Matt Waters - Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE

The Achaemenid Persian Empire, at its greatest territorial extent under Darius I (r. 522486 BCE), held sway over territory stretching from the Indus River Valley to southeastern Europe and from the western edge of the Himalayas to northeast Africa. In this book, Matt Waters gives a detailed historical overview of the Achaemenid period while considering the manifold interpretive problems historians face in constructing and understanding its history. This book offers a Persian perspective even when relying on Greek textual sources and archaeological evidence. Waters situates the story of the Achaemenid Persians in the context of their predecessors in the mid-first millennium BCE and through their successors after the Macedonian conquest, constructing a compelling narrative of how the Empire retained its vitality for more than two hundred years (c. 550330 BCE) and left a massive imprint on Middle Eastern as well as Greek and European history.

MATT WATERS is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of WisconsinEau Claire. He is the author of A Survey of Neo-Elamite History (2000), and his work has appeared in numerous journals, including Iran , Revue dAssyriologie , and the Journal of the American Oriental Society . Waters is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Harvard Universitys Center for Hellenic Studies, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, and the University of WisconsinMadisons Institute for Research in the Humanities. He was awarded the Jonas C. Greenfield Prize from the American Oriental Society in 2006 for the best published article in ancient Near Eastern studies in a three-year period by a scholar under the age of forty.

Information on the most frequently cited sources is contained in the following overview, by author and citation format. A. Kuhrt, The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period , 2007, contains translations of almost all textual material referenced herein; it is an indispensable tool for study of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. On a smaller scale, M. Brosius, The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I , 2000, has translations of several texts, and the Internet site Livius.org (http://www.livius.org/aa-ac/achaemenians/inscriptions.html) has translations of many of the royal inscriptions and other resources.

Inscriptions cited refer to the Old Persian versions of the text, unless otherwise noted. They are cited by standard abbreviations: kings first initial, superscripted number (if applicable), and location. Lowercase letters differentiate separate inscriptions from the same site. For example, A2Sd 2 stands for Artaxerxes II, Susa, inscription d, paragraph (or section) 2.

Elamite and Akkadian translations are found mainly in specialized literature. The classic treatment of all versions of most trilingual inscriptions is F. H. Weissbach, Die Keilinschriften der Achmeniden , 1911. The most accessible English translation of the Old Persian versions of the royal inscriptions is R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Text, Lexicon , 1953. Also notable is R. Schmitt, Naqsh-i Rustam and Persepolis , 2000.

Accessible text editions with translation for major authors, including most of those listed below, are published in the Loeb Classical Library series. The Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu) has translations available under its Greek and Roman Materials tab. Citations of major works follow convention by book, chapter (or paragraph), and section number. For example, Hdt. 1.125 refers to Herodotus, Book I, chapter/paragraph 125. An additional number indicates section, for example Diodorus 12.4.45 refers to Diodorus Siculus, Book 12, chapter 4, sections 45. Authors biographical information in the following is adapted from The Oxford Classical Dictionary , ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, Third Edition Revised, 2003.

Aelian , c. 156/170230/235 CE, from Italy. The author of a number of works, including On the Nature of Animals and Varia Historia .

Aeschylus , c. 525?455 BCE, from Athens. Preeminent Athenian playwright, his play The Persians dramatizes Xerxes failed invasion of Greece.

Arrian , c. 86160 CE, from Bithynia in northern Anatolia. Author of a number of works, references herein are to his Anabasis of Alexander .

Berossus , late fourth to early third centuries BCE, a Babylonian who wrote a history in Greek for Antiochus I, cited by fragment number and letter. An English translation of the main fragments is available in G. Verbrugghe and J. Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho , 1996.

Ctesias , late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE, Greek physician from Cnidus in southwestern Anatolia, who served at the court of Artaxerxes II. Author of a number of works, citations herein are to his Persica in twenty-three books, only fragments of which remain. Cited by fragment number and letter and, for longer fragments, paragraph () number. An English translation, with Greek text, is available in J. Stronk, Ctesias Persian History, Part I. Introduction, Text, Translation , 2010.

Diodorus Siculus (abbreviated DS), first century BCE, of Sicily, author of what is generally titled the Universal History ( Bibliotheka ), of which fifteen books survive.