Princes of Persia

by Ben Soton

Persians: The Age of The Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Hardback:

Wildfire: London, 2022; 448pp; rrp £25.99.

From Classical Antiquity to the early Modern Period imperial dynasties have ruled over vast tracts of land that Westerners called the Persian Empire. The most famous was the Achaemenid Empire; which is the subject of the recent book by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. It lasted from the time of its founder Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC to its eventual destruction at the hands the avenging Greek army of Alexander the Great in 330BC.
    Geographically it covered an area from Libya in the west to Pakistan in the East encompassing almost the entire Middle East, northern Greece and parts of central Asia. In its time it was the largest land empire the world had seem
    The book’s unique selling point is its use of Persian sources whereas previous studies were reliant on Greek texts in particular Herodotus and his work The Histories. For instance, Tom Holland’s book Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West almost exactly mirrors Herodotus; as well as being written from a largely Greek perspective. However, Llewellyn-Jones points out that the Greeks cannot be ignored as they were the first to record information in book form rather than in the form of poems and fables.
    When looking at ancient history there is always the danger of overlooking the elephant in the room – slavery. A whole chapter is devoted to the Kurtash; workers who were moved around the empire to carry out functions ranging from construction to childcare for the elite. Slavery is often overlooked in studies of the ancient world; although there is so far little evidence of slave revolts in the Achaemenid Empire. There were however numerous rebellions against Persian rule throughout the Empire’s existence; although these revolts should not be confused with modern national liberation movements
    According to the author, unlike other more recent Empires the Achaemenids did not impose Persian culture on those they ruled over. He makes comparisons with the Roman Empire and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Interestingly he makes no mention of an even more modern empire that imposes its culture in the form of tenth-rate fast food restaurants across whole swathes of the planet.
    A significant part of the book is devoted to the Persian Court; whether powerful concubines, overbearing Queen Mothers or influential eunuchs. The fundamental weakness of the Achaemenid Empire was its lack of an orderly line of succession as was the case in European monarchies from the Medieval period. Instead, a successor would emerge from the reigning monarch’s children born from the royal harem; a system that continued in the much later Turkish Ottoman Empire. This inevitably led to instability with a power struggle taking place after the death of almost every monarch; an example being the struggle between the brothers Artaxerxes and Cyrus the Younger following the death of Darius II.
    If you have ever read poetry or eaten a kebab on the way home from a pub, or used sulphuric acid or eaten a Meze in a Greek or Turkish restaurant; these things along with the postal service and even the notion of Human Rights (with reference to the Cyrus cylinder) can be said to have originated in Persia. For these reasons the Achaemenid Empire is worth studying making this book worth reading.