In 650 BCE, a young prince arrived in Nineveh, the new capital of the Assyrian Empire. His name was Arukku. He was the son of a king who ruled over a small plateau deep in the Zagros Mountains. It was located on the periphery of the more powerful kingdom of Elam, which the Assyrians had ravaged a few years earlier. ‘When Kurash, king of Parsumash, heard of the mighty victory, which I had inflicted on Elam with the help of Ashur, Bel, Nabu and the great gods, my lords, and that I had overwhelmed the whole of Elam like a flood,’ King Ashurbanipal later recorded, ‘he sent Arukku, his eldest son, together with his tribute, as hostage to Nineveh, my lordly city, and implored my lordship.’1 Nobody at the Assyrian court would have guessed that, barely a hundred years later, this small state with just a few thousand inhabitants would conquer a realm far larger than the Assyrians ever ruled. This chapter starts with an account of this remarkable takeover: of how the Assyrian Empire reached its zenith, of how its neighbours exploited its decline, and of how one of them – the Persians under the Achaemenid Dynasty – laid the foundations of their own empire.

Between 750 and 500, the world’s population grew steadily. Innovations such as the iron plough-tip and the waterwheel spread across the Eastern Hemisphere. Urbanization picked up and the Eastern Hemisphere became dotted with cities. These cities were seldom inhabited by more than 20,000 people, but even this small scale allowed for specialization in crafts, as had already been the case in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Levant for many centuries. Surpluses of wheat, olives, and rice were bartered for luxury goods, timber, and metals. With growing surpluses and trade came new writing systems, the introduction of coins, and more shipping.

In the absence of an imperial power like the one in Mesopotamia, anarchy took hold of the rest of the world. In the Mediterranean, South Asia, and the North China Plain, the transformation of towns into cities sparked relentless competition. This was the time of infighting between Greek city states, of wars between Rome and its neighbours, and of continued struggle in the Levant. In India, it was a period of rivalry between the ambitious states known as the Mahajanapadas. In China, this epoch of anarchy was lyrically named the Spring and Autumn period. The most important event in this era, however, was the downfall of the Assyrian Empire and the rise of the Persian Achaemenid Dynasty.

Assyria at Its Zenith

Assyria entered the eighth century in turmoil. Cities in the empire revolted. Lesser kingdoms refused to pay tribute. In 745, a general staged a coup, determined to end this time of trouble. He named himself Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BCE). The new king instantly addressed the core of Assyria’s problems. Previous conquests had become too heavy a burden. Tiglath-Pileser’s solution was once more to make conquest pay. He established a system of direct rule over the conquered peoples and made them deliver tribute and troops. Soldiers from different parts of the empire were combined in the same units and dressed uniformly. An Assyrian elite force was kept in reserve at the centre. To prevent insurrection, provinces were kept small. For his governors, the king chose eunuchs, officials whose loyalty was ensured through castration, which prevented them from founding their own dynasties. Even so, governors were rotated in their posts frequently and instructed to report on neighbouring provinces. Inspectors, spies, and courtiers formed a parallel network of control.

The result was a predatory economy such as the world had never seen. Territorial expansion was not only meant to defend the Assyrian Empire, but also to enrich it, strengthen it, and enlarge its armed forces. Under Tiglath-Pileser, the number of soldiers grew from 44,000 to 72,000. King Sennacherib (705–681) raised it to 208,000 men. Ashurbanipal (668–627) fielded over 300,000. This was a stunning achievement if one considers that the Assyrian heartland counted no more than a few million inhabitants. It also points to another explanation for Assyria’s revival: the fact that it was ruled by five forceful kings in a row. Once again, the Assyrians marched across the Middle East as if there was no resistance. In barely two decades, Tiglath-Pileser overpowered Cyprus and the whole of the Levant; Phrygia, Urartu, and the Cimmerians in the north; Persia, Media, and Elam in the east; and the most desired prize for any Mesopotamian ruler: Babylon.

The speed of conquest not only showed how decisively the balance of power had swung in Assyria’s favour, but also reflected the fact that most of the neighbouring countries were small and often divided. Around 723, the king of Judah, for instance, called upon Assyria to intervene, as he felt threatened by an alliance between Israel and Aram. The dust had not even settled before other parties tried to benefit from the situation. Pharaoh Osorkon IV of Egypt sought to exploit the confusion in the Levant by backing a revolt in Judah, yet was shrewd enough to send twelve horses as a token of friendship to Assyria. Beginning in 720, Assyrian spies reported that the Cimmerians had left their power base on the Black Sea and started to encroach upon Urartu and Phrygia. This led the kings of the city states in Asia Minor to form an alliance and to call on Assyria for assistance. The Assyrians, however, cynically allied with the Cimmerians in order to attack Urartu, with whom both Assyria and the Cimmerians competed for control of the Caucasian trade routes.

When Sennacherib took the throne in 705, he ordered a new campaign in the Levant. ‘The Lord is bringing the mighty flood waters of the River, the king of Assyria and all his glory; it will rise above all its channels and overflow all its banks,’ the Old Testament prophesied. ‘Band together, you peoples!’2 In 700, Sennacherib defeated the Elamites, Chaldeans, and Babylonians and placed his son on the throne of Babylon. Eight years later, these subject peoples revolted. The Chaldean king now formed an even larger alliance with the Elamites, the Persians, and other kingdoms from the Zagros Mountains. Sennacherib engaged with them at the Battle of Halule in 691, bragging that he had killed 150,000 enemy soldiers.3 Babylon was set ablaze.

Less than ten years later, Sennacherib was on his way to Egypt to fight the Pharaoh Taharqa. Taharqa belonged to a dynasty of pharaohs that originated in Nubia. He was seen by Assyria as a troublemaker in the Levant. The great Egyptian city of Memphis was sacked, but the Assyrian armies failed to capture the pharaoh, and a few months after the bulk of Assyrian troops had left Egypt, riots broke out. In the Levant, Sennacherib replaced the city of Tyre with an Assyrian trade hub after an official reported that its king was ‘turning all of the boat trade for himself’.⁴ By now, however, a much more formidable threat was looming. In 678, the Medes, the Cimmerians, and the Manneans, together with a new entrant on the scene – the Scythians – formed a coalition against the Assyrians. When their attack failed in 676, the Scythian king opportunistically changed sides and married his daughter to the Assyrian king.

For the time being, the Assyrian records reported no internal unrest. ‘The Palace Gate was normal; the Peace was there.’⁵ The economy flourished. Sennacherib moved the capital from Nimrud to Nineveh, which grew to 150,000 inhabitants. Nineveh must have been an astounding place with huge walls, towers, wide squares, botanical gardens, a zoo, aqueducts, workshops, a boatyard, and, above all, two newly built palaces.⁶ ‘There is no end to Nineveh’s treasures – its vast uncounted wealth,’ the Old Testament proclaimed.⁷ In 694, Sennacherib completed his ‘palace without a rival’.⁸ Winged bulls guarded the gates and the walls were finely carved with scenes of victories. His grandson Ashurbanipal’s palace was intended to be even bigger. Its library held ancient works from the whole empire – such as the Epic of Gilgamesh – as well as texts on astronomy, medicine, and diplomacy. This Mesopotamian renaissance later inspired Alexander the Great to build his own library in Alexandria. Archaeological finds reveal scientific activity using crystal lenses and complex hydraulic systems. In the British Museum, we can still experience the sensitive yet realistic relief carvings of lion hunts that adorned Ashurbanipal’s palace walls.9 By any standard, they comprise a landmark in the history of art. Less dramatic, perhaps, but profoundly symbolic is the relief of the king and his queen reposing in a garden of vines, palm trees, and birds, with the head of one of his rivals dangling from a branch.¹⁰

Ashurbanipal had succeeded to the throne in 668. Determined to complete his father’s work in Egypt, he swiftly reduced it to a puppet state. Two years later, he defeated the Medes, the Persians, and the Parthians. He kept the Scythians and Cimmerians at bay by playing one off against the other. By 650, however, a sequence of events had set off Assyria’s decline. Around that time, a severe drought struck the Middle East, where population growth already strained agricultural resources. In one prayer that has been preserved, Ashurbanipal begged for the alleviation of the resulting inflation in food prices. Meanwhile, unrest in Egypt and Babylon grew. About this time, the Arameans, Elamites, Medes, Egyptians, and Arab tribes formed a grand alliance. Even Ashurbanipal’s own brother, the king of Babylon, joined it secretly. ‘Outwardly with his lips he spoke friendly things, while inwardly his heart plotted murder’.¹¹

Ashurbanipal was able to contain this threat, but the whole region plunged into disorder with his death in 627. In the following year, the Babylonians rebelled, backed by the Scythians and the Medes. The Medes at that time were led by Cyaxares, a capable king, who exploited the power vacuum to conquer most of the kingdoms in the Zagros Mountains, and who forged a marriage alliance with Babylon. In 612, the coalition destroyed Nineveh. In 605, it overpowered a combined force of Assyrians and Egyptians at the Battle of Carchemish. And in 585, it defeated the wealthy Anatolian kingdom of Lydia at the Battle of Halys. The main beneficiary of these triumphs were the Medes, who now controlled an empire of their own in eastern Mesopotamia.

This Median Empire served as the launch pad for the far more successful push for mastery by the Persians. We do not know exactly how the Persians gained control over the Median Empire. But their power base in the Zagros Mountains towered above the eastern fringes of Median territory like a natural citadel.12 This plateau had numerous advantages: the presence of a large tract of flat farmland that could feed tens of thousands of inhabitants, natural walls of limestone cliffs, rivers, a moderate climate, and the proximity of trade routes. Besides this strategic location, the Persians had no particular asset that made them bound to predominate. Their first three kings were simple vassal rulers, first under the Assyrians and then the Medes.

It was only with the third of these kings, Cambyses I (580–559), that Persia’s growing influence became noticeable. The Greek historian Herodotus reported prestigious marriages with a princess of Lydia and a princess of Media. It was the son of this latter marriage, Cyrus II (559–530), who would challenge his Median grandfather. By that time, the Medes were already struggling to keep their empire together, and Herodotus informs us about court intrigues and border skirmishes.13 In 553, the Persians openly revolted against the Medes. A punitive expedition was dispatched, but its soldiers mutinied and were crushed by the Persians. This defeat sent a tremor through the Middle East. Babylonian records show how the subsequent campaigns of Cyrus II were observed with trepidation. The great god ‘Bel did not come out,’ we read in the Nabonidus Chronicle.¹⁴ It describes how Cyrus’ troops swept into Mesopotamia, encircling Babylon before they sacked it in 539. ‘All of the people bared their heads.’¹⁵

The Persian Takeover

A new imperial dynasty was born: the Achaemenids.¹⁶ What allowed the Achaemenid King Cyrus II to push so far was, once again, the weakness of his neighbours. In the east, the Persian heartland did not have much to fear from a slew of smaller mountain kingdoms. In the west, the Median Empire was overstretched, crumbling, and challenged from all sides. Once the Median dynasty was decapitated, Cyrus II could expropriate its resources and take on the cities of Mesopotamia one by one. The Persians were confronted by various alliances. But, according to the Greek historian Xenophon’s biography of Cyrus, they gained the support of the Cadusians, the Sacians, the Bactrians, the Hyrcanians, and many others.¹⁷

The Persians were thus picking up the shards of an old imperial order that had splintered into warring kingdoms. From the many accounts of Cyrus’ campaigns, it is clear that he displayed his leadership at the most decisive moments. When, in 539, his troops initially failed to storm the walls of Babylon, he diverted the course of the Euphrates so that they could enter the city along the river bed. To counter the threat of the Lydian cavalry at the Battle of Thymbra in 546, Cyrus reportedly deployed camels against them so that their smell frightened the horses, rendering the cavalry ineffective. Cyrus’ armies also launched bombs filled with petroleum from siege towers, employed engineers to undermine fortifications, and experimented with surprise strikes by fast cavalry.

Another explanation for the Persians’ advance was their magnanimity. Cyrus was often generous to those people who surrendered. He spared the king of Media after he had been defeated. According to the inscription on a clay cylinder found in Babylonia, Cyrus allowed the locals to continue worshipping their own gods. But he could also be ruthless. When the king of Lydia rejected Cyrus’ offer to keep his throne as a vassal ruler and instead asked the Greek city states for mercenaries, the Persian ruler seems to have ordered him burned alive, although he might have been spared at the last minute. By the death of Cyrus in 530, the Persian Empire stretched from the Aegean Sea to the River Indus and from the Caucasus to the Nubian Desert. Leadership, luck, and magnanimity had all helped create it.

The key to maintaining so vast a realm was efficiency: maximizing the gains and limiting the sacrifices. Like the Assyrians, the Persians developed a system of incorporation. As Cyrus himself put it: ‘If I make my friends rich I shall have treasures in them and at the same time more trusty watchers.’18 The provinces were ruled by satraps, or governors. Under Darius I (522–486), there were thirty-six of them, and they were responsible for collecting a fixed amount of tribute. Some of these governors were local rulers. They were often aided by native power brokers; plots of land in the provinces were allocated to them in exchange for services, and their daughters married Persian noblemen. For example, the rulers of the Phoenician cities became vassals of the Persian Empire after their conquest in 539. They could continue to mint their own coins, as long as they paid tribute, obeyed the satrap, and put their ships at his disposal in time of war. After the defeat of Egypt in 525, the Persians allied with the clan chiefs of Egyptian provinces to administer the kingdom on their behalf.

The conqueror of Egypt, King Cambyses II (530–522), also recruited a senior official called Udjahorresnet from the former regime to advise him. The Egyptian counselled the Persians on how to win the hearts and minds of the locals. When the holy bull of Egypt died, Cambyses oversaw his burial. On a wall of a temple, he had himself named the restorer of order. The Persian kings were eager to be seen as benevolent leaders by their new citizens elsewhere in the empire, and here too religious propaganda was vital. During his campaigns in Asia Minor, Cyrus had bribed the oracle of Apollo near Miletus to appeal to its followers to surrender. In Babylon, he distributed inscribed cylinders claiming that the native gods had abandoned their king and chosen Cyrus to liberate the city from previous rulers. He released the Jewish exiles from their captivity in Babylon, and ordered the return of their holy golden vessels, which the Babylonians had stolen, and the rebuilding of the great temple in Jerusalem.

The unequalled mastermind of such propaganda was Darius I. When he campaigned on the Aegean Sea, he did not let his troops land on Delos – which was sacred to the Greeks – but ordered a golden statue of the island’s patron deity, Apollo, to be erected instead. In Judah, he ordered the codification of local laws, which scholars assume contributed to the compilation of the Jewish Torah.19 In Egypt, too, he had the local laws compiled into a codex intended to guide non-Egyptian administrators. When Darius entered Memphis in 521 to suppress a revolt, he did so at the very moment the locals were mourning the death of the Apis bull. He quickly turned it to his advantage by promising a vast sum of silver to whoever provided a new bull. He even had himself carved on a stele kneeling before the falcon god Horus. Keeping the temples and priests happy was important. Not only could they legitimize Persian rule, but in the agricultural economies of the Middle East, they were indispensable in collecting taxes and administering reserves.

Archaeological evidence points to expanding settlements throughout the Persian Empire – a clear sign of economic prosperity.²⁰ Roads and ingenious messenger networks were established, reaching as far as present-day Pakistan. ‘There is nothing in the world which travels faster than these Persian couriers.’²¹ Records show how the Persians regularly presented gifts to rulers in the Zagros Mountains in exchange for commodities like wool, and to Arab tribes in exchange for keeping desert caravan routes safe. In 510, Darius convened a conference of architects in Persepolis, his new capital, to plan a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. The project was a success. Along the entire canal, vast steles were erected with the king’s image. ‘Ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, as was my desire.’22 Darius organized maritime expeditions between the Nile and the Indian Ocean, introduced weight standards, extended the Royal Road, and promoted coins as a means of trade instead of a means of propaganda. Trade meant taxes, and taxes were used to gain control over even more trade. All this was administered by an immense bureaucracy. It corresponded in all the different languages spoken in the empire. ‘An edict … was written to the king’s satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the officials of all the peoples,’ we read in the Old Testament, ‘to every province in its own script and every people in its own language.’²³ All those achievements were only possible because the Achaemenid Dynasty provided a near-unbroken chain of strong leaders for almost two centuries.

Once it was established, the Persian Empire faced no genuine rivals for over a century. This concentration of power in a single state was unprecedented. With the annexation of Egypt, the empire may well have controlled a third of the world’s farmland and a quarter of its population. It had an abundance of iron mines, needed for weapons and tools, and forests, for construction and ship building. Economic statecraft helped to exploit the potential of such resources: the organization into provinces, the role of the satraps, the advanced transportation networks, and the exchanges with peoples on the periphery that we have already mentioned.

The Persians outshone the Assyrians not only by establishing more solid rule over Egypt, but also by more firmly integrating the trading kingdoms of the Levant and those on the threshold of South Asia into their empire. There is no denying that Assyria had tried to control these important trade hubs as well, hence the many expeditions against the Phoenician kingdom of Tyre, into timber-rich Anatolia, and along the eastern trade routes, as well as the persistent focus on Egypt.24 ‘I opened the sealed-off harbour of Egypt, mixed Assyrians with Egyptians and let them trade with each other,’ Sargon II had boasted in 716.²⁵ The Assyrians had done the groundwork. The Persians built on it.

Mediterranean Mayhem

The most enigmatic challengers on Persia’s fringes were the Scythians. In the seventh century, they had penetrated from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe into the heart of the Middle East, helped sack Nineveh, and even infested the borders of Egypt. Riding stocky horses, and extravagantly tattooed, they were feared fighters, lightly armed, but extremely versatile.²⁶ Those Scythian warriors who entered Mesopotamia formed a relatively small group of mercenaries which gradually assimilated. Around the sixth century, the climate in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe became more favourable, so that the pressure to migrate abated.²⁷ From then onwards, the Scythians withdrew into their heartlands, from where they made occasional forays into the Balkans and the Armenian Highlands in pursuit of loot. The strategic position occupied by the Scythians allowed their elite to accumulate vast wealth from a mixture of pastoralism, agriculture, gold mining, slave trading, and other forms of commerce which reached as far afield as Western Europe and China.28

Yet, however impressive some of the Scythians’ treasures are, and however large some of their wooden fortresses, such as the remains excavated near Bilsk in Ukraine, their steppe homeland did not allow for wealth accumulation on the scale of that by the Persians. One hectare of irrigated land in Mesopotamia could feed more than five persons, but one hectare of cropland in the steppes north of the Black Sea could support only one or two people, and the pastoralists further north required several hectares to feed each mouth.²⁹ There was thus enough to survive, but not to flourish. A Greek traveller in the sixth century described the Scythians as plagued with arthritis and other diseases.³⁰ Altogether, their population could not have exceeded 1 or 2 million. As long as the Persians stayed strong, the Scythian challenge could be handled.

In the shadow of the Scythians and Persians, the Greek city states continued to grow and their populations expanded steadily. Forests rapidly gave way to olive farms and vineyards. This was the ideal world, as one of Homer’s heroes described it in the Iliad: ‘a great estate on the banks of a river, lovely in its vineyards and grain-bearing fields’.³¹ The eighth-century poet Hesiod’s Works and Days also idealized the peaceful life of the farmer:

Neither famine nor disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but light-heartedly they tend the fields which are all their care. The earth bears them victual in plenty, and on the mountains, the oak bears acorns upon the top and bees in the midst. Their woolly sheep are laden with fleeces; their women bear children like their parents. They flourish continually with good things, and do not travel on ships, for the grain-giving earth bears them fruit.32

He contrasted it with a gloomy world in which men foolishly sought to maximize their possessions, leading to war, hunger, disease, and starvation:

for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.³³

One of the main causes of strife in Greece was stenochoria, which means ‘confined space’: there was just not enough suitable land available to feed the growing population. It was also one of the reasons why Greek philosophers from the sixth century – more than 2,300 years before the Enlightenment scholar Robert Malthus – posited that a society could no longer be governed if its population became too large. The consequences were relentless migration around the coastal plains of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea as well as immense pressure to trade. Trade brought about new elites and changed the political organization of the city states. Wealthy trade hubs were the first to experience coups against their traditional rulers. In around 657, Cypselus, a powerful military leader in Corinth, overthrew the king. He claimed that he was obeying the oracle of Delphi and gained support by promising justice. About the same time, a general in the army of Sicyon called Orthagoras toppled that city’s king. Shortly after, Theagenes seized power in Megara, slaughtering the cattle of the rich to win the support of the poor. And in 632, Cylon, an Olympic wrestling champion, staged a putsch in Athens.34 The Greeks called these autocrats tyrannoi, or tyrants.

Shared gods, oracles, epics, and language helped the Greek city states develop a sense of common identity. On occasion it led to treaties formalizing cooperation between neighbouring states. One of the earliest examples was the Amphictyonic League protecting the sanctuary at Delphi, which established a council to arbitrate in cases of conflict between members. But, more often, the common language was used by poets to praise heroic exploits in the wars the Greeks fought against each other. ‘By doing mighty deeds let him learn how to fight,’ proclaimed Tyrtaeus in his so-called ‘Spartan Creed’.³⁵ Archilochus celebrated the courageous soldiers of Pharos, ‘desiring to plunge in the phalanxes of Naxos’.³⁶ ‘When will you show some courage, young comrades?’ another poet admonished. ‘Lazing in shabby peace on our land bled by war, have you no shame?’³⁷ Alcaeus warned: ‘Not homes with beautiful roofs, nor walls of permanent stone, nor canals and piers for ships make the city – but men of strength.’³⁸

Those ‘men of strength’ fought many wars: the Messenian Wars (743–724, 685–668), for instance, in which Sparta won the fertile coastal plains of the Messinian Gulf; the Lelantine War (around 710–650), which involved many cities in the fight to control the central fertile plain of Euboea; the Meliac War (around 690–670) between the Ionian cities in Asia Minor; or the First Sacred War (595–585), in which the Amphictyonic League destroyed the city of Cirrha for its impiety. Greek historians like Herodotus distinguished three forms of territorial aggrandizement: conquest, colonization, and synoecism. The latter – a kind of imperialism for pygmies – involved the incorporation by a city of smaller neighbouring towns; in this way, for example, Athens assimilated the settlements of the Attica.

Throughout the seventh and sixth centuries, Corinth and Sparta were the two dominant powers in Greece. During their seventy years in power (657–587), the tyrants Cypselus and Periander made Corinth the centre of commerce and industry. They promoted the manufacture of pottery, boosted exports by setting up trading posts in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, and paved a trackway so that ships could be pulled overland across the narrow isthmus between the Aegean and Ionian. Showcasing its might, Corinth invited smaller cities to its own sporting contest, the Isthmian Games, set up in the early sixth century to rival the Olympics. In 525, Corinth brokered an alliance with its main rival, Sparta. If Corinth dominated the seas and was one of the first Greek states to build the large warships known as triremes, Sparta was the land power par excellence, reliant on its military training and hoplite phalanx, a formation of heavy infantry armed with spears. But by the end of the sixth century, Corinth’s star had started to fade, as another city shrewdly diverted trade away and established itself as an industrial centre: Athens.

The boom in Corinth’s trade had initially benefited Athens, which was favourably located to exploit the sea routes of the Aegean. Athens had roughly 10,000 inhabitants in 700, and this increased to around 20,000 over the next two centuries.39 Meanwhile, it quietly built up an impressive network of colonies in Corinth’s shadow. Its currency was pegged to Corinth’s and the two rivals traded intensively. In the early sixth century, a new popular leader called Solon was responsible for steering Athens on its path to greatness. A cunning mercantilist, Solon created a local maritime sphere of influence for Athens in the Saronic Gulf by conquering the neighbouring island of Salamis. He improved the investment climate so that the pottery industry gradually moved away from Corinth. The first Athenian producers had copied the Corinthian style of vase painting, but they gradually made its black figures more refined, before setting new standards of artistry with their innovative ‘red figure’ style.

As Corinth’s export economy waned, Athens assumed the mantle of the leading sea power in Greece. After the populist politician Themistocles gained power in the early fifth century, he urged the Athenians to spend the profits from a newly discovered large silver mine on strengthening the fleet and fortifying the port of Piraeus with long walls that would connect it with Athens; he also introduced tax breaks that attracted foreign artisans and traders to the city. The Athenian statesman Pericles later extolled this period of expansion, stating: ‘Our adventurous spirit has forced an entry into every sea and into every land.’ His credo, that ‘Sea-power is of enormous importance’, remains the motto of the Hellenic navy today.⁴⁰

By the sixth century, the Greeks had long been embroiled in a fierce struggle with the Phoenicians for trade in the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians historically had controlled trade routes across much of the region, and were important suppliers of metals and timber to both Mesopotamia and Egypt. According to Homer, the Phoenicians, unlike the Greeks, were not especially organized and they generally tried to open markets peacefully rather than by force. Hesiod wrote that their primary objective was not colonization but trade.

Phoenicia’s trade dominance was under pressure from two sides: the interior of Asia to the east, as well as the maritime west.41 However, the Persian Empire was resolutely a land power: controlling the Levant and Asia Minor as the gateways for trade was profitable enough. The Greek city states were far more aggressive. Competition with the Phoenicians became so fierce that piracy was lauded by the Greeks as an act of bravery. In the seventh century, Greek merchants had already taken over much of the trade with Sicily and supported whoever was willing to fight the Phoenicians. When the Assyrians cracked down on an uprising against taxes by the traders of Tarsus in 697, the Greeks fought on the Assyrian side.⁴² When the Persians conquered the main Phoenician cities in the Levant in 539, the Greeks rapidly filled the void and became the dominant traders in the Eastern Mediterranean. Phoenician influence survived and continued to flourish in the Western Mediterranean under the hegemony of a power that would become a protagonist in one of the best-known conflicts in ancient history: the city of Carthage.

By the sixth century, then, the Greek world had more than recovered from its Dark Ages. This was the time when the first famous Greek philosophers and mathematicians were born, like Anaximander and Pythagoras. It was also the time now known as the Archaic period of Greek art (700–480), when sober geometric patterns on pottery gave way to elegantly painted figurative designs. Sculptors carved the famously enigmatic korai and kouroi, robed female and nude male youths. The first monumental stone temples in the austere Doric style were erected, for example the Temple of Apollo at Corinth.

Through trade and the influence of the Greek colonies in Italy, the Archaic style was eagerly embraced by the peoples on the other side of the Ionian Sea. None more so than the Etruscans, whose characteristic terracotta sarcophagi with their lifesize figures are clearly indebted to Greek sculpture. The Etruscans were a confederation of twelve towns located in the hills of Central Italy. Their assembly gathered once a year at the Shrine of Voltumna and elected a leader to represent the confederation. They expanded into the Po Valley and established colonies as far afield as Spain.

Although Greece and Etruria traded intensively – the latter was an important market for Athenian pottery – they soon became locked in a fierce contest for colonies and commercial opportunities, much like Corinth and Athens in earlier times. Before long, the Etruscans came to use Greek weapons against Greek citizens. In 540, an allied Carthaginian and Etruscan force engaged a Greek fleet near Alalia, in Corsica, repelling Greek attempts to colonize the island. In the north, the Etruscans also interacted with the Gauls. A spectacular archaeological find of Etruscan and Greek objects in a Celtic settlement in France in 2015 shows how extensive these relations were.43 But in this case too, trade led to friction. Enticed by the wealth of Etruria, tribes like the Insubres crossed the Alps and settled in Northern Italy.

In the context of these struggles, the early history of Rome was a relatively unimportant affair. In the two centuries after the death of its legendary first king, Rome grew into a city of about 30,000 inhabitants. Throughout that period, the Romans maintained much the same political system: male citizens elected a senate and the senate appointed the king, who was the chief priest, justice, and military leader.

Rome’s earliest wars were petty affairs, often sparked by cattle rustling. The army of the second Roman king consisted of only 1,800 soldiers. Besides Rome’s advantageous geographical position, it is difficult to explain its early military success. But once the first neighbouring towns were conquered, their citizens were forced to migrate to Rome and their soldiers were incorporated into the Roman army. The balance of power thus shifted with each conquest, sparking yet further wars, both of aggression and defence. The neighbouring city of Fidenae, Livy wrote, did not wait till Rome’s potential strength was realized, but began a preventive war itself. There are also examples of Rome sowing division among its rivals. King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (534–510) convened a peace conference of neighbouring leaders in a sacred grove. During the meeting, he had weapons put into the tent of one of the attendees so that the latter attracted the ire of the others.

However, the stronger Rome got, the more it could show its magnanimous side. King Servius Tullius (575–535) coaxed the nobles of neighbouring cities into a ‘community of harmony and worship’. After a series of successful wars against the Latins, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus erected a shrine of Diana where those same former enemies were welcome to pray. Following the conquest of the Latin towns on the eastern bank of the Tiber, the Etruscans loomed as the next challenge. ‘Great is their strength on land,’ the historian Livy had a Latin leader warn, ‘exceedingly great on the sea.’44 But, for now, the Romans avoided confrontation. Tarquinius Superbus even concluded a treaty with the Etruscans and tried to attract their artisans to Rome with the offer of a major project: the construction of a vast new temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. The artisans came in such numbers that the Romans became disgruntled with the heavy spending on infrastructure and the influx of immigrants, and deposed their king. In 509, the year that Tarquinius Superbus’ temple was consecrated, Rome became a republic.

By the end of the sixth century, Rome had grown into one of the largest cities on the coastal plain around the River Tiber. Its population had increased to such an extent that its sacred boundary – the so-called pomerium – had to be extended for the first and only time until the first century. It had gained the sea port of Ostia, bridged the Tiber, erected the first apartment blocks, or insulae, and, significantly, built one of the world’s first permanent underground sewerage systems, the Cloaca Maxima.

But although the city was flourishing, Rome continued to play only a modest, regional role. Looking back over the preceding two and a half centuries of power politics, it was great Middle Eastern empires like the Assyrians and the Persians that still predominated. Even if Hesiod was far from alone in yearning for tranquillity, the Eastern Mediterranean remained one large arena of rivalry. Stenochoria, commercial imperatives, ambitious tyrants – all inflamed the competition for land, trade, prestige, and power.

Beyond the Indus

In 538, the army of King Cyrus II of Persia reached the Indus. It found the political landscape on the other side of the river fragmented and marred by anarchy, as city states contended for territory, commercial advantage, and influence. Referred to in ancient Buddhist sources as the sixteen Mahajanapadas, these city states experimented with monarchical and republican forms of government, the latter known in Sanskrit as gana-sangha, which literally means ‘equal assembly’. By the sixth century, four main competitors emerged out of the Mahajanapadas’ struggle: Koshala, Magadha, Vatsa, and Avanti. Finally, there was a showdown between Avanti and Magadha. The Buddhist sources explained that, in the past, Avanti had conquered Magadha, but then the latter’s people rebelled against their foreign overlords and established a new, native dynasty. Throughout the sixth century, a precarious balance of power existed between the two states. Relations were sufficiently cordial at one point for King Bimbisara of Magadha famously to send his doctor to the Avanti ruler, Chanda Pradyota, when he fell ill. Around 490, Bimbisara was murdered by an ambitious son who embarked on a policy of attacking Avanti’s allies.

It is not clear exactly how it happened, but probably by the mid-fifth century, Magadha had emerged as the supreme power of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Advantageously situated on the middle reaches of the Ganges, Magadha was a large city, according to the sources, protected by five surrounding hills and with the intervening valleys barred by walls. Most of the writings of that time propagated the idea of a universal kingdom that brought stability. Considering the behaviour of the sixteen Mahajanapadas, the Numerical Discourses of the Buddha concluded: ‘human kingship is poor compared to celestial happiness’.45 Great emphasis was placed on the idea of the righteous king. The same text described a good king as cultivated, the shield and protector of his people, caring for the lives of his soldiers, guarding his vassals, and even minding the fate of animals and birds. ‘He is rich, with great wealth and property, with full treasuries and storerooms. He is powerful, possessing an army of four divisions that is obedient and compliant to his commands. His counselor is wise, competent, and intelligent, able to consider benefits pertaining to the past, future, and present.’⁴⁶

Further north and east, China too had dissolved into a remorseless struggle between states after the weakening of the Zhou Dynasty. ‘The world was fallen into decay,’ wrote the famous fourth-century philosopher Mencius, ‘and right principles had dwindled away. Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds were again waxen rife. Cases were occurring of ministers who murdered their rulers, and of sons who murdered their fathers.’⁴⁷ One man who experienced this at first hand was the pre-eminent sage Confucius (551–479), who served as advisor to the kings of Lu. The state of Lu had once been very powerful, controlling the core of the fertile North China Plain. But it was surrounded by rivals, and a moment of unrest at the court in around 700 proved fatal. One neighbouring state seized the opportunity: the Qi, who had grown rich on the salt trade, and had been mandated by the Zhou king to lead the fight against the barbarians. In 642, this role of ba, or hegemon, under the symbolic fiat of the Zhou, was seized by another of the Lu’s neighbours, the Song. Ten years later, the Jin in turn became hegemon, and spearheaded a campaign against the Chu, before the title was bestowed first upon the Qin and then on the Chu, each promising to restore peace between the Chinese kingdoms and to fight the common threat of the barbarians. The kingdom of Zhou by now had atrophied to the point that it conferred little more than a veneer of legitimacy to the ambitions of these warring states.

As a young man, Confucius had seen his world gird itself for major conflict as the short-haired, tattooed, barbarian Wu prepared to challenge the Chu. The Wu had grown powerful thanks to their proficiency in metal working, and they had as their chief strategic advisor a man who would later be regarded as one of China’s most famous thinkers: Sun Tzu (544–496). Focusing on military strategy and tactics, especially spying and deception, he was the intellectual antipode of Confucius. Sun Tzu served his Wu masters well, bringing them five important military victories. For a short period, the Wu became hegemon, before the advent of another challenger, the Yue, which was witnessed by Confucius as his life drew to a close.

The annals of this Spring and Autumn period (771–476) confirm that there was no sustained peace for any of the Chinese states. If one part of their border was secure, it was almost inevitable that challenges were building up in another part. But however much it was an era of conflict, it was also an era of consolidation.48 If there were still 148 separate states mentioned in the chronicles of the seventh century, the number had been brought down to eighteen by the sixth century. As in India, this period in China witnessed the rise of larger city states, which absorbed surrounding towns and enabled the specialization of crafts. As manufactures like bronze vessels, iron utensils, and silk developed, trade became ever more important, facilitated by the introduction first of shell tokens and then true coins. Fan Li, one of the earliest Chinese economists, counselled kings to promote commerce as well as agriculture. Cities evolved on a grandiose scale, with vast temple complexes, palaces, iron workings, huge walls, and wide roads that allowed the passage of nine carriages side by side.⁴⁹ Competition to serve the most powerful kings was ruthless: advisors, craftsmen, soldiers, and even ministers, would go to great lengths to place their knowledge and skills at the disposal of rulers. States could field armies numbering hundreds of thousands. Innovative military technologies – such as the crossbow, initially imported from Southeast Asia – spread rapidly.

Although the Spring and Autumn period was plagued by numerous wars, with kingdoms seemingly always ready to sacrifice their young men, it was also an era of intense diplomacy, as lesser states swung pragmatically between allies. The annals list hundreds of treaties, bilateral visits, and international conferences, where more powerful states forced weaker ones to acknowledge their will. Duke Ding of Jin, for instance, convened a summit that concluded: ‘No family is to amass military equipment. No town may have a wall of one hundred zhi.’50 The Jin themselves, though, were not bound by this agreement. Conferences could also legitimize a state’s hegemonic status as guardian of the heavenly mandate of the Zhou kings. In 667, the Qi assembled an important convention for the purpose of ‘supporting the prince and expelling the barbarians’.⁵¹ In 656, the Qi called another conference, this time to check the rise of the Chu and to sanction humiliating the king of Zhou. Equally, meetings were held to challenge the hegemon. In 598, for example, the Jin gathered the Qi, Song, Cai, Zheng, Wei, and Ju at Jiantu in order to broker an alliance against the Chu, who had just toppled the Jin hegemony.

The scope of those international meetings and treaties, however, was often much broader than security. In 651, an agreement signed between seven states at Kuiqiu stipulated that: ‘The contracting parties shall not build dykes on a river; shall not store grain for speculation; shall not change successors; shall not make concubines as wives; shall not let women be involved in state affairs.’⁵² A conference in 554 vowed to protect the king, give mutual aid in case of insurrection or at times of famine, extradite fugitives, eliminate barriers to the trade in corn, and refrain from distorting trade by means of monopolies. Rules were written down to protect envoys and treaties were submitted to the oversight of the gods. ‘May the gods of the hills and rivers, the spirits of former emperors and dukes, and the ancestors of our seven tribes and twelve states, watch over its implementation,’ the conclusion of the treaty proclaimed. ‘If any one proves unfaithful, may the all-seeing gods smite him, so that his people shall forsake him, his life be lost, and his posterity cut off.’⁵³ Such dire penalties recall the oaths sworn as part of Mesopotamian treaties. Among the Chinese states, treaties were ratified by the participants slitting their palm, mingling wine with their blood, and laying their hand on the head of a sacrificial ox, goat, or white horse. Each state possessed a special archive known as the mengfu, or ‘palace of treaties’, where copies of agreements were usually carefully stored.

Scepticism about such diplomatic endeavours was already prevalent in the Spring and Autumn Annals themselves. Its anonymous authors clearly portrayed treaties as instruments of the strong, nothing more than a reflection of military power on paper. ‘And thus the states are kept quiet and do service to the great powers, securing their own preservation and escaping ruin,’ we read. ‘The lawless are kept in awe and accomplished virtue is displayed.’54 The withering of the authority of the heavenly mandate and the consequent anarchy in China inspired a series of intellectuals who are still widely read today. One of them was Guan Zhong, prime minister to Duke Huan of Qi in the seventh century. Guan Zhong counselled the duke to be on his guard and to spend enough on defence. ‘When talk of universal love prevails, the troops will not fight … knights who are skilled in archery and charioteering and who possess courage and strength will go abroad. How will we be able to avoid attacks from others?’ But military power could not exist without good governance. ‘Heaven and Earth alternate hard times with the good,’ he insisted, but a prince who was ‘overly aggressive, he would fall as a withered leaf’. The key to power was prosperity: ‘The preservation of territory depends on walls; the preservation of walls depends on arms. The preservation of arms depends on men, and the preservation of men depends on grain.’ He warned against decadence, called for dignity at the court, and emphasized the importance of just legislation: ‘Laws are created to make use of the people’s strength.’55

Confucius also emphasized the need for wise government. ‘In carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all?’ he asked rhetorically in his Analects. He recognized the need for military strength, but seemed to stress that the effective use of hard power required an educated people. ‘To lead an uninstructed people to war,’ he said, ‘is to throw them away.’ The ideal was harmony, but harmony meant hierarchy, both between and within states: ‘There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.’⁵⁶ Lao Tzu, the legendary founder of Taoism, loathed violence. ‘Where armies are, thorns and brambles grow.’⁵⁷ Yet he, too, implicitly admitted the need for defensive wars. His plea was that force should be used prudently and proportionately: violence should be employed for limited ends, it should not be rejoiced in, and it should cease as soon as victory was achieved. Peace and tranquillity were what a prince should prize above all; the ideal was always to advance one’s interests without creating resistance: ‘Nothing under heaven is softer or more yielding than water, but when it attacks things hard and resistant there is not one of them that can prevail. For they can find no way of altering it. That the yielding conquers the resistant and the soft becomes the hard is a fact known by all men, yet utilised by none.’⁵⁸

Even Sun Tzu, who is known today mostly for his shrewd prescriptions for waging war, subscribed to the same fundamental viewpoint as his contemporaries Confucius and Lao Tzu. While the bulk of The Art of War is about how to fight, the introduction makes it clear that what is most important in the struggle between states is their internal strength. Out of the seven conditions for winning a war identified by Sun Tzu, only the last three related to the waging of war itself. Most important was the quality of the leader and his understanding of how ‘the moral law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler’.59 Next was the balance of power with the primacy of economic resources: lengthy wars should be avoided, and conquests must pay off. ‘The proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people’s substance to be drained away.’⁶⁰

In the eastern part of Eurasia, South Asia and the North China Plain remained separate arenas. Both, however, were beset by disorder: India by fighting between the Mahajanapadas and China by a sequence of wars contesting the hegemony under the Zhou. As in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, war coincided with economic rivalry and technological competition; but, as in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, states also combined to preserve peace. The writings of Buddhist intellectuals from India and Chinese thinkers such as Guan Zhong, Sun Tzu, Confucius, and Lao Tzu reveal to us both a search for order and also a fixation with hard power. Without peace and stability, they argued, the farmer could not farm. If agricultural production fell, the king’s position would weaken too. Good governance was important for preserving peace, but so was the readiness to fight – even if everyone understood the consequences when two neighbours fought.

Harmony and Anarchy

Between 750 and 500, the Achaemenid Dynasty of Persia founded the largest empire that the world had ever seen. Never before had Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Levant been so firmly under the control of a single monarch. The world’s centre of political prowess and prestige was clearly in the Middle East.

What permitted a small kingdom on the fringes of Mesopotamia to embark on so ambitious a political project was the fact that it encountered an Assyrian Empire whose body was severely weakened, but whose skeleton of laws and conventions, institutions, economic structures, trade networks, and infrastructure still operated. It was a hostile takeover of a decaying empire by a fresh, ambitious contender. But although the first Achaemenid rulers may have been fierce military commanders, they also recognized the wisdom of sponsoring trade, soft power, and an imperial doctrine of harmony. They accentuated their Persian origins while absorbing the imperial tradition of Mesopotamia. They also highlighted the importance of magnanimity and justice throughout their realm.

If the Achaemenid Empire brought unprecedented political unity to the heart of the Eastern hemisphere, everywhere else – especially the Mediterranean and the Indo-Gangetic and North China Plains – comprised arenas of conflict. Beyond the bounds of empire, the situation of anarchy gave birth to fresh debates about politics and diplomacy. Some intellectuals were pragmatic, if not cynical. It is the nature of man, asserted the Greek poet Hesiod, that he envies his neighbour. The Chinese statesman Guan Zhong insisted that societies had to be alert and that neglecting the army would lead to decline. Sun Tzu was of the same opinion. The king had to be just towards his citizens, he said, in order to prioritize economic prosperity, but also to be constantly ready for combat. Others, like Confucius, Lao Tzu, and the Indian writers in the Buddhist tradition, were more idealistic and placed greater emphasis on the pursuit of harmony.

Yet whatever their belief in the feasibility of harmony in international politics, all of these thinkers acknowledged the importance of peace for the countryside – a reflection of the fact that agricultural production remained a crucial attribute of power. Farmland meant food, food meant population growth, and population growth meant more soldiers. City states that lacked the ability to feed themselves had to go to great lengths to secure their food supply through trade or colonization. The lack of enough fertile land prompted the Greek city states both to fight each other and to establish colonies across the Mediterranean. Drought had made the Assyrian Empire vulnerable to the Persians. Nature thus remained a decisive factor.

But there were other causes of conflict too. Trade, in particular, was a principal source of discord. Commerce might bring polities closer together, but it could also cause them to clash. Military and political weakness continued to elicit aggression from predators. But strength, equally, could draw states into wars: each conquest led to a further campaign in order to protect the previous gains, as the Persians discovered. Offence often remained the best defence.

The ability of culture and religion to foster accord also had its limitations. States in China, India, and around the Aegean Sea often shared the same language, customs, rituals, and even gods, to whom they made solemn pledges when they signed treaties and attended international conventions. Yet despite the ceremony with which the Chinese cities stored diplomatic documents in their ‘palaces of treaties’, many thinkers remained sceptical about the enforceability of these agreements; military might, they argued, was a far more reliable guarantee of security. Many so-called peace conferences were little more than a means of enforcing the recognition of one state’s superiority over others. Despite the lip service paid to high ideals, shared values, and common heritage, all over the Eastern Hemisphere, diplomacy was a seething cauldron of opportunism and expediency as alliances were opportunistically built and broken in an endless struggle for advantage. Between 750 and 500, the ideal throughout the Eastern Hemisphere may have been harmony, but the overwhelming reality remained anarchy.