@@ Book review: The first empire builders @@
Arash
September 25, 2005
The first empire builders
Tom Holland's masterly study, Persian Fire, brings an ancient empire to vivid life,
says Geraldine Bedell
Book review
"Persian Fire: The first world empire and the battle for the west" by Tom Holland
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385513119
At some point, probably in the late Sixties, a decision was made that classics was no
longer 'relevant'. Public schools carried on with cheerful disregard, as they tend
to, but for most of us educated in the state system in the Seventies and Eighties,
comprehensive education meant comprehensive ignorance of the basis of European
culture.
Classical civilization GCSEs and A-levels have, happily, since filled the gap. But
there must be other people out there who feel, as I do, that ancient history is a
shaming lacuna, a kind of black hole in the brain, and whose first response to a book
about the Persian wars would be: 'Oh no, it's that ancient stuff that excludes me
again'.
This would be a pity, because there could scarcely be a better time to start thinking
about the Persian wars. Tom Holland's panoramic and gripping book arrives at the same
time as a blockbuster exhibition at the British Museum, which includes treasures that
have never previously been seen outside Iran, and are beautiful, rare and liable to
fire the imagination.
Even more important, this book is an unequivocal argument for the relevance of
ancient history. As we stand at the start of century that many would like to see as a
time when civilizations are doomed to clash, Tom Holland writes of a war between East
and West which predates the Crusades, which is older than Islam or Christianity.
The great kings of Persia, especially Darius and his son, Xerxes, ruled an empire
stretching from India to the Aegean. No other state or nation came close for
resources under its command or influence in world affairs. Yet at the same time, a
curious project was under way in Athens, designed to replace the political ideal of
good governance with a newer one of 'isonomia' - equality. The world was making its
first experiment in democracy.
This is not relevant? Tom Holland never strains for modern references, but he doesn't
have to; they are implicit in the stories he tells with such scholarship and flair.
The Persian wars, as he points out, have become the founding myth of European
civilization. Here we have the triumph of freedom over slavery, of civic virtue
against despotism. (That said, the Persians wrote nothing down, or whatever they
wrote has not survived, and our subsequent interpretations have been heavily
dependent on the Greeks).
Tom Holland believes that if the Athenians hadn't won at the Battle of Marathon,
there would have been no Plato. And without Plato 'and the colossal shadow he cast on
all subsequent theologies', it is unlikely that there would have been any
Christianity or Islam either.
But modern life also owes the Persians. They demonstrated the possibility of a
multi-ethnic, multicultural, world-spanning state, a political model that would
inspire empire after empire. Much later, in the same region, the caliphs echoed the
colonizing ambitions of Xerxes, 'albeit in pious Islamic idiom'. (And it is the goal
of Islamic fundamentalists to see the caliphate restored).
Meanwhile, when President Bush talks of an axis of evil, his vision of a world
divided by forces of light and darkness derives ultimately from Zoroaster, ancient
prophet of the Persians.
Tom Holland makes these points and then leaves them. His interest is in relating his
history as a powerful narrative for the general reader. He does so with drama and
vividness, so that the battle of Marathon, the skewering and hacking, the pulverizing
crash of metal into bone, feels as if it could have been a matter of decades ago
rather than millenniums, and the heroic last stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae is
still painful to read.
Tom Holland is fascinating on military strategy, but doesn't neglect the startling
detail. We learn, for example, that the Persians were so obsessed by physical
appearance that even on campaign, every nobleman kept a personal make-up artist in
his train. He is absorbing on the motivations of the main players: Xerxes, who saw
that knowledge was power and commanded the first information superhighway, or
Themistocles, the master of spin, of networking, infighting and making oneself
visible, the key components of success in a democracy.
Following Herodotus, to whom he acknowledges a profound debt, Tom Holland presents a
panorama of the world before it went to war. He writes about the rise of the Persian
empire along the Khorasan highway, and the barracks society that was Sparta, with its
master-race complex. The many notes on ambiguities of detail attest to the
scholarliness of his project, but he doesn't let the uncertainties slow him down too
much. The writing remains fluent and compelling. There should be a word of praise for
the maps, too, which are invaluable.
Tom Holland has succeeded in doing something very difficult: making the period of the
Persian wars seem not at all distant to a modernity that fears that the ancient world
might be too abstruse, too esoteric, too far removed from our own concerns. The
brutality of battle, the glee in killing, the pleasure in punishment - all these are
terrifying, but too close to what we know about ourselves to be truly alien. As for
the rest of it - the politics, the desire for domination, even the superstitions in
the name of which great crimes are committed - they are grimly familiar.
I haven't read Rubicon, Tom Holland's earlier account of the fall of the Roman
empire, but I will now. In Persian Fire, he has opened up a world for me and I am
grateful.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1577186,00.html
Related:
British Museum: Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/persia/index.html
Video: Channel 4 report
http://edge.channel4.com/news/2005/09/week_2/06_persian.wmv
Greek history (fake history) & another anti-Persia fable by West!
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/c9fb9779e8178501?hl=en
Letter to Guardian: "The Evil Empire" or Evil Intentions
Dr. Abbas Alizadeh
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/50f56c40b1da7f6a?hl=en
So much for Jonathan Jones
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/3781c646029efebc?hl=en
You're welcome -- People in the West deserve to know more about civilizations whose
effects on their own were more than incidental
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/a67fccb585284bf4?hl=en
Where does such deep antagonism toward the Persian Empire originate from?
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/3781c646029efebc?hl=en
Kings and legends of ancient Persia
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/f2aa8d2544977f62?hl=en
Rewriting victors' view of Persian history
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/f9f3b4cc2cea2539?hl=en
Behind the Iran curtain
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/d40b7beeeb4e4fc3?hl=en
Why the Greeks were green with envy
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/9bc78f3349fd49b8?hl=en
Persia, an exceptional empire
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/f1e8729bba580d77?hl=en
U.S. forces should take a lesson from the Persian kings
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/15f37aa007df134d?hl=en
Forgotten Empire to eternalize the Persian Gulf
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/5cc8286e52feaae4?hl=en
Persian Fire: The first world empire and the battle for the west
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/c9fb9779e8178501?hl=en
Bridge across the Persian gulf
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/210ead14d5f65dfa?hl=en
The Persians are Coming
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/5e14f1803cac2f5a?hl=en
"Persian Fire: The first world empire and the battle for the west" by Tom Holland
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/c9fb9779e8178501?hl=en
Touching god - Visiting Dariush and Ahuramazda at Behistun Inscription was as close
to a religious experience that I have ever had
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/8f68ed18f569bfcc?hl=en
Qanat; masterpiece of ancient Iranian engineering
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/f3b21b5056d4fbe8?hl=en