50 Fun Facts About Persian Empire

Which Spartan king died with his 300 men resisting Xerxes's invasion of Greece in 480 BC?

Leonidas did not make his last stand with only his 300: about 700 men from the small city of Thespiae refused to leave and died beside them, allies the legend usually forgets.

Cambyses dropped his plan to attack which city when his fleet refused to sail against it?

Carthage was a Phoenician colony, and the Phoenician crews who manned Cambyses's fleet would not attack their own kin; he let the plan drop, because his whole navy depended on them.

Persian envoys asked Greek cities for which two symbolic gifts as tokens of submission?

Earth and water was the standard demand, and Herodotus says two cities answered it by throwing Darius's heralds into a pit and down a well, telling them to fetch both for themselves.

Which Athenian playwright, who fought the Persians himself, put a grieving Xerxes on stage in The Persians?

Aeschylus told the Greek victory entirely from the losing side: the play is set at the Persian court in Susa, with no Greek character, and the news reaches Xerxes's mother and the ghost of Darius.

Cyrus's first great conquest, in 550 BC, was of which empire, ruled by Astyages?

The Medes were beaten from within: their general Harpagus went over to Cyrus with much of the army, and a Babylonian chronicle records that Astyages's own troops then revolted and handed him over.

Which fabulously wealthy king lost his capital Sardis to Cyrus?

Croesus asked the oracle at Delphi whether to attack Persia and was told he would destroy a great empire; in Herodotus's telling he marched, and the empire he destroyed was his own.

Which last king of Babylon was taken prisoner when Cyrus captured the city in 539 BC?

Nabonidus had spent about ten years away at the Arabian oasis of Tayma, leaving his son Belshazzar to run Babylon, the ruler the Book of Daniel places at the city's fatal feast.

Cyrus is credited with freeing which people from captivity in Babylon and letting them rebuild their temple?

The Jews honoured him in scripture for it: the Book of Isaiah calls Cyrus the Lord's 'anointed', the same Hebrew word that gives English 'messiah'.

Herodotus says Cyrus died fighting which nomadic people east of the Caspian Sea?

The Massagetae were led by Queen Tomyris, who in Herodotus's telling pushed the dead Cyrus's head into a skin full of blood so that he could drink his fill.

Which biblical queen of Persia, wife of King Ahasuerus, foils a plot to wipe out her people?

Esther's husband Ahasuerus is usually identified with Xerxes, and her victory is still celebrated each spring at Purim, when the villain Haman's name is drowned out with noisemakers.

Which museum holds the Cyrus Cylinder, the clay record of Cyrus's capture of Babylon dug up in 1879?

The British Museum keeps the original and made the replica displayed at UN headquarters in New York, a gift from Iran, whose last shah promoted the Cylinder as an ancient charter of human rights.

Darius's inscriptions in Egypt boast that he ordered which great work there?

A canal: Darius's stone markers say he ordered it dug from the Nile to the Red Sea, a forerunner of the Suez Canal, and that ships then sailed through it from Egypt to Persia.

Herodotus claims Cambyses went mad after killing which sacred Egyptian animal?

The Apis bull story looks like slander: the bull that died during his stay was buried in a granite sarcophagus made on Cambyses's own order, and its successor outlived him.

According to Darius's Behistun inscription, a magus named Gaumata seized the throne in 522 BC by impersonating whom?

Bardiya's only first-hand chronicler is the man who took the throne: Darius says he slew an impostor magus, and historians still argue over whether the man he overthrew was Cyrus's real son after all.

In Herodotus's account, what killed Cambyses II as he hurried home from Egypt?

A thigh wound turned gangrenous after Cambyses accidentally stabbed himself while leaping into the saddle, Herodotus says; an Egyptian chronicle records only that he died on the journey.

Darius the Great organised the empire into provinces each governed by an official with what title?

Satrap governors could rule like little kings far from court, so the Persian kings sent out travelling inspectors known as the 'eye of the king' to keep watch on them.

Which language did the Persian Empire adopt for written communication between its far-flung provinces?

Aramaic was already the Near East's common language of trade and diplomacy under the Assyrians and Babylonians, so the Persians simply adopted the tongue their subjects already wrote.

The Persian Royal Road ran west from Susa to Sardis, a city in which modern country?

Turkey: Sardis stood near the Aegean coast, and Herodotus reckoned the walk from Susa at exactly 90 days, which is why the king's messages went by relays of riders instead.

Herodotus's praise of Persia's mounted couriers inspired the unofficial motto of which American institution?

The US Postal Service has no official motto, but 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night', carved on New York's main post office, reworks Herodotus's line about Xerxes's relay riders.

Herodotus gave what name to the 10,000-strong elite infantry of the Persian army?

The Immortals got the name, Herodotus says, because any man who was killed or fell sick was replaced at once, so the corps never numbered more or fewer than ten thousand.

Which city, today's Hamadan, served the Persian kings as a summer capital high in the Zagros mountains?

Ecbatana had been the capital of the first kingdom Cyrus overthrew; rather than destroy it, the Persians kept it as a royal residence and treasury.

Persepolis lies in which Iranian province, the old homeland whose name gave us the word Persia?

Fars is the Arabic form of the older name Pars, since Arabic has no 'p' sound; the same shift is why Iranians call their language Farsi.

One theory says Alexander burned Persepolis at the urging of which courtesan during a drunken feast?

Thaïs is an Athenian in the tale, and wants the palace burned to avenge Xerxes's sack of her city; Arrian's account has Alexander burn it on purpose and never mentions her.

Darius's Behistun inscription is written in Old Persian, Elamite and which third language?

Babylonian Akkadian was the prize: because all three texts say the same thing, the inscription let scholars crack cuneiform, doing for Mesopotamia what the Rosetta Stone did for Egypt.

Which British East India Company officer scaled the cliff at Behistun from 1835 to copy the inscription?

Henry Rawlinson had to climb for it: the text sits about 100 metres up a cliff, and Darius's masons are thought to have cut away their own path once the carving was done.

Which supreme deity does Darius repeatedly credit for his kingship in his inscriptions?

Ahura Mazda is the only god Darius names in his texts; about a century later a Persian king began invoking Mithra and Anahita beside him for the first time.

In Herodotus, Darius became king because which animal of his was the first to cry out at sunrise?

His horse neighed first because his groom Oebares cheated: Herodotus gives two versions of the trick, and both rely on the stallion's favourite mare.

Darius pushed the Persian Empire to its eastern limit by conquering the valley of which river?

The Indus was unknown water to the Persians, so Darius sent the Greek sailor Scylax down it to find the sea, a voyage on to Egypt that Herodotus says took thirty months.

Which kingdom on Greece's northern edge became a Persian vassal under Darius and later marched with Xerxes?

Macedon bowed to a Persian general after 513 BC and its king was still Xerxes's ally in 480; about 150 years later another Macedonian king, Alexander, conquered the whole Persian Empire.

Which uprising of Greek cities in Asia Minor, from 499 to 493 BC, opened the Greco-Persian Wars?

The Ionian Revolt drew in Athens, whose troops helped burn Sardis; Herodotus says Darius then had a servant tell him three times at every dinner, 'Master, remember the Athenians.'

Darius's forces were defeated by the Athenians in 490 BC at which battle?

Marathon's famous run to Athens is legend: in Herodotus the courier Pheidippides instead runs the far longer road to Sparta to beg for help, arriving the day after he set out.

When a storm wrecked his first bridge across the Hellespont, what did Xerxes reportedly order done to the strait?

Whipped 300 times and fettered, the strait also got a scolding: Herodotus says the floggers had to call it 'bitter water', and the builders of the lost bridge were beheaded.

Xerxes's army was held up for three days in 480 BC by a small Greek force at which pass?

Thermopylae fell, Herodotus says, when a local man named Ephialtes showed the Persians a mountain path around it, hoping for a rich reward; the Greeks put a price on his head instead.

Which 480 BC naval battle forced Xerxes to withdraw to Sardis?

Salamis was fought in straits so cramped that the bigger Persian fleet fell into disorder; Xerxes watched it happen from a seat on the hillside opposite, his scribes noting who fought well.

Greek and Roman sources blame which official for the assassination of Xerxes in his bed in 465 BC?

Artabanus, captain of the royal bodyguard, meant to take the throne himself in Diodorus's telling, but the prince he went for next struck him down and took the crown instead.

Which exiled Athenian, architect of the Greek naval victory of 480 BC, ended his days as a Persian governor?

Themistocles was given three cities to live on by the Persian king: Magnesia for his bread, Lampsacus for his wine and Myus for the rest of his table.

Which queen commanded her own squadron for Xerxes and won his praise at the great sea battle of 480 BC?

Artemisia escaped the rout by ramming a ship on her own side; Xerxes, told she had sunk an enemy, is said to have remarked that his men had become women and his women men.

Which English word comes from an old Iranian term for the walled parks of Persian kings?

Paradise goes back to pairidaeza, 'walled enclosure'; Greeks borrowed it as paradeisos for the kings' hunting parks, and Bible translators then used it for the Garden of Eden.

Which Athenian marched home with 10,000 Greek mercenaries after a failed Persian coup and told the story in the Anabasis?

Xenophon's army was stranded near Babylon when the prince who hired it died in battle; it fought its way north to the Black Sea, where the men cried 'The sea! The sea!'

Which eunuch is said to have poisoned Artaxerxes IV and crowned Darius III, only to be made to drink poison himself?

Bagoas tried the same trick on Darius III, who made him drink the cup himself; Greek writers also blame him for the death of Artaxerxes III, though a Babylonian tablet suggests natural causes.

Alexander defeated Persian armies at Granicus and Issus before which decisive battle in 331 BC?

Gaugamela was ground Darius III had picked himself and levelled for his chariots and cavalry; Alexander's smaller army won there anyway, and Babylon opened its gates to him soon after.

Which Bactrian governor and kinsman murdered the fleeing Darius III and proclaimed himself Artaxerxes V?

Bessus gained little by it: his own officers soon arrested him and handed him over to Alexander, who had him executed for killing his king.

Which Iranian dynasty won the plateau back from the Seleucids, the heirs of Alexander's conquests?

The Parthians began as the Parni, nomads from the Central Asian steppe who seized the province of Parthia from a rebel Seleucid governor and then took its name as their own.

Where did Alexander visit the plundered tomb of Cyrus and put the Magi on trial?

Pasargadae's tomb was already two centuries old when Alexander, angry to find it robbed, sent his officer Aristobulus inside and ordered the damage put right.

What did Darius and three later Persian kings have cut high into the cliff face at Naqsh-e Rustam?

Their tombs made the cliff sacred ground for later Persians: more than 700 years on, the Sasanian king Shapur I had his victory over Rome carved into the rock beneath them.

Which word did the Greeks use for Persians and all other foreigners, mocking the babble of their speech?

Barbarians at first meant simply anyone whose speech sounded like 'bar-bar' to Greek ears; the word only hardened into a real insult after the Persian Wars.

Xerxes's engineers bridged the Hellespont for his army by lashing together hundreds of what?

Warships, 674 of them by Herodotus's count, were moored side by side under cables of flax and papyrus; the army then took seven days and nights to march across.

Which great gateway did Xerxes add to Persepolis?

The Gate of All Nations borrowed its guardians from the conquered: its human-headed bulls were an Assyrian design that the Persians took over for their own palace.

What was the daric, which Persian kings used to hire Greek mercenaries and buy Greek politicians?

A gold coin stamped with the king as an archer: Greeks nicknamed darics 'archers', and the Spartan king Agesilaus grumbled that thousands of archers had driven him out of Asia.

The Persians took up coinage after conquering which kingdom, the home of the world's first coins?

Lydia's lion-and-bull coins were apparently just kept in production by Cyrus after the conquest; only under Darius did the Persians strike a coinage of their own.