History of Money, Banking, and Trade
A historical look at the development and evolution of money, banking, and trade. From the ancient civilizations to the present.
History of Money, Banking, and Trade
Episode 26. From Deserts to Dynasties: The Resilient Legacy of the Persian Empire
Unlock the secrets of the ancient Persian Empire and discover how its innovations shaped the world as we know it. Join me, Mike D, as we unravel the captivating history of this formidable civilization, from the pioneering leadership of Cyrus the Great to the empire's revolutionary impact on trade and currency. Ever wondered how the Persians thrived in arid landscapes or outmaneuvered mighty Assyrian forces? Learn about their ingenious qanat system and strategic prowess that allowed them to flourish in the face of adversity.
Embark on a journey through time as we explore the intricate web of power struggles, alliances, and legendary tales that defined the ancient Near East. Witness the dramatic fall of the Assyrian Empire and the subsequent rise of Persia through strategic marriages and alliances. Experience the thrilling narrative of Cyrus the Great's rise to power, filled with destiny, betrayal, and rebellion, and understand how these events set the stage for one of the most influential empires in history.
As we navigate these fascinating stories, gain insights into the cultural and technological advancements that allowed the Persians to maintain stability amidst regional upheavals. From controlling vital trade routes to pioneering the use of coinage, the Persian legacy is one of resilience and innovation. Whether you're a history buff or simply curious about the past, this episode promises to enrich your understanding of a civilization that left an indelible mark on the world.
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Welcome podcast listener. I am Mike D, and this is the History of Money, banking and Trade podcast. My goal is to expand your knowledge of the history and evolution of trade, along with money, banking and credit, from ancient civilizations all the way to the present. I truly hope you find these episodes to be informative and entertaining. Now, I'm not a historian, but I am a fan of history.
Speaker 1:There have been numerous people throughout history that have taken up the title the Greats in their name, and, yes, there have been some truly great people, but only a handful of people probably really deserve to be referred to as the great. Out of those handful of people who truly deserve that description, one of them is probably the most underappreciated out of that group, and that one person that I'm referring to is Cyrus the Great from the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Although his life was somewhat cut short, his impact can possibly be felt to this very day, because if it wasn't for him, there's a small possibility that the Jewish population fades out of history, and if the Jewish population went away, then there's no Christianity or Islam. The Achaemenid Persian Empire was much more than just Cyrus the Great. It was one of, if not the Great. It was one of, if not the largest empires ever made. And to give you an idea of the size, they ruled about 44% of the global population at one point. But who were the Persians? Where did they come from? And, more importantly, how did they get so big and powerful and how did their empire transform, trade money and speed up the use of coinage? Unfortunately, like a lot of other ancient societies, it's really hard to fully understand and appreciate who these people were. The reason being is, like so many societies before and after them, a lot of information gets lost after the chaos that follows the destruction of the empire, and in reality, what it is a lot of times is there's so much natural decay, and then there's other materials or resources are really buried beneath thousands of years of time. Then you factor in modern problems such as the Iran-Iraq war, and then modern Iran essentially chose to isolate itself from the international community. So there's been a lot lost, or there just really hasn't been as much information unearthed as we probably would like to see unearthed, as we probably would like to see.
Speaker 1:Sometime in prehistory, which essentially means it was before the advent of written records, a group of people who have been referred to as Proto-Indo-Iranians lived in Central Asia, which would be in modern-day Afghanistan, uzbekistan, turkmenistan, along with other places such as China's Xinjiang province and even part of the Indian subcontinents, where they began to migrate. This group of people is often referred to as the Aryans, which translates into free or noble people, and even the modern name Iran means land of the Aryans. I discussed the Aryans briefly when I was talking about the Indus Valley, and it's worth noting that you should not confuse the anglicized term Aryan. That had developed into a purely racist meaning implicating the Nordic racial superiority, a purely racist meeting implicating the Nordic racial superiority. The Aryan wave of migration essentially happened in three separate waves. Each wave more or less settled into different regions and some would have settled in modern places such as Uzbekistan, afghanistan and places like that. Other places would have been further south, to the plains between the mountains of Iran and Afghanistan, and the last wave would have moved into the Iranian plateau, but that would have taken place in two separate waves.
Speaker 1:The first group of people would have been arriving sometime around 1100 BCE and settled in the region of northern Iran. This group would eventually become known as the Medes. The second wave would have moved further south, into modern-day southwestern Iran, and these people would have been known as the Persians. Why did all these groups move? Well, we really don't know, but it could have been for a number of factors. If I were to guess, I would probably say that it was probably due to climate change, the same reason that the people of the Indus Valley had to leave. But maybe it was something different. We just don't know. But either way, there would have been people from other tribes living in these regions for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Speaker 1:By the time we get to this point, you would have had the nomadic people known as the Gudians in the region. The Gudian people were the people whom the inhabitants of Sumer and Akkad originally feared the most, as they were nomadic shepherds who plundered constantly and basically at free will, and when I say plunder, I mean they would burn villages, steal cattle and kill people. So these were the types of people that the Indo-Iranians or the Aryans were running into when they migrated into the region. In the end, the people of Mesopotamia had reason to fear the Gudian people, as they were eventually able to overthrow the Akkadian kings and rule the land. This was known as the Gudian dynasty, which would have lasted from about 2141 to 2050 BCE, so this is well before the Aryans were coming into the region, but this kind of gives you an idea as to how powerful they could become and what kind of potential foe that they could be running up against when they moved into the region. Eventually, the Gutian rulers were overthrown by Utu Hangal, who was a Sumerian ruler who mysteriously died when he was inspecting a dam. That was probably more or less foul play, but that's for a previous episode, not this episode.
Speaker 1:Another group of people that would have also been in the region would have been known as the Hurrians. The Hurrians were the people that lived in northern Mesopotamia and Iran. Not a lot is known about them, but they spoke a language called Hurrian, and this was a language isolate, meaning it wasn't an Indo-European or Semitic language. However, they eventually developed a writing system using the Akkadian script, and it's quite possible that they had come from the north in the Caucasus, but they were relatively independent peoples. But the primary player in the region were the Elamites.
Speaker 1:The people of Elam probably had the most complex and dominant culture in the region, and when I say region, I'm more or less referring to the Near East in general, as the Elamites were early adopters to writing and even using the wheel, and became wealthy traders in the Near East. In fact, their ancient city of Susa, which was founded around 4400 BCE, is one of the oldest and most impressive cities in the ancient Near East. The thing about Elam is their relationship with Mesopotamia and the kingdoms, because sometimes they had great relations and other times they were at each other's throats. So while the Elamites were primarily in western Iran, the Persians were expanding from southwestern to central Iran around 1000 BCE, to central Iran around 1000 BCE, but they really weren't independent because at the time they would have been basically living under the rule of the Assyrian kings, along with the Elamites, for that matter. And since Elamites were more of a dominant player and the fact that the Persians initially did not have any written languages, they would have adopted an Elamite script for their writing. In addition, I get the sense that the Elamite language may have been an upper class language, if that makes any sense, because it appears that the higher level of government officials would have spoken Elamite, not the Persid dialect. Now, if you know much about Roman history, you will know that the upper class of the Roman society often would have studied Greek, not Latin, and spoke Greek, not Latin. Now, all in all, it appears that the Elamites and the Persians had a pretty good working relationship because they did live peacefully near each other for hundreds of years and there really wasn't any major reports or incidents of any kind of severe conflicts between the two different ethnicities. The only time that there was any kind of reports of conflicts between the two groups was when the Persians began to settle down and form settled, not nomadic, societies, and therefore it sounds like Persians would have come into the settled cities and kind of disrupted the local populations, but that didn't appear to be a major problem between the two.
Speaker 1:I get the sense that there was a lot of similarities between how the Akkadians and the Sumerians lived side by side. This peaceful relationship may have been part of their culture and also kind of bled into how they viewed women. Women in ancient Persia were often viewed as equals to men, so therefore they could have had the ability to buy and sell land, they could have conducted business for themselves without the need of a husband or a father, they received equal pay for equal work and they were free to travel about on their own. Furthermore, women in the royal court could have, and often did hold councils for the meetings on policy. Now, this appears to have come directly from the Elamite culture, which was the oldest culture in Iran, but this would have also been applied to the Median empire as well. Now, it's also not much of a surprise to imagine that, if women were provided equal rights, that the Persians would have also been very tolerant of other religions, but there still needed to be some certain level of respect for the dignity and autonomy of women, regardless of their class. So ultimately, this tolerance and open-mindedness probably played a major part in the way the culture saw things, and therefore they would become some of the world's great engineers, because ultimately, their culture allowed for free thinking. They were allowed to drive new ideas, test them out, and this ultimately led to them to thrive in general.
Speaker 1:Now, because of all this, it's quite possible that this resulted in the Persians being advanced aquatic engineers, as they had developed the technology for accessing water in their arid lands by building underground water tunnels called canuts. What they did is they would build these long underground tunnels that used a natural slope of the land by starting from one endpoint, and then they would dig a tunnel that was slightly sloped until it hit the underground water aquifer. Since the slope of the tunnel was slight, water would be transported naturally for many miles or kilometers. All along these canots, the Persians built these vertical shafts that allowed people to bring water above ground for regular use and farming. Since these water tunnels were well below the Earth's surface, water wouldn't be lost due to leakage or, more importantly, evaporation. The Mesopotamians and the Egyptians were at the mercy of the rivers, which ultimately, were unpredictable. The Persians didn't have these great rivers, but because of these canats, the Persians were able to have a reliable water source in the region of the world that was typically very hot and very dry. Therefore, they didn't have to worry about prolonged droughts, the same way other civilizations had to worry about it. I mean, I would imagine that if this technology were known by the people of the Indus Valley, for example, then the population may not have had to move away from the region. So this is the reason why a group of people can emerge from a place that doesn't appear to be conducive to population growth.
Speaker 1:Now, keep in mind the time frame that we're talking about here. This is some 2,000 years before the Roman aqueducts were being built. Now, despite this great technology, the Persians were, for the most part pretty obscure. People really just didn't know about them for centuries. In fact, the first written mention of them was from the Assyrian king Shalmaneser's obelisk that inscribed tribute from 27 Persian kings in 836 BCE. Persian kings in 836 BCE. The idea that there were kings might be a bit of a stretch as they were probably local warlords, but either way, it's the first time that we hear of the Persians in any kind of historical written records that we know of right now. I mean, I say right now because you know, in the very near future we could find some buried tablets somewhere. That gives us a little bit more historical records regarding the Persians.
Speaker 1:Before this point, despite this little bit of information, the Persians begin to be vital trade partners for the people of Mesopotamia and I say trade partners a bit loosely, because it could have been the case where it was more about plunder, not so much trade. But either way, these trade routes would have secured animals from the region, such as horses and camels and sheep. But also the people of Mesopotamia had an open trade route that ran through Iran. That would have made it much easier to import tin from modern Afghanistan, because that's where the bulk of the tin was, and if you did not secure that trade routes and bring tin into the region, well, your kingdom and the people probably would have been ruled by someone else, because you wouldn't have had the ability to make bronze. Now, in order to make bronze, you had to have a mixture of 88% copper and about 12% tin, but tin was very rare. In fact, I would say it was more valuable than gold or silver throughout the Bronze Age, which would have lasted until approximately 1200 BCE. So each region would have entered the Iron Age at different times. Also, too, I would look at tin the way we look at oil. In modern times, any country that has any kind of military would absolutely have to secure oil reserves, or at least oil supplies, if they wanted to defend their region or become an offensive player. Tin and oil, I think, have a lot of similarities in the way they would have been viewed for national defense. So, ultimately, as a lot of these countries or states were entering the Iron Age, the people of Persia were still somewhat quiet, in the sense that for a few hundred years we just don't really hear much about them at all. To be honest with you, the Assyrian king, well, he annexed Persia in around 744 BCE and from there he would have received tributes of horses, camels, sheep and cattle from the Medes and the Persians. Then, in 737 BCE, tiglath-palasser recorded obtaining over 1700 horses from various Median cities, 1,700 horses from various Median cities.
Speaker 1:One of the more notorious Assyrian tactics was when the Assyrians came to dominate a region, they often instituted a system of resettlement. So if a territory had been conquered and they weren't playing ball with the Assyrians, such as paying their required tributes, or they were rebelling against the crown, the Assyrians would simply invade the region again and take the people from the region, such as Iran, and move them somewhere else, say to Anatolia, and then someone else would move into that region. So the Assyrians weren't going to leave a region empty. They were going to more or less put people in a region that they felt would be more compliant and therefore they could extract any kind of resources that that particular region had. This is one of the big mistakes that the Babylonians made. Years later, they would try to copy the Assyrian tactic. They would move people that are rebellious from one region and put them in another region, but they failed to bring people back to that region. So then you have a territory that was rich in certain kind of resources that were not exploiting the Assyrians. At least they had the sense to make sure that they had people there that they could get whatever resources were valuable to the particular crown. So, with all that being said, it appears that Tiglath-Balasar may have resettled over 60,000 Medes from the northwest of Iran all the way to the Levant, and the people of the Levant would have been sent back to the Median territory.
Speaker 1:Luckily for the Persians, they were spared from this relocation program, but they weren't let off too easily, because the Persians, who were disruptive, had their right thumbs cut off so that they couldn't throw a javelin or wield a sword. But they could still pay their tribute, would know who the people that weren't playing ball were, and they would see that they don't have a thumb. They couldn't really contribute to society the way they had in the past. So you might look at that and say you know what? It's probably just not worth rebelling against the Assyrians. I'm just going to pay my tribute, my taxes and live a normal life.
Speaker 1:However, despite all this and the threats that were imposed by the Assyrians, diocese, a powerful Median king, was growing stronger and stronger, and he unified the Medes and other surrounding tribes in this region. Well, that wasn't going to work, as it would have been a direct threat to the Assyrian king Sargon II, who ruled from 722 to 705 BCE. So he seized diocese and exiled him to Syria as part of the Assyrian resettlement program. But it wasn't just the Medes that were unifying, it was also the cousins to the south, the Persians, who were also unifying under the leadership of King Thesebes, who would have been Cyrus the Great's great-grandfather. Darius the Great claims that Thesebes was Achaemenid's son, whom we get the name of the accumulated or Achaemenid Empire. The interesting part for me is it's nearly impossible to find out any information regarding Achaemenid's life, so it's quite a mystery at this point. In fact, it might be a great mystery, because it's quite possible that Achaemenid's was made up entirely by Darius the Great. So at this point I don't know for sure if Darius the Great is telling the truth or if it is just a made-up story or not. But one of the persons that was supposedly deported to the Levant was the founder of the Median kingdom, who was supposedly the lineage that Cyrus the Great's mother came from. Now, this is a bit of information that came from Herodotus, so who knows if that is true, but where we are in this story is.
Speaker 1:Elon was still the dominant player in Iran, and really was for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before this period. But the thing is is they may have gone a little too far with the Assyrians, and I went into this a little bit when I was discussing the Assyrian episode. But long story short, elon kept on getting involved with Babylon's desired independence from Assyria. The first major incident would have happened when Snokrib installed his son and heir as the king of Babylon, but he was assassinated by a group of Elamites and an Elamite king was placed on the Babylonian throne. As you can imagine, the Assyrians weren't going to let this slide. So in 691 BCE, according to Snakir, thousands of Persians upwards of 20,000 to 30,000 of them joined in a coalition of Aramanians, babylonians, chaldeans and Elamites to fight the Assyrians. It was said that the Persian warriors were the sons of the men whose thumbs had been cut off. A little bit dramatic, but it still sounds not great nonetheless. Now it's quite possible that this may have been the only time that the Persians took the side against the Assyrians.
Speaker 1:The Assyrians sieged Babylon in 690 BCE, and this is when Sennacherib may have gone a little too far, because he had destroyed the temple to the god of Marduk. And to make matters worse, he took the statue back to Nineveh and he put it on trial. The people of Babylon and Assyria were outraged by this. So by the time Ashurbanipal took the throne of Assyria, he was dealing with rebellions to the east and the west. He was probably more concerned about Egypt, but Elam was always the thorn in their side. Ashurbanipal had weighed successful campaigns against the Medes and fought off several rebellions in Egypt, but his biggest concern was probably his older brother, who he feared would attack him and take control of Assyria for himself, and take control of Assyria for himself. This revolt by the Babylonians was quite large, as it included Arabs and the Chaldeans. But more importantly for this episode, the Elamites thought it would be a good idea to deal with their Assyrian problem once and for all. They all ganged up and fought the Assyrians. On a side note, the Egyptians took this opportunity to declare its independence from Assyria, but they did not choose a side. This war between the brothers lasted approximately four years and caused massive disruptions throughout the region. It finally ended in 648 BCE, when the Assyrian troops apparently surrounded and set fire to the Babylonian palace where Ashurbanipal's brother had committed suicide.
Speaker 1:Ashurbanipal's first action after his brother's suicide was to make sure that he took care of all the people that took his brother's side. Ashurbanipal invaded the Arab peninsula and killed the Arab kings. Ashurbanipal then looked towards Elam. In 646 BCE, ashurbanipal destroyed Susa quite easily. Ashurbanipal then installed the puppet king, but this new puppet must not have been well vetted, because the puppet turned on Assyria due to Assyria's continued plunder of Iran. The last Elamite king was captured in 640 BCE by Ashurbanipal, who just simply annexed Elam, after massive destruction, to Susa and other towns in and around the region.
Speaker 1:In a tablet that was discovered in 1854 that was written by Ashurbanipal, he said Susa, the great holy city, abode of their gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces. I opened their treasuries where silver and gold goods and wealth were amassed. I destroyed the ziggurats of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to knots. Their gods and goddesses I scattered to the winds the tombs of their ancient and recent kings. I devastated, I exposed to the sun and I carried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. I devastated the provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt While Elam was devastated it was a bit of an exaggeration by Ashurbanipal.
Speaker 1:Elam was able to lean forward and eventually Elamite kings were able to retake their thrones and they would have ruled somewhat independently. But the region was fragmented into smaller kingdoms that were probably more like chieftains or warlords that still would have had to deal with their Assyrian overlords. Persia, on the other hand, kept out of the fray by maintaining peaceful relations with Assyria. If Assyria wanted to plunder, the Persians typically pacified the Assyrians by offering large sums of tributes and their royal children as hostages. In other instances, they simply abandoned their cities and headed for the mountains until it was safe to head back to town. Let us not forget that the Persians were originally nomadic and great horsemen and shepherds, so leaving the city for a period of time somewhat suited their strengths.
Speaker 1:And I just want to circle back to the hostage thing. I had mentioned it prior in my Assyrian episode, but this was something that a lot of the ancient societies used as a tool to keep people in line. What this entailed, this hostage taking, was kings would have taken the royal children of rival kingdoms that they had conquered and were reigning them from either Nineveh or some other Assyrian city such as Ashur. This was designed to make sure that the rival kings didn't attack Assyria or get out of line because the Assyrian king could have had the prince of the rival kingdom killed. This often worked as they would return to the homeland to become the next king or assume some kind of eminent position.
Speaker 1:The long-term goal was you would build some kind of loyalty to Assyria, right. So you're a prince from Elam. You've been held hostage basically since you're a toddler or a young child, so you kind of grow up in the Assyrian ways of life. So you're almost becoming Assyrian at that point. So when you're much older and you're ready to retake the throne of a far off kingdom, you would have some kind of Assyrian sympathies or almost view yourself as Assyrian. So you're most likely not going to get out of line because you kind of almost view yourself as part Assyrian, part Elamite, for example. So this is great in a sense that it can build long-term peaceful relations. But there are potential drawbacks in that a prince of a rival kingdom could learn valuable inside information and kind of figure out where all the weaknesses are and the tactics they use in battle. This was notoriously the case when Philip of Macedonia was taken hostage by thieves, and we all know how that turned out, because eventually his son would have turned around and conquered the known world. So that's the idea of hostage taking in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:But getting back to the Persians, one thing that's interesting is if you know much about the Mongols and their history, their upbringing is similar to how the Persians' upbringing was. By the time a Persian boy reached the ripe old age of five, he would have began his training. That would have started with learning how to ride a horse and then would have advanced into archery and even riding and shooting at the same time. Similar to that of the Mongols, this training would have lasted from age five to 20, but also they would have been trained how to speak the truth. Now, this is probably one of those more unique characteristics of the Persian society, because being accused as a liar is probably one of the biggest insults that you can accuse someone of. So for them, one of the biggest disgraces a man could commit is to lie. In addition, another great offense is to be in debt, because the Persians believe once a person is in debt, they are more likely to start lying, and lying is probably their biggest taboo. So obviously I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here, but the thing is this will kind of really show when the idea of any kind of debt market or usury or lending of any kind of money would be pretty much completely prohibited within the Persian empire.
Speaker 1:So really, the two main things that the Persians were really teaching their young ones was to be great horsemen and to not lie. And the whole idea of being a great horseman is interesting because even to this day it is believed that there are over a million nomadic horsemen in Iran. So you can kind of see how this legacy still lives on. But we're talking ancient time periods here, so I want to really stick to that. But the thing is is within the ancient Persian population they wanted to be and they were relatively peaceful because they realized that war brought on too many problems and destruction. So they typically prefer to live peacefully with their neighbors. But they could be great warriors when called upon because they were great horsemen. But they could be great warriors when called upon because they were great horsemen and their tactics allowed the Persians to basically grow in population and strength because you're kind of, you know, in peace and you're not getting entire populations and cities wiped out. You can obviously grow in size and strength without people realizing it, but there's a drawback to this growth. The issue in growth in population, in humans and also don't forget cattle and horses is more land is needed and at some point constantly giving away the store to maintain the peace isn't going to work out anymore. So while the Persian population was growing in size and strength, and without anybody really knowing it, assyria was about to fall apart after the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE, and the whole world as they knew it would be upended. So while the Persians were growing in size and strength, the Elamites made their resurgence once the Assyrian empire collapsed.
Speaker 1:Once the Assyrian Empire collapsed, but the real growing power wasn't the Elamites, it was really. It was after a Median king was killed in battle, but his son, syaxares the Great, took over in 625 BCE and really kind of reorganized the Median army and also formed a large coalition with other armies in an attempt to really take care of the Iranian plateau and ultimately make sure that the Assyrian problem would no longer be an issue. So Syaxares was growing the Median kingdom, but he had problems with his Scythian cousins who also derived from Aryan nomads. The Scythians spoke a variant of an Iranian language and followed the Vedic religion, just like other Iranian tribes. Later, in 625 BCE, syraxeres invited the Scythian lords to a magnificent banquet. The Medes drank wine which was watered down significantly, while the Scythian lords drank regular wine with regular amounts of alcohol. While the Scythians were drunk and basically defenseless, the Medes massacred the entire Scythian nobility. Defenseless, the Medes massacred the entire Scythian nobility.
Speaker 1:I feel like RR Martin got the idea of the Red Wedding scene directly from this, rr Martin being the writer of Game of Thrones. This basically left the common forces of the Scythians leaderless and, as a result, they figured it's a good life decision to join up with the Medes. This new force was used to attack the limping Assyrian empire. So now the Medes and the Babylonians, along with the recent addition of the leaderless Scythians, all joined forces to once and for all destroy the Assyrians. To make matters worse for Assyria, the Bactrians from eastern Iran and Afghanistan defected to the Babylonians. Upwards of 400,000 soldiers were all in. The Babylonians further enhanced this union when Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, arranged a marriage between his son, the heir presumptive Nebuchadnezzar II, to Princess Amedis Syaxares' daughter. So, with all these unions and alliances.
Speaker 1:The Assyrians were pretty much toast by this point. The sacking of Nineveh was horrific. People were massacred, and temples and holy places were destroyed. It was said that Nebuchadnezzar was distraught by the holy site's desecration, so much so that he resorted to an unkempt appearance and slept on the ground to signal to the gods his mourning for the desecrations. While this was all happening, the Persians were led by Cyrus I, the grandfather of Cyrus the Great.
Speaker 1:So now Assyria is basically done with, and the question is what do we do with the lands that the Assyrians had conquered? So ultimately, what they came up with is they divided the lands up with the Babylonians, the Medes and the other Iranians, with the Babylonians, the Medes and the other Iranians. So with the destruction of Assyria and the divvying up of lands, peace was re-established in the region. The Medes and the Persians further enhanced their union with a royal marriage between King Cyrus I's son, cambyses of Persia, and Mandani, the Median king, estagi's daughter and Syaxares' granddaughter. Media remained the dominant kingdom, with Persia as its vassal. So it kind of gives you an idea.
Speaker 1:Don't think that Persia is this grand empire at this point. No, they're actually kind of really under the thumb of the Median kingdom at this point in time, kind of really under the thumb of the Median kingdom at this point in time. So the question is well, where did this accumulated Persian empire begin? Can you point to a specific spot or points in time that you could say oh okay, that's really the beginning of this empire?
Speaker 1:Herodotus attempts to give us some color as to the beginnings of the empire, but, like I said, the problem with Herodotus is you really have some color as to the beginnings of the empire, but, like I said, the problem with Herodotus is you really have to take a lot of his stuff with a grain of salt. There might be some elements of truth in it, or maybe there is no truth, but either way, I find his stories to be absolutely fascinating and amazing and, like I said I said it prior is Herodotus' tales are written to be spoken orally, so they would take a lot of liberties, because if you're speaking to people, you want to grab their attention, and the story of the beginnings of the Achaemenid Persian Empire is as good as it gets. It starts out with the Median king, astyages, having a dream in which his daughter, mandani, gave birth to a son who would destroy him and his empire. Now, many of these kings took their dreams as prophecies, and this dream absolutely scared Astyages. Fearful of the dream's prophecy, astyages married his daughter, mandani, off to Cambyses I of Ansan, who had a reputation for being a quiet and thoughtful prince, and therefore Astyages probably thought he could mitigate any kind of threat to his rule if the father of the baby was very thoughtful and compliant, if the father of the baby was very thoughtful and compliant. After the marriage he had a second dream that warned Astyages of his daughter's son, cyrus.
Speaker 1:Now modern scholarship generally rejects Herodotus' claim that Cyrus was the grandson of Astyages, but let's continue anyway, because I love a good story. So anyway, like any powerful ancient king, he thought it would be a good idea to have his grandson killed right after the birth. So Astyages sent his trusted general Harpagus to kill the child. Cyrus Harpagus didn't want to kill the child. Cyrus Carpegas didn't want to kill the royal baby. So he didn't have the heart to kill an infant and ask a low-level herdsman named Mitrodates to take the baby into the wilderness and leave it to the wild animals or exposure Around. The same time, mitrodates and his wife had a baby. But let's not forget back in these days, and even like 100 years ago, infant mortality was much, much higher. So, unfortunately, the baby died during birth. Being heartbroken, the couple decided that instead of killing the king's grandson, they would essentially swap him out and raise the royal baby as if it was their own in a life of poverty, not royalty. The king was obviously not aware of this, as he was informed that his grandson, his future threat, had been eliminated.
Speaker 1:Mithridates raised the child and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly until the young boy was a little older and was playing games with a group of other younger boys. Apparently, this game involved someone choosing a king and, wouldn't you know, they chose Mithridates' son to play the role of the king. This was all well and fine, but apparently during the game the king ordered a boy to be beaten for disobeying him in the game. Unfortunately, that little boy just happened to be part of a noble family. The father of the little boy was incensed and was very much offended that some poor boy born to a herdsman would dare to be a kid of noble blood. The boy's father was so upset by this that he brought this up with the king Astyages and demanded justice. Astyages called Mithridates and his son to stand trial. But as soon as he saw the boy and the way he looked and the way he carried himself, he immediately could spot that this boy was of royal blood and he knew, right then and there, that Mandani's son was still alive. The king demanded the truth and, of course, mithridates is scared out of his mind, so he confessed to the whole entire story. The boy who went by the name of Kaino at the time the boy who went by the name of Kaino at the time was given back to his real mother and father, mandani and Cambyses, and therefore they were actually spared. Now the parents had to come up with some crazy explanation as to why their boy just literally reappeared in their lives, and basically what they came up with is they created a version of his background that would have been kind of similar to the real background, in that they said he was left in the woods as ordered by the king, but through divine intervention he was raised by a female dog, which is referred to as Kaino, hence the previous name, and then the boy's name was changed to Cyrus.
Speaker 1:Now, herodotus' story didn't end there. He actually had a follow-up story as well. While Astyages let the boy live, he was still really upset by the fact that his original order wasn't followed and he really couldn't let that pass. So Astyages invited his general to a banquet. So he had served him plenty of meats and soups and while the general was eating, astyages asked him how the meal was. The general went on to call it the best meal he'd ever had. After he told Astyages how great the food was, astyages informed him that he had killed his son, cut him up into pieces and cooked and served his body to Harpagus, his general.
Speaker 1:Obviously Harpagus was not happy, but he realized that he just had to take it and move on. This was the king, after all, and he was a general. But in the end it was the king's decision to do what he did. But Harpagus would not forget. But either way, you might be asking yourself at least I ask myself this is why wouldn't Cyrus be taken care of anyway? Well, luckily for Cyrus, osteages' astrologers had done their due diligence and came back with great news Cyrus was no longer a threat.
Speaker 1:So Osteages returned his grandson to Cyrus, to his true parents, the king and queen of Persia. If you remember, the Medes and the Persians had enhanced their union with a royal marriage between King Cyrus I's son, cambyses of Persia, and Mendene, the Median king's daughter, king Astyages. Everything was working out great for Astyages. Cyrus proved to be a loyal and successful general for his median grandfather's military. Afterwards, cyrus ascended the Persian throne in 559 BCE with the title of King of Anshan, when his father died, taking the throne name of Cyrus II to honor his paternal grandfather. However, everything began to break down. Eventually, conflict broke out between Cyrus and his grandfather, osteages, who was still on the Median throne, the issue being that Persia knew his place. It knew that the Medes were their overlords, but they generally wanted to receive local autonomy on how they ran their kingdom. They only needed to pay tribute and supply men to serve in the military. This actually worked out well for the Persian soldiers, as they could enrich themselves through plunder.
Speaker 1:Arpagus was still really mad by Astyages killing and serving him, his son, and as such, he plotted for years to get back at Astyages. Arpagus wrote to Cyrus and reminded him of how he had secured his life as an infant and, according to Herodotus, he said To me you owe me your deliverance. Do I as advise, and Astyages' kingdom will be yours. Convince the Persians to rebel and march against the Medes, we will desert Astyages and come over to your side. Now, apparently, cyrus took that advice because he rebelled against his grandfather, king Astyages. Of course the king wasn't going to just against his grandfather, king Astyages. Of course the king wasn't going to just let his grandson take control of his kingdom.
Speaker 1:So Astyages tried to reform his army and defend his crown. His first course of action was to go on the offensive and lead an army against Cyrus to conquer Anshan, persia's capital. Unbeknownst to Astyages, anshan, persia's capital. Unbeknownst to Astyages, his army turned on him, took him captive and turned him over to his grandson, cyrus. Cyrus then marched to Akbatana, the capital city of the Median Empire, and plundered its valuables, including its silver and gold, and then carried it back to his capital of Anshan. So, in the end, it back to his capital of Anshan. So, in the end, asiagi's fears came true His grandson Cyrus was, in fact, the threat and ended up taking his crown from him.
Speaker 1:Now, this is the part of the story that has the beginnings of Cyrus the Great, and this is why he is one of the few leaders that truly deserved to be named the great. Now, if Cyrus was an Assyrian or Babylonian king, you would expect that Cyrus would have had him killed in some kind of dramatic fashion and would have left his head on a pike or would have put his skin on the wall as a form of wallpaper. Nope, not Cyrus, he pulled a 180 on the ancient world. Cyrus treated his grandfather with a great deal of respect and compassion. He wasn't killed or even sent off into exile.
Speaker 1:Now, according to Herodotus, astyages was given an appointment as Parthia's governor, and he even lived in the palace with his grandson, cyrus. So the next phase of the story has a bit of disagreements, because Herodotus said that Cyrus ruled over both the Medes and the Persians almost immediately, whereas Xenophon said that Syaxares II, astyages' son, led the Medes in an alliance with his nephew Cyrus until the fall of Babylon. It was at that point that Syaxares II gave his daughter in marriage to Cyrus, with the Median kingdom as her dowry, and Cyrus gave his uncle a place in Babylon and, apparently, the kingship over Babylonia. But either way, persia was now a dominant player in the region. So basically, the Medes and the Persians just swapped roles and, to give you an idea of the size, at the time, the Persians ruled over all of modern day Iran, tajikistan, uzbekistan and Armenia. And that was just the start.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for taking your time to listen to this first episode of the Persian Empire. If you like what you hear and want to donate to the show, you can visit us at patreoncom slash history of money banking trade or you can visit our website at moneybankingtradecom. Also, you can help out the show a ton by leaving a five-star review and telling a friend or two. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon.
