History of Money, Banking, and Trade

Episode 28. From Kings to Roads: The Strategic Marvels of the Persian Empire

Mike Episode 28

Send us a text

What if leadership wasn't just about power, but about the strategic finesse to unify and expand one of history's most formidable empires? Join me, Mike D, as I unravel the compelling narratives of the Persian Empire from the visionary reign of Cyrus the Great to the masterful administration of Darius the Great. This episode promises to enlighten you on the art of leadership transitions, the challenges of securing legitimacy, and the monumental infrastructure projects that sculpted the empire's legacy. Learn how Darius transformed an economic oversight into an opportunity, setting the stage for a standardized monetary system that was pivotal to the Persian economic revival.

Explore the architectural grandeur and strategic brilliance of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, reflected in the construction of Persepolis and the intricate road networks. Discover the strategic significance of the King's Road, which facilitated trade and communication from Armenia to Northern India, and the tragic tale of Persepolis's destruction at the hands of Alexander the Great. We’ll discuss how these infrastructure marvels laid the groundwork for future empires, highlighting innovations like resting stations that ensured efficient connectivity across daunting terrains. 

Delve into the complexities of ancient politics as Darius navigated military strategy and political expansion, including his intriguing promotion of democracy in Ionia. Examine the tensions between Athens and Sparta, culminating in the iconic Battle of Marathon, where innovative military tactics thwarted the Persian advance. Uncover the subtle interplay between tyranny and democracy, and how these ancient dynamics continue to echo in modern geopolitical strategies. Each of these elements paints a vivid picture of an empire defined by its leaders’ remarkable ability to adapt, strategize, and implement visionary changes.

Support the show

To support the podcast through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/HistoryOfMoneyBankingTrade

Visit us at https://moneybankingtrade.com/



Speaker 1:

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:

When we last left off, we were discussing the rise and fall of Cyrus the Great. As part of the discussion, we touched upon his military tactics, including the use of psychological warfare. We also discussed the development of coinage in Lydia and a subsequent conquering by Cyrus the Great. We also explored how King Cretaceous of Lydia became an unexpected advisor to Cyrus. This unique twist in leadership and diplomacy highlights how victory was not just about force, but also about forging alliances. That would not have happened before Cyrus the Great came along. Finally, we ventured into the political landscapes that were reshaped by Cyrus' conquests, from the peaceful takeover of Babylon to the elevation of the Persian naval power with the surrender of the Phoenicians. Every move that Cyrus made had a profound implication on the direction of the Persian Empire. After the death of Cyrus, his son, cambyses, extended Cyrus' campaigns into Egypt which further expanded Persians' sphere of influence in the region In order to accomplish this. There would have been extremely interesting tales of intelligent coups, including using domesticated cats as a tactical weapon on the battlefield.

Speaker 1:

And from there is kind of where we left off with the rise of Darius the Great. So Darius more or less had to explain why he should be in the position to be the next leader of the Persian Empire. So, according to Darius, his father was a man named Hestapses, his grandfather was a man named His Tapsis, his grandfather was a man named Arsemes, his great-grandfather was Erymanes and his great-great-grandfather was Tipsis. The father of Tipsis was Akamenes, so Akamenes was his great-great-great-grandfather, akamanes was his great-great-great-grandfather. Therefore, he should be part of the Achaemenid, or Achaemenid, persian Empire. So this is how Darius made the connection to Cyrus. His father, his Topsis, would have been the cousin of Cyrus the Great, so therefore he could tie his line, his lineage, all the way back to the founder Akamene.

Speaker 1:

Now, of course, many of the satraps, which were basically governors well, they weren't buying the story about his family tree, and thus his right to rule the Persian Empire was in serious question. It's quite possible that they were in fact correct, or maybe not, I'm not really sure, but either way, those particular satraps that questioned his lineage story, well, they declared themselves independent from this illegitimate ruler. So now, overnight, essentially there were independent kings in these newly independent regions that were formerly part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. And these newly independent regions, well, they weren't some places in far off parts of the empire. No, these were like brand name places. These were places like Elam and Babylonia. Brand name places. These were places like Elam and Babylonia. In the end, basically, anyone that had a satrap in place pretty much declared independence of the Persian empire. But Darius was a great ruler and a great leader and, one by one, all 19 satraps were recaptured and taken under control of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Speaker 1:

And, I'm sorry, I say Achaemenid, sometimes I say Achaemenid, I don't really know how to pronounce it, so I might pronounce it both ways. I'm not going to be very consistent. I just want to be upfront with that. Now, out of all the regions that were the most prosperous and probably the most-third of all the gold that was paid to the Achaemenids, so essentially one region contributed at least 33% of all the gold that was flowing into the empire at the time, and at the time they had controlled about 23 various regions throughout the Near East and even into Central Asia. Now it should be noted that, despite the fact that all this gold was flowing into the empire, they really didn't mint any of it. They only really used gold primarily to pay their soldiers. So they weren't really capitalizing upon the Lydian concept of coinage. Instead, they kind of really turned their back to it and wanted to operate as if coinage wasn't even a thing for the most part.

Speaker 1:

So in reality, I think this would be like kind of one of the biggest mistakes that the Persians really committed in the fact that they did not allow the economy and trade to develop the way it possibly could have if they would have developed a coinage system. Instead, they just kind of really used what was already in place and therefore they would have distributed gold coins and silver coins through the previous conquered Illyrian territories. And kind of, looking at it from a modern perspective, you would have thought that the Persian kings would have saw how great this concept of coinage was. I mean, it's not like they didn't mint coins at all. They were still minting coins but, like I said, they were just using mints that were previously in place. They didn't expand the mint process. They didn't expand coinage, and this possibly was due to the fact that maybe they viewed coinage as a very Greek phenomenon or a Western Anatolian phenomenon, and they probably didn't want any part of it. I don't really know, but this seemed to be one of the biggest blunders that they would have made, up to this point, prior to Darius taking the throne. Now I'm getting ahead of myself, but Darius does make correction to this and we'll get into it a little bit later in this episode.

Speaker 1:

The one region that was becoming more and more important to the persians was that of the scythian territories. Now, this region didn't have much in the way of natural resources and really wasn't producing much in the way of crop yields, because this people in the region were primarily nomadic. But it appears, from a modern perspective, that the Persians probably viewed this region to be very important if they were going to lay siege to Greek city-states. But this wasn't an easy area to conquer because they were nomadic. Therefore, they could just pick up and leave if the Persians were approaching. They were nomadic. Therefore, they could just pick up and leave if the Persians were approaching. Plus, on top of that, the Scythians were fierce warriors who decorated their horses with the scalps of their victims.

Speaker 1:

And, by all accounts, it appears that Darius had chased the Scythians from the Black Sea to the Volga River in Russia. And if you know anything about Russian history, you'll know that attacking Russia can become a major problem if the local population just keeps retreating and retreating until winter comes. And that's pretty much what happened. They retreated, kept on going further and further. Then winter came and Darius is like I got to get out of here because this isn't going to work. The Germans found out the hard way that it doesn't work, let alone people that were ancients and didn't have modern mechanized vehicles. These were horses and chariots and wagons. So fierce Russian winter came.

Speaker 1:

There was just no way that the Persians were going to be able to supply their troops in the field, that the Persians were going to be able to supply their troops in the field, but all along, while this was happening, it really appears that Darius had his primary eye on Macedonia and he would have sent some ambassadors to the region. Now, apparently, what happened was these Persian ambassadors viewed the local Macedonian women to be absolutely stunning, and of course, the Persians knew that they were the dominant player in the region and therefore they were the new kings of the hill, and they just assumed that the women would fall all over themselves for them. So one night, the Persian ambassadors were to meet these beautiful Macedonian women and have a lively time with lots of food and drink, where they would seduce them. However, the Macedonians had other ideas and had young boys who were cleanly shaven and dressed up as women, hoping that the extremely intoxicated Persian ambassadors wouldn't notice. And sure enough, it worked. The intoxicated Persian ambassadors were kind of flirty with them getting close, and as soon as the boys saw their chance, they took out the knives and they stabbed up the Persian ambassadors, killing them. Luckily for the Macedonians, the Persians never figured out what happened to their lost ambassadors, but it still didn't stop the Persians from controlling much of Macedonia. So they were playing with fire and ultimately they got burned. But they could have been a lot worse if the Persians had figured out what happened.

Speaker 1:

So all the while, while Darius is expanding his empire in all different directions, he was also busy building his new capital city of Persepolis. Now, in reality, this city was probably already built under Cyrus the Great, but Darius made this one of his capital cities, and I just wanted to point out that this city's amazing engineering feats included the water and drainage system, for which plumbing brought in fresh water through the canot system, but they also added drain pipes which would drain the wastewater out of the city underground, below the surface, where the citizens would never see them. So this city was a model of engineering feats and was probably well ahead of its time. But also let's not forget because we talked about this in this valley they probably got a lot of this great information from the people in India and in this valley. So I'm not sure if they developed this system on their own, independently, or if this was some information that was brought in from the east. It's possible, but I'm not really sure. But either way, this was a major city that would have kept people safe and clean, because ultimately, when you develop a good drainage system, you really are protecting the citizens, because now you don't have the risk of disease that would have been flowing into the city.

Speaker 1:

And unfortunately for everybody you and I and anybody that's a fan of history the city of Persepolis was burnt to the ground when Alexander the Great had conquered the region and his soldiers got into a drunken melee and broke the whole city. So in the end, I mean, it's one of those really unfortunate things that happened throughout history and these are the kind of things that happen when conquest happens and people take over cities. And in reality I'm surprised things like this didn't happen more often, because the stress of war can really really change a group dynamic. Once people start drinking and they're stressed, really bad things can happen, and really bad things do happen. So in the end, darius never stopped expanding his empire. Under his leadership, the Persian empire grew to an astonishing size from modern day Armenia and Turkey and Syria, egypt, lebanon, jordan, israel, pakistan, parts of Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia all the way up to Northern India. This is the scope of the conquest and I'm pretty sure a lot of you have seen maps that you can see just how big the empire got to.

Speaker 1:

Luckily for Darius, the Assyrians had already laid out and constructed a highway system which would have crisscrossed the empire, with the main system referred to as the King's Road. I went over this in my previous episode where I was discussing the Assyrian Empire, but, if you recall, this road included regional and local spurs that were equipped at regular intervals with relay stations and resting places, which helped facilitate the transport of people and, more importantly, goods and communications were transported much more efficiently than anything that had been engineered prior to the Assyrians. And you see something similar down the road. When the Romans conquered the world, they built these great roads and, just like the Assyrians and the Romans, these roads were built to last and as such, all the Assyrian governors had to maintain their road stations in their province. So, luckily for the Persians, they just kind of really took this system and ran with it. They basically continued on and therefore the king's road was already in place and well maintained by time Darius had came to the throne.

Speaker 1:

What Darius did was he took the Persian roads and expanded them in size and scope, since the accumulated Persian empire was rapidly surpassing the size of the Assyrian empire. Now, it wasn't quite the sophistication of the Romans with their engineering drainage systems that would come along, you know, five to 700 years later. Because these roads would have started in Sardis, which was the Lydian capital city, not far from the western coast of Anatolia, and then the road would have traveled due east through Cappadocia in central Anatolia, and then passed over the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers in northern Mesopotamia where Nineveh would have turned south from Nineveh into Babylon. From there it would have split up into two paths, one traveling northeast and then east, through Aqabana and then along the Silk Road via the Great Khorasan Road. The other would have continued east through the future capital of Susa, persian capital, susa, which would have been around 1,600 to 1,700 miles, or approximately 2,700 kilometers, from Susa to Sardis. Now, keep in mind that was the main portion of the road. There was also other branches and other roads that would have fed into it as well From Susa, the road connected to Persepolis and then out to India, which ultimately meant that Darius could reach his provinces in Medea and Bactria and Sagdiana. Other branches connected southeastern Iranian cities of Fars to Sardis, which then crossed the foothills of the Zagros mountains and east of the Tigris and the Euphrates river.

Speaker 1:

So by the time Darius came to the throne and the subsequent expansion of the empire, he would need to obviously expand on the Assyrian road which he was working on. And if you take a step back from all the different places I said that these roads would have traversed, you got to understand. The amazing part was these roads pass through deserts and they pass through mountains and even dense forests. Now it's quite possible that a significant portion of the roads were not paved, but the roads were around 16 to 23 feet in width, or 5 to 7 meters. But for the parts that were paved luckily for the Persians they would have had a deep understanding of how to pack and harden gravel and tiny rocks to create a stone road. But in order to do this properly, they needed to raise the surface area above the surrounding area so that there would be natural drainage to the side of the road. Without that, trade would have been severely disrupted any time the region got a decent amount of rain, because the roads would have easily gotten muddy and the carts and the people would have gotten stuck in the mud.

Speaker 1:

There was also more to it than that. They also built resting stations and inns every 18 miles where travelers could eat and hydrate and sleep. Also, the traders or the messengers could switch to fresh horses. The traders or the messengers could switch to fresh horses. It was reported that there were 111 way stations on the main branch between Susa and Sardis. There were also square or rectangular stone buildings with multiple rooms around a broad market area that had an enormous gate that allowed parcel and human-laden horses and camels to pass under it. So, in other words, marketplaces would have developed at these particular way stations, and in a weird way it kind of reminds me of the railroad system in the United States, whereas every time you put in a stop, a settlement would develop from that stop and trade would have occurred. A perfect example of this would be the city of Denver, which basically sprung up because it was a regional train stop and transportation hub to the west.

Speaker 1:

But the Persians did more than just put in way stations. The Persians had patrols along the way and ensured that the traders could safely move their goods throughout the empire without the fear of being robbed along the way, which obviously was a major problem for many people that were trading. And this, right here, is one of the positive consequences to an ever-expanding empire. A lot of times you have these regions where trade would have to pass from one part to the other. That region is in an area that is highly contested amongst different groups of people and tribal leaders, and these regions are very dangerous. You just have a hard time trading from one region to the next.

Speaker 1:

When you take a strong central government or power that can control everything, this makes trade a lot more easier and efficient, so goods can get from one point to the other without many problems along the way, or at the very least less problems. So I mean, there's always going to be problems and you can't control everything all the time. There's going to be robbers and thieves and stuff like that. But when you know that you have a strong central government that is responsible for patrolling the region, anybody that gets caught in the act of robbing a trade cart is going to face severe consequences. That maybe in the past, if you're in a contested region and someone's robbing a cart or a trade caravan, well you can just pay off a local person and people can look the other way. Or maybe even you were part of a little militia that funds itself on robbing people. But either way, because of this road system and the fact that they were a strong central government, trade was able to happen a lot more efficiently.

Speaker 1:

And even if you don't include trade, let's just say hypothetically, you're living in the ancient Cuman and Persian empire and you need to send a message from Sardis and Lydia and get it to Susa. Well, here's what you would do you would have a messenger, travel by horseback and they would basically exchange horses as they went along, they'd be well hydrated and fed, and also, too, when they had to pass through rivers, they would be ferried across, and then, when they're dealing with the mountains, they would have different paths that they could take, and essentially what happens is they would go from one garrison to the other every 18 miles, changing to fresh horses or even fresh messengers, so someone would pick it up, despite the topography and the distance, this message could have traveled in nine days by skilled horsemen, or 90 days on foot. And this nine days is really interesting to me because the one thing I always kind of questioned was how did these huge empires, how did they control these people in far off distances? I mean, it just seems so easy that people could break away or there could be a lot of unrest. But when you build a great system of roads and messaging, you could see how a message from Sardis or Susa could reach far off places like modern day Afghanistan relatively quickly, a lot faster than I would have ever predicted, that's for sure. And on top of all this, there seems to be some evidence that suggests that there were maps and itineraries and milestones that were laid to aid travelers in their journey. In addition, there were road maintenance crews that were known as the road counters, or people who count the road, who made sure that the road was in good shape and made the necessary repairs. There is also a mention in the Roman writer Claudius Alenius indicating that Darius asked at one point that the road from Susa to Medea be cleared of scorpions. Not sure how true that is, but pretty interesting nonetheless.

Speaker 1:

Historian David French had argued that the much later Roman roads would have been constructed along the ancient Persian roads as well. It's worth noting that some of the Roman roads are used today, so this means that parts of the royal road would have been used continuously for some 2,500 years, would have been used continuously for some 2,500 years. It is possible that Alexander the Great traveled the same route while conquering much of Eurasia in the 4th century BCE. So this could have been one of those unintended consequences type things where you're developing this great road and you're hoping to expand trade and communications and wouldn't you know it, your adversary comes and uses it and is able to take over your empire a lot more efficiently than maybe he would have been able to do without the road. It is what it is Now.

Speaker 1:

It must be worth noting that much of the information that we get about the royal road actually comes from Herodotus, and what he basically said was he says, hey, nothing in the world travels faster Than these Persian couriers. He was marveling at how fast information Can get from one side of the empire to the other. He also praised the messengers when he said that Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night Stays these couriers From the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Now, if you live in the United States, that might sound familiar. In fact it was inscribed on the James Farley Post Office in New York, which is basically across the street from MSG Madison Square Garden. It's a humongous post office and that inscription is often thought of as the United States Postal's Creed. So if you live in the United States, you've probably heard some variation of it when you're hearing about the US Postal Service. So obviously the road system was crucial to trade developing in the Persian empire.

Speaker 1:

But I also want to kind of circle back to the coinage that they use Now. I said that I think one of the Persians' biggest blunders was the fact that they didn't really expand coinage as much as they probably should have, and I think you know now that I'm thinking about it, it's worth kind of really going back to that discussion, because they did use coinage and they did expand coinage, but they probably expanded it later than they probably should have. They realized that they needed to have coinage circulating throughout the empire. Most of it was really used honestly for paying soldiers. But by 500 BCE, darius had moved away from the traditional Lydian coinage and had adopted his own coinage, known as a Daric.

Speaker 1:

The gold coin had a standard weight of 8.4 grams, which ultimately equaled 20 silver coins. Now, since it was the Persian Empire, the Persian authorities had a monopoly on mining it in the empire, which enabled them to balance the quantities of gold and silver coins in circulation, which ultimately meant that they ran a bimetallic ratio of gold to silver coins. This weight would have been based on the Babylonian shekel of 8.33 grams, which means it was slightly heavier than the cretaceous standard of 8.06 grams. This gold was of high quality and its purity was slightly above 95% pure gold, but I've also read that it was as high as 98 to 99% gold. Ultimately, one derrick initially represented about one month of a soldier's wage and really the way it was distributed between gold and silver was the emperor paid his soldiers and administration's costs in gold coins, while the local satraps covered their spending with silver coins. And I should also be clear that the silver coin was the siglos, which was about 5.5 grams each, which would have been based on 0.5 lydian siglos of 10.73 to 10.92 grams in a full unit. So they basically just took what the lydians had as far as their silver coins and basically halved it. The purity was approximately 97 to 98% silver, but by the middle of the 4th century it was slightly down to 94 to 95%. So ultimately it sounds like there may have been a little bit of debasement. That was happening not so much on a huge scale, where it was, you know, dropping to 75%, but there was a noticeable drop in the purity of silver in the coins. So ultimately, under Darius, the minting of the Crocids in Sardis was replaced by the minting of the Derricks and the Sigloy which, like I said prior, means that they were running their empire under a bimetallic monetary standard.

Speaker 1:

The new coins that were minted by the Persians had one significant change compared to what the Lydians had done, in the fact that in the past what they did is they did a double reverse punch of the original coins. Darius basically simplified the process and just used a single reverse punch of the original coins. Darius basically simplified the process and just used a single reverse punch. Darius had replaced the former image, which was the Lydian lion and bull, with his new image, which was him with a bow and spear. This coinage became the standard for about 200 years afterward.

Speaker 1:

So, even though the coins were changed, sardis was still the central mint for the Daraks and the Sigloy of the accumulated Persian Empire. As of now, there is no evidence of any other mints that were also used, which I find kind of fascinating, because the empire was so big and you had gold that was shipped in from the east and I'm kind of surprised they didn't have mints closer to where the gold supply was to make it more efficient. But then again, darius probably figured why fix a system that's not broke? And on top of that, things would change because, like I said, the Persians' view of coinage was a lot different prior to Darius coming along and one of the things that Darius did was prior to him the local satraps, especially in Asia Minor, would strike their own coins. Darius considered this a crime, punishment by death, since the right of coinage was treated exclusively as a royal privilege. In addition, the image on the derricks and sigloy contained only that of the king, so essentially, darius used coinage as an expression of his economic power.

Speaker 1:

We get a lot of this information regarding the coinage from a hoard known as the Apodina Hoard, which was a large deposit of coins from around 515 BCE that were found in boxes underneath the Apadena Palace in Persepolis in 1933. The coins were a mix of crocets which were in very good condition, which leads people to believe that they were recently minted under the accumulated rule. These deposits did not have any Darix or Sigloy, which implies that these coins started to be minted later, sometime after 515 BCE. So that's why we can kind of really say that the coinage had basically transferred from being the Crocids from Cretaceous to the Darics and Sigloy of Darius.

Speaker 1:

Also, there were numerous Greek coins that were found in the empire as well, much more numerous than that of the Sigloy. This suggests that the circulation of Greek coinage played a pivotal role in the monetary system of the Persian empire. These coins could not have been used as legal tender in the cumulative empire, but they were still used and valued for their weight in silver, so they can easily be melted down and made into bullion of silver as well. So it sounds like when there was long distance trade with the Greeks, the Greeks would just use their local currency because ultimately, the people of the Persian Empire would have just cared about the actual silver or gold content of the coins. And you take all these coins, you know how much they weigh and you can easily melt them down and you can convert them into the derricks or the sigloy, if needed, them into the derricks or the sigloy, if needed, and in the end, these derricks and sigloy, well, they'll be the preferred coinage used throughout the region and really won't be challenged until Philip II of Macedon starts minting his own coins. And in the end, like, what does all this mean when it comes to the coinage? Well, the fact is is the obvious thing about coinage makes commerce a lot more efficient, right, but also this allowed for efficiency in the payment of taxes and tribute. This would mean that payment in silver would increase.

Speaker 1:

Under Darius, who instituted a standardized coordinated tax system in 519 BCE, tax rates were previously calculated based on the measurement of each satrap's land and also how fertile it was and therefore how much productivity was expected from the land, and as such they would calculate what the harvest produced in an average year and that would be your taxes. But it wasn't simply a monetized system. There was also a lot of taxes and tribute that would have been paid in kind right. So certain places in the far off regions of the empire maybe didn't have access to as much gold and silver, but they had other things that were very valuable. They had horses, they had grain that would have been valuable and you could use these things to pay in kind. So they were easily accepted. And I think ultimately, the way I gather it and the way I kind of understand it, is Darius and the later Persian kings kind of really understood this and they kind of understood what to expect from each region and would have planned accordingly as far as taxes and tribute is concerned. So in the end trade was flourishing.

Speaker 1:

We had the ever-increasing supply of coinage throughout the empire. Like I said, most of it was really used for paying soldiers and other people in the administrative or government services. But ultimately, when you start paying soldiers and you start paying people in the government, they're going to want to buy goods and services and those gold coins and silver coins would have really worked its way through the economy and really the entry point ultimately was through the soldiers and the government officials. So whether Darius really understood it or meant it or not, the fact is is by him really sending the coins through certain individuals, those coins would have worked its way through the economy. So in the end, while Darius was establishing his new coinage, he was also extending his empire eastward, into the Indus Valley region as well. We know this because written records due to certain archaeological finds show that the accumulated and Greek coins in the region were well established. So therefore that would make sense, because if you're expanding your empire to the east, you are sending soldiers and other administrative officials to the east and therefore the gold coins or the silver sigloy are going to find a way into the local Indus Valley region. And we know this because what happens is people will hoard coins and eventually people will dig them up. And what happened was there was the Axis treasure of gold and silver crafts that were discovered at the Axis River. That would have showcased that the Achaemenid Empire's riches and artwork were in that region.

Speaker 1:

The Oxus River ran between today's Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, so this would have been the Persians' ancestral homeland, if you think about it. Apparently, the jewelry and the coins and other items were hidden by temple priests in the riverbank for protection during the uprisings and ultimately they were just never recovered, which, honestly, is probably the reason why most hordes are never discovered for centuries or millennia later. Right, so someone buries a lot of coins and gold and jewelry and when the problem dissipates or goes away, they just kind of go back and get it. But what happens if you're killed? What happens if you don't tell anybody where the stuff is and you die and that information dies with you? Well, that's kind of what happened in this particular case. Most likely, that is, and the only reason why the Oxus treasure was discovered was in 1880, the region had experienced a severe drought and the river nearly dried up and ultimately would have exposed this massive treasure trove.

Speaker 1:

You can actually see pictures of some of the items that were recovered and they were just spectacular. In addition, you see not only the Persian aspect of it, but you also see the Egyptian and even the Assyrian influence in these metallurgy sculptures and in a weird way, these sculptures give hint as to why empires like the Persians became so strong and powerful was ultimately due to the fact that they were very inclusive of other cultures and would have incorporated into their own little small city, into a regional powerhouse, because they were good at incorporating the good things of regional people, such as the Truscans, into their ever-expanding city-state. Now, in reality, one of the biggest reasons why we know so much about the Persians was due to their long and storied rivalry with the various Greek city-states and storied rivalry with the various Greek city-states. Now I think it's important to take a quick step back and just explain that the Ionian Greeks had won their westernmost edge of Anatolia from the Hittites hundreds of years prior to the Persians coming along. Part of this victory would have been from the famous story of the victory at Troy.

Speaker 1:

The Ionian Greeks weren't alone in this region, as they also shared it with peoples that had come down from the Balkans, the predecessors of the Armenians. Now, as the Persian Empire grew, certain of these independent Greek city-states would have allied with the Persians and, as I mentioned prior, this doesn't necessarily mean that they wanted to be under the boot of the Persians, though they could have collectively did their math and just seen it was at their best odds of survival. But either way, under Darius they would have been vassals to the Persian Empire and therefore had to pay their fair share of taxes and supply troops anytime the Persians called upon them. But they still maintained a great deal of autonomy to rule as they pleased, just like the other regions of the Persian Empire. But soon enough, the Ionian Greeks became restless and wanted to shake off the Persian yoke. Now, apparently, before all this, they had originally appealed to the Greeks from the mainland, but they were essentially ignored and therefore felt they had no choice but to ally with the Persians. The entire region, however, including those tyrants running those city-states, kept a smoldering of resentment against the Persian Empire.

Speaker 1:

And I just mentioned the word tyrant. This is kind of a term that we get from this time period. Now, our modern understanding of the word tyrant may not really align with what a tyrant was in ancient Greece. I mean, when I think of the word tyrant, I tend to think of the mad king slaughtering people in order to maintain power or, at the very least, imposing draconian laws to maintain his or her power. However, in the ancient Greek city-states, there were tyrants who really didn't align with that kind of idea.

Speaker 1:

In fact, a tyrant would have typically been someone who came to power in a way that was not typical of the previous ascension to the throne. So typically, if things go smoothly, a new king will be crowned when his father or someone relatively close dies, and the new king was always the heir presumptive. Now, obviously, the smooth transition from a king to an heir presumptive doesn't happen that way all the time. There's wrinkles that happen. I mean, we just discussed Darius, how he came to the throne. He may not have really aligned With the throne Because you know, he may have made up this story About how Akamene's was this Great, great great grandfather of his. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't, but the fact is is sometimes there's wrinkles that happen when a king dies and a new king takes over and when that happens.

Speaker 1:

Usually this is where you kind of get the terminology of the tyrant coming into play in the ancient Greek city-state world, which means that they would have normally came to the throne not through normal channels. Now, this could have been a person who usurped the throne. But what really separates them from what we associate with the word tyrant is a typical Greek tyrant would have ruled almost as a benevolent ruler because he realized he had backers that would have deposed him if he stepped out of line. And when I say benevolent, what I'm really getting at is he may not have been a cruel leader like a typical tyrant's monarch that we would think of in today's parlance. Don't get me wrong he could have been a bad guy. I mean, look at the United States. We elect presidents that are just awful people. So it's quite possible that, even though he may not have been the cruel leader that one would think of when you hear the word tyrant, but either way, he just didn't really take the throne in a normal means.

Speaker 1:

And what a lot of these tyrants would have done is they would have said, hey, what's the easiest way to get on the side of the people? And one of the things that they did or it was quite common for them to do would be they would have enforced some sort of clean slate decrees or clean slate policies. Now, I discussed this quite a bit in my Mesopotamian episodes. But what a clean slate policy is? It means that a typical king would put a rule in place that would have forgiven all debts. And, as you can imagine, if a new king usurps a throne and one of his early policies is to erase your debt, which could have been so burdensome that you would have had to sell yourself or a close family member, like a child, into slavery. So, as you can imagine, there's got to be a lot of people that, when these policies take hold, they got to really look at this person as almost a savior right. They would have been much loved and would have had the loyalty of a vast amount of the population. It's the really ultimate form of populist policies.

Speaker 1:

Now, I'm not saying that all the tyrants did this clean slate policy program, but that would have been a tool that they could have used if they needed to increase their popularity, because, in the end, most kings have to operate as if they were politicians, because if they overstepped their bounds they could literally lose their heads. Now, from looking at it from a modern perspective, it's almost the opposite of today's politics, in that it's really the wealthy people who are backing these tyrants or presidents or prime ministers, and they would have a serious issue with clean slate programs if it were implemented today. Slate programs if it were implemented today, because the truth is is many of these wealthy donors of politicians of today are in the banking industry or maybe in some kind of rent-seeking middleman type of role. So it definitely would not fly today. For sure and honestly, it would absolutely destroy our economy. And the fact is is a clean state program. It's great for the populace. I wish I had that on for me sometimes, trust me.

Speaker 1:

But the fact is is from a aggregate view, this would be devastating to the economy because the US dollar basically comes into circulation based on debt and you can't just erase it, because you basically are going to end up taking dollars out of the economy and you're going to basically send our economy into a depression, almost guaranteed. Because ultimately, who's going to lend money? If I lend money and you know for a fact that it might not get paid back, well, no one's going to lend their money. They're going to hoard their money and you're going to slow down the economy, grind it down to nothing, because ultimately our economy is built on debt. And another thing, too, is the economies in the ancient society were built on agriculture. You wanted to produce certain grains and crops and you sell it to the market or any kind of access or whatever. So really that was the backbone of the economy. Today it's not. It's not even close right. So in the United States, really, the banking operation is one of the major pillars in the United States economy, along with, obviously, technologies and healthcare and all these other things and healthcare and all these other things.

Speaker 1:

But the fact is is back in the ancient societies, if one were to set out to make a lot of money or be very wealthy or have prestige, the biggest thing what they would want to do is they would want to own lots of land. Today is almost the complete opposite. No one wants to own land, or they don't want to own agricultural land. They want to own buildings or rental units. They want to be rent-seeking middlemen, right, because that's the easiest thing you can make money without doing anything. So, from a modern perspective, a person would want to become, say, an investment banker. If they want to make it big in today's society and they want to have prestige, they wouldn't want to own farmland by any stretch of the means.

Speaker 1:

And I'm getting way ahead of myself, because this is more of a discussion for the Greek city-states. The fact is, is the Greeks viewed banking well? They looked down upon banking, right. That was not something that a person of means or wealth or status would ever, ever get involved into. No well-respected elite would ever be a banker. They would be a rich landowner. So if that's the case, you could potentially see why a clean slate program might not alienate political backers the same way it would today. So I use this long-winded explanation of why it could work back then, but it can't work now.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, a tyrant from Samos named Polycrates. He was a key figure that helped Darius conquer Egypt, but he wasn't the only tyrant to help Darius. There were many other tyrants as well throughout the Ionian Greek city-states who had allied themselves with Darius Greek city-states who had allied themselves with Darius. Hestiaeus was another tyrant that helped Darius out, but Hestiaeus was growing increasingly irritated in Persia because he felt he was trapped there and he couldn't get back home. After he was invited by Darius to live in his palace back in Persia, since he felt he couldn't go back home, he wanted to send messages back to Ionia to stir up a revolt, but he realized if you try to send any messages, it would ultimately be intercepted by any Persians who were part of any kind of intelligence gathering. So therefore, he had to come up with a clever way to get certain messages from where he is in Persia all the way out to the Ionian Greek city-states, and one of the ways he came up with this was he had a trusted servant shave his head bald and then he tattooed the word revolt on his head and then afterward he re-grew his hair and then he sent him home. But it didn't work, because the people in Miletus had recently thrown off their tyrants and now were enjoying the democracy for the first time. So they didn't want another tyrant to come back into the picture.

Speaker 1:

Now. Despite all this, there were rumblings of more and more tensions between the Persians and the Ionian Greeks. But despite all this, hystiaeus didn't give up, as he was able to flee Persia, but when he got home he wasn't received because there was a democracy there. So he was forced to go somewhere else to plan his revolt. Forced to go somewhere else to plan his revolt. Eventually he settled into the island of Lesbos, where the people agreed to build him triremes. Now a trireme is a very large boat that had three rows of sailors on each side who would have rowed the ship. Triremes were essentially the biggest, baddest naval ships of the time.

Speaker 1:

Now the people of Lesbos are referred to as lesbians. Now we all know that in English and in many other European languages, including Greek, the term lesbian is commonly referred to as a homosexual woman. The reason why this came about was the writings of the poet Sappho Lesbos, which was from 620 to about 570 BC, so that's when she lived, and her works were so popular in ancient Greece that she was honored with statues, coinage and pottery centuries after her death. Unfortunately, little remains of her work, however. What remains suggests that she was gay, and thus her name inspired the term lesbian, both referencing female and same-sex relationships, both referencing female and same-sex relationships. Presently, she is viewed as a great poet and an inspiration to the LGBTQ community and its allies.

Speaker 1:

Now, for the purposes of this podcast, it's important to note that ship traffic flowed from the Aegean Sea through the Hellespont into the Sea of Mamara and then through the Bosphorus Strait to the Black Sea. Now, anyone who controlled either side of the straits controlled the very lucrative shipping trade. So, as you can imagine, the Ionians wanted it, of course, because they lived there, and the Persians viewed it as a major prize in terms of economic prowess, as well as a strategic location, if they were to send troops into the Greek mainland. As such, a naval battle occurred with the Persians and the Ionian Greeks. However, the Ionian Greeks didn't fare well. The Persians were able to plunder Miletus and took majority of the goods back to Persia, but also, too, they were able to sell slaves back into Persia as well, from the captured POWs, and even slaves of the civilians as well. So now essentially what happens is you basically transported a whole entire city back to Persia.

Speaker 1:

And this is where it gets a little weird and kind of really falls in line with the Persian experience, because, like I said, the one thing the Persians were known for up to this point was the fact that they were very lenient and, you can say, treated people real well that they had conquered, which was unlike most other ancient societies at the time. And because of it, the normal arc of the story is supposed to be that the people went back to Persia and they revolted and things got messy and thousands upon thousands of people died in revolt and nothing really happened. Or maybe they got their freedom and they went back to Ionia at great expense to the people, but it didn't happen that way because of course it didn't, because the Persians were just kind of different. In fact't happen that way because of course it didn't, because the Persians were just kind of different. In fact, the people that were sent back to Persia. Supposedly they were treated very well and were given their own city on the Persian Gulf. So they said, hey, you're going to live here now, but we're not going to enslave you in the normal sense. We're just going to say, hey, you got to live here, you're going to develop your own city, you can develop trade and you're going to pay your taxes and tribute and of course, if we need you in battle you got to come serve with us, which ultimately is much different than what you would normally hear about. So you can kind of see how Darius is kind of slowly encroaching upon the Greek mainland.

Speaker 1:

And in 492 BCE Darius had become furious with Athens in particular because they had backed the opposition in the sacking of Sardis. Darius was so upset that he sent his general to Ionia with his vast naval force and even landed an army and had his general remove all the tyrants and install democracies, which again kind of doesn't make sense, right? You would think that if you're going to take over a region of the world and you're going to remove the people in power, that you're going to put in a dictator who is a puppet. You're not going to put in democracies. So this is really the complete opposite to what one would expect to happen.

Speaker 1:

And it's funny because if you look at it from a modern perspective and it's funny because, if you look at it from a modern perspective, look at the United States we kind of really hold ourselves out as being the beacons of democracy, right, but in the 80s and 70s, and even like in the 60s, there was countries in Latin America that were electing left-leaning officials. The United States did not like this because we were afraid that they were kind of really aligning themselves with the Soviet Union. What did the United States do? We went into these Latin American countries and certain things happened, like a ruler's plane would accidentally crash or we would just outright support a coup d'etat and remove the person that was elected by the people and install a far-right military dictator. We were not putting in democracies, far from it. We were doing just the opposite. We wanted to have people that would play ball with our business leaders. It's that simple.

Speaker 1:

So I find it very interesting when you contrast that with the ancient Persians who, let's be honest, most people in the United States or even probably throughout Europe, I would imagine it's very similar. We kind of view the Persian versus Greek battles as the good guys versus the bad guys, and the Greeks being the good guys and the Persians being the bad guys. But in reality, can you say that Is the bad guy really going to install a democracy and remove a tyrant? No, you would not expect that, but that's what the Persians did and it's definitely not what the United States did. The United States did not install democracies when we were removing people in Latin America. We were doing just the opposite. In fact, the United States was installing people that we would consider tyrants, or our modern version of what a tyrant is in charge of the country.

Speaker 1:

So anyway, getting back to the story that was kind of developing between Darius and the mainland Greek city-states, shortly after Darius had ordered the Phoenicians to rebuild his fleet of ships of nearly 600 new triremes, plus enough transport ships to carry some 10,000 horses and supplies for his 200,000 plus soldiers, the Phoenicians told him that it would take about two years to build this many ships. So, with the growing military might of the Persian army and the Phoenician navy, pretty much all of the Greeks, with the exception of the Athenians and the Spartans, had submitted to the Persians. They all saw what was common and said you know, we don't want any piece of that. So, with the exception of those two, it's interesting, because the Athenians and the Spartans were always at each other's throats. So it's, you know, it's one of those things. You know, hey, you know we're cousins that fight all the time. But when an outside person comes into play, you know, we'll, you know, put aside our differences and we'll align with each other to fight off these outside forces. But we know, once they leave, we'll get back at each other. So don't worry about that. And since they had interfered with Ionian campaigns, darius had come to the conclusion that if they will not submit, they will burn and the population will be enslaved.

Speaker 1:

Now, sparta itself was an interesting place, because the kids had essentially started their military career when they were seven years old and their whole society essentially revolved around fighting and military operations. In addition, they didn't have one ruler, but they had two kings who ruled simultaneously. We'll see that with the Romans down the road. Now, this could be a good thing or it could be a really terrible thing if one king were to destroy the other or, at the very least, make the other king look like he was weak or a terrible military ruler. In fact, this was kind of what happened when one of the kings defected to Darius after he had lost his throne due to the other king subverting his rule. So in the end, it was only Athens and Sparta who could stop Persia from encroaching further and further into Greece.

Speaker 1:

Now, prior to the Persians looking at sacking Athens, they did have a battle with Eritrea, which had fallen to the Persians, since they had decided to fight the Persians. The city was sacked and plundered. The Athenians took the lead role and they started beating back the Persians, but they didn't want to do it alone, since they appealed to Sparta for help. But unfortunately, sparta was celebrating a festival to a god and couldn't go to war until there was a full moon, so the Athenians had to rely on a smaller city-state north of Athens for help. So now, basically, it was Athens going at it alone, with a little bit of help from a smaller city-state, but luckily for Athens, they would come out victorious in the famous Battle of Marathon. And the thing is, when you're fighting on your home turf, you can set up the battlefield that would be most conducive for your style and bad for the other side, and the region of Marathon was quite swampy and therefore not a good place for horsemen to do battle. So therefore, marathon's geography would have eliminated the Persian cavalry on its own.

Speaker 1:

In addition, the Greeks were able to form up in their famous phalanx, which acted almost like the ancient equivalent of a tank across the battlefield, and the Persians didn't know how to defend themselves from this formation, because this is the first time they've ever seen the Athenians use it, and the Persians would have squared off against each other, not knowing how to defend themselves from it. And the story goes that when the Persians first saw this phalanx position and its square formation, they had apparently laughed at it, especially because it didn't utilize any horses, only men and their long spear. They thought the Athenians were crazy and they were about to get routed. However, when the Athenians formed up, and then they ran full speed in formation down through the ridge and across a small plain and crashed headlong into the Persians, well, they weren't laughing anymore, and they were quite startled by the speed of the Athenians. They moved so fast that the archers couldn't get enough shots off to slow down or impede their progress, because they were basically on top of them before they knew it. Now, the way this formation worked was it would be thin in the middle and thick on the right and left flanks, so that when the Persians attacked the center, the Greeks would outflank them and eventually try to encircle them. The Persians made it through the initial attack basically because they ran away and, in typical fashion of a fleeing army, it is often routed in the process. In the end, this was a massive loss for the Persians.

Speaker 1:

And then this is where we get the famous story of the courier running the 26 miles back to Athens to tell the people that the Persians had been defeated. He is said to have only said win and then collapsed and died. Now this story is probably utter nonsense, but I like it anyway and this is a story that people know of. Herodotus also said the alternative story is that the train runner was sent from Athens to Sparta before the battle in order to request assistance from the Spartans. He is said to have covered about 150 miles in about two days. So there's two versions of the story the one that we're pretty much all familiar with, where we get the idea of the marathon race that we do every year. I did the New York City Marathon. People run marathons all the time. It's 26.2 miles and that's supposed to be the distance of the courier. Now the story about him saying one word and dropping dead. Well, that probably didn't happen. Now, this was just one battle.

Speaker 1:

This was not over even for a long shot, because the Persians were now sailing up around Attica and had its designs towards Athens. Therefore, the Athenian army had to race back to Athens and get there before the Persians arrived, and, luckily for them, they made it back. A day before the Persians were able to sail into the harbor, the Athenians were able to build massive fires on the bluffs surrounding the city. So when the Persians arrived in the harbor, they could see fires burning and probably assumed that they were going to face thousands upon thousands of warriors. So, in other words, the Athenians kind of really set up a ruse to try and convince the Persians that they might not want any part of it, because they're going to face a massive army that could potentially decimate them. And luckily for the Athenians, it actually worked. But the Athenians knew that the Persians would be back eventually and therefore the leading Athenian politician decided that it would be a good time to really build up our navy and luckily for the Athenians, they had a silver mine that was within pretty close proximity to Athens and they were able to use the silver from the mines in order to pay these workers to build up this massive fleet of ships. But in the meantime, persia was also preparing for the invasion. They didn't have a newly discovered silver mine nearby. Instead, they would have to raise taxes and tribute upon the people throughout their empire. This money that they would have raised would have been used to build ships and raise horses and prepare provisions for the troops for when they finally invaded Greece in three years time, mind you.

Speaker 1:

While all this is going on, darius is getting up there in age and he needed to appoint an heir apparent to the throne. Darius had seven sons in total, of which three he had from his first wife and four from his second wife. His second wife, atuso, was the daughter of Cyrus the Great. So Darius was kind of really looking at it from a kind of political perspective, in that he probably figured it's best to appoint his heir that could directly trace his grandfather to Cyrus the Great, because Cyrus is so well revered in the empire. So in the end, instead of choosing his oldest son, he appointed Xerxes as the crown prince and, like I said, this was probably done because Darius had some question marks on his lineage. So he probably figured you know what, let's just nip this in the bud and let's appoint someone that we know for sure is the grandson of Cyrus.

Speaker 1:

Because in the end it's quite possible that if he would have chosen his oldest son, that people in the empire may have kind of re-dug up this whole lineage thing and maybe there would have been revolts. Maybe they would have said you know what? You know, he's really not related to Achaemenes and therefore he probably shouldn't be the king and therefore, since I have my satrap, I want to basically revolt and I want to have my own little kingdom independent of the Persians. But because Cyrus was so well revered and Darius took the steps to basically ensure that we have a direct lineage, he probably prevented any kind of revolts that would have happened in the transition of power and, luckily for Persia, the succession of the king was already established because Darius had died unexpectedly after reigning for 36 years unexpectedly after reigning for 36 years.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you look at Darius's reign, you could probably say that his reign was just as, if not more important than, cyrus's reign.

Speaker 1:

In the end, he basically had to overcome challenges at first because of his lineage concerns, but he was able to quickly reunite the empire and was able to expand it even further. But in the end, really, what he probably is most known for is the fact that he was a great administrator, and this alone is a very underrated aspect of any kind of rule. You can have so much talent on the battlefield and you can be this person that has a great aura of greatness and be very charismatic, but in the end, if you're going to manage a huge empire like the Achaemenid Persian Empire and an expanding empire for that matter you have to have somebody at the top that knows how to move all the pieces in the right places and establish a system of government that works for everyone. And really it appears to me that Darius the Great was one of the first great, if not greatest, administrators of all time. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon.

People on this episode