Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland (PDF)

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In the fifth century B.C., a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history. Tom Holland’s brilliant study of these critical Persian Wars skillfully examines a conflict of critical importance to both ancient and modern history.

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Editorial Reviews: Review “Ambitious….a sweeping popular account that seems destined to become a classic.” —The Seattle Times“Excellent. . . . There is an even-handedness in Holland’s treatment of both Greek and Persian cultural riches that is rare in popular accounts of these wars.” —Sunday Times“Holland has a rare eye for detail, drama, and the telling anecdote. . . . A book as spirited and engaging as Persian Fire deserves to last.” —The Telegraph About the Author Tom Holland is a historian of the ancient world and a translator. His books include Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, Persian Fire, In the Shadow of the Sword and The Forge of Christendom. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC. In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to “the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilization of Ancient Greece and Rome.” He lives in London with his family. Visit the author’s website at www.tom-holland.org. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1The Khorasan HighwayWoe to the Bloody CityThe gods, having scorned to mold a world that was level, had preferred instead to divide it into two. So it seemed to those who lived in the Zagros, the great chain of peaks which separates the Fertile Crescent from the upland plateau of Iran. Yet these mountains, though savage, were not impassable. One road did snake across them: the most famous in the world, the Khorasan Highway, which led from the limits of the East to the West, and joined the rising to the setting of the sun. In places, as it climbed through the Zagros Mountains, winding along river beds, or threading between jagged pinnacles and ravines, it might be little more than a footpath–but even that, to those who used it, was a miracle enough. Only a beneficent deity, it was assumed, could ever have fashioned such a wonder. Who, and when, no one really knew for sure,* but it was certainly very ancient–perhaps, some said, as old as time itself. Over the millennia, the Khorasan Highway had been followed by any number of travelers: nomads, caravans–and the armies of conquering kings.One empire, in particular, for centuries synonymous with cruel and remorseless invincibility, had sent repeated expeditions into the mountains, dyeing the peaks, in its own ferocious vaunt, “like wool, crimson with blood.”(1) The Assyrians, inhabitants of what is now northern Iraq, were city-dwellers, a people of the flat, alluvial plains; but to their kings, warlords who had spread terror and extermination as far as Egypt, the Zagros was less a barrier than a challenge. Themselves the patrons of a proud and brilliant civilization, sumptuous with palaces, gardens and canals, the kings of Assyria had always seen it as their duty to flatten resistance in the wilds beyond their frontiers. This, the wilds being what they were, had proved a calling without limit. Not even with their incomparable war machine could the Assyrians pacify all the mountain tribes–for there were some living in the Zagros who clung to the peaks like birds, or lurked in the depths of thick forests, so backward that they subsisted entirely on acorns, savages hardly worthy of the royal attention. These too, however, with regular incursions, could be taught to dread the name of Assyria, and provide her with the human plunder on which her greatness had come increasingly to depend. Again and again, punitive expeditions would return from the mountains to their native plains, to the sacred cities of Ashur, Nimrud and Nineveh, while in their wake, naked and tethered, followed stumbling lines of captives. Increasingly, the Assyrians had fallen into the habit of moving entire populations, shunting them around their empire, transplanting one defeated enemy into the lands of another, there to live in the houses of the similarly transported, to clear weeds from the rubble, or cultivate the abandoned, smoke-blackened fields.These tactics had in the end had due effect. By the late eighth century BC, the reaches of the Khorasan Highway had been formally absorbed into the empire and placed under the rule of an Assyrian governor. “Grovelling they came to me, for the protection of their lives,” boasted Assyria’s greatest king, Sargon II. “Knowing that otherwise I would destroy their walls, they fell and kissed my feet.”(2)Not that captives were the only source of wealth to be found in the Zagros. Wild and forested though the mountains were, and often bitter the climate, the valleys were famous for their clover-rich pasture. Over the centuries, and in increasing numbers, these had been attracting tribes who called themselves “Arya”–“Aryans”: horse-taming nomads from the plateau to the east.(3) Even once settled, these immigrants had preserved many of their ancestors’ instincts, filling the valleys of their new homeland with great herds of long-horned cattle, and preferring, wherever possible, to live in the saddle. The Assyrians, no horse-breeders themselves, would speak in wondering terms of the stud farms of the Zagros, with their “numberless steeds.”(4) It was relatively easy for the Assyrian army to cherry-pick these as tribute, for the finest horses, by universal consent, were those bred by the Medes, a loose confederation of Aryan tribes settled conveniently along the Khorasan Highway itself. No wonder the Assyrians came to prize the region. Their mastery of Media,(5) as well as enabling them to control the world’s most important trade route, permitted their armies to develop a new and lethal quality of speed. By the eighth century BC, cavalry had become vital to the ability of Assyria to maintain her military supremacy. The tribute of horses from the mountains had become the lifeblood of her greatness. The richest silver mine could not have been more precious to her than the stud farms of the Zagros.And yet, in Assyria’s supremacy lay the seeds of its own downfall. The mountains were a mishmash of different peoples, Aryans and aboriginals alike, with even the Medes themselves ruled by a quarrelsome multitude of petty chieftains. Foreign occupation, however, by imposing a unitary authority upon the region, had begun to encourage the fractious tribes to cohere. By the 670s BC, menaced by the shadowy leader of a formal Median union, the Assyrians’ hold on the Zagros started to slip alarmingly. Tribute dried up as its collection became ever more challenging. Open revolts blazed and spread. Over the following decades, the scribes of the Assyrian kings, employed to keep a record of the victories of their masters, ceased to make mention of Media at all.This silence veiled an ominous development. In 615 BC, a king who claimed sovereignty over all the clan chiefs of the Medes, Cyaxares by name, joined an alliance of the empire’s other rebellious subjects and led his troops from their fastnesses against the Assyrians’ eastern flank. The effect of this sudden eruption of the mountain men was devastating. After only three years of campaigning, the inconceivable occurred: Nineveh, greatest of all the strongholds of Assyrian might, was stormed and razed. To the amazement–and joy–of the empire’s subject peoples, “the bloody city” was pulverized beneath the hooves of the Median cavalry. “Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end–they stumble over the bodies!”(6)Four years later, and all traces of the Assyrian colossus, which for so long had kept the Near East in its shadow, lay obliterated. To the victors, naturally, had fallen the spoils. Media, precipitately elevated to the rank of great power, seized a huge northern swath of the defeated empire. Her kings, no longer small-time chieftains, could now indulge themselves in the occupations proper to their newly won status–throwing their weight around and scrapping with other great powers. In 610 BC, the Medes swept into northern Syria, burning and looting as they went. In 585, they went to war with the Lydians, a people based in the west of what is now Turkey, and only a solar eclipse, manifesting itself over the battlefield, finally persuaded the two sides to draw back. By the terms of a hurriedly patched-up treaty, the Halys, a river flowing midway between Media and Lydia, was established as the boundary between the rival empires, and for the next thirty years, throughout the Near East, peace, and the balance of power, were maintained.(7)Not that the new king of Media, Astyages, had any intention of hanging up his saddle. Undistracted now by war with other major empires, he turned his attention instead to the wilds north and east of his kingdom, far distant from the cockpit of the Fertile Crescent. Leading an expedition into the badlands of Armenia and what is now Azerbaijan, he was following in the footsteps of the Assyrian kings, teaching the savages beyond his frontiers to fear his royal name.(8) In other ways, too, the traditions of the great monarchies of the Near East, so alien to those of his own people, still semi-tribal and nomadic as they were, appear to have whetted the ambitions of the Median king. After all, a ruler of Astyages’ stature, no less powerful than the King of Lydia or the Pharaoh of Egypt, could hardly be expected to rule his empire from a tent. What the monarchs of more ancient lands had always taken for granted–a palace, a treasury, a mighty capital–Astyages, naturally, had to have as well: proofs of his magnificence raised in gold and blocks of stone.Travelers who made the final ascent through the mountains along the Khorasan Highway would see, guarding the approaches to the Iranian plateau ahead of them, a vision which could have been conjured from some fabulous epic: a palace set within seven gleaming walls, each one painted a different color, and on the two innermost circuits, bolted to their battlements, plates of silver and gold. This was Ecbatana, stronghold of the kings of Media, and already, barely a century after its foundation, the crossroads of the world.(9) Commanding the trade of East and West, it also opened up to its master the whole range of the Zagros, and beyond. Here, for the Median clan chiefs, in particular, was a thoroughly alarming development. The surest guarantee of their freedom from royal meddling, and of the continued factionalism of the kingdom itself, had always been the inaccessibility of their private fiefdoms–but increasingly they found themselves subordinated to the reach of Astyages’ court. At one time, before the building of the polychrome palace walls, Ecbatana had been an open field, a free meeting place for the tribes, a function preserved in the meaning of its name: “assembly point.” But now those days were gone, and the Medes, who had fought so long to liberate themselves from the despots of Nineveh, found themselves the subjects of a despot nearer to home.No wonder that later generations would preserve a memory of Astyages as an ogre. No wonder, either, that when they sought to explain their loss of freedom, the Medes would identify Ecbatana as both a symbol of their slavery, and a cause.(10)King of the WorldAstyages, it was said, even amid all the proofs of his greatness, was haunted by prophecies of doom: strange dreams tormented him, warning him of his downfall and the ruin of his kingdom. Such was the value ascribed by the Medes to visions of this kind that a whole class, the Magi, existed to divine what their meaning might be. Skilled in all the arts of keeping darkness at bay, these ritual experts provided vital reassurance to their countrymen, for it was a principle of the Medes, a devout and ethical people, that there was shadow lurking beyond even the brightest light. All the world, it seemed to the Magi, bore witness to this truth. A fire might be tended so that it burned eternally, but there was nowhere, not beside the coolest spring, nor even on the highest mountain peak, where the purity of its flame might not be menaced by pollution. Creation bred darkness as well as the daylight. Scorpions and spiders, lizards, snakes and ants, all crept and seethed, the visible excrescences of a universal shadow. Just as it was the duty of a Magus to kill such creatures wherever he found them, so shadows had to be guarded against when they darkened people’s dreams–and especially the nightmares of a king. “For they say that the air is full of spectres, which flow by exhalation, and penetrate into the sight of those with piercing vision.”(11) Greatness, like fire, had to be tended with care.That a kingdom as powerful as Media, less than a century after its first rise to independence and greatness, might once again be prostrated and subjected to foreign domination must, to many, have seemed implausible. But this, as the Medes themselves had good cause to know, had always been the baneful rhythm of the region’s power play: great empires rising, great empires falling. No one kingdom, not even Assyria, had ever crushed all who might wish to see it destroyed. In the Near East, predators lurked everywhere, sniffing the air for weakness, awaiting their opportunity to strike. Ancient states would vanish, new ones take their place, and the chroniclers, in recording the ruin of celebrated kingdoms, might find themselves describing strange and previously unknown peoples.Many of these, just like the Medes themselves, were Aryans–nomads who had left little trace of their migrations upon the records of the time. In 843 BC, for instance, the Assyrians had campaigned in the mountains north of their kingdom against a tribe they called the “Parsua”; two centuries later, a people with a very similar name had established themselves far to the south, on the ruins of the venerable kingdom of Anshan, between the lower reaches of the Zagros and the sweltering coastlands of the Gulf. No chronicler, however, could know for sure if they were one and the same.(12) Only by putting down roots, and by absorbing something of the culture of the people they had displaced, had the newcomers finally been able to intrude upon the consciousness of their more sedentary neighbors. These, reluctant to change the habit of centuries, had continued to refer to the region as they had always done; but the invaders, when they spoke of their new homeland, had naturally preferred to call it after themselves. So it was that what had once been Anshan came gradually to be known by a quite different name: Paarsa, Persia, the land of the Persians.(13) In 559 bc, while Astyages still ruled in Media, a young man came to the throne of this upstart kingdom. His name was Cyrus, and his attributes included a hook nose, immense ambition and quite limitless ability. From even before his birth, it appeared, he had been marked out for greatness; for it was he–if the stories are to be believed–who had been prophesied as the bane of Median greatness. Astyages was supposed to have seen it all in a dream: a vision of his daughter, Mandane, urinating, the golden stream flowing without cease, until at last the whole of Media had been drowned. When the king had reported this the next morning, his Magian dream-readers had turned pale and warned him that any son of Mandane would be destined to imperil the Median throne. Hurriedly, Astyages had married off his daughter to a vassal, a Persian, the prince of a backward and inconsequential kingdom, hoping in that way to defeat the omen’s malice. But after Mandane had fallen pregnant, Astyages had dreamed a second time: now he saw a vine emerging from between his daughter’s legs, nor did it stop growing until all Asia was in its shade. Panic-stricken, Astyages had waited for his grandson to be born, and then immediately given orders that the boy be put to death. As invariably happens in such stories, the orders had been defied. The baby had been abandoned on a mountainside, to be discovered and brought up by a shepherd; or perhaps, some said, a bandit; or maybe even a bitch, her teats conveniently swollen with milk. Whatever its precise details, the miraculous nature of such an upbringing had clearly betokened a godlike future for the foundling–and so, of course, it had proved. Cyrus had survived and prospered. Once he had grown to a splendid manhood, his natural nobility of character had served to win him the Persian throne. Thus it was that all the wiles of Astyages had been foiled–and the empire of the Medes been doomed. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Holland is one of the best popular historians writing: while up to first rate scholarly standards, he can speak to lay readers with graceful clarity and intelligence. It is a unique combination of gifts, especially when you compare it to the dry writing of most academics. This book was particularly welcome to me because, having read Creation by Gore Vidal over 20 years ago, I have been looking since then for a history book that could explain and analyze, from an academic point of view, what the great novel portrayed.This book is about the collision of at least 3 worlds. First, you have the Persian Empire, the first multi-national fighting force that sought to exploit (and to a degree, respect) the attributes of its innumerable ethnic groups rather than impose the domination of one on them by force. This was the work of Cyrus the Great, who transformed a mountain nomad tribe that raised horses as tribute to whoever dominated them at any given time, and is a defining moment of administrative genius: rather than simple repression and exploitation, he united opponents to the brutal Assyrian Empire under the same banner and forged a fighting force the world had never seen, its population at one time encompassing 40% of all living human beings. Holland offers a detailed and fascinating portrait of him and his successors, in particular the usurper Darius and his son, Xerxes. Second, there are the middle eastern peoples, which included the exiled Jews living in cosmopolitan Babylon, but also Phoenicians and Egyptians. It is a dazzlingly rich patchwork of people, virtually all of whom found places in the war machine.Third come the Greeks, who represented a poor, fractious backwater of over 700 city states, virtually all of whom were in a state of near-incessant war. Of the Greeks, the Ionian colonies (in modern day Turkey) were conquered and then co-opted by the Persians. Unfortunately, Darius reduced this unique culture to a smoldering ruin when crushing a rebellion. It was there that philosophy first fluorished and its potential will never be known. Then there are the Spartans, who lived under a kind of military socialism, its nomenklatura being aristocratic generals. Finally, there are the Athenians, who were experimenting with democracy (the first one!), emerging from a long period of class struggle and backwardness, and developing a literary culture for an audience beyond elite courtiers. Of course, hundreds of other city states are included, but they are essentially petty kingdoms at war.Once Xerxes ascended to the throne, he set his eyes on Europe. His father had failed there (at Marathon) and Xerxes wished to distinguish himself with the glory of conquest. To counter the threat, for the first time in their history, the Greeks more or less united: with Spartans as military leaders and the backbone of the fighting force, the Athenians converted their fighting forces into a sea power after a rancorous democratic negotiation. A number of remarkable leaders emerged, including Themistocles, a demagogue and genius of military strategy; and Leonidas, the Spartan king who knew his life was forfeit at Thermopylae in order to buy precious time. Against overwhelming odds – perhaps 10 or more to 1 in men – the Greeks held back and then beat the Persian military.Holland goes into great detail about the military tactics and technologies, the story of which is the core book and 2/3 of its content. While war interests me less than culture, Holland masterfully weaves details and issues into the narrative as they arise. For example, when the Athenians have to evacuate their city, Holland offers a wonderful sub-chapter on the cloistered, repressed status of women in Athens, as they had to WALK the streets to leave; this was a scandal to aristocrats.The book ends on a wonderful note that plays on Greek mythology: the goddess Nemesis, purportedly the mother of Helen with Zeus (think Iliad), moved to exile or destroy virtually all of the heroes that emerged. Themistocles was ostracized and exiled to Persia, where he became a traitor and satrap in charge of Ionia and Pausanias, who had adopted an oriental bias for opulence that offended his Spartan subjects, was starved to death. These are the kind of details and skillful storytelling that make this book so memorable. It pulses with life and ideas.The theme of the book is that this war was what saved the West, what enabled Athens under Perikles to lay the greco-roman foundations of what would become European civilization. I must admit that I find this to be a dubious claim, similar to the one that Europe would have been Muslim if Charles Martel had not held out at Poitiers. Persia had reached its apogee, if only because it was so large that incorporating EUrope was all but impossible to conquer, let alone maintain. Perhaps western civilization would have emerged under a different form – we can never know.Warmly recommended.

⭐The author, Tom Holland, gives an extensive history lesson and background story of the Persians, Athenians, and Spartans. The narrative is well-written and story driven with it all coming together in the second half of the book. I recommend this to anyone wanting to learn more about these empires during the 600-450 BC era

⭐A little more than a year ago, I read the Iliad for the first time as an adult, for no other reason than my own entertainment. I was at once bitten by the ancient Greek bug and set out to obtain the classical education I somehow missed in high school and college. I pursued this by taking a few Teaching Company audio courses, reading primary sources of the ancients — Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides — as well as the best popular and scholarly books I could find to elucidate the various eras of ancient Greek civilization. One of the latter certainly is Tom Holland’s Persian Fire.I came to Persian Fire with a decent background in the overall theme, and I read Herodotus in tandem with it through much of the book, but Holland’s treatment enhanced everything I had absorbed prior because he approached the subject with a regional theme. It would be difficult to comprehend the foreign policy of the United States in the latter half of the 20th century without a fairly comprehensive background in the history of the Soviet Union; yet most historians of early fifth century Greece provide scant attention to the foe that most defined their political culture, the Persians they referred to sometimes pejoratively as “the Mede.” Holland’s work is superior from the get-go because he takes the regional approach most period treatments gloss over.For those who want to delve right in to the Greco-Persian conflict, patience is in order as Holland sets the stage with an extremely well written background history not only of chief Hellenic city-states Athens and Sparta, but most importantly the origins of Persian rule — and all of that takes us — sometimes breathlessly with the gusto of a great author in love with his subject — to an account of Mediterranean geo-politics on the eve of the conflict. I got more of the sense of the ancient world at the time from Holland than any other single work I had read previously.Unlike many contemporary historians of the ancient world like Kagan, Holland deliberately avoids trying to fit the themes and the conflicts of 2500 years ago into today’s foreign policies, but — remarkably so — he does manage to interpret the actions of the key players into the sometimes Machiavellian power politics characteristic of states throughout recorded history. No other work I have encountered brings marble figures like Themistocles and Aristides to flesh-and-blood life, warts and all, the way Holland does in this book.A great read, in every way. Lots of material and not a boring spot in the story. I’ll probably re-read it again someday. If you have any interest at all in the ancient Greek world, don’t miss this one!

⭐Having enjoyed Holland’s translation of Herodotus (and his Roman books) I had high hopes for this; alas, they were dashed. The Persians fascinate me but I learnt nothing new about them in this mistitled book which is (perhaps inevitably, as it is rooted in Herodotus) written almost entirely from the Greek perspective.In Holland’s books on Caesar and the Julio-Claudians he had copious amounts of classical texts to work with and this justified his confident narrative style. With the Greco-Persian wars he has Herodotus, with a few forays into Thucydides, Plutarch and Diodorus). This material does not justify the same assured approach here, nor is he shy of using a dozen words where one or two will suffice (which eventually becomes tiresome in itself).Presented as history, but ultimately a work of historical fiction I fear, though not a bad one at that; the reader would be better off sticking with reading Herodotus, which is far more enjoyable.

⭐Hollands book is a great work of history told with style and insight. He takes his time in establishing the main players, Persia, Athena & Sparta. Particularly of note is the role of the Persian religion of ‘Ahura Mazda’. Based on truth vs lies it enabled the Great King of Kings to attack and conquer cities with the excuse of bringing them ‘the truth’ and destroying the statues etc of their old ‘false’ Gods. To a cynic, just a excuse for conquest and land grabbing.Both Athens and Sparta receive ample attention, Holland explaining the Athenian budding of democracy and the extremely unforgiving and strict warrior code of Sparta. The work also seems to debunk some myths. For example , that it was the messenger who ran from Marathon to bring news of victory and then dropped down dead. Holland tells us that the running was actually done by the Athenians themselves after they realised the Persian fleet was heading to Athens and they’d left their city sparsely defended.Ultimately this is a book about the desire for power and conquest. But, its also a very human telling. We read how different characters of history interacted with each other, how their rivalry and hatreds (the Greeks) made them easier targets. Division, it seems, really does breed weakness. When you read of all the back-stabbing, plotting and power struggles it is quite amazing that the Greeks managed to work together well enough to fend off the threat from the east.

⭐The Greco-Persian wars are often just referred to as the Persian wars. In the same manner, this book’s title is “Persian Fire” but, after an initial account of the raise of the Persian empire/emperors, it really zooms in on the bravery and faults of Athens, Sparta and other Greek towns around the Aegean sea including Ionia in today’s turkey, coming together – or many times not – against the Persian common gigantic foe. The granularity of the disagreements within the Greeks is fascinating as it goes down to the psychological level of each city, with some characters either by fear or bribes willing to side with or appease the Persians, but others preferring to fight. What goes in Athens under threat is truly fascinating as only when a wealthier town then, Miletus, is destroyed and doesn’t resist within its walls, do the Athenians decide to fight on open ground in Marathon, with the Spartans (with their own fascinating set of character and issues) arriving to help too late after the victory. All this is told in a thrilling manner were all characters come alive in a convincing psychological profile manger, their reasons and context. Famous characters like Leonidas from Sparta or Xerxes are described vividly and like a novel but always quoting the original sources. In Summary, excellent job of non-fiction as fun or more fun than fiction to read! And in such an important topic such as the reason the West and Democracy exists because all this happened and resulted ultimately in the victory of Greece and beyond in Europe!

⭐Tom Holland’s books are so easy to read! I am on my third now and his knowledge shines through in all of them, his understanding of the times he writes about, his obvious fascination with the Greeks and Romans between say 550BC and the first century AD. I now know what the Battle of Marathon was (and hence why marathons) and understand a little more about how the Greeks stopped Xerxes and the ‘Persian’ army (it did of course comprise of men from all areas around the Near East across towards India) in their tracks and protected Greek culture for posterity. He certainly goes into adequate detail (for an interested observer) about the negotiations between the Greek cities then and how the battles panned out from both sides’ point of view. Tom Holland does seem to dwell too much for me on the utterly horrific and gruesome ways in which human beings (well, some men anyway) treated their enemies in his writings but also he gives us a good feeling for the filth, mud, the basic way in which normal life carried on then. I enjoyed it (not so much the gruesome bits).

⭐Great book. Informative and very readable, from an author who must rank amongst the best in the historical non-fiction genre.Although it covers Marathon and its aftermath, it also gives a detailed account, with occasional wry humour, of the origins of Persia, Athens, Sparta etc. The book also introduces you to a host of other peoples you half know, including those of Assyria,, Babylon, the Phoenicians and suchlike. In short, there is a pretty high percentage here of all the stuff you need to know about the ancient world (excluding Rome and Egypt), contained in less than 400 pages of well-written and engaging narrative.Very highly recommended.

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