One thing you should note, though, is that the Persians were able to be “enlightened” and “culturally advanced” because they had done what other condemn the Athenians or Spartans for doing much less often or brutally - crush one people after another and drag their labor and wealth back to the home country. I’m not sayign they were worse, but it’s hardly sensible to condemn the Greeks for not wanting to be enxt on the dinner menu.
Ironically, Sparta soon became quasi-hegemon in Greece, formed a semi-alliance with persia, and that eventually lost them their power. They got a bad (well, wrose) reputation as thus and idiots, a couple minor uprisings they couldn’t quash. Then Thebans got restless, and their elite band defeated the Spartans several times. Persia was backing Sparta, and the rest of the Greeks got the funny notion that maybe Greeks shouldn’t be taking orders from Persians, even through a Grek puppet. Eventually Sparta lost all dominance and then a Greek alliance disrupted its long enough that then entire Helot system broke down - and the Spartans discovered that the Helots were rather competent to handle their own affairs (according to one source, they fortified Messenia’s new capital overnight with unending labor).
Sparta never recovered, since it was now hemmed in on all sides, by enemies who were backed by all of Greece. The helots around Sparta itself remained under control, though Sparta’s culture (such as it was) faded.
I think it’s pretty well documented that all the Greek cultures did. At least, families of the citizen caste. A daughter’s family had to provide a dowry to marry her off, and sometimes they expected that to be an expense they could not afford.
But they generally just abandoned unwanted babies. In places where one might conceivably, if not likely, be rescued and raised as a slave. Actually killing a blood relative with your own hands was impious.
Well, I’d say Persians were hardly mismatched, seeing as how they did conquer half the Greek world ( Ionia ), a half that Olmstead argued was wealthier, more advanced and more populous than mainland European Greece. Moreover when Achaemenid Persia went down it was to a military phenomenon in Alexander - I see no reason to suspect that such a triumph was inevitable. It was the Greeks who were mismatched, which makes their eventual triumph all the more remarkable.
At any rate Persia ( whether it be Achaemenid Persia, Sassanian Persia, Abbasid Persia, Safavid Persia, Pahlavi Persia or our modern Iranian theocracy ) is one of the great cultures of world history. One of the reasons I lobbied near the end for Cyrus to take the “greatest national leader” title in the game I linked to above, is that out of a little near-backwater Cyrus de facto created that culture that in one form or another has endured down to the modern day.
Repeatedly. And held there own, the only Near Eastern state to do so. 'course I get what you mean, but the the Parthians ( through the back door ) and Sassanians ( through the front ) were the inheritors of Achaemenid Persia :). Indeed both claimed dynastic descent from them, though that may have been spurious.
This thesis summarizes what’s known about the issue. According to it, there are a few skeptics but most historians accept it as fact that widespread infanticide occurred. The main evidence is simply that so many ancient writers referred to the practice directly. An exact percentage is hard to come by and various guesses are given.
Really? I recall a passage by Isaac Asimov, forget what book, where he put it all down to the technical superiority in warfare that the Greeks had developed by fighting each other for generations: “When Alexander conquered the Persians, he was not David slaying Goliath, he was Hunter shooting Elephant.”
Asimov was wrong ;). And while Greek heavy infantry was indeed superior to their Persian equivalents, the Persians were quite aware of this which is why they made abundant use of Greek mercenaries. Folks like the dangerous Memnon of Rhodes had absolutely no trouble hiring themselves out to the Persians. The Greco-Persian Wars were near things, Alexander’s successes incredible.
Moreover there was the ever present issue of Greek disunity. Allying to fend off an invader is one thing, launching an extended offensive campaign was quite another. Philip and Alexander of Macedon partially overcame that by sheer force and military genius ( both of them ). But I see no reason why we should suppose such a unity of purpose was inevitable. Plenty of Greeks profited from Persia, not least the thousands of mercenary soldiers and sailors employed by them. There was no universal driving motive to conquer the Persians now that the immediate threat of conquest had receded a bit.
Even as a tottering edifice Achaemenid Persia simply had much greater resources to spend than the Greeks. A stately decline to a large core state shorn of its extremities was a much more likely outcome if we posit no Alexander.
It is the same argument made by Victor Davis Hanson, didn’t know Asimov had made it before. Asimov is here and there and everywhere.
The Persians were defeated by the Greeks in many large battles several times before Alexander. Alexander was probably inspired by the Ten Thousand. But as much as actual superiority of the Greek way of war, it was the superiority of a free people fighting for their own vers. that of subject people and mercenary soldiers. The Persians were wise to acknowledge that their men were no match for the Greeks. They would have been wiser still had they acknowledged that free men makes better men and soldiers than slaves and mercenaries. Like many such despotic regimes the Persian Empire was a giant with clay feet. Impressive to the eye, but likely to topple.
The wars might have been a near thing (even though the Persians had resources and men many times that of the Greeks). The cultural superiority of the Greeks was not. One has only to compare the number of contemporary sources. Even if you want to study the Persians themselves, you’ll find many more Greek writers on the subject that Persian. That doesn’t necessarily say much of the Persians, since it is hardly fair to compare them to the best the world has yet produced. Compared to many other cultures of the period they were quite ok. It’s said they invented the postal service, and were the first to cultivate the rose, invented the religion Zoroastrianism which was influential of Judaism and through that Christianity and Islam. I can’t recollect much else besides that, that they enriched the world with. But there’s probably much else.
The Ten Thousand, of course, being Greeks who fought as mercenaries for the Persians. And the Greeks were under their kings and had their own subject peoples.
I don’t think it is irrelevant that female infanticide is still widely practiced today, although many societies use sonograms so they can abort female fetuses before birth.
I’m no expert, but I never read a reference to casual infanticide under the Achaemenids. Which doesn’t mean much because surprisingly few things are known about such a powerful empire. Most is guesswork from some fairly certain data points arbitrarily assumed to be representative. And in fact, a lot of information we have is derived from Greek works (again, after sorting out a bit arbitrarily what is likely to be true).
In any case, the Persian empire is known for at least one thing : its tolerance towards the customs of the people it ruled over (basicaly, the Persian King presented himself as the succesor of the ousted ruler, the king of Baylone, or the Pharaoh, etc…), and especially religious customs (temples and such were always abundantly provided for). As long as the various regions paid their taxes (seemingly generally not crushing, and in fact often spent locally), sent their military contingent (more of a problem) and didn’t revolt or switch side (which happened quite a lot on the outskirts of the Empire), the Persian King was a happy king. So, if infanticide was traditionnally practised somewhere, I doubt Persia would have done anything against it.
In fact, there wasn’t much of a “Persia”, with its own culture, to begin with. The Achaemenids, of very obscure origin, essentially created it, borrowing on the fly whatever seemed efficient or was culturally already well established and respected.
To say the truth, I find the Achaemenid Empire much more interesting and worthy of being remembered than the bickering, obnoxious, full of themselves, Greek micro-states.
Sparta and Athens almost certainly had majority slave populations. Indeed it was crucial to the functioning of the Spartan state with it professional soldier class and some have argued that it also was crucial to the functioning of Athenian democracy ( the last is certainly arguable, but the preponderance of Athenian slaves seems to be established fact ).
Meanwhile Zoroastrianism abhorred slavery and slaves seems to have a been a rarity in Persian society ( though possibly more common among
quasi-autonomous non-Persian subject peoples ). What you can say about Achaemenid Persia is that it was feudal and the lot of a free peasant farmer in Persia was undoubtedly much worse than that of a gentleman free landowner in Athens. But saying that Greece was the exemplar of freedom and Persia of autocratic oppression is to somewhat flip history on its head.
Since we know that both helots and penestae fought at Plataea, there we have an excellent example of a presumably largely free Persian army losing to a certainly partially “unfree” Greek army :D. And as noted Cyrus seems to have no particular difficulty conquering Greek Ionia.
Western education is still, as per the OP and ahistoric slop like the movie 300, a bit tainted by the vestiges of 19th century philhellenic triumphalism.
Then the world would be stifled by an Oriental despotism with no democracy and no hope for scientific progress. Most of Eurasia would resemble perhaps Imperial China in it being a bureaucratic, authoritarian (albeit benign) state.
For all you who are touting how Greek (“Western”) culture and freedom defeated Oriental despotism. You would also do well to realise that it wasn’t Greece that conquered Persia.
Alexander was Macedonian, not exactly Greek, and very much a despot.
His soldiers weren’t in it for “freedom” they were fighting for their King, and loot of course.
And what magnificent works of literature, philosophy, art and science those small poor, squalid, bickering microstates enriched mankind with. A single book by Aristophanes, Aristotle or Epicurus is worth more than all the unfathomable riches and pomp of the royal court and city of the King of Kings, which in any case is all but dust now. Even the small city Miletus, destroyed by the Persians, had produced such as Thales and other natural philosophers, superior to anything brought forth by the great Persian Empire. And for the many great accomplishments of the Persians? I mentioned some myself, tolerance, Zoroastrianism, the postal service, the rose and later Persian nations.
Tolerance: the Persian Empire was an empire created on war and conquest and its tolerance only somewhat tolerable within those limits. It is somewhat ironic to say that a people who owes their greatness to war and conquest should be known for their tolerance. And if the conquered people did not toe the line, they were subject to cruel revenge. As for example of the thriving city of Miletus I mentioned, most of its population slaughtered, men, women and children, the few remaining dragged away to slavery in Persepolis. Not what you’d normally call tolerant. Before the Greeks the Persians had invaded and conquered Ancient Egypt. A civilization both older and more tolerant (and less martial) than the Persian and a conquest from which it never recovered (after the Persians came the Greeks, Romans, Arabs. But the Persians were first.) Sure, the Persians were probably to be preferred to the Assyrians. But that’s setting the bar rather low.
There is a successor state with somewhat doubtful provenance, since there was a gulf of half a millennia separating the 1st from the 2nd Persian Empire, which then fell to the Arabs. There is Zoroastrianism with a few thousand adherents clinging on, and which at some stage turned into a rather nasty religion persecuting unbelievers. The Greeks more often than general called the priests of Zoroastrianism for Medes, so I have a small thought that the religion was actual a Mede invention, but I don’t know. There is the postal service, the modern version of such is only a descendent of this in fancy. There is the cultivation of the rose, wrong – it was mentioned in texts that predated the Persian Empire by at least two millennia. What else of great import has the Persian Empire enriched the world with?
Empires of conquest like the Persian, they come and go and great kings with even greater harems praising themselves for their many military victories and conquests and their grandiose monuments and tombs are like snow flakes for the eyes. There are so many and they all resemble each other that after a while it is hard to distinguish one from the other. I’d rather take a single poor and destitute obnoxious Greek like Diogenes the Cynic, living like a dog, than all the rich powerful Persian King of king. YMMW.
The Greek Byzantine sure does get little mention around here.
That particular cite actually presents only a quote from a poet as evidence that female children were more likely to be exposed, and then goes on to admit that the majority of textual evidence indicates that this wasn’t the case. A bit of speculation as to why male babes might have been more likely to be rescued from exposure due to a demand for slave labour, but literally zero evidence that this actually happened, just speculation as to why. It does claim that one of the “causes” of exposure was “gender”, but as no evidence is offered I’m not thinking this is really a cite for that. Most historians might accept it, but if this is an example of their reasoning then it’s a prime example of why “appeal to authority” is falacious.