Review : Persians - The Age of the Great Kings

This next review takes us considerably further back in time, to the age of Cyrus the Great and ending with the Macedonian conquest of Persia. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (one of the most Welsh names ever) takes a much-needed look at the history of ancient Persia from the perspective of the Persians themselves, attempting to dispel some of the myths propagated by their considerably more famous Greek adversaries.

In this I have to say he's only partly successful. There are times when he does an outstanding job, both spinning a gripping yarn and plausibly correcting some of the more deliberately-bigoted acts of Greek misinterpretation. But there are other times when he comes across as blatantly anti-Greek, which I think is bloody daft considering the debt modern society owes to them. Perhaps worse are the times when he's flagrantly self-contradictory. I'm not quite sure if he's being deliberately provocative, trying to take the Persian side just a bit too hard, or has genuinely fallen for it. Either way, pointedly labelling Athens as "democratic" with the quotation marks just feels extremely petty and mean-spirited.

I also have to say that the style is a bit old-fashioned. It's partly narrative history, partly archaeological reconstruction, and it tells the reader very explicitly what's being done and why. It all feels rather forced, often stating things which are really very obvious. The narrative sections are generally good (though the military aspect is very poor), and while switching back and forth in its different approaches does basically work, it could also have been done more effectively. I don't think it was necessary to compartmentalise things like this. A better way would be to control the narrative to focus each section on a particular aspect of Persian life, whilst maintaining a chronological flow.

Still, it does accomplish the important goal of making me want to know more about the Persians on their own terms rather than merely as a foil for ancient Greece. But ironically, I have to say I've come away thinking they're probably... nothing all that remarkable, to be honest. Important, certainly. But if one was to do a Python-esque sketch of what the Persians have ever done for us, the answer would have to be, "not much". 

Overall, I give this one 6/10 : a mixed bag, with some parts a respectable 7 or even a commendable 8, but enough stupid statements and tediously bland passages thrown in to be... not fatal by any means, but irritating.

I do however respect Jones very much for having an axe to grind, even though I don't agree with his conclusions. He begins by provocatively declaring the idea that the Persian conquest of Greece would have ended democracy and altered the course of civilisation as "absurd". Fair enough, points rightly made that some Greek cities in Asia Minor under Persian rule were permitted their democracies. But later he says that a successful conquest would have seen the Athenians deported ! And Persian rule was above all autocratic, so the idea that Athens would have been allowed to follow the imperial course that it did, that its greatest philosophers would have come up with the same thoughts without Persian interference... sorry, no, that's complete bollocks. It's not in the least bit credible, just a fashionable bit of self-loathing. If you're going to posit this idea, it needs much more development than a couple of paragraphs in the introduction.

Another glaring contradiction Jones makes is the role of concubines. Again, fair enough, try and explain the harem by going beyond the sexual stereotypes : a worthy goal ! But then having spent some pages explaining that it wasn't like this, that this is all just western sexualisation... Jones then describes in quite lurid detail that most of the concubines'* duties revolved around sex. Having tried to describe the harem as being far from the popular image of flowing silk curtains and scantily-clad nubile young ladies, Jones pretty much then describes things as being exactly like this. This doesn't do him any favours.

* Though not the harem, strictly speaking. This referred to the collective of imperial Persian women, mothers and daughters and sisters and concubines alike. But this is a very petty terminological issue to get hung up on, with the more obvious point being that yes, there were lots of concubines, and yes, they fulfilled exactly the sort of duties one would expect. It's good to be the Great King.

More interesting is Persian governmental structure. This is strongly reminiscent of the later Mongolian empire. It was a merger of many different civilizations and cultures under the umbrella of the Persian khans (the Persians themselves being of nomad stock), a true empire rather than anything like a nation-state. It was enormously tolerant and vibrantly multi-cultural, far more so (says Jones, not without merit) than Rome or, much later, Britain. In essence the Persians themselves were the rulers, the aristocrats with their hands firmly on the reins, but all the lower institutions were allowed to persist more-or-less as they had previously.

Jones may at times hate the Greeks but he's not an unapologetic fanboy of Persia either. He's clear that Persia could use extraordinarily brutal methods of executions (e.g. the ordeal of the boats, don't say I didn't warn you) when it felt it was necessary and that it took a very different view of the truth than western ideas. Darius could thus paint himself as both a foreign conqueror and the legitimate ruler of Egypt; their idea of history had yet to approach even the attempt at getting at objective truth in the way the Greeks at least claimed to try. Persia didn't seem to even understand the concept, and this lack of knowledge about its own history may have been a fatal weakness.

Fascinatingly, Persian culture held the concept of the Truth and the Lie as almost physical entities or deities. The way of Truth was the correct one, the way of the Lie was the realm of devils and monsters. But which was which seems to have been entirely arbitrary, very much in the vein of might is right. If the Great King decided that this was Truth, then so it was. By Jones' own admission, the best rulers of Persia were astute at the art of fake news and bullshitting, putting out messages for their efficacy rather than out of any interest in anything as petty as what really happened.

When it comes to the Greek wars with Persia it's very much a mixed bag. I commend Jones for two very plausible reinterpretations of stories in Herodotus. Firstly, rather than Xerxes stopping to all but make love to a tree because he was actually mad, Jones' version of this being an exaggeration of a widespread Persian practise of tree-worship feels far more believable. Secondly, that Xerxes would seek to appease the waters of the Hellespont with prayers and offerings sounds much more likely than he would whip it out of despotic anger, with the scope for misinterpretation being obvious. 

In like vein, Jones does an excellent job of demonstrating that Cambyses I was a competent and astute ruler, in stark contrast to the Greek portrayal of an ineffectual despot. And he makes the valuable point that it was probably simple imperial ambition that led to Xerxes' invasion, not any sort of revenge for the earlier defeat at Marathon or the Ionian revolt. Unfortunately he rather undoes the latter by apparently forgetting it was the Greeks who were on the receiving end of the invasion force, and getting all prissy because they said mean things about the vast army burning its way through their lands.

Militarily it's on very thin ice. Jones' numbers for the size of Xerxes invasion are on the extremely low side, lower than the lowest values given on Wikipedia. To me they just don't feel plausible. If we allow the city-states of Athens and Sparta to each field armies of 10-40,000 well-armed hoplites each, as is well accepted, then it seems like massive underkill to suppose that Xerxes invasion force was a mere 70,000 infantry. If Athens alone could manage 200 triremes, then for Xerxes to find just 500 seems downright pathetic given the vast scale of the empire*. To note that Greece was not a united front in defending itself is correct but disingenuous, the main point surely being that Athens and Sparta, two astonishingly different societies, did manage to unite. And to spin Thermopylae as a "great Persian victory" is honestly laughable in a grim sort of way, the sort of propaganda the Great King would have approved of.

* Granted, Michael Scott notes that the ability to field disproportionately large military forces was one of the principle advantages of early democracies.

Later Jones uncritically repeats stories which feel a lot more like Greek titillation than anything else. The idea that the Great King would have an occasion at which he would be unable to refuse any request is just plain silly (see Trump, immunity from prosecution...). Trying to justify the actions of an autocratic serial killer on the grounds of trying to protect her dynasty is just mind-wrenching, as is saying that Darius was destined to have a glorious reign... absolutely nothing about it was glorious, ending as it did with his utter defeat at the hands of Alexander. 

Likewise, the argument that Darius wasn't a coward by fleeing battle (an argument I've heard from others) just isn't tenable either. It's ludicrous to expect anyone in that situation to be so conscious of their dynastic obligations that they run away out of duty, and far, far simpler to suppose that they did so because they were bloody terrified. Alexander faced exactly the same dynastic pressures but was made of considerably sterner stuff.

Jones clearly loves his subject. Some of his narrative passages are genuinely gripping, but here he seems to be only repeating the historical sources. At the end of it all I'm reminded again of John Man's comments on Mongolia. Man too loves his subject but for all the light readability of his books, he's clearly thought a lot more about it than Jones. The Mongol Empire, according to Man, was driven by nothing much more than a pure desire for conquest. It had ultimately nothing to offer the world, no new ideologies, no new perspectives. It was conquest for conquest's sake. That gave it an extraordinary, paradoxical capacity for both tolerance and violence alike. 

So it seems to me with the Persians. To unify the disparate lands and hold them together for two centuries was an extraordinary but ultimately pointless achievement. A capacity for synthesis and fusion of artistic styles from a multitude of cultures was all very well, but art alone does not a culture make. To allow local democracies under autocratic overlords in no way compares with instituting democracy as the end point of rule. And mastering propaganda is no substitute whatever for even the worst philosophy; even a bad but honest attempt to get at the Truth is better than embracing the Lie.