Military mentality of Achaemenid leaders?

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Shahname is beyond the Achaeminid time frame.

Exactly. So that leaves no literary works.

[Kitsunegari]

When your cities (including libraries) are destroyed that kind of thing can happen, eg we have almost no Punic literature left, except for what the Romans were able to copy from their client kingdoms who were granted some of the material.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

And thus we can conclude Phoenicians did not keep literary accounts of stuff.

[Kitsunegari]

Heaping amounts of fail: the Romans copied Punic treatises on farming, vinery, etc. As for Phoenicia proper, Sanchuniathon was possibly the first history, and the Greek word biblos (book)comes from the Phoenician city of Byblos from whom the Greeks learned book making. The Phoenicians were maybe the most literate people of the time, as befits international traders.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

I was trolling you there.

[Kitsunegari]

You succeeded I'm probably way to proud of Phoenicia considering DNA testing on modern Lebanese has shown the results of many waves of immigrants.

[the persian Immortal]

Shahname is beyond the Achaeminid time frame.

actually it is about all tree Iranian dynastys pre-islam .

it talks about hakhamaneshian , ashkanian , sassanian , even solukian and iskandar. don't undrestimate ferdowsis work

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

It is about them, yes, but it was written in 1000AD.

[the persian Immortal]

and herodotus was borned in 484 BC , in his history in nine books he noted that he only writes what he have heard but there is no reason for him to belive his own writings .
when writing history you won't write what you have seen by your own eyes , you write what you have heard, so shahnameh is a very good source since persian sources written in 5th century BC are extreemly rare.

[TWWolfe]

and herodotus was borned in 484 BC , in his history in nine books he noted that he only writes what he have heard but there is no reason for him to belive his own writings .
when writing history you won't write what you have seen by your own eyes , you write what you have heard, so shahnameh is a very good source since persian sources written in 5th century BC are extreemly rare.

Herodotus was bore far closer to the events he wrote about, so that time hadn't degraded the reliability of the accounts enough to matter.

Tales written fifteen hundred years later, on the other hand, are far too inaccurate and degraded by time to be taken as anymore than folk tales by that point.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Exactly.


Either way, it appears Darius III defeated some revolt by defeating the leader in a duel before coming to power. Who would've expected that? However, that probably means a young man, clad in metal head to toe, armed with spear, axe and steel sword, with a lifetime of training under his belt, engaging some old man in cheap armor.

[century x]

Why are you so ridiculously defensive? I never said any of that. I am just setting some matters straight - there is no evidence what-so-ever of a Persian equivalent to Herodotus' histories or the Illiad (ok, maybe the Shahname qualifies for the latter, but no Herodotus).

I understand you are setting things straight but you need to be more open about the Persian culture and history.

Not only did we have Alexander burn it down to the ground but we also had a 20 year war with Arabs that destroyed everything and then a 200 year occupation in which they completely destroyed and erased our history and writings. That is what you need to understand. The Persians have very little of their history preserved due to this. Just because there is no evidence of it now does not mean there ever was.

Persians were forbidden to speak their language or even talk about their past. I can imagine 200 years of that there will be a lot of information and literature lost.

Who knows how many countless libraries were lost and burned in the Persian Empires. Priceless information that if they were preserved till this day your arguments will be very different.

[TWWolfe]

Exactly.


Either way, it appears Darius III defeated some revolt by defeating the leader in a duel before coming to power. Who would've expected that? However, that probably means a young man, clad in metal head to toe, armed with spear, axe and steel sword, with a lifetime of training under his belt, engaging some old man in cheap armor.

although the sword would have more likely been iron.

[DarthLazy]

I understand you are setting things straight but you need to be more open about the Persian culture and history.

Not only did we have Alexander burn it down to the ground but we also had a 20 year war with Arabs that destroyed everything and then a 200 year occupation in which they completely destroyed and erased our history and writings. That is what you need to understand. The Persians have very little of their history preserved due to this. Just because there is no evidence of it now does not mean there ever was.

Persians were forbidden to speak their language or even talk about their past. I can imagine 200 years of that there will be a lot of information and literature lost

Who knows how many countless libraries were lost and burned in the Persian Empires. Priceless information that if they were preserved till this day your arguments will be very different.

Prove it. I can name a dozen intellectuals from Iran that appeared AFTER the Arab conquests.

[the persian Immortal]

Prove it. I can name a dozen intellectuals from Iran that appeared AFTER the Arab conquests.

emmmmmmmm isn't that what we are trying to say ? we are saying that persian sources about preislamic Iran is extreemly rare we nominated some who we all know about shahnameh , manis book ect but you guys seem to not getting it , and counter this with "oh hell no! the writers was rather not native pure blood persians or they didn't lived in the time frame

Herodotus was bore far closer to the events he wrote about, so that time hadn't degraded the reliability of the accounts enough to matter.

Tales written fifteen hundred years later, on the other hand, are far too inaccurate and degraded by time to be taken as anymore than folk tales by that point.

muhahahahaha and that's why he says that 300 spartans held 3,000,000 persians back for 3 days right ?

I agree with you mate herodotus is 100% accurate

[DarthLazy]

Fact is, you may "guess" there would be persian literature, but there isnt, you need to have proof, you have none.

[Drtad]

Fact is, you may "guess" there would be persian literature, but there isnt, you need to have proof, you have none.

The Library of Persepolis, which contained a lot of literature including the Avesta (which only exists in fragments now mainly) was destroyed by Alexander's forces.

Given Persia's history of other cultures overrunning it at times (Hellenes, Arabs, Seljuks, Mongols, etc) I'd imagine that most Achaemenid records would be lost, besides their rock carvings. A lot of ancient kingdoms only have a few inscriptions left like this to prove they were literate cultures at all, like the Urartians and their steles. Don't forget that the Mongols burnt half the Khwarezmian Empire to the ground, and it might have been the half of Persia that Alexander hadn't touched.

The proof is in the circumstantial evidence. The Persians were undoubtedly influenced by Mesopotamian literary cultures, which were extremely rich and extensive in their subject matter (myths, reporting, king lists, dictionaries, hymns, laments, epics, etc). To say that the Persians, a settled people, adopted none of that for their own use isn't impossible, but it's highly improbable. The other people they conquered also had literate cultures, such as Egypt, Urartu, formerly Hittite regions, formerly Hurrian regions, and then the Greeks of Ionia and Anatolia, and we know how they loved their literature.

[century x]

emmmmmmmm isn't that what we are trying to say ? we are saying that persian sources about preislamic Iran is extreemly rare we nominated some who we all know about shahnameh , manis book ect but you guys seem to not getting it , and counter this with "oh hell no! the writers was rather not native pure blood persians or they didn't lived in the time frame

Yes exactly

Fact is, you may "guess" there would be persian literature, but there isnt, you need to have proof, you have none.

It was destroyed, gone lost forever. Who knows maybe in 10 years some random find in the Fars province will show Persian literature that pre - dates Islamic invasions, Alexander invasion, everything.

One can hope

[DarthLazy]

So we can only speculate.

[Drtad]

So we can only speculate.

Speculate rather definitively.

Let me give an example to compare. Armenia has nothing written left from its pre-Christian history (thanks to the efforts of Drtad III), except for Urartian steles and a few steles from Artaxias I in the 2nd century BC. Does that mean they didn't have any literature, and then all of a sudden started mass producing and translating books in the 5th century AD? That is highly unlikely, just like the Persians having no literature in Achaemenid times is very highly unlikely.