Themes

The encyclopaedia by subject: a reader's map of 91 articles in 9 themes, led by the survey essays. An article may appear under more than one theme. The complete alphabetical list is at All articles.

Survey essays (5)

The long thematic essays: each surveys a whole domain of the empire and points onward to the articles beneath it.

Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious worldAchaemenid religion, as the kings proclaimed it, turned on a single polarity: the worship of Ahura Mazdā, the Wise Lord who set the world in order, against…
The Achaemenid dynastyThe Achaemenid dynasty was the royal house that ruled the first Persian empire from its founding by Cyrus the Great about 550 BCE to its conquest by Alexander…
The Peoples of the EmpireThe peoples of the empire are, in the Achaemenid kings' own word, the dahyāva: the named lands-and-nations, from Persia and Media to Egypt, Ionia, India and…
The Sources & How We KnowThe evidence for the Achaemenid empire is abundant but broken into kinds that do not agree with one another, and the history of the empire is the discipline…
Warfare & the ArmyThe Achaemenid army was the fighting force of the first Persian empire, under Darius I and his successors: the seasonal levy of the subject nations set beside…

The Kings (22)

The rulers of the house of Cyrus and Darius, and how the kingship itself worked.

The Achaemenid dynastyThe Achaemenid dynasty was the royal house that ruled the first Persian empire from its founding by Cyrus the Great about 550 BCE to its conquest by Alexander…
Cyrus the GreatCyrus II, called the Great (Old Persian Kūruš), was the founder of the Achaemenid, or first Persian, empire, and reigned from about 559 to 530 BCE. A king of…
Cyrus the YoungerCyrus the Younger (Old Persian Kūruš; died 401 BCE) was a son of Darius II and Parysatis and a younger brother of Artaxerxes II. His epithet distinguishes him…
Cambyses IICambyses II (Old Persian Kambūjiya; r. 530–522 BCE) was the second Achaemenid Great King, elder son and heir of Cyrus the Great, who in 525 BCE conquered…
Bardiya and GaumataBardiya (Old Persian Bardiya; Greek Smerdis) was the younger son of Cyrus the Great and the full brother of Cambyses II. For some months in 522 BCE a man…
Darius IDarius I (Old Persian Dārayavauš, born about 550, reigned 522 to 486 BCE) was the third of the Achaemenid Great Kings and, in most respects, the true founder…
The SevenThe Seven are the seven Persian nobles, Darius among them, who in September 522 BCE killed the man ruling the empire as Bardiya, son of Cyrus, and made Darius…
Xerxes IXerxes I (Old Persian Xšayāršā, "ruling over heroes"), the fourth Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from 486 to 465 BCE. Son of Darius I and of Atossa the…
Artaxerxes IArtaxerxes I (Old Persian Artaxšaça, "whose rule is through Truth"), the fifth Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from 465 until late 424 or early 423 BCE. A…
Xerxes IIXerxes II was the only legitimate son of Artaxerxes I, king of the Achaemenid empire, by his queen Damaspia, and when his father died at the end of 424 BCE he…
SogdianusSogdianus (the Secyndianus or Sekyndianos of Ctesias; Sogdianos in Diodorus and Manetho) was a son of Artaxerxes I by the Babylonian concubine Alogune, and…
Darius IIDarius II (Old Persian Dārayavauš), born Ochus and remembered by the Greeks as Nothus, "the bastard", was King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 424 to…
ParysatisParysatis (Babylonian Purušatu; Iranian name reconstructed as *Paurušātiš) was a royal woman of the later fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. Ctesias's…
Artaxerxes IIArtaxerxes II (Old Persian Artaxšaça, "whose rule is through Arta"; throne-name of a prince born Arsaces), the seventh Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from…
Artaxerxes IIIArtaxerxes III (the throne name of Ochus; Babylonian Umakuš or Umasu, Greek Ôchos) was the Achaemenid King of Kings from 359/8 to 338 BCE. The son and…
Artaxerxes IV (Arses)Artaxerxes IV (personal name Arses; Babylonian Aršu) was the penultimate King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, the son whom Diodorus calls the youngest of…
Darius IIIDarius III (Old Persian throne name Dārayavahuš; personal name Artašata, the form recorded in the Babylonian diaries; called Codomannus by the Roman…
AtossaAtossa (Old Persian *Utauθā, corresponding to Avestan Hutaosā; lived c. 550 to after 480 BCE) was an Achaemenid queen, the daughter of Cyrus the Great and the…
The Accession of Darius (522 BCE)The violent, contested seizure of the Achaemenid throne in 522 BCE: the killing of a king held to be an impostor magus, the coup of the Seven that raised…
The King of KingsKing of kings (Old Persian xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām) is the title the Achaemenid ruler set at the head of almost every inscription he left, and the seed of a…
ProskynesisProskynesis (Greek προσκύνησις, from pros, "towards", and kyneō, "to kiss") is the gesture of respect a Persian made before a social superior, and above all…
SusaSusa was the great lowland capital of the Achaemenid empire, the ancient city of Elam that Darius I rebuilt from about 520 BCE as a royal residence and…

Religion & Belief (11)

The Wise Lord and the order of truth: the gods, the priests, the fire, and the long debate over the kings' Zoroastrianism.

Ahura MazdāAhura Mazdā, the "Wise Lord", is the supreme god of the Achaemenid kings: named at the head of nearly every royal inscription as creator of earth, sky, man…
Arta (Truth, right order)Arta (Old Persian arta-, Avestan aša) is the Iranian principle of truth and right order: the correct joining of the world, cosmic, social and moral at once,…
The Drauga (the Lie)The drauga (Old Persian drauga-, Avestan druj) is the Lie: the principle of falsehood, deceit and disorder that stands against arta, the right order of the…
ZarathustraZarathustra (Zoroaster to the Greeks) is the Iranian prophet and poet-priest whose seventeen hymns, the Gāthās, exalt Ahura Mazdā as the one God and lay upon…
The MagiThe Magi (Old Persian magu-) were the priestly class of the western Iranians, the one body of religious specialists named across the Median, Achaemenid,…
The Sacred FireThe sacred fire (Avestan ātar) was the purest of the good creations and the earthly emblem of aša/arta, tended by the Magi and honoured in the open air at…
MithraMithra (Avestan Miθra, later Mihr) is one of the oldest gods of the Indo-Iranian world, and the one whose nature is least in doubt, because his name is also…
AnāhitāAnāhitā, in full Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā, 'the moist, the strong, the undefiled', is the great Iranian goddess of the waters. She is the deified cosmic river that…
The Winged Symbol (the figure in the winged ring)The winged symbol is the ring or disc with outspread wings, most often enclosing a robed male figure, that hovers above the Great King at Behistun, on the…
Gold plaque of a barsom-bearer (Oxus Treasure)The barsom plaque is one of the small gold votive plaques of the Oxus Treasure (British Museum 123949): a standing man in Median dress holding before him a…
Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious worldAchaemenid religion, as the kings proclaimed it, turned on a single polarity: the worship of Ahura Mazdā, the Wise Lord who set the world in order, against…

The Persian Wars (11)

The empire and the Greeks, from the Ionian Revolt to Plataea and Mycale, told as far as the evidence allows from the Persian side.

The Ionian Revolt (499–494 BCE)The revolt of the Greek cities of the empire's north-western coast (Ionia, the Hellespont, Caria and Cyprus) against Darius I, from the failed attack on Naxos…
The Battle of Marathon (490 BCE)The seaborne expedition of 490 BCE, led by the Median commander Datis and Artaphernes the younger, which sacked Naxos and Eretria and then landed on the plain…
Xerxes' Invasion of Greece (480–479 BCE)The great expedition that Xerxes I led against the Greek mainland in 480–479 BCE, the largest single enterprise the Achaemenid Empire ever mounted and the…
The Xerxes CanalThe Xerxes Canal was a navigable channel cut through the neck of the Athos peninsula in northern Greece on the orders of Xerxes I, during the regional…
The Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE)The forcing of the coastal pass of Thermopylae by Xerxes I in high summer 480 BCE, during his invasion of Greece. A small allied Greek army under the Spartan…
The Battle of Salamis (480 BCE)The naval defeat of Xerxes' fleet in the straits between Attica and the island of Salamis, on a day near the end of September 480 BCE, watched by the King…
The Battle of Plataea (479 BCE)The land battle fought in the summer of 479 BCE on the plain of the Asopos river in Boeotia, near the ruined town of Plataea, in which the picked Persian army…
The Battle of Mycale (479 BCE)The defeat, in the late summer of 479 BCE, of a beached Persian fleet and its covering army on the Ionian shore below Mount Mycale, opposite the island of…
Artemisia I of HalicarnassusArtemisia I of Halicarnassus was a widowed subject-dynast of Xerxes I who ruled Halicarnassus and several neighbouring Carian and Dorian communities. She…
MardoniusMardonius (Old Persian Marduniya, d. 479 BCE) was a Persian noble of the first rank: son of Gobryas, one of the Seven who put Darius I on the throne, and…
The ImmortalsThe Immortals were the 10,000-strong standing corps of elite Persian foot that guarded the King of Kings and formed the professional heart of the field army,…

Empire & Government (16)

How the empire was run: satrapies and tribute, roads and money, the army, and the working records of Persepolis.

The PersiansThe Persians (Old Persian Pārsa) were the ruling people of the Achaemenid Empire: the Iranian-speaking ethnos of the Fārs highland from which the dynasty…
PersepolisPersepolis was the ceremonial and administrative heart of the Achaemenid empire in its Persian homeland, a vast terraced complex of palaces, audience halls…
BabylonBabylon was one of the largest cities of ancient western Asia and the centre of the Achaemenid empire's most heavily assessed province. It was a royal…
The Satrapy SystemThe great administrative frame of the Achaemenid empire: the division of a realm that stretched from the Indus to the Aegean into provinces, each held for the…
Tribute & TaxationTribute and taxation comprised the assessments, renders and services imposed in Achaemenid territories. Herodotus distinguishes the “gifts” received under…
Arshama, satrap of EgyptArshama (Old Persian Aršāma; Aramaic ʾršm; Greek Arsames) was an Achaemenid prince who governed Egypt, among the empire’s richest and most rebellious…
UdjahorresnetUdjahorresnet, an Egyptian noble of Sais (fl. c. 526–518 BCE), commanded the royal ships of the last two Saite kings and then served their Persian conquerors…
Egypt as a ProvinceEgypt as a province of the Achaemenid Empire, the Twenty-seventh Dynasty of the Egyptian king-lists, ran from the conquest by Cambyses II (conventionally 525…
TissaphernesTissaphernes was a Persian royal commander whose long western career crossed the reigns of King Darius II and King Artaxerxes II. He first emerges among the…
The King's EyeThe King's Eye (Greek ho basileōs ophthalmos), with its companion the King's Ear, is the name the Greeks gave to a royal officer who watched over the empire's…
The Royal RoadThe great overland route and courier relay that bound the Achaemenid empire together: the road of stations and inns Herodotus walked in his mind from Sardis…
The Daric (and the Siglos)The gold daric (Greek dareikos statēr, about 8.4 grams of nearly pure gold) and its silver companion the siglos (about 5.4 grams) were the coins of the…
Warfare & the ArmyThe Achaemenid army was the fighting force of the first Persian empire, under Darius I and his successors: the seasonal levy of the subject nations set beside…
The ImmortalsThe Immortals were the 10,000-strong standing corps of elite Persian foot that guarded the King of Kings and formed the professional heart of the field army,…
The Persepolis Fortification ArchiveThe working paperwork of Darius I's own heartland: tens of thousands of clay tablets from a bastion in the Persepolis fortification wall, recording the intake…
The King of KingsKing of kings (Old Persian xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām) is the title the Achaemenid ruler set at the head of almost every inscription he left, and the seed of a…

The Later Empire (17)

The empire after Xerxes: the long fourth century of the later Artaxerxids and their successors, the mercenary world of Cunaxa and Xenophon's Anabasis, the satraps' revolts, and the slow road to Alexander.

Artaxerxes IArtaxerxes I (Old Persian Artaxšaça, "whose rule is through Truth"), the fifth Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from 465 until late 424 or early 423 BCE. A…
Xerxes IIXerxes II was the only legitimate son of Artaxerxes I, king of the Achaemenid empire, by his queen Damaspia, and when his father died at the end of 424 BCE he…
SogdianusSogdianus (the Secyndianus or Sekyndianos of Ctesias; Sogdianos in Diodorus and Manetho) was a son of Artaxerxes I by the Babylonian concubine Alogune, and…
Darius IIDarius II (Old Persian Dārayavauš), born Ochus and remembered by the Greeks as Nothus, "the bastard", was King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 424 to…
ParysatisParysatis (Babylonian Purušatu; Iranian name reconstructed as *Paurušātiš) was a royal woman of the later fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. Ctesias's…
Artaxerxes IIArtaxerxes II (Old Persian Artaxšaça, "whose rule is through Arta"; throne-name of a prince born Arsaces), the seventh Achaemenid King of Kings, reigned from…
Cyrus the YoungerCyrus the Younger (Old Persian Kūruš; died 401 BCE) was a son of Darius II and Parysatis and a younger brother of Artaxerxes II. His epithet distinguishes him…
Arshama, satrap of EgyptArshama (Old Persian Aršāma; Aramaic ʾršm; Greek Arsames) was an Achaemenid prince who governed Egypt, among the empire’s richest and most rebellious…
TissaphernesTissaphernes was a Persian royal commander whose long western career crossed the reigns of King Darius II and King Artaxerxes II. He first emerges among the…
The Battle of Cunaxa (401 BCE)The Battle of Cunaxa (401 BCE) was the decisive clash between the royal army of Artaxerxes II and the coalition raised by his younger brother, Cyrus the…
The Retreat of the Ten Thousand (401–399 BCE)The Retreat of the Ten Thousand was the withdrawal and subsequent dispersal, from 401 to 399 BCE, of the Greek force that had marched with Cyrus the Younger…
Artaxerxes IIIArtaxerxes III (the throne name of Ochus; Babylonian Umakuš or Umasu, Greek Ôchos) was the Achaemenid King of Kings from 359/8 to 338 BCE. The son and…
The Egyptian Revolts and Reconquest (405/4–343/2 BCE)The Egyptian revolts and reconquest were the staggered secession of Egypt from Achaemenid rule between 405/4 and 400/399 BCE, roughly six decades of native…
Artaxerxes IV (Arses)Artaxerxes IV (personal name Arses; Babylonian Aršu) was the penultimate King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, the son whom Diodorus calls the youngest of…
Darius IIIDarius III (Old Persian throne name Dārayavahuš; personal name Artašata, the form recorded in the Babylonian diaries; called Codomannus by the Roman…
XenophonXenophon of Athens (c. 430–353 BCE) is the one classical writer on the Achaemenid empire who had actually been inside it, marching to Babylonia in 401 BCE…
Ctesias, The PersicaCtesias of Cnidus (fl. c. 400 BCE) was a Greek physician who served for years at the court of Artaxerxes II and there gathered the matter of the Persica, a…

The Sources (12)

What survives and how far to trust it: the kings' own inscriptions, the administrative archives, and the Greek narratives.

The Sources & How We KnowThe evidence for the Achaemenid empire is abundant but broken into kinds that do not agree with one another, and the history of the empire is the discipline…
Herodotus, The HistoriesHerodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 484 to after 430 BCE) wrote the Histories, the earliest surviving work of history in the Western tradition and the fullest…
Ctesias, The PersicaCtesias of Cnidus (fl. c. 400 BCE) was a Greek physician who served for years at the court of Artaxerxes II and there gathered the matter of the Persica, a…
XenophonXenophon of Athens (c. 430–353 BCE) is the one classical writer on the Achaemenid empire who had actually been inside it, marching to Babylonia in 401 BCE…
Aeschylus, Persae (The Persians)The Persae of Aeschylus, "The Persians", produced at Athens in 472 BCE, is the earliest surviving account of any Achaemenid event by a contemporary, and the…
The Behistun Inscription (DB)The Behistun inscription (DB) is the monumental cliff-relief and trilingual text that Darius I had carved at Bagastāna in Media between about 520 and 518 BCE,…
The Cyrus CylinderA barrel-shaped clay cylinder inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, buried in the foundations of Babylon's city wall after Cyrus II took the city in 539 BCE. In…
The Daiva Inscription (XPh)The daiva inscription (XPh) is a trilingual proclamation of Xerxes I (r. 486–465 BCE), known from three Old Persian copies, with a Babylonian and an Elamite…
The Hebrew Bible as an Achaemenid SourceThe Hebrew Bible is the most widely read body of ancient writing that touches the Achaemenid empire, and the least externally controlled. A small set of books…
The Persepolis Fortification ArchiveThe working paperwork of Darius I's own heartland: tens of thousands of clay tablets from a bastion in the Persepolis fortification wall, recording the intake…
The Elephantine PapyriThe Elephantine Papyri are the Aramaic archives of a garrison town at the First Cataract of the Nile, where a community of Judaean soldiers and their…
The Murašû ArchiveThe Murašû Archive is the business file of a firm of entrepreneurs at Nippur in central Babylonia, active under the Persian kings Artaxerxes I, Darius II and…

Places & Monuments (12)

The built landscape of the heartland: the first capital, the great terrace of Persepolis, the rock of Behistun, and the royal tombs.

PersepolisPersepolis was the ceremonial and administrative heart of the Achaemenid empire in its Persian homeland, a vast terraced complex of palaces, audience halls…
The Apadana ReliefsThe Apadana reliefs are the sculptured façades of the two great stairways of the Apadana, the audience hall of Persepolis: files of Persian and Median guards,…
SusaSusa was the great lowland capital of the Achaemenid empire, the ancient city of Elam that Darius I rebuilt from about 520 BCE as a royal residence and…
BabylonBabylon was one of the largest cities of ancient western Asia and the centre of the Achaemenid empire's most heavily assessed province. It was a royal…
The Xerxes CanalThe Xerxes Canal was a navigable channel cut through the neck of the Athos peninsula in northern Greece on the orders of Xerxes I, during the regional…
PasargadaeThe first Achaemenid capital, raised by Cyrus the Great on the high, well-watered plain of the River Pulvar in the heart of Persis, some forty kilometres…
AnshanAnshan (Elamite Anzan) was the highland capital of Elam, on the Marvdasht plain in the province the Old Persian sources called Parsa, modern Fars. Its ruins…
Naqsh-e RostamNaqsh-e Rostam is the perpendicular cliff about six kilometres north-west of Persepolis where the Great Kings of the Achaemenid house were entombed. Four…
The Behistun Inscription (DB)The Behistun inscription (DB) is the monumental cliff-relief and trilingual text that Darius I had carved at Bagastāna in Media between about 520 and 518 BCE,…
EcbatanaThe chief city of the Medes and, after Cyrus took it in 550 BCE, one of the four working royal residences of the Persian empire, the one where the King and…
SardisSardis, the old royal capital of Lydia at the foot of Mount Tmolus on the river Pactolus, became after its capture by Cyrus in 547 or 546 BCE the chief seat…
The paradise gardenThe enclosed, well-watered royal park of the Persian king and his satraps, and the single most resonant word the Achaemenids gave to the languages of Europe.…

Before & Beside the Empire (9)

The powers Cyrus overthrew and the older world the empire absorbed.

The MedesThe Medes (Old Persian Māda, Greek Mêdoi, Assyrian and Babylonian Mādāya) were the Iranian people of the north-western Zagros, settled about the plain of…
The ElamitesThe Elamites were the ancient people of south-western Iran, holders of the lowland plain of Khuzistan around Susa and of the highland valleys of Fārs, whose…
AstyagesAstyages (Greek Astyagēs; Babylonian Ištumegu; from an Old Iranian *R̥šti-vaiga-, perhaps 'lance-hurler') was the last king of the Medes, who reigned from…
CroesusCroesus (Greek Kroisos; reigned c. 560 to the mid-540s BCE) was the last king of Lydia, ruler of the wealthy kingdom of western Anatolia from his capital at…
HarpagusHarpagus (Greek Harpagos) is the Median grandee who, in the account of Herodotus, engineers the fall of the last Median king Astyages and the rise of Cyrus…
TomyrisTomyris (Greek Τόμυρις; fl. c. 530 BCE) is, in the account of Herodotus, the queen of the Massagetae, the nomad people beyond the Araxes against whom Cyrus…
NabonidusNabonidus (Akkadian Nabû-naʾid, "the god Nabu is exalted"; r. 556–539 BCE) was the sixth and last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, and the man whose fall…
The Fall of Babylon (539 BCE)The fall of Babylon in October 539 BCE was the conquest of the last native Mesopotamian empire by Cyrus II of Persia. Ruled by the absent and religiously…
The Conquest of Egypt by CambysesThe conquest of Egypt by Cambyses II, conventionally dated to 525 BCE, brought the Nile valley under Achaemenid rule. Cambyses II, the son and successor of…

The Peoples of the Empire (6)

The dozens of nations the kings ruled and counted: how the empire pictured its peoples, and how each lived inside it.

The PersiansThe Persians (Old Persian Pārsa) were the ruling people of the Achaemenid Empire: the Iranian-speaking ethnos of the Fārs highland from which the dynasty…
The ElamitesThe Elamites were the ancient people of south-western Iran, holders of the lowland plain of Khuzistan around Susa and of the highland valleys of Fārs, whose…
The Saka (Scythians)The Saka (Old Persian Sakā), the horse-riding nomad peoples of the Eurasian steppe, were the empire's whole northern and eastern horizon: fought at the…
The IoniansThe Ionians were the Greeks of western Asia Minor, the twelve cities of the central Aegean seaboard from Miletus in the south to Phocaea in the north, with…
The Peoples of the EmpireThe peoples of the empire are, in the Achaemenid kings' own word, the dahyāva: the named lands-and-nations, from Persia and Media to Egypt, Ionia, India and…
The MedesThe Medes (Old Persian Māda, Greek Mêdoi, Assyrian and Babylonian Mādāya) were the Iranian people of the north-western Zagros, settled about the plain of…