The Persian Empire: The Achaemenids

Listen to this episode from Historically High on Spotify. History sometimes has a habit of framing cultures as either heroes or villains, depending on the source. When it comes to Greek sources Herodotus "The Father of History", is kinda the go to when it comes to the period of antiquity. Every story needs a bad guy or a great evil to overcome, and when it comes to Herodotus his history was many times more fiction than fact. For the Greeks it was the vast and powerful Persian Empire coming to snuff out the light of the greek world. Weeeellllll...the Greeks were already doing a decent job of that themselves to be honest. While the first Persian Empire, established by the Acheamenid (Ack-a-men-id) Dynasty was central to the story of Greece "uniting", the Persians were across the Aegean doing some pretty incredible things. Founded by Cyrus the Great the Achaemenid Dynasty became the largest empire in the world during its time. Religious Tolerance, establishment of great road systems to carry trade and culture, the first mail system, a standardized monetary system based on the gold and silver, and a common language just to name a few. We owe a surprising amount of things in our modern world to this Empire. Tune in a find out just who were the Achaemenids and why maybe the Greeks kinda had it coming... Support the show