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Further Reading

550 BC - 330 BC - Achaemenid / Persian Empire

Achaemenes	750 ?	675 ?
TEISPES	675	640
CYRUS I	640	600
CAMBYSES I	600	559
CYRUS II, the Great	559	530
CAMBYSES II	530	522
DARIUS I	522	486
XERXES I	486	465
ARTAXERXES I LONGIMANUS	465	424
XERXES II	424	423
DARIUS II	423	404
ARTAXERXES II MNEMON	404	359
ARTAXERXES II OCHUS	359	338
ARSES	338	336
DARIUS III CODOMANNUS	336	330

Persia first grabbed the attention of the historic world in the sixth century BC with the exploits and conquests of the near-legendary Cyrus the Great, conqueror of the Medes, and of his successors Darius and Xerxes, so strikingly described in the renowned fifth century BC classical Greek works of the historians Herodotus and Xenophon. Prior to 600 BC, the Persians were a nomadic tribe that inhabited the southern part of the area dominated by the Medes, in what is the modern country of Iran. After Cyrus II took control around 550 BC, the Persians attacked the Medes and their allies, the Chaldeans, who controlled New Babylon and Mesopotamia. The Hebrews who were in exile in Babylon assisted the Persians, and as a reward, Cyrus allowed them to return to Palestine after the war.

The Persian Empire, which was founded 550 BC by Cyrus the Great and dominated the surrounding area until the time of Alexander the Great, conquered the kingdom of Lydia in 546 BC. Cambyses II son of Cyrus the Great conquered the Egyptians in 525 BC and Darius the Great his successor pushed the Persian borders far as Indus River and constructed a canal connecting the Nile River and the Red Sea. The Persian religion was based on practices that originated around 1600 BC, but became organized during the lifetime of Zoroaster, who lived around 600 BC.

The native country of the Persians is that mountainous province still called Farsistan, that is, the dwelling-place of the Fars, the Persians. This nation was the purest branch of the Iranian race. For a long period the Persians remained nomads and semi-barbarians, and from this mode of life, and from the rigorous climate of the country they inhabited, acquired the indomitable courage they exhibited.

The Persians and the Bactrians were, of all the Iranian people, those who had preserved the Zoroastrian religion in its greatest purity. Their isolated life and tribal independence, their republican liberty and parliamentary forms of government, which, as we have already shown, were the normal and primitive state of the Iranians, remained unaltered till the time of Cyrus. It was by free deliberation in a real national assembly that he was elected king. Even in later times, when the Persian empire was at its greatest height of glory and power, there still remained something of these ancient forms of this spirit of independence and liberty.

The nature of the government and the authority of the great king were very different in the provinces from what they were in Persia itself. Although elsewhere he was the typical Asiatic sovereign, absolute, uncontrolled, almost divine; in Persia the king was only the chief of a free people. The Persians paid no tribute; the king could not condemn one of them to death for a single crime,J and without observing all the forms of justice; it would even seem that the institution of the trial of every man by his peers, by a jury, existed among them. It was their warlike legions, with the hardy habits of mountaineers, who constituted the chief strength of the armies of the king; but he was unable to march them out absolutely at his own caprice - the Persian nation had to decide on the propriety of the war. On these solemn occasions the king, whose word was law to all the other nations beneath his sceptre, assembled round him, before taking his resolution, a real parliament.

The Persians were divided into ten tribes, and into three social classes - the tribes of the Pasargadians, or more correctly Parsagadians, inhabitants of the city of Parcauvada, "the Persian fortress," called Pasargadae by the Greeks; the Maraphians and the Maspians formed the aristocracy, the warriors.The Panthialaeans, the Derusiaeans and the Germanians were the cultivators of the soil; the Daans, the Mardians, the Dropicans and the Sagartians led the life of nomad shepherds. Modern travellers still find these ancient manners and customs existing in the mountains of Farsistan. The Pasargadae were superior to all the others, from them sprang Achaemenes, the ancestor of Cyrus.