Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

was only the “anairya”—the non-Aryan—who was foreign. Indeed, any of Astyages’ courtiers who were suffering from nostalgia had only to look south for a glimpse of the good old days. 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 confederation of different clans as a state. “King of Anshan” though he was, Cyrus had also claimed his throne by virtue of his status as his people’s greatest chieftain—for he was head of the Achaemenids, the leading family of the Pasargadae, the leading Persian tribe. Master both of the stiff rituals of a Near Eastern court and of assemblies of wild horsemen wheeling beneath the open sky, of ancient cities and of the hills and plains, of the Persians’ future and of the memories and customs of their past, Cyrus was