Persian History
A chronological collection on Achaemenid Persia: the empire’s founding, the systems that held it together, and the conflicts that tested it against the Greek world and beyond.
Featured Leaders in this Collection
Xerxes I
Darius the Great
Cyrus the Great
Alexander the Great
About this collection:
Persian history in this collection is the story of scale: how a power from the Iranian plateau becomes an empire spanning regions, languages, and religions, and how it learns to govern without collapsing under its own weight. The episodes run in chronological order, so the imperial logic builds step by step.
It begins with the foundations of empire building: conquest paired with legitimacy, and early choices about how to rule newly absorbed peoples. From there, the focus shifts from expansion to structure, showing how administration, taxation, infrastructure, and royal ideology turn conquest into a durable system.
The collection then moves into the external tests that shaped Persia’s reputation in the West: imperial decision-making under pressure, revolt management, and the strategic dilemmas that emerge when expansion slows and rivals define the story.
It closes with the empire’s collision with Macedonia, a turning point that ends the Achaemenid era and remakes the political map of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East.