Achaemenid Persia

Historical Sketch

The Persian Empire in its first phase—encompassing territory from Central Asia through Anatolia—was forged by Kuras of Anshan in the space of roughly 20 years, ca.

The pastoral component may explain why the early Persians are so thin in the archaeological record and, simultaneously, may provide one key to Cyrus's rise. Pastoral groups evolved into incredible fighting forces in later empires, among others the Arabs and the Mongols, and those parallels can be instructive here. The march of traceable Persian conquests in our sources proceeded from Iran to the Anatolian plateau and then to Babylonia. Perhaps somewhat ironically, the primary riverine agricultural regions of Babylonia (Tigris and Euphrates) and Egypt (Nile)— geographically in strong contrast with the Persians' pastoral origins—were added late in the initials stages of Achaemenid expansion, under Cyrus and Cambyses, respectively.

The thin source material confounds answers to such questions and, for that matter, the application of appropriate models. A simple formula for conquest includes a significant armed force, but we do not have demographic figures for any region of the empire.^[339] Beyond the essential phenomenon of Persian-Elamite acculturation (for which see later discussion), it seems obvious that an important component in the Persians' successful conquests may be found in the incorpora­tion of Iranians outside the core area of Fars. The exact chronology eludes us, but some of this incorporation must have occurred before or during Cyrus's initial conquests; perhaps some of the northern regions may be considered a natural pro­gression, if not inheritance, from his victory over the Medes.^[340] Any such hypotheses are complicated, however, because much of northern and eastern Iran are poorly represented in the extant textual and archaeological sources, especially during the initial phases of expansion under Cyrus and Cambyses. These eastern regions were undoubtedly critical to the Achaemenid Persians' rise, if for no other reason than as sources for manpower. However, it is unlikely to be a coincidence that in later Iranian tradition eastern Iran was considered their homeland and that Darius I's family had so many links—religiously, culturally, even in the etymology of their names—with Zoroastrian and eastern Iranian traditions.^[341] Over several centuries in Parsa, the synthesis of various Persian and Elamite groups resulted in a demo­graphic dynamic of the early Persians who forged the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the sixth century bce. A variety of data testifies to the cultural components of Persian-Elamite acculturation, but the archaeological and documentary evidence is so disjointed that only a general outline of the history of the early period is pos­sible.^[342] In the mid-first millennium, “Elam” as a geographic and political term is understood to refer to Susiana.

In the year 550 bce Cyrus defeated Ishtumegu, the Astyages of classical sources, and took Ecbatana. The addition of Median forces—and those of whichever other Iranian peoples were beholden to the Medes—presumably augmented Cyrus' forces considerably. We do not know if Cyrus's subsequent moves were proactive or reactive, but the former is usually implied and almost always taken for granted in modern scholarship. A “program of conquest” is not obvious from the extant sources, but Cyrus's rapid rise strikes most modern historians as no accident. Cyrus subsequently conquered Anatolia by the mid-540s and Babylonia in 539. Beyond allusions in Greek sources, we know nothing of the intervening years of Cyrus's reign. Herodotus (1.153) indicates that after his defeat of Croesus of Lydia, Cyrus entrusted further campaigning in Anatolia to subordinates, while he planned to campaign against Babylonia, the Scythians and Bactrians, and Egypt. Egypt was not conquered until his son Cambyses's reign. Various traditions indicate that Cyrus died in 530 fighting in the extreme northeast of the empire, the most developed of which is Herodotus's account of the campaign against the Massagetae (1.204-214).

Cambyses's reign is notable mainly for the conquest of Egypt and other parts of northeastern Africa, 525-522 bce.

Darius added to the empire's territories with conquests in the Indus River Valley, Libya, Scythians in Central Asia and in the Danube and Black Sea regions, and in Thrace and the Aegean. Xerxes's reign is noted mainly for his expedition against Greece in 480-479 bce, which resulted in several Persian victories, including the sack of Athens. The Persians were driven out, however, and were thus not able to incorporate formally this region in the empire.

Because of the Greek source bias, the focus of much Achaemenid political history gravitates toward the west: especially the activities of the Persian satraps in Anatolia and, to a lesser extent, intermittent but intractable rebellions in Egypt. The Persians were frequently involved in Greek politics, playing one city-state against another for the Persians' own advantage—e.g., in stabilizing Persian control in western Anatolia. An example of such a policy may be seen during the reign of Darius II, when his son Cyrus the Younger's financial and military assistance to the Spartans enabled them to finally defeat Athens in 404 and bring to an end the Peloponnesian War. In 387/386, Persian military and diplomatic successes resulted in the King's Peace, essentially an edict of Artaxerxes II that reasserted formal Persian sover­eignty in Anatolia—contested for almost a century after Xerxes's withdrawal from Greece—and made the Persians the unchallenged power in the Aegean world. This situation did not maintain for long, and we may only wish that Persian sources for this diplomatic victory were extant to provide a further window into their impe­rial vision. Sporadic troubles in Egypt were generally contained until ca. 400, when Egypt ultimately was lost from Achaemenid control. It remained independent for much of the fourth century âñå, and it was only reincorporated into the empire by Artaxerxes III in 342. With a few exceptions, the east remains almost a blank in the documentary record until Alexander of Macedon's campaigns, recorded almost en­tirely by the Greek tradition.

After Xerxes's death, contested succession became the norm, whether through palace intrigue among members of the royal family and court or, in some cases, full-scale civil war such as that recorded in copious detail by the Greek writer Xenophon between Artaxerxes II and his younger brother Cyrus in 401. Several scholars have drawn historical inferences from the (apparent) lack of imperialistic activity and the (seeming) instability of the royal succession. But this is a tricky undertaking because of the dearth of sources, and any conclusions are provisional at best. Occasionally, Achaemenid royal inscriptions provide a tenuous link to po­litical phenomena recorded in the Greek tradition, but these are as infrequent as they are difficult to interpret. In one of his inscriptions from Persepolis (XPf §4), Xerxes alludes specifically to the fact that Darius had other sons but that Darius chose Xerxes as the successor—the only other rationale Xerxes gives is, true to for­mula, because Xerxes had Ahuramazda's favor. Herodotus's tale (7.2-3) on the same subject features as the determining factor the exiled Spartan king Demaratus's ad­vice to Darius. Demaratus argued that the eldest son born after Darius had become king (i.e., Xerxes) should be the successor, not any sons born to Darius before he took the crown. Herodotus’s story is a livelier one, and allows him to feature the Spartan Demaratus as a wise adviser (one of Herodotus’s stock character types), but it is more literary than historical. How much correspondence should be allowed between the two testimonies? In any case, the Achaemenid dynastic principle remained a given to the end, beyond question, regardless of how much blood was shed by how many contenders for the throne. Achaemenid kings could trace their bloodline directly to Darius I and, through Xerxes and his mother Atossa, to Cyrus.