, I found to be the nature of early events, although with difficulty in trusting every piece of evidence. For men accept each other's account of the past, even about their native countries, with a uniform lack of examination.”
Persians were the key targets of Hellene hostilities and they were referred to as “barboroi: barbarians” by ancient Hellenic writers, derived from the word ‘babbler’, people who did not speak Greek; an appalling practice, rooted in provincial arrogance and blind ignorance of the splendid ancient and contemporary eastern cultures of the Cradle of Civilization, that remains to this day in the pages of new translations of such works. Even the most learned western scholars refer to ancient Persians as barbarians after the Hellenes, where the appropriate term would be: Persian, Median, Babylonian, or Egyptian, ... , Bactrian, Lydian, Thracian, or simply non-Greek.
Ever since the classicist historians of the 19th century conveniently pinned the foundations of the western civilization to the broken bones of the 'free' Hellenes, Persians have never been given a fair assessment and their rightful place in the history of mankind.
History, or more accurately, historiography of the Great Kuruš and the Persian Achaemenids still rests somewhere between the pillars of Biblical records and the biased views of the classical historians who still worship at the altar of the ancient Hellenes (Greeks). Even unlocking the code of the cuneiform languages in the 19th century and the archaeological discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries have not changed the hostile perception of the Persian Empire. The prospect of the western history being built on a fault zone has proven too much for the historians to contemplate: school books have to be rewritten; college books have to be revised; heaps of scholarly works have to be discarded. Worst: historians have to change their minds or admit ignorance. Not to mention all the novels, movies, and works of art that would become utterly absurd if history were to be 'corrected'. Unthinkable. So, if material evidence does not agree with Herodotos and others, the evidence is wrong. After all, the Hellenes are infallible in the eyes of the modern western historians: they were eye-witnesses to accounts turning into history: they were the first western historians!
While almost all ancient names and places have been latinized, anglicized and modernized for the convenience of the modern western readers, the equation of Persians with barbarians, a not so subtle political symbolism, is still held on to by the translators with the same blind Hellenic fervor. With roughly 16 million Greeks from a global population of 6.684 billion people, 99.99 % of modern world population are barbarians, according to this archaic and obsolete Greek definition.
One cannot help but wonder how the Hellenes must have appeared to the Persians: their public nakedness, their open practice of pederasty, exclusion of their women from all public activities, their worship of a pantheon of idols, and their love of slavery, among many celebrated Hellene practices that would have been considered barbaric in Persian eyes. And how about the Spartans who not only had institutionalized pederasty, they had to hunt and kill a helot as a test of their manhood before they could be admitted into the ranks of a masculine primitive secretive society? Helots were close to a quarter of a million rural slaves, tied to land, who freed the Spartans from any manual labor. The result was the creation of the first militaristic society capable of murderous brutality to suppress the enormous helot population at any cost.
Shame on western historians and novelists to make glorified heroes out of such savages hiding behind the shield of free men. Spartan women did not give birth to men, they gave birth to beasts, bathed them in wine and if they survived, raised them as brutal killers.
When the Imperial Achaemenids were unifying their vast empire by King's Law, royal roads, imperial messengers, postal service, uniform taxes, standard weights and measures, a single gold currency, private banking, ... , and underground irrigation qanats, the democratic Athenians were decorating pottery jars with the images of naked Hellenes fighting elaborately dressed, lame, weak and womanish Persians.
When the noble Persians were training their young men to become Immortals, royal judges, satraps and administrators of the empire, aristocratic Athenians were gathering in symposiums to talk about the love of grown men for young boys while drinking watered wine and enjoying naked entertainment.
When Persians exported rice, pistachio nuts and sesame, the Hellenes exported mercenaries.
Prior to contact with the Persians, Athenians and indeed most Hellenes lived in smug isolation with minimal if any knowledge of the splendid eastern civilizations.
While there is no doubt that the classical period in aristocratic Athens was blessed with great men of art, war and philosophy, it is doubtful they would have risen to greatness without any contact with the Persians. No Hellene was known to have grasped the higher concept of 'God': God cannot be found through idol worship. One is indeed hard-pressed to find a modern society, eastern or western, Hollywood not withstanding, that endorses idol worship, warlike aggression, slavery, public nudity, murder of the innocent and exclusion of women from public life, and glorifies pederasts.
On the nebulous issue of democracy vs. monarchy: both political systems live side-by-side in the modern world. The much hailed Athenian democracy bore little resemblance to what we think democracy is. It was always aristocratic and exclusive, firmly in the hands of the prominent and wealthy Athenian families who were able to skillfully agitate and manipulate the rest of a small population of Athenian male citizens, probably no more than some 5,000: a group that was fickle, reckless and quite dangerous; excluding all other Hellenes, women, slaves and foreign residents.
Once the Athenians started on the path of empire building after the Achaemenids, they did not let the inconvenience of democracy get in the way of their lust for gold and glory. Those 'democratic' Athenians showed no hesitation to slaughter all the men and sell all the women and children of the people of Melos who had refused to submit to them, according to Thukydides (V: 84.1-116.4). However, in all fairness, it must be noted that the decision was first debated among the fair-minded Athenians: to kill or not to kill?
So, centuries after the Persians and the Hellenes made peace, western classical historians are still fighting the 'Great Greek War' of their own creation. A truly sad commentary on the state of classical scholarship who on the whole is remaining decidedly ignorant of all the recent advances that has been made in the various studies of the ancient Persians and their complex relationships with the ancient Hellenes.
So, leaving idol worship to others, selectively reading and quoting only ancient and modern sources agreeable to Kuruš, would give the one-sided impression that the treatment of the Great Kuruš throughout the ages has always been favorable. Well, nothing is further from the truth.
From Kuruš to Cyrus So, how did the Great Kuruš become Cyrus the Great?
Well, while it is impossible to uncover and read everything that has been written about the Great Kuruš over a period of nearly 25 centuries, it is important to know how his image was developed during his time and later evolved through time. It also must be noted that the image of the Great Kuruš is directly linked with the image of the Imperial Achaemenids and cannot be examined separately. The first known literary account of Kuruš in Histories is mostly embellished with typical Greek formulaic pairing of opposites: a heroic rise to power followed by ignoble fall due to hubris, Greek word for arrogance. What captured the imagination of the Hellenes and the later Roman writers was not the spectacular rise of such an unprecedented world ruler, but the bloody fall of a greedy barbarian king: the ‘story’ of the violent death of Kuruš at the hands of the fictional Queen Tomyris, defending her lands and revenging her dead son. In the strange world of Herodotos, being a Great King was not to go unpunished by the Hellene gods.
They say Herodotos is the 'father of history' or the 'father of lies'. Either way, since most of the information about the Great Kuruš and the early part of the Persian Empire is derived from the Histories, Herodotos is a source that cannot be ignored, even though his hostile bias toward the Persians is well attested to.
But those who praise Herodotos as the so-called ‘father of history’, overestimate the historical value of his narrative. As he wrote himself: "It seems easier to fool many men than one." Histories, while somewhat readable, it was nothing more than a Greek tragedy meant to be orally performed in Greek theaters to stir the emotions of contemporary xenophobic Hellenes against the Persians. Careful examination of the narrative structure of Histories by modern scholars has revealed a closer affinity with the known Greek literature of his time than previously realized; a literary account for the purpose of personal glory set within a very specific Greek context, where any extraordinary success and wealth was sure to bring on the wrath of jealous vengeful Hellene gods. Complexities of major wars to form the vast Persian Empire and the meddlesome interference of the Hellenes with the Persian subjects were glossed over in favor of telling irrelevant tales and glorifying a few minor victories on the western fringes of the empire.
So, here is a different perspective: he is neither the father of history, nor the father of lies. He is probably the 'father of historical romance', a novelist who used the historical framework of the Persian Empire and spun a tale to tell the story of a few victories of the Hellenes over the Persians.
Even though there are no surviving written literary works from the Achaemenid period, there is no doubt that Persians possessed a rich oral tradition, according to Herodotos himself, who wrote down the stories he heard from and about the Persians. The endless 'digressions' in Histories is a well-known structure common to the Persian literature of the later periods, where smaller stories are woven within a the frame of a larger story, even though it was poorly executed by Herodotos.
Knowingly or not, Herodotos went beyond biased historical selectivity to actually altering the facts, seriously distorting the events. As a typical storyteller, he made up whatever pleased him. Regrettably, with the missing gap between the Babylonian Chronicles 7 and 8, we just don't know what should be kept and what should be discarded. Herodotos wrote what his Hellene audiences wanted to hear. One of his biggest detractors was no other than Thucydides, his contemporary, who wrote in the History of the Peloponnesian War (I:22):
"The absence of an element of romance in my account of what happened, may well make it less attractive to hear, but all who want to attain a clear point of view of the past, and also of like or nearly like events which, human nature being what is, will probably occur in the future; if these people consider my work useful, I shall be content. It is written to be a possession for all times, not a competition piece competing for an immediate hearing."
By the time of Herodotos, Hellenes and Persians were engaged in the Greek Wars and the line in the sand was already drawn.
No doubt Persai, the Persians, the Greek tragedy written by Aischylos that was performed in Athens in 472 BCE, which celebrated the Athenian victory and devastation wrought on the Persians, heralding the pending demise of their empire - Athenian wishful thinking - was known to Herodotos. While the defeats at Marathon and Salamis were surely unexpected by the Persians, they were of no great consequence in the long history of the Imperial Achaemenids who thrived for another 150 years, while Athenian Empire rose and fell, first to the Spartans and then to the Macedonians.
The Athenian rhetoric against Persia at first served Athenians' political interest, through which Athenians rose to wealth and political prominence and formed the Athenian Empire. But their empire, no more than a regional superpower, was short-lived.
In 404 BCE Spartans broke Athenians with the help of Persian gold. In 386 BCE Peace of Antalkides promptly returned all the Asian Greek cities to the Great King.
That the Great Kings gave so much thought to the provincial Hellenes as the ancient Hellenic writers seem to have imagined, when their vast empire covered so many lands and so many people, stretches reason to the breaking point. While Hellene mercenaries had proven somewhat useful in the service of the Great Kings, in the higher Mazdean context, such men could not have been seen more than greedy men who worshiped daevas. Although there is no doubt that the Persians were constantly on the minds of the Hellenes, they themselves remained on the fringes of the Persian horizon. When the Great Dâriuš told one of his servants to remind him of the Athenians daily, he was dead serious. Curiously enough Herodotos himself hinted at this in Histories (I:134):
"After their own nation [the Persians] hold their nearest neighbors most in honor, then the nearest but one - and so on, their respect decreasing as the distance grows, and the most remote being the most despised."
Themistokles, the Athenian Commander during the Battle of Salamis, was ostracized from Athens for becoming too powerful and was granted protection in the imperial court of Artaxerxes I [Artakhšaçâ], son and heir of Xerxes, even though he was an enemy of the empire. He died beholden to the Great Kings.
Benevolence and forgiveness of the Great King, sign of absolute imperial power as well as a true Mazdean belief in final judgment, was seen as weakness by the Hellenes, who always washed blood with more blood.
Persians' lack of interest in further pursuing the conquest of Hellas after the minor losses during the reign of Xerxes [Khašâyâr-šan], was misinterpreted by the Hellenes themselves and their historians later as a sign of decline of manliness; a sign of fear and weakness. Hellenes simply could not believe or understand that Persians had come and seen what there was to see and had lost interest. Their aversion to engage in more bloody battles with the Hellenes, was no more than excellent management of imperial resources by superb administrators who simply allocated their valuable imperial armies to the maintenance of jewels of Babylon and Egypt and bought the Hellenes and Spartans with a few sacks of gold: a fair bargain. Imperial Achaemenids showed no hesitation in maintaining a firm grip on their prized possessions and when Egypt was lost and broke away for almost 60 years, Persians tried time and again and finally brought Egypt back under the Persian rule.
Hellenes were relegated to the status of meddlesome 'barbarians' on the fringes of the empire to be dealt with by the local Persian satraps and the Achaemenids only interfered in the internal affairs of the Hellenes and Spartans to ensure whomever ruled over Hellas was friendly to the Imperial Persian rule.
The Doctor...
Then came Ktesias and the fanciful tales of palace intrigues and powerful queens who enjoyed influence with the Great Kings: Persika was the sort of a story that to the Hellenes who had no regards for women and the mere mention of them was scandalous, was a sure sign of moral decay at the Achaemenid court; after all what sort of men allowed women to interfere with the political affairs of an empire? Well, perhaps sort of men who were light years ahead of their contemporaries.
Unlike Herodotos who never even visited Persia, Ktesias was a physician at the Imperial Achaemenid court of Artakhšaçâ [Artaxerxes II], so the Hellenic assumption was that he 'knew'. How a Hellene physician with no known abilities to read or speak any of the languages of the imperial court could have risen above the known imperial protocol and become the intimate of Persian kings and queens remains a mystery. About all that he contributed to the history of the imperial Achaemenids was the confirmation of existence of royal journals that have perished and vanished.
General & War of Words...
The peaceful Persian policy did not bring peace to the warlike Athenians and Spartans, who turned on each other for the supremacy of ancient Hellas in the long and bloody Peloponnesian War. More Hellenes were killed by the Athenians and Spartans during this war than the entire Greek Wars by the Persians.
While Thukydides, the Athenian General turned writer, when he was exiled during the Peloponnesian War, focused on the history of war between the Athenians and the Spartans, Persians and the Greek Wars were never far from his thoughts. As a military man, familiar with privilege and disgrace, he did not suffer from idealism. He most likely knew that it was not the 'Persian War' but the 'Persian Peace' that broke Hellas.
"The Persian War was the greatest action of the past, yet it had a quick resolution in two battles on sea and two on land. But this war not only was great by its extended length but was accomplished by such sufferings as never afflicted Hellas in any comparable period of time." (I: 23)
He wrote one of the finest military histories of all times.
Sword, Sandal, and the Sea
Kyropaideia, written by the pro-Spartan Athenian Xenophon, the contemporary of the Younger Kuruš [Cyrus the Younger], was also a literary work, meant as a model for educating good rulers. While Kuruš, the good king, died in bed of old age after a long and typically moralizing Athenian speech in Xenophon’s novel, his sons, the bad kings, immediately set out to destroy the Persian empire through luxury and decadence. Although the authorship of the last chapter of Kyropaideia is in dispute, it reflects both the general attitude of the contemporary Hellenes about the Persians, as well as the development of a more complex web of relationships between them. While Persian queens were again seen as the real powers behind weak Great Kings, armies of Hellene and Spartan mercenaries were now in the service of the Great Kings and contenders to the Persian throne. Apparently there were no high-minded Hellenic ideals when it came to accepting the Persian gold.
Who would have thought after all those years of pretentious demagoguery, Xerxes could have just bought Athens with gold instead of trying to conquer it with sword?
The Macedonian...
The devastation brought on Persians by Alexander's invasion and the its destructive impact on the religion and imperial records of the Persian Achaemenids has been covered elsewhere. That Alexander honored the Tomb of the Great Kuruš and ordered its restoration, was not reverence for a great emperor, but the measured act of a conqueror who knew his bloody conquests were slipping away from him and he was in desperate need of Persians to keep hanging on, an act which probably pushed the Persians further away from him. Entering the purified tomb of a Mazdean monarch was utter sacrilege and a sure sign that Alexander knew nothing or cared nothing for the religious rituals of the Persian Achaemenids. Persians never submitted to Alexander's rule and Mazdeans call him 'cursed' to this day; an epithet that was undoubtedly well earned by Alexander's own deeds while living.
If Dâriuš III had followed the same generous policy of the earlier Great King when the Athenians and Spartans asked for more gold to rid him of the menace of Alexander, ancient Persian history could have been a lot different. By all accounts there was no shortage of gold in the imperial treasuries. But in all fairness, the Great King was probably just tired of the long line of Athenians, Spartans and other Hellenes who regularly made the long journeys from Hellas to the imperial court asking for Persian gold to make war on each other.
Emperor's new clothes
According to Strabo, the Greek geographer who traveled and wrote Geography in the first century, Persians were effeminates because they covered their bodies with clothes and refused to go naked or lightly clad like the Hellenes and Romans: surely a sign of moral decline and decadence.
It seems Persians, women, and all who wore clothes, were a constant danger to the masculine world of ancient naked Hellenes.
In my own general ignorance of military matters, I have to wonder if being almost naked on the ancient battlefields was such a great advantage, why do modern soldiers look more like the camouflaged Immortal Persians than the naked Hellenes?
Yet, that any such dramatic literary accounts by the ancient Hellenes is still accepted without question by modern historians as the 'History of the Persians' in the first place is beyond belief.
It is even more astonishing when the words of Mazdeans, followers of one of the great world religions, who consider lying as one of the greatest sins, are dismissed as 'lies' in favor of the accounts of men who worshiped Zeus and Apollo. Is it because the followers of Zeus were mostly naked, while the Mazdeans were fully dressed?
Hmmm...
What tangled web of words we weave...
A bit of history to reflect on...
Yet it would be equally petty not to acknowledge a great debt to the same ancient Hellenic sources who by their own words managed to at least preserve the memory of the Great Kuruš and the Persian Achaemenids when all else was lost later. It was not the responsibility of the Hellenes to write a fair account of the Persians.
It is, however, the intellectual responsibility of the modern historians to write a new history of the Persians based on new data.