Persian Fire: The First World Empire, Battle for the West - 'Magisterial' Books of the Year, Independent

by Tom Holland

Asty...

Ecb...

No wonder that later generations would preserve a memory of Astyages as an ogre. No wonder, either, that when they sought to explain their loss of freedom, the Medes would identify Ecbatana as both a symbol of their slavery, and a cause.

Astyages, it was said, even amid all the proofs of his greatness, was haunted by prophecies of doom: strange dreams tormented him, warning him of his downfall and the ruin of his kingdom.

Such was the value ascribed by the Medes to visions of this kind that a whole class, the Magi, existed to divine what their meaning might be. Skilled in all the arts of keeping darkness at bay, these ritual experts provided vital reassurance to their countrymen, for it was a principle of the Medes, a devout and ethical people, that there was shadow lurking beyond even the brightest light.

That a kingdom as powerful as Media, less than a century after its first rise to independence and greatness, might once again be prostrated and subjected to foreign domination must, to many, have seemed implausible.

But this, as the Medes themselves had good cause to know, had always been the baneful rhythm of the region’s power-play: great empires rising, great empires falling. No one kingdom, not even Assyria, had ever crushed all who might wish to see it destroyed.

Aryans

In 843 BC, for instance, the Assyrians had campaigned in the mountains north of their kingdom against a tribe they called the ‘Parsua’;

Anshan,

No chronicler, however, could know for sure if they were one and the same.

Only by putting down roots, and by absorbing something of the culture of the people they had displaced, had the newcomers finally been able to intrude upon the cons...

it was that what had once been Anshan came gradually to be known by a quite different name: Paarsa, Persia, the land of the Persians.

In 559 BC, while Astyages still ruled in Media, a young man came to the throne of this upstart kingdom. His name was Cyrus, and his attributes included a hook nose, immense ambition and quite limitless ability. From even before his birth, it appeared, he had been marked out for greatness; for it was he – if the stories are to be believed – who had been prophesied as the bane of Median greatness.

daughter, M...

Magian dream-readers

But after Mandane had fallen pregnant, Astyages had dreamed a second time: now he saw a vine emerging from between his daughter’s legs, nor did it stop growing until all Asia was in its shade. Panic-stricken, Astyages had waited for his grandson to be born, and then immediately given orders that the boy be put to death. As invariably happens in such stories, the orders had been defied. The baby had been abandoned on a mountainside, to be discovered and brought up by a shepherd; or perhaps, some said, a bandit; or maybe even a bitch, her teats conveniently swollen with milk.

Or so the legends had it. It is the nature of great men to attract tall stories, and it may be that the early proofs of Cyrus’ destiny were not quite so manifest as the Persians would later claim.

Even so – and irrespective of whether there had truly been prophecies – his potential was evidently sufficient to alarm Astyages: for the Median king, overlord of the Zagros, and wary of high-flying vassals, decided, after six years of watching his grandson on the Persian throne, that Cyrus was altogether too able and dangerous to be left in place for long.

Zagros

‘Cyrus

Astyages,

How had it come about? Yes, Cyrus had proved himself a steely and indomitable opponent. As had his Persian subjects, a people so toughened by poverty that they had uncomplainingly endured the sternest hardships – even, notoriously, to the extent of wearing leather trousers.

Yet Astyages, with all the resources of a mighty empire behind him, would surely still have triumphed – had he not been grievously stabbed in the back. The story of his betrayal was a strange one – and, as the years passed, the retellings of it grew ever more fantastical and grotesque.

The bare essentials were not in doubt. Harpagus, commander of the Median army, and most prominent of the clan chiefs, had deserted to Cyrus, leading a rebellion in mid-battle, and taking Astyages captive. But why such treachery? Because – so the story went – Harpagus, a close kinsman of Astyages, had simulta...

It was Harpagus, according to the Medes, who had been charged with the murder of the infant Cyrus, a task which – dissembling – he had claimed to have carried out. Years later, when the truth had at last emerged, Astyages was rumoured to have wreaked a bloody revenge, butchering Harpagus’ son, jointi...

So how had this tall story ever come to be believed?

Maybe – somewhere within the shadow-play of implausibility and rumour – a faint hint of the truth could still be glimpsed? The family relationship between Astyages and Cyrus had mirrored the close ties, of culture as well as blood, which had always bound the Persians to the Medes.

Both peoples, after all, were Aryan; and, to an Aryan, it was only the ‘anairya’ – the non-Aryan – who was foreign. Indeed, any of Astyages’ courtiers who were suffering from nostalgia had on...

Like their Median cousins, the Persians were at heart a nomadic people, and their country, ‘rich with good horses, rich with good men’,16 had remained as much a ...

Achaemenids,

As a result, Persia had largely avoided the tensions that afflicted Media: between a king impatient with the traditional tribal structures of his people and a nobility still defined by them.

Nor, even after this first great victory, did the subtlety of his balancing act fail. The kings of Assyria, honing the traditional rights of conquest to a peak of savagery, had prescribed unspeakable cruelties for defeated enemies, but Cyrus, prompted by calculation and – no doubt – by temperament as well, preferred the course of mercy.

Having lured important swaths of the Median aristocracy into his camp, he resisted the temptation to treat their countrymen as slaves. Even Astyages, rather than being flayed, fed to animals or impaled, was pensioned off into princely retirement.

An...

Ecb...

Nin...

Za...

The most pleasant, too – for if, in winter, the cold was savage, with blizzards blocking off the passes, in summer, while the lowlands of Persia burned, Ecbatana was a paradise of greenness, the mountain peaks behind it still capped with cooling snow, the slopes below the wa...

And that adventure, as events were soon exhilaratingly to prove, had only just begun.

The downfall of a king as great as Astyages had sent shock waves throughout the whole Near East. Not only the Median Empire but the decades-old international status quo had been left in rubble.

Suddenly, it seemed, there was everything to play for, and neighbouring great powers, still barely able to take the Persians seriously, began to wonder what...

Croesus, the King ...

River...

Cyrus,

Croesus.

Croesus

capital, Sardis,

But the Persians did not retreat. Instead, braving the bitter cold, they shadowed Croesus, never alerting him to their presence, allowing him time to dismiss his allies, lurking and waiting for his conscripts to melt away.

Then, with Sardis denuded, Cyrus struck. Frantically, Croesus cobbled together what few troops remained. A desperate battle, with the Lydians staking everything on a final cavalry charge – and then the storming of Sardis, and the capture of Croesus himself.