The Persian Empire..
Alongside the Mede people south of the Caspian Sea, was another Indo-European people: the Persians. The Persians had arrived from Central Asia sometime before 800 BCE, and they had come under the rule of the Medes. In the mid-500s the Chaldean Empire, centered at Babylon, supported a Persian rebellion in order to weaken the Medes. A Persian prince, to be known as Cyrus II, led the rebellion, and some in the Medes army joined his rebellion. Cyrus and his army deposed the Medes king, and Cyrus united the Persians and Medes under his rule.
With Cyrus the Chaldeans got more than they had bargained for: Cyrus was an able administrator and military leader. He consolidated his power over tribes in central Persia, and then he started building a greater empire. He moved his army of cavalry and light infantry into Asia Minor, and there, in 547, he overthrew King Croesus of Lydia, who had ruled all of Asia Minor west of the Halys River. Cyrus acquired all of the king's great riches, and in name he acquired all of his empire. The Greek cities on the western coast of Asia Minor submitted peacefully to Cyrus' rule, but, in the more rugged terrain in southwestern Asia Minor, Cyrus' generals had rebellions to crush.
The Achaemenid Persian empire was the largest that the ancient world had seen, extending from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India and Central Asia. Its formation began in 550 B.C., when King Astyages of Media, who dominated much of Iran and eastern Anatolia (Turkey), was defeated by his southern neighbor Cyrus II (“the Great”), king of Persia (r. 559–530 B.C.). This upset the balance of power in the Near East. The
of western Anatolia under King Croesus took advantage of the fall of Media to push east and clashed with Persian forces. The Lydian army withdrew for the winter but the Persians advanced to the Lydian capital at
, which fell after a two-week siege. The Lydians had been allied with the Babylonians and Egyptians and Cyrus now had to confront these major powers. The
In 539 B.C., Persian forces defeated the Babylonian army at the site of Opis, east of the Tigris. Cyrus entered Babylon and presented himself as a traditional Mesopotamian monarch, restoring temples and releasing political prisoners. The one western power that remained unconquered in Cyrus’ lightning campaigns was Egypt. It was left to his son Cambyses to rout the Egyptian forces in the eastern Nile Delta in 525 B.C. After a ten-day siege, Egypt’s ancient capital Memphis fell to the Persians.
A crisis at court forced Cambyses to return to Persia but he died en route and
(“the Great”) emerged as king (r. 521–486 B.C.), claiming in his inscriptions that a certain “Achaemenes” was his ancestor. Under Darius the empire was stabilized, with roads for communication and a system of governors (satraps) established. He added northwestern India to the Achaemenid realm and initiated two major building projects: the construction of royal buildings at Susa and the creation of the new dynastic center of Persepolis, the buildings of which were decorated by Darius and his successors with stone reliefs and carvings. These show tributaries from different parts of the empire processing toward the enthroned king or conveying the king’s throne. The impression is of a harmonious empire supported by its numerous peoples. Darius also consolidated Persia’s western conquests in the Aegean. However, in 498 B.C., the eastern Greek Ionian cities, supported in part by Athens, revolted. It took the Persians four years to crush the rebellion, although an attack against mainland Greece was repulsed at Marathon in 490 B.C.
Darius’ son Xerxes (r. 486–465 B.C.) attempted to force the mainland Greeks to acknowledge Persian power, but
and Athens refused to give way. Xerxes led his sea and land forces against Greece in 480 B.C., defeating the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae and sacking Athens. However, the Greeks won a victory against the Persian navy in the straits of Salamis in 479 B.C. It is possible that at this point a serious revolt broke out in the strategically crucial province of Babylonia. Xerxes quickly left Greece and successfully crushed the Babylonian rebellion. However, the Persian army he left behind was defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Plataea in 479 B.C.
No comments:
Post a Comment