THE ACHAEMENID DYNASTY
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THE ACHAEMENID DYNASTY |
The Achaemenid dynasty was established and given its name by Achaemenes, its eponymous ancestor, around 700 BC. The lands over which he had once ruled soon divided into the two separate kingdoms of Anshan and Parsa. It was not until 559 BC that Cyrus, the son of Cambyses I, ascended the thrones of both Anshan and Parsa and in so doing became the undisputed ruler of the Persian world. He was Cyrus II, the grandson of the first Cyrus, king of Anshan. In acknowledgement of his seminal role in the creation of the first Persian Empire, he has become known to history as Cyrus the Great.
Cyrus set about organizing the new state under his rule with a view to increasing its power and, in this way, gaining greater independence from its overlords, the Medes. It was not long before the Medes became aware of what was taking place under the new Persian king and alarm bells started ringing. They realized that they had to bring their vassal to heel without delay. It had to be made clear to Cyrus who really wielded the power in the Middle East. We learn from a contemporary source, the ancient cuneiform Babylonian Chronicles, that, ‘King Astyages (of Media) called up his troops and marched against Cyrus, King of Anshan, in order to meet him in battle.’
The army of the Medes marched through Anshan and penetrated deep into Pars. There they confronted the forces of Cyrus at Pasargadae in the foothills of the Zagros mountains. They had come a long distance, while the Persians were on home territory. At Pasargadae the Persians conclusively defeated the Mede army and forced it to retreat. Cyrus pursued the Medes and besieged their capital, Ecbatana, forcing the city to surrender.
Seeing the way in which the geopolitical situation in the region was changing fast, Croesus, king of Lydia in western Anatolia, determined to take advantage of the instability. In 547 BC he invaded Media with the intention of replacing Mede domination with his own. Cyrus was certainly not prepared to allow this to happen and he moved westwards from Ecbatana, meeting the Lydian army at Pteria in the heart of Anatolia. Like the Medes before them, the Lydians were defeated and Cyrus continued to move westwards. As he had done with the Mede capital, he besieged Sardis, the Lydian capital, and this city also soon surrendered to the Persians. Following this surrender, the Lydian state collapsed and the whole of Anatolia was soon occupied by the Persians. Most significantly, this included the Ionian Greek cities on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, and these were also absorbed into the growing Achaemenid Empire. This was an event of particular historical importance because as a result the Greeks for the first time came into direct contact with the Persians. From that time on the confrontation between the Greeks and the Persians was to be a major occurrence in the history of the ancient world.
By this time Cyrus was in full imperial mode and the expansion of the new empire continued almost uninterrupted. In 541 BC he took his army northwards into Central Asia, which had remained a region of considerable turbulence. It was his aim to pacify the lands east of the Caspian Sea, a natural route southwards for the steppe nomads, and so to consolidate the vulnerable northern frontier. His army moved well to the north, occupying the huge lowland drained by the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers, which flow northwards into the Aral Sea. He established the frontier of his empire on the Jaxartes and there constructed fortifications for defence against the tribes to the north. This military foray was the first Persian incursion into that inland Mesopotamia known as Transoxiana, in which Persia was to be heavily involved in the future. It was to be one of the principal routes taking Persian influences into Asia.
Still bent on further conquests, Cyrus turned back westwards towards Babylon. This had long been the greatest city in southwest Asia and the chief centre of that urban civilization which had always been attracted to the inhabitants of the steppe lands to the north. Historically, Babylon had dominated Mesopotamia but had become increasingly unstable during the reign of its incompetent king Nabonidus and his son Bel-shar-usur (Belshazzar). In 540 BC Cyrus attacked the city and defeated the Babylonians at the battle of Opis. He then treated this great centre of urban civilization with great respect. Officials were allowed to keep their posts and Babylonian religious practices were allowed to continue. The Babylonian vassal states were also added to Cyrus’s empire. These included the Phoenician cities in the eastern Mediterranean, which gave the Persians further access to sea power. A particularly significant gesture was that Cyrus ended the ‘Babylonian Captivity’ of the Israelites, who were allowed to return to their homeland and to rebuild their sacred temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by the Babylonians.1
As a result of these conquests, within a quarter of a century Cyrus had transformed his small inheritance into an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean deep into Central Asia and from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. By this time it had become clear to him that endless conquest was not sufficient; it was necessary to have a system of government, in order to rule effectively the vast areas conquered. As a result of this, the empire was divided into provinces called satrapies, each governed by a governor, or satrap. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, eventually there would be twenty of these, most of them based on former vassal states of the empire. The other necessity was to establish a capital city from which the enormous empire would be ruled and its boundaries defended. In the early stages of conquest, Susa was chosen for this function. Chief city of the land of the Elamites, Susa was located on the western edge of the Zagros mountains, facing the great prize of Mesopotamia itself. As such it was a ‘forward’ capital, facing westwards, the main direction in which the empire was moving at this time.2 It also had good communications and was chosen to be the terminus of the Persian Royal Road, which was intended to be the main axis of the empire and which initially stretched from Susa to Sardis. However, from Cyrus’s point of view, Susa did have disadvantages. Most importantly, it was not in the historic Persian lands that held a special place in the hearts of the Persians. It was in Parsa that the Persians had first settled and it was there that the great victory over the Medes had taken place, signalling the beginning of the Persian journey to empire. Cyrus decided that Pasargadae, the place of the battlefield, should now be transformed into the place of government. There he embarked on the construction of his imperial residence, barracks to house the army and administrative buildings to house the agencies of government. As a result of this, two capitals came to share responsibility for the running of the empire, but it was Pasargadae that had the more important place in the affections of the Persians.
Despite the work involved in building a capital worthy of the achievements of the Persians, there were still pressing needs on the frontiers and Cyrus found it impossible to completely substitute his role of general for that of ruler. In 528 BC he was again on the frontier, this time in the north doing battle with the fierce nomadic tribes who lived there. It was in this conflict, in 530, that Cyrus was killed.3 His body was returned to Parsa and laid to rest in Pasargadae, the site of his first great battle. From then on, the significance of Pasargadae to the Achaemenids was enhanced by the tomb of Cyrus the Great.
Cyrus’s successor was his son, Cambyses II, who endeavoured to continue the policies of his father and extend the empire yet further. The main achievement of his brief six-year reign was the conquest of Egypt. This conquest took the Achaemenid Empire as far as Libya and it extended along the southern shores of the Mediterranean as far as the Cyrenaica peninsula. As a result of this, the empire became a Mediterranean as well as a Middle Eastern power and so inevitably came ever closer to the world of the Greeks. The city-states of this maritime people were by this time dominating the trade and the politics of the eastern Mediterranean and to them the Persians were very unwelcome intruders.
Following the early death of Cambyses and the absence of an heir, there were disputes over the succession. While in the early seventh century BC the kings of Anshan had succeeded to the throne of the united Persian kingdom, the succession now moved back to the branch that had ruled Pars. Darius, a descendant of Ariamnes and a distant cousin of Cambyses, became the Shahanshah, the Great King, and as Darius I he was to rule the empire for more than thirty years. Like Cyrus, Darius had a military background. He had been commander of an elite force known as the ‘Ten Thousand Immortals’ and had been closely involved with military operations on the frontiers. Much of the subsequent development of the empire was the work of Darius.
The uncertainties over the succession resulted in the outbreak of rebellions in Babylonia and Elam, but these were soon subdued. Darius then moved eastwards to the turbulent eastern frontier. Defeating the Afghan tribes, the Persians invaded India and established a new frontier on the Indus river. The junction between the northern and eastern frontiers was secured by establishing control over the Hindu Kush, the huge knot of mountains located between Central Asia and the plains of northern India.
Having thus secured the eastern frontiers, Darius then turned westwards against the Greeks. The Ionian Greeks of Anatolia had been absorbed into the Persian Empire by Cyrus, but across the Aegean lay the major Greek city-states on the large peninsula lying between the Aegean and the Ionian seas. The largest and most important of these was Athens, and much of the Greek world was clustered around this city in a kind of unofficial and unstructured federation. These Greeks of the western Aegean encouraged the Ionian Greeks to assert their independence from the Persians and so to regain their historic liberties. This was another frontier that Darius was determined to stabilize and this necessitated moving ever deeper into the Mediterranean. In 513 BC his army crossed the Bosphorus on a floating bridge and embarked on the first invasion of Europe by an Asiatic power in historical times. This inaugurated a new phase in history. Herodotus, dubbed ‘the father of history’, asserted that the Persian army consisted of seven million men. While this was an example of Herodotus’ notorious exaggeration, the army was certainly of a formidable size.4 Thrace and Macedonia were occupied with little difficulty and this put the Greeks into a highly vulnerable position. Aid was sent to the Ionian Greeks in order to encourage them to rise up against their Persian overlords, and they were able to force a withdrawal of the bulk of the army back into Anatolia.
The Greeks of the western Aegean were now the last people in the ancient world to hold out against the Persian onslaught. In order for Persia to become the truly universal state of the western oikoumene it was necessary for this maritime people to be subjugated like all the others.5 Darius decided to strike straight at the heart of the Greek world and this necessitated Persia becoming for the first time a sea as well as a land power. The maritime skills of the Phoenicians of the eastern Mediterranean were used and the ships were largely of Phoenician design.
While Darius, like his great predecessor, was much occupied with the stabilization of the frontiers, which inevitably meant the extension of the territory of the empire, he also found time to give attention to the internal affairs of his realm. It was Darius who gave Pasargadae, in the heart of Pars, its special significance and consolidated its position in the Persian mind by building the great tomb for Cyrus on the site of his first – and perhaps greatest – victory. As a result of this it became a place of pilgrimage and of imperial ceremony.
Cyrus himself had intended it to be his ceremonial capital and had begun to build there. However, the last thing Darius wanted was to be overshadowed by Cyrus, and from the outset he planned to have his own capital. He wanted his achievements to be seen as being quite separate and different from those of his great predecessor and needed a place to display the splendour of his own reign. This capital would have to be in Parsa and so relatively close to Pasargadae at the heart of the realm. Emphasizing this, the new city would be called Parsa. The Greeks subsequently Hellenized this and called it Persepolis, the name by which it has come to be known.
After the humiliating defeat by the Greeks at Marathon, Darius seems to have accepted the situation in the west. The Greeks of the western Aegean remained independent and the Persian dream of conquering Europe was abandoned. However, in 486 BC Darius was succeeded by his son Xerxes, who certainly did not share his father’s acquiescence in this situation. While Darius had attempted in most ways to follow the example of Cyrus as a benevolent and humane ruler, Xerxes was more prepared to use force to keep his subjects in order. A revolt in Babylonia was quelled with considerable brutality and Babylon was so badly damaged that it never fully recovered. This destruction of the richest city in the ancient world impoverished the whole empire.
The Persian Empire at its greatest extent, 526 BC.
The new Great King was determined that what today would probably be called the ‘western question’ had to be resolved. Herodotus attributed to him the pronouncement,
We shall so extend the empire of Persia that its boundaries will be God’s own sky, so that the sun will not look down upon any land beyond the boundaries of what is ours . . . I shall pass through Europe from end to end and make it one land.6
Presumably that one land would have been the Persian Empire, into which Europe would have been incorporated. Xerxes prepared for the next phase in the wars with the Greeks, and this time it was to entail the deployment of overwhelming land and sea power by the Persians. Xerxes planned that the army should take the easiest crossing into Europe via the Hellespont (the Dardanelles) while a Persian fleet was to cross the Aegean for the purpose of supplying and supporting the army.
In the spring of 480 BC Xerxes and his army crossed the Hellespont again, using a bridge of boats, and marched westwards through Thrace and Macedonia. Turning southwards into the peninsula, by August of that year they had reached Thermopylae where, despite showing great heroism, the Greek army was defeated. From there the Persians moved on and reached Athens itself. The city was poorly defended and its walls were inadequate to withstand attack. It soon surrendered and the heart of the Greek world was now in the hands of their greatest enemy. It seemed at this point as though Xerxes had achieved what his predecessor had failed to do, and he was poised to complete the long-desired conquest of Europe.
Yet the Greeks were by no means defeated. Athens was a maritime power and the Athenian leader Themistocles had stressed that the safety of the Greeks from the Persians could be ensured only by the construction of a powerful fleet by Athens and her allies. After the fall of the city, the Athenian fleet, together with ships sent by its allies, remained intact in the Straits of Salamis, and the Persian fleet was drawn into this narrow stretch of water. The two fleets clashed and the battle became one of hand-to-hand combat. The lightly armed Persians proved to be no match for the heavily armed Greek hoplites and the battle became a complete disaster for the Persians. By the time the battle came to an end there were very few Persian vessels left undamaged and the Persian losses were immense. (The Greek dramatist Aeschylus himself fought in this battle and later described what he had witnessed in his drama The Persians.) The Great King and his army who had watched from the shore were dismayed. At that point Xerxes lost his nerve and ordered an immediate retreat. The English military historian Geoffrey Regan expressed the opinion that the Persians had at first seen the battle as being a kind of sporting event, a grand spectacle to inaugurate the conquest of Greece and of Europe.7 However, maritime combat was not a sport with which the Persians were at all familiar and there was to be no permanent conquest of Greece, let alone Europe. In the maritime environment of the Mediterranean, land power proved to be no match for sea power. Regan compared the subsequent Persian retreat northwards from Athens to the Hellespont to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Likewise Salamis can be compared to Trafalgar, where the power dominant on land was no match for the maritime power at sea. As the great Persian army returned northwards it was harried by the Greeks and subject to disease and shortages of food. The army that arrived back in Asia was a sad shadow of the magnificent force that had set out earlier in the year, and the Persian fleet had been practically wiped out.
In the following year a Persian army of considerable size, which had been left behind with Greece in the hope of being able to resume the campaign, was conclusively defeated by the Athenians at Plataea. There were no further attempts by the Persians to complete their dominance over the ancient world by conquering Greece. Their European dream had come to an end. The reign of Xerxes was proving to be a disaster externally and internally and in 465 BC he was assassinated by one of his ministers. The Achaemenid Empire lasted for another 150 years and there were six more Great Kings, but the days of glory were already at an end.
The Tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae.
The son and successor of Xerxes, Artaxerxes I (r. 465–424 BC), set the tone for the future. Following a revolt against him, he had all his brothers murdered and married his sister. This crime did little to stabilize the empire and further trouble on the frontiers was followed by the first losses of territory. The Greek city-states of Ionia on the eastern side of the Aegean became fully independent and moved completely into the Greek world.
Intrigue, corruption, feuds and murder now became the norms in court life. Artaxerxes III (r. 358–338 BC) seems to have murdered most of the royal family so as to remove any possible rivals to the throne, and he in turn was murdered by his chief minister. The political and moral decline continued unabated and the frontiers of the empire continued to shrink. Following the loss of Egypt and the defeat by the Greeks, Persia had virtually ceased to be a Mediterranean power and its influence in the ancient world continued to diminish.
The last Achaemenid king was Darius III, who ascended the throne in 336 BC following the death of Arses, who had been little more than a puppet king and like so many of his predecessors was murdered. Darius III was descended from Darius II – the great-grandson of Darius the Great – in another branch of the royal family, which had survived the spate of murders that had decimated the immediate succession. He made strenuous efforts to reassert the power of the monarchy, but by this time it was too late for any actions to save the Achaemenid dynasty. It is interesting that the final demise of the dynasty was brought about by the Greeks, the people who had prevented the Persians from becoming the empire of the ancient world and the dominant power in the oikoumene. While the Persians had failed to overcome the sea power of the Greeks, the latter overcame the land power of the Persians. More specifically, this huge reversal was brought about not by the Greeks themselves but by a people on the edge of the Hellenic world whose territory was minute by comparison with the vastness of the Persian Empire. These were the Macedonians, and the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty was accomplished by their king, Alexander, known to history as ‘The Great’.
