Persepolis, Iran
This image: Altra1100, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
At the beginning of the fifth century BC a great empire flourished all the way from the borders of India to the Mediterranean Sea. This was the Persian Realm, founded by Cyrus the Achaemenid, and now ruled over by a usurping upstart named Darius. It contained some of the greatest cities in the world, and a multitude of different peoples, all bound to serve the Persians.
By contrast, away to the west, in a rocky and half-barren land, a series of small city states bickered and brawled with one another. These were the Greeks. Their land and their culture had been of little interest to the Persians up to this point. That all changed in 499 BC when a group of cities along the Ionian shore of Asia Minor revolted against Persian rule. The cities had been founded by colonists from Greece, and so they looked for aid from that direction in their struggle. Most of the Greek states ignored the appeal, but Athens and a few allies answered it.
Ultimately, the Ionians lost and the Athenians went home. But it was too late. Darius the Great had heeded their names and discovered where they lived. Soon the entire might of Achaemenid Persia would be bearing down upon Greece, seeking a terrible revenge. How could these small, impoverished states hope to survive and remain free? And yet they did both. For over a decade Darius and his successor, Xerxes, strove to bring Greece under the Persian yoke, and failed.
Well that's the story first told by Herodotus – a story utterly fundamental to the notion of Greek exceptionalism and Western destiny. And yet, things are never quite so straightforward. For a start, Greeks and Persians knew far more about one another, and were far more influenced by one another than the traditional East versus West narrative suggests. The real relationship between these two civilisations was in fact both collaborative and complex.
RJW F2510 Online (via Zoom)
A 5-hour short course, delivered via 2 x 2½-hour sessions on consecutive Saturdays (Saturday 5 & Saturday 12 April, 10.30-1.00).
£40 (individual registration); £72 (for two people sharing one screen).