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Why Don’t We Know Much About Ancient Persia?
It comes down to luck, culture, and more
We know quite a bit about ancient Greece. We have a number of sources that tell us about Athenian democracy, its famed “golden age,” and its influential leaders, men like Pericles and Themistocles. We know about Sparta, the most militaristic city-state, its most famous warriors, and its key battles. We’re familiar with Greece’s great thinkers, artists, and authors. We know their gods and goddesses, even though they haven’t been worshipped in centuries.
But ask most people about the Greeks’ on-and-off enemies, the Persians, and they’d stare at you fairly blankly. History buffs might know one or two Persian kings, but they almost certainly know them because they were important to other groups — Darius and Xerxes show up in Greek histories of the Greco-Persian Wars, and Cyrus liberated the Jews in the Bible.
That the knowledge of Greek civilization would last for millennia but Persian history would fade into obscurity might have seemed ridiculous to someone living in the 400s BCE. After all, Persia was an immense empire, and the Greeks were a bunch of squabbling little city-states whose greatest military achievement was hanging on to survival by their fingertips against the Persians.
