01 Rethinking the Persian Empire

I n its time, the Persian Empire was the largest and greatest empire the world had seen. From 559 to 530 B. C., under the empires founder, Cyrus the Great, the Persians rose from relative obscurity to conquer vast territories. By 500 B. C., when Rome was still just a small village on the banks of the Tiber River and China was still divided into warring states, the Persian Empire had uni ed the lands stretching from Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt in the west, across Mesopotamia and Iran, through central Asia, all the way to the Indus Valley in the east. For more than two centuries, until 330 B. C., the Persian Empire was the single greatest power anywhere on earth.