Topic: court (7)

• SourceAeschylus, 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 only Greek tragedy on a historical rather than mythological subject to survive complete. It was staged eight years after the sea-battle at…

• SourceCtesias, The Persica

  Ctesias 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 history of the Near East in twenty-three books. He is the one classical writer on Persia who worked from inside the palace, and, by the…

• PersonParysatis

  Parysatis (Babylonian Purušatu; Iranian name reconstructed as *Paurušātiš) was a royal woman of the later fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. Ctesias's dynastic tradition makes her a daughter of Artaxerxes I by Andia and the wife and paternal half-sister of Darius II. Xenophon independently…

• ConceptProskynesis

  Proskynesis (Greek προσκύνησις, from pros, "towards", and kyneō, "to kiss") is the gesture of respect a Persian made before a social superior, and above all before the king: a graded act that ran from a kiss between equals to a full prostration by the lowly. The word is Greek, not Persian, and…

• PersonSogdianus

  Sogdianus (the Secyndianus or Sekyndianos of Ctesias; Sogdianos in Diodorus and Manetho) was a son of Artaxerxes I by the Babylonian concubine Alogune, and for some months of 424–423 BCE a claimant king of the Achaemenid empire. In the only connected account that survives, Ctesias's Persica in the…

• ConceptThe Immortals

  The 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, famous under the Greek name Herodotus gave them, 'the Immortals' (athanatoi): Herodotus says the corps was held always at ten thousand, a…

• ConceptThe Seven

  The 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 king. They are unique in Achaemenid history in being attested by two versions of the same list, set down separately, in different languages…