King and Court in Ancient Persia 559 to 331 BCE

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Jan. 2013 · Edinburgh University Press

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The first Persian Empire (559-331 BCE) was the biggest land empire the world had seen, and seated at the heart of its vast dominions, in the south of modern-day Iran, was the person of the Great King. Immortalized in Greek literature as despotic tyrants, a new vision of Persian monarchy is emerging from Iranian, and other, sources (literary, visual, and archaeological), which show the Kings in a very different light. Inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and their heirs present an image of Persian rulers as liberators, peace-makers, valiant warriors, righteous god-fearing judges, and law-makers.Around them the Kings established lavish and sophisticated courts, the centres of political decision-making and cultural achievements in which the image of monarchy was endorsed and advanced by an almost theatrical display of grandeur and power.This book explores the representation of Persian monarchy and the court of the Achaemenid Great Kings from the point of view of the ancient Iranians themselves and th

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Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University and a specialist in the histories and cultures of ancient Iran and Greece. He also works on dress and gender in antiquity and on the ancient world in popular culture, especially Hollywood cinema. He is the author of "Aphrodite's Tortoise: the veiled woman of Ancient Greece" and "King and Court in Ancient Persia 559-331 BCE" and of "Ctesias' History of Persia". He is editor of "Women's Dress in the Ancient Greek World", "Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras", "Creating a Hellenistic World" and "The Hellenistic Court" as well as numerous articles on Greek and Persian culture. Forthcoming work includes "The Culture of Animals in Antiquity" and "Through Esther's Eyes: An Iconographic Exegesis of the Book of Esther". He is the series editor of Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia and co-series editor of Screening Antiquity.