The Achaemenid Empire

The Achaemenid Empire was founded by Cyrus II in the 6th century B.C.E., and it became an empire unlike any the world had seen up to that point.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(01:04):
You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy B. Wilson,
and today we are going to touch on a little
bit of Persian history, specifically an empire that occupied a

(01:25):
massive swath of territory and it is uh the Acumenated Empire.
You'll sometimes also hear it called the Achemenid Empire. It
is also sometimes called the Accuminated Persian Empire. Sometimes the
word Persian and Achemenid are transposed. But it's also discussed
in terms of being ancient Iran. But in terms of
geography it was much much larger than modern day Iran is.

(01:48):
So if you overlaid the map of the Acciumenate Empire
at its peak over a modern map, it would cover
Iran and to its east Pakistan, Afghanistan, parts of Turkmenistan
and as Pakistan, and to the west of modern day
Iran Uh. The empire encompassed Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan's, Greece,
parts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia. It just went on and

(02:11):
on and on, including Macedonia and Albania. It was, as
we will discuss the largest empire the world had ever
seen in recorded history at that point. At any time
we talked about a chunk of one area's history, it
can also be a little awkward to define the exact
beginning and end of the segment, because what comes before
it and what comes after the period that you're discussing

(02:34):
is all related to the period of time itself. So
in this instance, we're going to talk primarily about the
accominted empire from its founding to the height of its power,
but we're also going to feather out a bit on
either side of that for context. So first we're going
to start talking about the figure for whom the empire
was named, although that is not the person who established it, uh.

(02:56):
He came quite some time before the empire was actually founded.
Achimanes was the founder, at least in name of the
Persian royal house, but there's a possibility that in fact
he was a mythical figure. He was then adopted into
the royal lineage to give it a divine power. In
Plato's writing, Achimenes was Zeus's grandson, and in the writings

(03:19):
of Alienas he was the son of an eagle. The
name Achimenes or Achimanees, depending on how you're gonna go
with that is derived from the old Persian words meaning
friend and thinking power. But even though we lack historical
evidence of the actual existence of Achimanees tracing back the
historical line of Persia, if he had been a real person,

(03:42):
he would have lived roughly at the end of the
eighth century b c e. Into the first part of
the seventh century BC. But even before that, the klansmen
of the line that's linked to Achimanes may have been
leaders over the Persian tribes who lived in the area
of modern day northern Iran as far are back as
the ninth century BC. Eventually, though the Persians, possibly under Achimenes,

(04:07):
are just as likely under another leader, migrated south into
the Zagros region and the Zagros Mountains for a reference point,
run along the western border of modern day Iran, and
from there the kingdom was enlarged over time, but the
actual Achimenid Empire wasn't founded until the sixth century BC,
so three hundred years after that ninth century date we

(04:30):
mentioned earlier. To get to that point, we have to
jump in time to uh Cyrus, the second son of
camp by ses Cyrus the First was his grandfather. Just
in case you were wondering, Yeah, anytime we jump into
a numbering system and we kind of come in like
on a two or three, I feel like we should
give a little context of who maybe the first one was.

(04:52):
But Cyrus the Second was a Persian prince who ascended
to the throne of king of Anshan when his father
died in five fifty nine BC. E on Sean was
a city that was conquered by the Cyrus the Second relatives,
and they assumed the name of the city as part
of the royal title. Beginning in five fifty two b C.
Cyrus the Second led a coalition of Persian tribes with

(05:14):
the intent to make a move for power and no
longer be dominated by the Median dynasty. In five b C,
Cyrus the Second a k a. Cyrus the Great of
Persia defeated King Astiagus of Media. The victory was aided
in part by a number of soldiers turning on their
king and siding with Cyrus Astia. Guess who's actually recorded

(05:39):
as Cyrus the Second's grandfather, on his mother's side, had
ruled most of the of what is now Iran. And Turkey,
and Cyrus the second had with his federation of tribes
come up from the south to take all of this land.
We don't have any real record of his lineage, but
Cyrus the second claimed royal descent from a chemen eve

(06:00):
as he established this new kingdom. Maybe right. There is
some cloudiness actually over whether Cyrus the second actually did
claim this relation. In his inscription from Pasargaty, Cyrus to
claims himself to be in a Kimunid but we don't know. However,

(06:20):
if there was another man, Darius the First, we'll talk
about him in a moment moment, who was actually responsible
for those writings rather than Cyrus the Second himself. In
any case, uh, Cyrus the Second's victory in this situation
really marks the beginning of the Acuminate Empire. Cyrus declared
himself shot of Persia, built a capital on the side

(06:41):
of his victory, and started figuring out what he wanted
to do with the vastly diverse assortment of lands and
people's that he now governed. This is also at a
point where a previous fracture in the Persian Kingdom, which
was formed when a prior king had split the land
that he controlled between two suns. When he died was

(07:02):
basically healed. That's a whole separate story really. These two
separate entities, though, were reunited in the formation of the
Accummutate Empire. And we're gonna talk more about Cyrus the
Second as a ruler in just a moment, because he
was quite unique. But first we're gonna pause for a
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and now get back to our story. So before the break,
we spoke about how Cyrus the Second founding the Aciminate
Empire was a reunification in some ways, but make no mistake,

(09:46):
it was not exactly a rosy picture. Some of the
people's of this newly formed empire were not exactly enthused
to be ruled by this self installed Persian monarch. Still,
Cyrus the Second quickly managed to expand the land he
ruled significantly and continuously, and this is considered a really
extremely significant moment in world history. For one, it represented

(10:08):
the largest empire that the world had ever seen at
this point, and for another, it united all of the
existing civilized states of the ancient Near East as one kingdom.
And one of the strategies that was employed by Cyrus
the Second, at least according to legend, was to take
advantage of the knowledge of the men he had conquered.
So while normally it would be pretty standard to kill

(10:31):
off everyone who came before you, he actually spared the
leaders that he had bested in battle so that he
might ask their advice on how best to govern their
people what would one day be known as Asia Minor,
and then eventually Turkey was conquered by Cyrus the Second
when it was the Lydian Kingdom of Crisis, and that
was in five forty seven b C. At this point,

(10:53):
Cyrus advanced on the Lydian army as they were retreating
for the winter. They had been battling in the fall
all but it had not come to any kind of
conclusive outcome, and then King Creasus pulled his troops back.
He thought everyone was going to stop there's hostilities until
spring naiceally take a break for the wintertime, but Cyrus
the Second took advantage of the situation instead. After a

(11:16):
two week siege, the Accummend Empire emerged victorious and absorbed
the Lydians lands, taking over Lydia. With this, Cyrus the
Second gain power over the major commerce hub in all
of the Middle East at that point, and Cyrus the
Second also added the babylon and Neo Babylonian Empire to

(11:39):
the Acuminate Empire in five BC. Once the Lydian Kingdom
had been dominated, Cyrus went after its Babylonian ally, but
he did not march on these lands and take military action. Instead,
he enlisted propaganda, spreading the word that Babylonian culture would
be safer in his hands, the hands of Cyrus the Second,
who would respected than under the rule of their king Nabinatus.

(12:05):
The smear campaign against Nabinatus works. The people rose up
against their king, and then after he had been deposed,
Babylonia welcomed Cyrus the Second, who was able to just
walk into the city and take over. In the nineteenth century,
a clay cylinder, which is now called the Cyrus Cylinder
and it's kept in the British Museum, was found beneath

(12:25):
the foundations of Babylon City Wall, believed to have been
placed there very purposefully. It is another propaganda element designed
to characterize Cyrus the seconds entry into Babylon as completely benevolent.
The cylinder reads quotes when I entered Babylon as a friend,
and when I established the seat of the government and

(12:46):
the palace of the Ruler under jubilation and rejoicing, mar
Duke the Great Lord induced the magnanimous inhabitants of Babylon
to love me, and I was ali endeavoring to worship him.
My numerous troops walked around Babylon in peace. I did
not allow anybody to terrorize any place of the country

(13:09):
of sumer and a cod I strove for peace and Babylon,
and in all his other sacred city, as indicated in
the Cyrus Cylinder. Cyrus the Second restored temples in Babylon.
He reinstated religious rights that had gone neglected under the
Babylonian king's reign. And he released political prisoners, and he

(13:31):
proclaimed that he was the new king of the land.
He set up a system in which the peoples of
his empire could practice whatever religion and cultural traditions they
desired in exchange for tribute. This is basically like a
tax system that grants those paying the taxes the right
to live their lives as they please. The wording of
his cylinder just cracks me up a little bit. I mean,

(13:55):
I'm sure that is a slightly embellished translation on somebody's part. Yeah,
it just sounds like I was the greatest and most magnanimous,
and I really I didn't kill anybody at all, you guys,
I'm awesome and super gentle. So for the record, we
don't know what religion Cyrus followed, if any. We should

(14:16):
also point out that this approach to governance and leadership
was really a steep departure from what had gone before
in most civilizations, the idea of conquering a place or
a group of people and then bending them all to
the conquerors. Ways, it's played out numerous times in history
before this point, and in fiction for that matter, and
then for that matter, lots and lots more times since then,

(14:38):
which is one of the reasons that this language on
the cylinder, uh being so like, I am the most
gentle ever anyway. Uh, this concept of just letting people
live their lives their way after their country had been
conquered and absorbed was really groundbreaking. Yeah. Yeah. And Cyrus

(14:59):
the Great is mentioned then the Old Testament Bible as
a patron of the Jews, and that's due to his
policies and actions during this time. Exiled and imprisoned Jews
living in Babylon were released and told to go rebuild
the Temple in Jerusalem, and they were given financial assistance
at Cyrus the Second Decree. Cyrus the Second is believed

(15:19):
to have been killed in battle in five twenty nine
BC by the queen of an Iranian tribe when he
and his troops tried to expand their holdings farther into
the west. According to the writings of Herodotust, and he
was laid to rest in a tomb and Pasargaty, as
we mentioned just a moment ago, we don't know what
his religious beliefs were, and while some historians have come

(15:40):
to the conclusion that the kings of the Acumenate Empire
were zoro Astrians, a tomb burial is in direct conflict
with that idea. The practicing Zoroastrians who came after Cyrus
the Second practice something closer to a sky burial, which
you may have heard of, uh, leaving bodies on stone
structures nicknamed towers of Silence to decompose and be consumed

(16:04):
by animals. And there's been speculation that perhaps there were
at one point variations of the religion that would accommodate
the idea of Cyrus the Second being buried in a tomb,
but that's still all a very big question mark at
this point. Cyrus the second son cam by Sees the Second,
took the throne in five twenty nine BC when Cyrus

(16:24):
died and continued his father's work. Under his rule, the
Accumman Empire expanded to contain Egypt, Nubia, and the land
that makes up modern day Libya, but Cambyses the Second
was not like his father at all when it came
to how he ruled things, and that proved to be
a problem. Yeah. Whereas Cyrus the Second had tried to

(16:46):
unite his people by working with them and accepting their differences,
can buy Ses was considered a severe king. He was
not very good at compromise. Uh. He certainly did not
exhibit that ability to work with people the way his
father had excelled at it. Cam Byses the Second ruled
for only seven years, and the end of his life

(17:06):
included a pretty big amount of drama. Well, cam Byases
was away from home and five BC he received news
that a revolt had broken out, and the weird part
was the revolt was being led by cambyses brother, Bardia.
This was weird, Uh, not because it would have been traitors,

(17:28):
traitors like the obviously, if your brother is rising up
against you, he is a trader, but because cam Buyses
the second had actually killed his brother in secret several
years before that. Yeah. So this revolt, according to the story,
which I should say is told with some variations in

(17:49):
a number of different sources, was actually led by a
holy man, a magi, who was pretending to be the
deceased brother, taxes, military conscription, religious intolerance, and a serious
debt for the kingdom. For all of that military led expansion,
including some of the stuff that Cyrus the Second had done,
it wasn't all Cambyses the Second that was racking up

(18:09):
all of his debt, but all of that combined had
really laid the groundwork for this holy man Gaumata, to
incite a revolution among the people. Can I see the
Second never really engaged with this whole revolt situation. He
seems to have died suddenly, possibly en route to his capital.
There's some speculation that he actually committed suicide rather than

(18:30):
face what awaited him when he got there. In the
power vacuum that was left in the king's wake. Once
he had died, one of his generals named Darius, who
he was also distantly related to, assumed the role of
defender of the acumenated throne. Darius killed Gaumata, the leader
of this revolution, within a few months of the uprising,

(18:52):
and he spent the next year suppressing additional revolts and
uprising through military action. Allegedly, there were nineteen different battles
with potential revolts that he put down rather efficiently. One
of the reasons that we use the word allegedly there though,
is because the story of Darius and his victory over
this rebellion is known to us mostly through a narrative

(19:13):
rock carving which Darius himself commissioned. The writings that also
tell tell the tale, including the work of Herodotus, all
come later, and we're probably influenced by this official carved
rock version of the story. So rather than the title
of king being passed down from father to firstborn son,
Darius in killing the leader of the uprising against camp

(19:36):
By Sees the Second believed himself to have restored the
kingdom to the house of the Acumenated family, and Darius
was related to the preceding king, but it was pretty distantly.
He certainly would not have been the next in line
for the throne. There's also a possibility that he concocted
this whole story of the Holy Man, and this is

(19:56):
the whole thing made up by Darius as part of
a much law dr Khan to gain power, and the
writings of Herodotus. Uh Cyrus the Second had been suspicious
of Darius during his reign. Before his death, believing that
the young man was plotting to overthrow him. Yes, so
that would definitely be a long con if he was
doing it, if it had been more than seven years

(20:19):
in the making, since Cyrus the Second died seven years
before Darius came to power. But just the same, Darius
supported by the Persian nobles who worked with him to
murder Gaumata and end that uprising. Uh. He still came
into power with that support, and as we mentioned just
a moment ago, he defended against a series of uprisings

(20:40):
in his first year's ruler, cementing his position a little
bit more with each of those victories. So, whether Darius
came to the throne through scheming or not, what's actually
kind of fascinating is that he proved to be an
important and very adept leader. Although Cyrus the Second and
cam Biases the second made massive strides and establishing and

(21:02):
expanding the Empire, it's really Darius the First who's considered
to be the greatest of the command rulers. Darius further
augmented empires holdings and most importantly, he moved it into
the Indus Valley. But in his thirty five year reign
he also advanced the empire in other ways as well,
and we're going to talk about how he really earned

(21:24):
this reputation as a great ruler. But first we're gonna
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first made the government of the Acumeni Empire centralized and
compact and efficient. He managed to develop a means of

(24:00):
governing people from all of the diverse lands that have
been conquered in the empire's expansion, and to once again
unify the rule of people's with different customs, languages, and
religions under one governmental umbrella. As you recall, Cyrus, the
second was pretty good at that camp by sees less so.
Uh So, under the reign of Darius, art and culture

(24:20):
actually flourished, and really ambitious public works and building projects
were undertaken. He divided the land into twenty provinces or satropies,
and each of these is governed by a sat trip
with a military commander in each one. To keep keep
tabs on things and prevent any of the satraps from
getting ideas about amassing additional power, he also collected tributes

(24:45):
in other words, taxes from each of them, which in
this case was used to fund a navy public irrigation systems, roads,
and a canal to connect the Red Sea to the Nile.
He also united all of these financially by gating one
unified currency for all of them. And like Cyrus the
Second had done before him, Darius allowed the people of

(25:07):
the empire to worship whatever religion they wished. Darius, uh,
we should point out, was certainly not modest about himself
or his position. He built a mammoth palace at what
would come to be known as Persepolis, although this was
not the permanent capital of the empire, and he adopted
the title shahn Shaw, which is king of Kings, over

(25:30):
the previously used title of Shaw, like he was super king.
One thing that Darius the First never managed was the
conquering of Grecian revolts, and four ninety two BC, while
sailing to attack the Grecians, his entire flotilla was demolished
in a storm at sea. He made another run at

(25:51):
Greece and for nine BC, but his army was defeated
at Marathon by the Athenian army. Not long after, Darius,
who was weakened by an other uprising in Egypt, died,
and that was in four eighties six PC, and unfortunately
that burgeoning culture that he had really fostered and caused
to grow in his thirty five years of leadership was

(26:13):
not to last. So when Darius the first son Xerxes
came to power, it signaled in many ways the beginning
of the end for the Acumenate Empire. Erxes was rather smug,
and he was unable to cooperate with the various different
peoples of the empire. His relationship with the people that
he governed was generally fraught, as evidenced by his punishment

(26:37):
of Babylon for an uprising that was catalyzed by a
tax increase. Quick to act, even at a cost to
his own kingdom, Xerxes had the rioters quieted by completely
destroying Babylon himself. Rebellions became commonplace, and they slowly chipped
away at the domain that had been established with Virus

(26:58):
the second's rule. While he mounted military actions, they weren't
generally successful, one against Greece and for a d b
c went so poorly that after that point he seemed
to mostly just spend his time hiding away in his palace. Yeah,
there's a whole secondary thing we could do about Xerxes
and palace intrigues at this point. Uh, it's a little

(27:21):
daytime drama. It's uh. But over the course of the
next two centuries, the Acumenate Empire just continued to slowly crumble.
The sat Traps slowly made power grabs to extend their
influence and their riches. Artis Zerxies succeeded his father's Zerxies
in four sixty five b C. And he was followed
by Darius the Second in four twenty three b C.

(27:44):
And then artist Xerxes the second through the fourth came
after that. And while all of these rulers had their
own intrigues in battles, uh, and you know their own
stories that we could tell, they still are not as
as sort of big and important and interesting because none
of them advanced the Acumenate Empire in the way that
Cyrus the Second and Darius the First did. Wars continued

(28:07):
to rage on with Greece in Egypt, and then finally,
in three thirty four BC, Alexander the Great brought his
armies up against the once mighty Persian throne under Darius
the Third. While Alexander had to fight a long series
of battles along the way, proof that even in a
weekend state, that commuted empire was still pretty formidable. He
was ultimately victorious, and Darius the third was murdered by

(28:29):
one of his own generals. Alexander took command of the
Persian Empire, which really put an end to the Acumenid Empire. Yeah,
that was a rap on it. It's so um, you know.
It's one of those things where it was the apex
of all things. It was the biggest government in some
under some rulers. It was a really pretty spectacular government

(28:54):
in terms of of having a vastly diverse population and
that was able to sort of uh just live as
it would, all of the people being able to do
what they wanted in terms of their culture and their religion.
And then it all fell apart, which is sort of sad,
but that is how history works. Do you also have

(29:15):
listener mail? I do, and it's really pretty uh. This
listener mail is postcard from our listener Amy, and it
is an absolutely gorgeous postcard with four ladies in beautiful
rococo gowns on it. And she says, dear Holly and Tracy,
I'm a big fan of stuff you missed in history

(29:35):
class and felt compelled to send you a postcard from
my recent European vacation. Is My boyfriend and I were
taking a train from Nice in the south of France
to Paris. Your episode on Elizabeth Louise Vija le Blanc
came on my playlist. How fortune it is. I was
able to listen to the fascinating story of le Blin
and her talent while watching the beautiful French landscape that

(29:56):
she loved so much rush before my eyes. The next day,
we took in the wonderful art of both Elizabeth and
her father at the Palace of Versailles. It meant a
lot to look at their art and understand the context
of their work and the triumphs and tragedies they had experienced.
I'm sending this card, is it? Thank you for hours
of entertainment on the New York City subway because I know,
and because I know of Holly's enjoyment of costume and

(30:18):
fashion all the best. It's so pretty. Thank you so much, Amy,
I love it, And I'm going to confess a lot
of times I keep our postcards here so Tracy can
enjoy them when she comes to the office. But I'm
probably going to steal this one and use it as
a personal bookmark, because I'm selfish that way. If you
would like to write to us, you can email us
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(30:39):
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You can also visit us at misst in history dot
com and you'll find all of our episodes going back
to when the podcast first existed in very short form
with other hosts and every episode since then, as well
as show notes on every episode that Tracy and I

(31:20):
have appeared on I and the occasional other fun Gideon
blog post. We encourage you come and visit us at
misston history dot com and at our parents site, how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics because it has staff workstatter