Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE
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The Persepolis texts offer insights into the stratification of Persian society, but of course the emphasis is on a bureaucratic hierarchy and the people who work within it or for it. Rations (payments) distributed to kurtash workers at Persepolis varied in amount by age and gender, though amounts could vary widely based on locale and jobs performed.9 Pregnant women received special rations, and in some cases those who bore sons then received higher amounts than those who bore daughters. We assume the kurtash lived in families, but the circumstances of these families elude us. What happened when the children grew up? Did they remain kurtash and start their own families through marriages at the same social level or status?
And the evidence for other members of Persian society, even the lower echelons of citizens, is slimmer yet. All people, regardless of social status, were the king’s bandak, the Old Persian word that is sometimes translated as “slaves” but is usually better rendered as “subjects” or “servants.” Archaeological evidence offers enormous insight into daily life but at very specific locations.10 The scope and diversity of the Empire also does not lend itself easily to broad categorizations, though the daily life and tasks of a small farmer may not have differed much in Fars than in central Anatolia. The royal inscriptions refer in general terms to “the strong” and “the weak,” but even moving beyond the inscriptions’ ideological context such classifications are not very useful in understanding Persian social stratification beyond a very general level. When members of the lower classes appear in the documentary evidence, it is usually in anecdotal contexts; for example, the Roman Aelian writing circa 200 CE tells the story of a Persian man, Siniates, who met Artaxerxes II unexpectedly and scrambled to find a suitable gift for the King. Siniates scooped some water from a nearby river, named after Cyrus, and offered it to the King with a benediction for his long reign and a promise of more suitable gifts once Siniates returned home. Artaxerxes received the gift with full approval, and he rewarded Siniates for this piety with gifts of his own: a Persian robe, a gold cup, and a hefty sum of money (Aelian, Varia Historia 1.32). Of course, this anecdote tells us more about the relationship between king and subjects than it does about Siniates’ way of life.
The Persian Army
Persian military forces were drawn from all areas of the Empire, members of the elite corps (see Figure 6.6 for an example) as well as conscripts levied for local action or for major campaigns. Thus the label “Persian” is not to be understood as describing the ethnic makeup but rather the troops’ allegiance, fighting under Persian officials or commanders. As has been seen, however, the command structure was not thoroughly Persian by any means either, save at the very top of the hierarchy, including most satraps and of course the King himself. The Old Persian word kra may be translated either as “army” or as “people.” This reveals the army’s ultimate origin – among the Persians themselves, many of whom came to form the corps of the standing army – as it results in occasional confusion in modern translation. When kra appears in a text, it is not always evident to us whether the people as a collective group or the specific subset of the army is meant.
Figure 6.6 Frieze of Archers, Palace of Darius, Susa. © RMN – Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.
Herodotus gives a full and colorful account of the vast and diverse forces of the imperial levy, the full army and navy of Persians and subject peoples, when he tallies the vast forces that Xerxes arrayed against Greece in 480 BCE. Herodotus also names many of the commanders, an elaborate depiction of the peoples of the Empire with descriptions of their clothing and equipment (7.61–100). For example, both Persians and Medes were arrayed in felt caps, colored tunics over scale mail, trousers, wickerwork shields, and a variety of weapons. Ethiopians (Nubians) wore leopard or lion skins and carried large bows. Paphlagonians wore woven helmets and carried small shields and spears. That Herodotus’ entire portrayal better describes a parade than a battle array has long been understood. But it typifies the diversity of peoples and weaponry that the Persian commanders had to weld into an effective fighting force. Persian forces, both infantry and cavalry, were renowned for their use of the bow: a frequent tactic was the unleashing of storms of arrows from behind a shield wall or for horsemen to harry the enemy with volleys of arrows.
Scholars debate the effectiveness of the Persian forces’ armor and tactics especially in the context of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480 and Alexander’s invasion of the Persian Empire in the late 330s. Herodotus (9.62) describes the final crush of the Persians against the Spartans at the Battle of Plataea in 479:
On the one hand the Persians were no less than the Greeks in courage
and strength, but the Persians were without shields and, beyond this,
were unskilled and not the equal of their opponents in experience.
This passage offers just one example of the persistent problems of source evaluation. When Herodotus says that the Persians were “without shields” (Greek anoploi), what does that mean? Were the shields lost in battle? Was this contingent of the Persian army simply not carrying shields? And which group was it, ethnic Persians or some other? Some translate anoploi as “without armor,” which adds another layer to the problem. The Spartans were the most (by far) professionalized Greek soldiers of their day, so even the elite corps of the Persian army would have had their hands full against them. Beyond the elite, levied troops from the provinces of course did not have the same sort of armor, weaponry, or tactics as did, for example, the Persian Immortals and similar contingents. Numerous other passages in Greek sources provide similar perspectives: heavily armed Greek infantry, fighting in tight phalanx formations, trumped the (as generally described in Greek sources) light armed, less experienced, inferior Persian infantry every time – except when they did not. It is difficult to sift the Greek stereotypes from the realities of individual battles. That the Persians were able to conquer and retain so much territory for so long testifies to their army’s effectiveness.
The elite Persian force, numbering 10,000 according to Herodotus (7.83), was called the Immortals. Whenever one of their number died or was wounded or ill, another would take his place so the number of the battalion always remained 10,000. They were the most effective, and feared, Persian infantry force, and clearly comprised elite members of Persian society: men of prominent families or high rank. One thousand of them had gold pomegranates on their spears, some of whom comprised the king’s personal bodyguard, and the other 9,000 had silver. Herodotus’ incidental detail that the Immortals were conspicuous for their gold (bracelets or other marks of status and honor), and that they were accompanied by wagons bearing concubines and many servants, indicates that we are not dealing with the rank and file. Prestige items are frequently mentioned in conjunction with Persian officers and nobles, a phenomenon that also fed Greek stereotypes of Persian effeminacy and weakness. But these items were more symbolic than practical and communicated entirely different messages – honor and status – in a Persian context.
Greek sources often highlight the prominence and skill of Greek mercenaries, and from that perspective it was only thanks to better trained and better equipped Greek professionals that the Empire was able to field any sort of worthwhile fighting force in the fourth century. This trope contributed heavily to the stereotype of the effeminate, decaying Persian Empire before its fall to Alexander the Great. And even though Greek mercenary forces were an increasing phenomenon in the fourth century, and certainly used by Persian commanders, their significance often seems overestimated in Greek sources.
Communication Networks – The Royal Road
Reliable and efficient communications throughout the Empire were a necessary component for its success (see Map 1.1). The construction, maintenance, and guarding of an extensive network of roads and bridges required a great deal of engineering expertise, manpower, and expense. The Persians adopted and adapted their predecessors’ systems, and greatly expanded them, to facilitate communication across vast distances. Individuals or groups on
state business carried sealed documents that allowed access to supplies or provisions en route to their destination.
The most famous of these roads, though it was only one of many, was what Herodotus called the Royal Road from Susa in Elam to Sardis in Lydia (5.52–53). Any “royal” road would have, in fact, run through Persepolis and points eastward, so Herodotus’ terminology reflects a Greek view, which usually viewed Susa as the main Achaemenid capital. From the west it ran through Cappadocia and Cilicia in Anatolia to Armenia and then south through Arbela – along the Tigris River – and on toward Susa. Herodotus notes that there were 111 royal staging posts interspersed on it and mentions several of them specifically (5.52). By his calculations this route ran roughly 1,500 miles and took a journey of ninety days. That was for a traveler in no great haste. Royal dispatches could move with surprising speed, a relay system with fresh horses and messengers at each staging post. Herodotus also describes these royal messengers: “There is nothing mortal that travels faster than these messengers … for as many days as the whole route there are horses and men stationed, one horse and one man set for each day. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor night hinders them from accomplishing the course laid before them as quickly as possible. After the first one finishes his route, he delivers the instructed message to the second, the second does likewise to the third; from there in rapid succession down the line the message moves.” (8.98)
There were similar routes in all directions from the Empire’s core in Fars.11 Ctesias alludes to other roads running from Mesopotamia and Persia proper to Central Asia. The primary route to Bactria across northern Iran is called in modern works either the (Great) Khorasan Road or, for later periods, by its better known appellation the Silk Road. Administrative documents from Persepolis, Syro-Palestine, and Egypt record disbursements to travelers in all directions. From the Persepolis documentation we gain a sense of the itineraries of a number of the network of roads running between Susa and Persepolis. An Aramaic document tracks travelers journeying from northern Mesopotamia to Damascus and on into Egypt, with several stops along the way listed by name.
Large work crews were involved in the construction and maintenance of these roads. Herodotus’ account of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece describes roadmakers at work, not infrequently the army on campaign. The main roads, constructed wide enough to allow chariots or wagons to travel on them, served to move military forces quickly, but they were also used by travelers or merchants to transport cargo. Roads also at times had to cross obstacles such as rivers. Some permanent bridges, such as one spanning the Halys River in Anatolia, were guarded by a fort. Pontoon bridges allowed crossing of other rivers, for example, at many spots on the northern Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers and their tributaries. Temporary pontoon bridges afforded the means for Persian armies to cross into Europe: Darius I over the Bosporus on his campaign against the Scythians and Xerxes’ bridge over the Hellespont against the Greeks. Of course, rivers and larger waterways were sometimes part of the route. Diodorus Siculus (14.81.4) records a journey on a well-known route at sea along the coast of Cilicia, on land from northwestern Syria to the Euphrates, then down the river to Babylon. Similar sea trading routes connected other parts of the Empire to the core, such as through the Persian Gulf and along the southern coast of Iran to the Indus Valley.
7 Xerxes, the Expander of the Realm
The Death of Darius and the Accession of Xerxes
Stung by the defeat of his forces at Marathon, Darius was furious and immediately began to prepare a much larger campaign. At least this is what Herodotus tells us (7.1) – not that the Father of History would have had any chance of knowing Persian strategic concerns in 490 or, for matter, Darius’ actual words. Herodotus supplies such details, some perhaps from oral tradition, for dramatic effect. That Darius intended another campaign would be no surprise; the Persians were relentless, after all, but no short-term preparations can be confirmed. Darius died in 486, and his son and successor Xerxes had, on his succession, far larger problems than Greece. Herodotus offers no details about Darius’ death but notes that he reigned for thirty-six years, a number confirmed by Babylonian documentation. The latest text to Darius’ reign dates from late December 486; the first to Xerxes’ reign is from early December of the same year, so there may have been some confusion, even in Babylonia, as to the exact date of the transition. Ctesias indicates that Darius died of illness (Fragment 13 §23).
The succession of Xerxes was not without controversy. Herodotus sets his story (7.2–3) near the end of Darius’ reign, when Darius was compelled to choose a successor before he went on campaign, “according to the law of the Persians.” There is no other record of such a Persian practice, and Herodotus’ reference to it here is a bit odd. Darius had undertaken many campaigns previously, as Herodotus himself related without mention of the succession. It is probably a rhetorical statement that served Herodotus’ literary purpose here. Regardless, the issue turned on which son should be successor: his eldest son from his first marriage (before he became king) or his eldest son after he became king. By his earlier marriage to a daughter of Gobryas, Darius had three sons, the eldest of whom was named Artobazanes. Xerxes was the eldest child from Darius’ marriage to Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, after Darius ascended to the throne. Xerxes’ descent, and the timing of his birth, became the compelling arguments. Herodotus has these arguments presented to Darius by an exiled Spartan king named Demaratus. Demaratus later accompanied Xerxes on his invasion of Greece and became one of Herodotus’ stock characters, the wise adviser. Herodotus adds that the influence of Xerxes’ mother, Atossa, would have carried the day in any case, because she had such enormous influence upon Darius. But Atossa’s purported influence, as described by Herodotus, represents the popular Greek stereotype of the dominant (and often domineering) position royal women held at the Persian court. Herodotus is unsubstantiated here.
Xerxes himself provides some backdrop for Herodotus’ story, as he makes oblique reference to a succession controversy in an inscription from Persepolis (XPf §4). “Xerxes the King proclaims: Darius had other sons as well, but thus was the desire of Ahuramazda: Darius my father made me greatest after himself. When my father Darius died, by the favor of Ahuramazda I became king in my father’s place.” The rest of the inscription emphasizes Xerxes’ continued building works at Persepolis and reinforces the continuity between Darius and Xerxes. No specifics of his mother, birth order, or succession politics are revealed here, nor would we expect them to be. The only salient point is that Darius, and of course Ahuramazda, chose Xerxes; therefore, Xerxes is the rightful king. It is usually presumed to be Xerxes standing behind the enthroned Darius in the so-called Treasury Relief (Figure 7.1) at Persepolis, though the figures are not labeled.1
Figure 7.1 Treasury Relief, Persepolis. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
The new King Xerxes was immediately confronted by a revolt in Egypt that had actually begun before Darius’ death. By virtue of its geography and its wealth, Egypt had greater strategic significance than any other western region. We know little about the revolt beyond allusions in Classical sources, so it is difficult to gauge its magnitude or Xerxes’ response. Herodotus notes that Xerxes crushed the revolt and adds the cryptic note that he made Egypt “more enslaved than it was under Darius” (7.7). It is difficult to determine what that means, but the response appears to have been effective. Xerxes installed his full brother, Achaemenes, as satrap there, and the sources indicate no serious trouble on the Egyptian front for roughly two decades.
Xerxes also faced one, and perhaps two, revolts in Babylonia, an area of course even more important than Egypt. A few Babylonian economic documents name two kings who reigned for only a few months: Bel-shimanni and Shamash-eriba. Details elude us here also. The main trouble appears to have been localized in northern Babylonia, including Babylon itself. Dates proposed for the rebellion have ranged from 484 to 479 BCE, and the latter date carries heavy inter
pretive significance. If a revolt in Babylon could be dated to 479, it would impact analysis of Xerxes’ actions against Greece, with wide-ranging ramifications. Most scholars now accept a date of 484, based on a thorough analysis of the relevant evidence.2
Both Herodotus and Ctesias relate a story of Xerxes visiting the ziggurat of Babylon, the god Marduk’s sanctuary, and either plundering the temple or violating a tomb. Herodotus claims that Xerxes removed a solid gold statue and in the process killed the priest who tried to stop the sacrilege (1.183). Ctesias offers a more convoluted story (Fragment 13b). Xerxes opened a sarcophagus, which bore an inscription indicating that whoever opened it must make sure it was filled with oil. Xerxes was unable to fill it, despite his continued efforts. Of course, this was a bad omen, and Xerxes’ failed expedition against Greece and his assassination by his own son (see discussion later in this chapter) were regarded as manifestations of divine displeasure with his impiety.
A lively debate continues as to whether Xerxes truly did any of these things. It remains unclear whether the stories are simply anti-Persian sentiment expressed in Greek sources or whether certain Babylonian rituals were misinterpreted by the Greeks. With regard to Ctesias’ story, it has been suggested that it stemmed from confusion with a well-attested ritual that involved the pouring of oil on foundation walls.3 Modern interpretations often trace these stories to reaction against Persian reprisals for the Babylonian revolt, though Herodotus makes no mention of a revolt in Xerxes’ reign.