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

by Tom Holland

Why, he wondered, did the peoples of East and West find it so hard to live in peace? The answer appeared, superficially, a simple one. Asiatics, Herodotus reported, saw Europe as a place irreconcilably alien. ‘And so it is they believe that Greeks will always be their enemies.’3 But why this fracture had opened in the first place was, Herodotus acknowledged, a puzzle. Perhaps the kidnapping of a princess or two by Greek pirates had been to blame? Or the burning of Troy? ‘That, at any rate, is what many nations of Asia argue – but who can say for sure if they are right?’4 As Herodotus well knew, the world was an infinite place, and one man’s truth might easily be another’s lie.

‘Better a small city perched on a rock,’ it could be argued, ‘so long as it is well governed, than all the splendours of idiotic Nineveh.’

Thales, for instance, a man ranked by the Ionians as the most brilliant of their sages – as the first philosopher, indeed – was reckoned to have given a fine example of his wisdom by observing how grateful to Fate he was for three things: ‘first, that I am not a beast but a man; second, not a female but a male; and third, not a foreigner but a Greek’.

What a jerk