Iran: Empire of the Mind (7 page)

Fig. 3. Alexander (left) attacks the troops of Darius (centre right) at the battle of Issus—the second of a series of defeats that overturned the Achaemenid Empire.

Philip had other plans in any case—plans to invade the Persian empire. His preparations were quite open, and were justified in pan-Hellenic terms by reference to the Persian desecration of Athenian temples in the invasion of 480
BCE
. But before he could put them into effect, he was murdered, in 336
BCE
. The circumstances of the murder are murky and were disputed at the time—some have suggested that Alexander and his mother Olympias were involved, but it is possible that the Persians instigated the killing.

Alexander continued where his father had left off. He consolidated his authority in Greece, quickly crushing a rebellion in Thebes, and then crossed into Asia Minor in 334
BCE
. He defeated a Persian army at the Granicus river (near the Dardanelles), conquered the towns of the Ionian coast, including the Persian regional base at Sardis, and then marched east. The following year he defeated Darius himself at the battle of Issus (on the Mediterranean coast near the modern border between Syria and Turkey), leading the decisive attack personally at the head of his Companion cavalry (
hetairoi
). Alexander then marched south, taking the coastal cities, conquering Egypt and founding Alexandria. Moving east again, in 331
BCE
Alexander defeated Darius in a third battle, at Gaugamela, near
Mosul and Irbil in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan. Darius left the battlefield and was killed some time after by Bessus, the satrap of Bactria.

This is not the place to consider Alexander’s conduct of war in any detail, but Alexander’s military brilliance illustrates something that may appear at first counter-intuitive: the feminine nature of military genius at the highest level. Successful high command has little or nothing to do with masculine attributes: brute force, bravado, machismo, arrogance—little even to do with courage—except insofar as it may be necessary from time to time to advertise these to inspire the troops. Rather it has to do with what one might regard as more feminine characteristics—sensitivity, subtlety, intuition, timing, an indirect approach, an ability quietly to assess strength and weakness (based perhaps on an intuitive grasp for the opponent’s likely behaviour as much as factual information), to avoid the strength, to baffle it, flow around it, absorb its force and strike unexpectedly at the weak spot at precisely the right moment. Military history shows again and again that predictable male behaviour, manifest in frontal attacks and reliance on strength alone, is at best a liability and at worst catastrophically wasteful at the command level. The maximum effectiveness of military force is achieved only by the more subtle methods associated with what one might call a feminine approach. Without making any crass connection to his bisexuality (which has its own very particular cultural context), or any wider points about the virtue or otherwise of his personality, Alexander’s conduct of warfare exemplifies this well.

Alexander continued on to Babylon, Susa and finally Persepolis, which he burned to destruction in 330
BCE
after some weeks and months of celebrations. One story says that a courtesan accompanying the army, Thaïs, persuaded Alexander to destroy the palaces while he was drunk, in revenge for the burning of the Athenian Acropolis by Xerxes, and threw in the first torch herself. But it is likely that the destruction was a deliberate political act, to show that the Achaemenid dynasty was over for good. Notwithstanding the destruction of Persepolis, Alexander had been presenting himself at least since Gaugamela not so much as the revenger of Greece but as the successor to the Achaemenians.
²⁰
The previous Persian satraps of Babylon and Susa had been confirmed in their posts. From now
on he appears to have followed a deliberate Persianising policy, encouraging his troops to marry local women and settling them in colonies. He himself married several Persian princesses, including Statira, the daughter of Darius III, and later Roxana (whose name is cognate with the modern Persian word
roshan
, meaning ‘light’), daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria. Alexander continued with his campaigns, into the furthest reaches of the former Empire, wiping out all resistance, and then beyond, into India and what is now the Punjab. But his troops grew increasingly weary of the never-ending wars, and disaffected with his perceived pro-Persian policy.

Alexander died in Babylon in 323
BCE
, probably of natural causes, after a session of heavy drinking. The succession to his empire was left unclear, and the result was a lengthy series of wars between his generals to divide up his conquests, in which the murderous unruliness of the Macedonians emerged with full force. In these wars Alexander’s secretary Eumenes of Cardia for a time had some success in reunifying the centrifugal elements in support of Alexander’s young son, born to Roxana after his death. But the other generals and soldiers disliked Eumenes because he was a Greek and a scholar, and in 316
BCE
he was betrayed and killed. Roxana and Alexander’s son were murdered in 310 or 309
BCE
.

Despite his early death, Alexander’s aim, to bring Greek influence into Persia, Persian influence into Greece, and to create a blend of eastern and western civilisations, was realised to a startling extent. But ultimately it failed. Persia was ruled by the descendants of Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals, for more than a century, and Greek influence persisted after that. They were kings that ruled more in a Persian than a Greek style, and this was arguably the case for the Ptolemies who ruled in Egypt also. When Rome rose to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin, the Roman empire was divided between the Greek east and the Latin west, but still the style of the Greek east showed the influence of the vanished Achaemenid empire, and in turn influenced Romans with imperial ambitions from Pompey to Elagabalus.

Although the Iranians submitted to foreign rule, not for the last time in their history, Greek influence was ultimately passing and superficial despite the presence in the land of colonies of Greek ex-soldiers, and
some penetration of Greek culture. The Mazdaean religion persisted and consolidated, and seems to have served as a focus for hostility to the Greeks and to the memory of Alexander.

It is generally recognised that the historical accounts we have of Alexander and his life are partial, written mainly by authors who were writing at second hand, and somewhat in awe of their subject. They are all western accounts, and although there is an eastern tradition of Alexander (
Iskander
) as a warrior-hero, the Zoroastrian tradition about him is very negative, suggesting a different side to the story. There is little in the western sources about measures Alexander took to establish or consolidate his rule, but the Zoroastrian record says that he killed many Magi, priests and teachers; and that the sacred flames in many fire-temples were extinguished. This may simply reflect the incidental killing and destruction around the plundering by the Macedonian soldiery of the gold and silver of the temples. But it is likely that the Magian priests, proprietors as they were of the religion that underpinned the Achaemenian state and therefore the most likely centre for any continued resistance or revolt, would have been a target for repression in any case. Whatever exactly happened, it is unlikely that the Iranians cooperated as submissively in Alexander’s pacification policies as the western historians later suggested. In later Zoroastrian writings Alexander is the only human to share with Ahriman the title
guzastag
—meaning ‘accursed’.
²¹

2

THE IRANIAN REVIVAL: PARTHIANS
AND SASSANIDS

We have made enquiries about the rules of the inhabitants of the Roman empire and the Indian states… We have never rejected anybody because of their different religion or origin. We have not jealously kept away from them what we affirm. And at the same time we have not disdained to learn what they stand for. For it is a fact that to have knowledge of the truth and of sciences and to study them is the highest thing with which a king can adorn himself. And the most disgraceful thing for kings is to disdain learning and be ashamed of exploring the sciences. He who does not learn is not wise.

Khosraw I Anushirvan

(according to the Byzantine historian Agathias)

The empire established by Seleucus Nicator in 312
BCE
looked to be the most powerful of the successor states that emerged out of the collection of territories conquered by Alexander, controlling Syria, Mesopotamia and the lands of the Iranian plateau (as well as, at least in theory, other territories further east). Initially the capital was established at Babylon; later at a new site at Seleuceia on the Tigris, and finally at Antioch, on the Mediterranean. The Seleucid kings pursued the easternising policy of Alexander, established Greek military and trading colonies in the east, and used Iranian manpower in their armies, but their political attention was for the most part on the west, and particularly focused on their rivalry with the other major eastern Macedonian/Greek dynasty, that of the Ptolemies in Egypt. In the east, outlying satrapies like Sogdiana and
Bactria gradually became independent princedoms, the latter creating an enduring culture in what is now northern Afghanistan, fusing eastern and Greek cultures under Greek successor dynasties.

Warrior Horsemen

The horse-based cultures of the north-east had given Alexander problems, and the Achaemenids before him. Tribes like the Dahae and the Sakae (speaking languages in the Iranian family group), with their military strength entirely on horseback, highly mobile and able, when threatened, to disappear into the great expanses of desert and semi-desert south of the Aral Sea, would always be very difficult for any empire to dominate. Within two generations of Seleucus Nicator’s death in 281
BCE
one tribe or group of tribes among the Dahae, the Parni, established their supremacy in Parthia and other lands east of the Caspian (supplanting the local Seleucid satrap Andragoras, who had rebelled and tried to make himself an independent ruler in Parthia in around 250
BCE
) and began to threaten the remaining territories of the Seleucids in the east. The ruling family of the Parni named themselves Arsacids after the man who had led them to take control of Parthia, Arshak (Arsaces). But as the Arsacids expanded their dominion (including into Hyrcania before 200
BCE
), they were careful to preserve the wealth and culture of the Greek colonies in the towns, and later Parthian kings used the title
philhellenos
(friend of the Greeks) on their coinage.

Fig. 4. This bronze statue of a Parthian warrior from Shami demonstrates the confidence of an Empire that faced down the Romans, but also its fusion of steppe nomad and Greek elements.

Several Seleucid kings planned or carried out expeditions to the east to restore their authority in
Parthia and Bactria, and the Parthian Arsacids chose on occasion to ally with them or submit to them rather than confront them. But the Seleucids were always drawn back to the west, and in the reign of the Arsacid Mithradates I (171-138
BCE
) the Parthians renewed their expansion, taking Sistan, Elam and Media; then Babylon in 142
BCE
and finally Seleuceia itself in 141 (while Seleucid pretenders were occupied with succession disputes and civil war). Mithradates gave himself the traditional Achaemenid title of King of Kings. In the decades that followed the Parthians were attacked by the Sakae in the East and by the Seleucids in the west. Fortunes swung either way. At one point the Parthians defeated a Seleucid army, captured it and attempted to use the prisoners against the Sakae; only for the Seleucid troops to make common cause with the Sakae and defeat and kill the Parthian king, Phraates (in 128
BCE
). But Mithradates II (Mithradates the Great) was able to consolidate and stabilise Parthian rule in a long reign from about 123 to 87
BCE
, subduing enemies in both east and west. He also took the title King of Kings, a deliberate reference back to the Achaemenid monarchy, which with other indicators suggests a new, Iranian self-confidence.

Concealed behind the long struggle between the Seleucids and the Parthians lie the origins of the silk trade, which was to be of central importance for the Iranian towns and cities along the Silk Route for more than a millennium. The initial involvement of Greeks and Greek cities in the silk trade (including, crucially, those of the Greek Bactrian kingdom north of the Hindu Kush, a large part of which was conquered by Mithradates I) may go some way to explain both the survival of Greek culture in the Parthian period, and the Parthian kings’ respect for it. They were friends to the Greeks not out of aesthetic sensibility, or out of deference to a superior culture, but because they wanted to protect the goose that laid the golden egg.
¹
Mithradates had diplomatic contacts with both the Chinese Han emperor Wu Ti and with the Roman republic under the dictator Sulla. Either he or his successor Gotarzes, to establish a lasting presence in Mesopotamia, founded a new city, at Ctesiphon near Seleuceia, which was to continue as the capital for over 700 years (though often Seleuceia,
on the other side of the Tigris, was used as the centre of administration, and Ecbatana/Hamadan as the summer capital).