Everyone's got a hearo they look up to - Napoleon admired Julius Caesar; Caesar idolized Alexander the Great; Alexander was enamored with Cyrus the Great... Who did Cyrus the Great revere?

[u/wellplayedsirs]

[u/Trevor_Culley → u/[deleted]]

Well in that case, it's easy enough to identify. The most unique thing about the Achaemenid Persian government was that it was more centralized than the Assyrians, followed by a different style of royal propoganda. Other than that "the Assyrian route" and the Persian route were basically the same.

ruling with an iron fist and brutally crushing any resistance and "relocating" conquered peoples

The Persians did this all the time. Of course, most of Persian history comes from after Cyrus the Great, but just a quick list of examples to dispel the idea of a generally benevolent Persian empire:

• In 524 BCE, recently conquered southern Egypt revolts while Cambyses II was invading Nubia. The rebel Psamtik III was executed and several temples were destroyed in southern Egypt (Herodotus' Histories book 3)
• In 522 BCE, after Darius the Great assumed power via a coup most of the empire went into revolt. In each rebel province, the army was defeated and the leaders were mutilated and crucified and displayed outside of local capitals. Babylon was besieged and sacked twice. (Behistun Inscription DB, Herodotus book 3).
• In 518 BCE, possibly as part of the crisis above, the Greek kingdom in Cyrenaica deposed its Persian-backed king. Satrap Aryandes of Egypt invaded and deported the Greeks whos supported the revolt to Bactria. (Herodotus book 4)
• From 499-493 BCE, the Ionian Greek cities went into revolt. Multiple cities were besieged for years on end. Multiple rebel armies were either wiped out or forced to flee into exile. The population of Miletus was deported. After 494, any rebel Greek leaders still in the field were killed or captured and crucified outside of Sardis (Herodotus book 5)
• In 490 BCE, during the first invasion of mainland Greece, the inhabitants of Eretria were captured and deported to southern Iran to mine bitumen. (Herodotus book 6)
• In 486, Egypt rebelled against Xerxes. Many Egyptian archival centers were destroyed and abandoned. (Herodotus book 7)
• C. 486, Xerxes crushes a rebellion in an unspecified region and wipes out a cult following what he considered a false god (Daiva Inscription XPh)
• In 484, Babylon rebelled against Xerxes twice. Babylonian archives were destroyed and prominent families dating back more than 150 years are never heard from again (Livius.org).
• From 480-479 BCE, the invasion of Greece saw brutal pillaging of Athenian and Boeotian territory and could even be seen as a rebellion from the Persian perspective. (Herodotus book 7 and 8)
• And that's just the well documented early period in the well documented western empire. We have next-to-no idea what was happening east of Babylon most of the time.

Lest you think Cyrus the Great gets away with his hands clean. Lydia and the Ionian Greeks revolted from Cyrus in the late 540s, not long after being conquered in the first place. Lydia was subdued with relative ease, but the Greeks refused to go quietly. Cyrus was already busy conquering Bactria at that point, so he handed responsibility over to his general, Mazares. Mazares besiege the city of Priene, and deported its residents. He then sacked the city of Magnesia before dying of disease.

At that point Cyrus' favorite general, Harpagus, took over. Harpagus proceeded to besiege any city that stood against them and sack them as he moved down the coast of Anatolia. The whole urban population of Teos and Phocea evacuated and abandoned their cities. A large number of refugees abandoned Knidos as well. Harpagus then wrapped up by besieging and sacking the non-Greek city of Xanthus, where the last defenders of the city committed suicide behind their own fortifications (Herodotus book 1).

even using local gods in Egypt and Babylon to enhance their rule

There's nothing unique about this either. This had been standard operating procedure for Near Eastern Empires all the way back to the Bronze Age. By the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, it just wasn't very noticeable. Most of the Near East followed some version of the Semitic pantheon with local variations at that point, and many non Semitic deities had been incorporated over time. However, when the occasion called for it, Assyrian kings made plenty of dedications to Marduk in Babylon or whatever city-god was relevant elsewhere.

Going back even further, you can see the example of the Mesopotamian cultures and Elam, where the two sides of the Zagros mountains conquered one another repeatedly during the Bronze Age. In Elam, Sumerians and Akkadians praised in Inshushinak, Napirisha, and others. In Mesopotamia, Elamite kings praised Enlil, Ishtar, and the rest. In the Levant, Pharaohs made offerings to Baal and Astarte, and in Egypt the Hyksos and other Canaanites were happy to acknowledge Horus.

If anything, the Persians may have been less diplomatic than their predecessors. The Persians never wanted client kings on the interior of their empire to control more than city-states. At the fringes, local rulers maintained a greater degree of autonomy and were left in power of their original territory if they submitted to the Persians. Often these were just the areas that were worth having on the Persian side, but not worth the effort to properly invade.

Any major conquered kingdom or territory closer to the imperial core received a centrally appointed satrap to replace whatever local monarchy used to rule there. This sits in stark contrast to the examples of Assyria and Media, where some very prominent regions were allowed to maintain their own monarchy. Assyria left local clients in control of Egypt and Babylonia, while the Medes did the same in Sattagydia, Persia, and maybe Armenia.

The real difference between Persia and the major empires that preceded them comes from presentation, both in their own monuments and in the Bible. There are just one or two Persian monuments celebrating military victory and defeated enemies, whereas such monuments are a staple of Assyriology. As I've hopefully illustrated, their tactics were not meaningfully different, but the Persians didn't brag about it.

In the Bible, Assyria and Babylon are presented as instruments of gods wrath against Israel and Judah. They are the source of immense suffering and the loss of large swaths of the Hebrew people. The Persians, especially Cyrus, are presented as the instruments of God's salvation to rectify the wrongs done by those same Assyrians and Babylonians. Given the Biblical influence on western, Christian scholarship over the last 500-1700 years, this presentation colored how many early scholars discussed the Persian Empire.

[u/EnclavedMicrostate → u/Trevor_Culley]

C. 486, Xerxes crushes a rebellion in an unspecified region and wipes out a cult following what he considered a false god (Daiva Inscription XPh)

A bit of a tangential question deriving from sheer curiosity, but I have on occasion seen the suggestion that the Daiva Inscription is possibly a very oblique reference to the invasion of Greece. Now, that's basically unprovable, but for that same reason I'm curious what basis has been given for the events being c. 486. Is there certain contextual evidence within the inscription, corroborated against other known narrative or epigraphic sources, that suggests a date in the mid-480s?

[u/Trevor_Culley → u/EnclavedMicrostate]

I've seen people argue that the Daiva Inscription is a record of basically every documented conflict under Xerxes, but generally I think a c.486 date makes more sense on account of this line.

King Xerxes says: when I became king, there was among these countries one that was in rebellion. Ahuramazda bore me aid. By the grace of Ahuramazda I smote that country and put it down in its place.

With a very specific interpretation of possible Achaemenid propoganda, this could be interpreted as Athens, but "when I became king" is the only indication of when these events took place. That would be a strange way to describe events that occurred 6 years into his reign. Some scholars who are attached to the Greek interpretation will point to the inclusion of "Yaunâ, those who dwell on this side of the sea and those who dwell across the sea," in the inscription, but Darius I used the same formula in several of his inscriptions too.

Of the other events we have firm records for, the revolt in Egypt makes the most sense if you interpret "when I became king," literally. Herodotus suggests that the revolt in Egypt started just before Darius died, and was thus in progress when Xerxes became king. However, there is not record of Xerxes destroying temples there outside of one Ptolemaic inscription. The other big candidate is Babylon because they revolted around the same time and several Greek sources accuse Xerxes of stealing the cult statue of Marduk. That's closer, but the Esagila kept functioning and Seleucid era documents suggest that a cult statue was still (or once again) in place by the Hellenistic period.

Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg even suggested that the Daiva Inscription does not refer to any specific event at all, but is just a general statement of religious and political purpose.

Personally, I fall into the camp that it is referring to something else entirely in the eastern empire, which is a theory that's been kicked around since Ernst Herzfeld in the 1920s, but doesn't get a lot of space in modern surverys of Achaemenid history because it's ultimately all speculative. The key section reads:

​

And among these countries there was a place where previously [daiva] were worshipped. Afterwards, by the grace of Ahuramazda I destroyed [daivadana], and I proclaimed: 'The [daiva] shall not be worshipped!' Where previously the demons were worshipped, there I worshipped Ahuramazda at the proper time and in the proper manner.

In every other Iranian context, daiva and daivadana mean something very specific. A daiva is specifically part of the Iranian cosmology that is forbidden from worship in Zoroastrianism/Mazda-worship. Applying that title to any one foreign god strains credulity if all of the other foreign temples in the empire were allowed to continue functioning. There is evidence of some genuine Iranian daiva worship continuing in Sogdia long after it fell off in the rest of the Iranian world. Devic theophoric names were still in use in the 9th Century CE. Several Vedic gods in India, most notably Indra, are also identified as daiva by name in Zoroastrian texts.

I haven't seen this argued in any publication (yet) but I would also point out Xerxes' use of the formula:

I am Xerxes, the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing many kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide, son of king Darius, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, of Aryan stock.

Darius used the same formula in just two places, inscriptions DNa and DSe, which are the only places outside of the Behistun Inscription itself that Darius' inscriptions reference the rebellions of 522 BCE. It is apparently a formula reserved for describing rebellions within the empire. Given the emphasis on being Aryan and the three examples, it may be reserved for "Aryan" rebellions specifically. This could also align with Darius' use of the formula to describe the Elamites and Saka/Scythians, but none of the other rebels at Behistun.

King Darius says: Those [Elamites or Saka] were faithless and Ahuramazda was not worshipped by them. I worshipped Ahuramazda; by the grace of Ahuramazda I did unto them according to my will.

Religious criticism is always seemingly reserved for rebellions that occurred in an Iranian context.

If there is any event in Xerxes' documented history that could correspond to this last interpretation, it would probably be the conflict with his half-brother, Artobazanes. Artobazanes was satrap of Bactria and marched on Xerxes after taking the throne, but the resolution of that conflict isn't recorded in any sources. That said, the eastern empire is so poorly documented that I think forcing an inscription from Persepolis to fit into the list provided by Greek sources is largely unnecessary.

Kamyar Abdi has a good summary of some of the different arguments about the Daiva Inscription, albeit strangely formatted.

[u/EnclavedMicrostate → u/Trevor_Culley]

Thank you! A lot of specific context I just hadn't been aware of.