Jokerang t1_iuwnr3w wrote
Reply to comment by HardPawns in TIL that the Persian King Xerxes was so enraged after a storm destroyed his bridges that he ordered the sea be given 300 whiplashes, and branded it with red-hot irons as the soldiers shouted at the water by LethalPoopstain
> The Greeks hated Xerxes
Not really, about 80% of the Greek speaking world sided with the Persians during the wars. It's only later that Athens made it out so that they were defending Greek freedom.
Crepuscular_Animal t1_iuwud87 wrote
Herodotus writes mostly positive things about the Persians. He says their laws are wise, and that they abhor lies and criticize Greeks for their tendency of scamming each other.
Lord0fHats t1_iuzfyib wrote
A lot of people who know of Herodotus but never read him miss this.
Herodotus came from Halicarnassus, on the Ionian coast and grew up under Persian rule. More Greeks lived in the Persian Empire than in what we now call Greece.
His account is actually pretty favorable toward the Persians in many respects. Badmouthing the Persians was an invention of latter Greeks, not Herodotus.
ShalmaneserIII t1_ivmnp88 wrote
Herodotus was born around 484 BC. During the Achaemenid dynasty, around that time, the Persian empire had 44% of the world's population.
The Greek poleis were scrappy little states on the outside of the largest empire (relatively to share of global population) the world has ever seen. It's inevitable that a lot of what they did and thought was going to be done in relation to that huge empire just to the East. "Yeah, Persia's basically what civilization is, we should acknowledge that and imitate parts of it" or "Yeah, Persia kind of sucks, look at all this bad stuff they do, we should do our own thing in contrast to them."
You see how this works nowadays, too.
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