The Persian Empire
"Like A Persian"
They didn’t call him Cyrus the Great for nothing. Beginning with the reign of Cyrus, this song gives you a peek at the Persian Empire’s skillful expansion of power. Their army was unstoppable. Or so they thought. Find out which ancient empire gave Persia a run for its money. We’ll also cover sibling rivalry to the extreme, as Smerdis steals the throne from his brother Cambyses, only to be overtaken by a distant relative named Darius. It’s the history of Persia in a song.
Intro
Let’s take it back to the sixth century BC,
When the Persians mastered the Middle East.
Before wars were fought digitally,
They said, "Send in the cavalry," that’s literally.
In the desert land, you could get sand in your sandwich,
An empire was born and spread by the sword.
The Persians were the ancestors of modern Iranians,
And they had the greatest army, always training them
To take on the neighboring states of Mesopotamia,
They reached the Himalayas and conquered the rest of Arabia.
Persian secret weapon was the special forces,
"The Immortals," warriors who would ride into war
On impressive horses and leave a mess of corpses,
In their wake led by Cyrus the Great.
He freed Hebrews from Babylon,
Not Hannah Montana; Cyrus was the nicest.
Like a Persian:
Tough since the very first times,
Smart since the very first rhymes.
We’re the army comin’ and you can hardly summon
The strength to stand up, we’re Persian.
Cambyses inherited the kingdom in 529 BC,
And he was quite pleased.
He wanted to extend the empire’s reach,
But he spent a little too much time overseas.
Conquered Egypt, but his leadership was not,
As strategic as his father’s.
He left his brother running things for too long and lost his allegiance,
Maybe his brother was a fake, but either way.
The new king of Persia was Darius the Great,
He knew how to collect coins and build up trade.
But try as he might, Darius couldn’t increase
The empire’s size by invading Greece.
Greco-Persian Wars began in 490,
Three hundred Spartans stopped em at Thermopylae.
A Greek traitor’s hand showed ‘em the place to land,
But this was the home of the Marathon Man.
And Greeks fought with hoplites (that’s not right!),
And a storm at sea destroyed a third of the fleet.
Even Xerxes the First couldn’t conquer Greece,
‘Cause they were too strong, and had bomb philosophies.
Like a Persian:
Tough since the very first times,
Smart since the very first rhymes.
We’re the army comin’ and you can hardly summon
The strength to stand up, we’re Persian.
Flocab Spits Facts:
The Madness of Cambyses
History Speaks
Discussion Questions
First understand that Persia is Iran and vice versa. The land now known as Iran was called Persia by most people until 1935 when its King said, "Please call us Iran." So most people do.
In 2001, American President George W. Bush said that Iran was part of an "axis of evil." Iran's president, in turn, said that "we will soon experience a world without the United States." In the years before and since, there has been lots of tension between America in the West and Iran in the East. Today's tension and clash of cultures echo the past, namely, a series of incredible wars between the Greeks and the Persians.
It's important to avoid thinking of any group in such simple terms as "us" versus "them." In fact, we learn this lesson by studying the history of Persia itself. Just ask Cyrus the Great.
In 2001, American President George W. Bush said that Iran was part of an "axis of evil." Iran's president, in turn, said that "we will soon experience a world without the United States." In the years before and since, there has been lots of tension between America in the West and Iran in the East. Today's tension and clash of cultures echo the past, namely, a series of incredible wars between the Greeks and the Persians.
It's important to avoid thinking of any group in such simple terms as "us" versus "them." In fact, we learn this lesson by studying the history of Persia itself. Just ask Cyrus the Great.
Various groups had populated the land we now call Iran by 600 BC. The west of the country was a beautiful, mountainous land with green valleys and rugged peaks, which gave way to desert sands in the east. The different groups who lived there were brought together under the leadership of one charismatic and charming guy: Cyrus the Great.
When Cyrus the Great (585-529 BC) took power in Persia, the kingdom, near Mesopotamia, was relatively small. Within 20 years, Cyrus had expanded it to include a vast territory, all the way from the Himalayas to what is now Turkey and down past Israel to the Arabian Peninsula. It was an astonishing accomplishment.
Cyrus had set up the largest empire the world had ever seen. He built an incredibly strong and effective army. Persian power, like that of nearly every empire, was spread by the sword. His successors would build an even larger army and expand the empire further still, taking Egypt and parts of India and Greece.
The Persian army was led by a group of 10,000 soldiers called The Immortals. They must have seemed immortal because everywhere they went, they were unstoppable. Part of their success was due to the incredible loyalty they had for Cyrus, but they also had a fast cavalry, able to strike with speed. The cavalry, or mounted warriors, attacked not only with horses but with bows and arrows as well - the same technique that the armies of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan would later use so devastatingly.
Cyrus the Great was one of the world's finest military men - one would have to be to conquer the Babylonians, Assyrians, Jews, Syrians, Phoenicians, Lydians, Turks Greeks, and everyone else he managed to overthrow. He was also supposedly a just and fair ruler. He allowed each of the cultures that he incorporated into his empire to continue living the way they had been living; they could practice their religions and continue their traditions.
Cyrus was respected by many of the groups that he conquered and united, but he was especially important to the Jews. He issued a kind of emancipation proclamation freeing the Jews from slavery, and told them to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. For this reason, the Jewish Bible refers to Cyrus as a "messiah," a leader chosen by God. He is the only non-Jew to get this distinction.
Cyrus also created an artifact known as the Cyrus cylinder, a cylinder-shaped stone covered in writing. It was written in cuneiform, and it recounted some of Cyrus's hopes, as well as his belief that people should be free to worship their own gods and practice their own traditions. Some historians have traced America's Bill of Rights back to the Cyrus cylinder.
The founder of Zoroastrianism, Zarathustra was most likely from a province in what is now Afghanistan. Very little is known about his life, though most historians agree that he was a prophet who had visions, and one of the first to propose that there was only a single god in the centuries before Jesus. His philosophy was strongly based on good vs. evil, and was the most popular religion during the Persian Empire. Some religious scholars have noted similarities between Zoroastrianism and Hindu texts. Some people in India and Iran continue to practice the faith.
After Cyrus died, his son Cambyses took the throne. His dad had conquered the Middle East, and so Cambyses thought he should try to conquer Egypt, the only remaining independent state in that part of the world. So Cambyses headed off to Egypt, leaving his brother Smerdis in charge of running the eastern provinces.
Cambyses conquered Egypt with his mighty army. Some accounts say that having killed the pharaoh, Cambyses started to dress in the pharaoh's clothes. But here is where the drama really began. Back in Persia, Cambyses's brother Smerdis was grabbing power in Asia and proclaiming himself the Persian emperor. Some people claimed that the man doing this wasn't even the real Smerdis at all, but an imposter; they said the real Smerdis was already dead. Either way, Cambyses was scared to march against this "Smerdis" guy, and he was slowly losing his mind. During this time, Cambyses either died by accident or he killed himself.
Darius stepped up and led the army against Smerdis, killing him and then claiming the throne. Darius was only loosely related to Cambyses and Cyrus, but in 521 he became emperor anyway. He became known as "the shopkeeper," and introduced coined money and a good postal service. He / the empire into easy-to-manage states and moved the capital to the city of Persepolis.
But Darius wasn't happy just keeping his empire running smoothly. In 490 BC, he attacked Greece. Their empire bordered his on his western flank, and he wanted it. Plus, he was unhappy with the Greeks for siding with the Ionians, who had rebelled against his control. He was able to take several Greek cities, but the Athenians put up a great fight. This was called the First Persian War, or First Greco-Persian War.
In the First Persian War, the Persian invasion force landed at Marathon. Though fighting a much larger army, the Greeks eventually won. The idea of a marathon (a 26.2-mile run) comes from this time, as a Greek messenger ran the 26 miles to Athens to tell the city of the victory - before he collapsed and died. It was the first marathon.
Most soldiers standing on their feet were no match for a warrior on a horse. To change that, the Greeks developed the hoplites, a type of Greek foot soldier. These soldiers had large shields and long spears and would group themselves very closely together in what is known as a phalanx formation. When cavalry came charging in, the hoplites would raise their weapons at an angle, creating a virtual wall of spears. They were very effective.
The Second Persian War began 10 years later when Darius's son Xerxes wanted revenge on the Greeks. He attacked by land and sea against a coalition of Greek cities, including the Athenians, Spartans, and Corinthians. Xerxes was an interesting guy who built up the Persian army even more. Herodotus, a famous Greek historian, wrote that Xerxes's army, some two million men, would drink entire rivers dry. Herodotus also reported that when a bridge between Turkey and Greece broke, Xerxes beheaded the engineer and ordered that the river be lashed 300 x as punishment.
Amazingly, a scrappy group of Greek warriors was able to fight off the giant army that had conquered all of the Middle East. Most famously, a group of 300 Spartans held off thousands of Persian soldiers at Thermopylae, a narrow passage between cliffs. When one Spartan heard that the Persians were so numerous that their arrows would "blot out the sun," he replied, "Then we will fight in the shade." Even today, "in the shade" is the motto of a division in the Greek army, and the story has been the basis of books, comics and movies.
According to the important Greek historian Herodotus, Cambyses went crazy. While in Egypt, he became paranoid and jealous when the Egyptians started celebrating a sacred bull that had appeared in their town. Fuming mad at this "bull-god," Cambyses had the bull brought to him and stabbed it with his sword. Then Cambyses ordered that anyone caught worshipping the bull should be put to death. This did not make him very popular in Egypt.
"Cyrus the Great is genuinely one of history's towering figures. America's own founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, were influenced by Cyrus the Great in the field of human rights." - Ted Koppel, ABC News
1. Describe some ways in which Zoroastrianism may have influenced Christianity.
2. What similarities do these religions share?
2. What similarities do these religions share?
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