Greek and Persian Wars | Empire Builders: The Persians (Lecture 2)

Lecture 2: Modern scholars have learned about the Persians in their own language thanks largely to the translation of the inscription at Behistun rock by Henry Rawlinson in the 1830s. That inscription tells the story of the accession of King Darius to the throne of the Persian Empire. Other Old Persian texts give us a sense of what the Persians were like both before and after they became the dominant power in the ancient world. It was Cyrus who initiated the drive to dominance, uniting the formerly tribal Persian people and leading them to expansion through the conquest of Media, Lydia, and other Greek city-states. Cyrus’s son Cambyses organized the ever-widening empire into provinces and continued the tradition of engineering projects begun by his father. One such project, the Royal Road, typifies the qualities of relentlessness, duty, and achievement that made the Persian Empire a force to be reckoned with.

Recommended Reading:
Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period.
Lyle, The Search for the Royal Road.