|
|
|
The first empire builders Tom Holland's masterly study, Persian Fire, brings an ancient empire to vivid life, says Geraldine Bedell Sunday September 25, 2005
Persian Fire
Classical civilisation GCSEs and A-levels have, happily, since filled the gap. But there must be other people out there who feel, as I do, that ancient history is a shaming lacuna, a kind of black hole in the brain, and whose first response to a book about the Persian wars would be: 'Oh no, it's that ancient stuff that excludes me again.' This would be a pity, because there could scarcely be a better time to start thinking about the Persian wars. Tom Holland's panoramic and gripping book arrives at the same time as a blockbuster exhibition at the British Museum, which includes treasures that have never previously been seen outside Iran, and are beautiful, rare and liable to fire the imagination. Even more important, this book is an unequivocal argument for the relevance of ancient history. As we stand at the start of century that many would like to see as a time when civilisations are doomed to clash, Holland writes of a war between East and West which predates the Crusades, which is older than Islam or Christianity. The great kings of Persia, especially Darius and his son, Xerxes, ruled an empire stretching from India to the Aegean. No other state or nation came close for resources under its command or influence in world affairs. Yet at the same time, a curious project was under way in Athens, designed to replace the political ideal of good governance with a newer one of 'isonomia' - equality. The world was making its first experiment in democracy. This is not relevant? Holland never strains for modern references, but he doesn't have to; they are implicit in the stories he tells with such scholarship and flair. The Persian wars, as he points out, have become the founding myth of European civilisation. Here we have the triumph of freedom over slavery, of civic virtue against despotism. (That said, the Persians wrote nothing down, or whatever they wrote has not survived, and our subsequent interpretations have been heavily dependent on the Greeks). Holland believes that if the Athenians hadn't won at the Battle of Marathon, there would have been no Plato. And without Plato 'and the colossal shadow he cast on all subsequent theologies', it is unlikely that there would have been any Christianity or Islam either. But modern life also owes the Persians. They demonstrated the possibility of a multi-ethnic, multicultural, world-spanning state, a political model that would inspire empire after empire. Much later, in the same region, the caliphs echoed the colonising ambitions of Xerxes, 'albeit in pious Islamic idiom'. (And it is the goal of Islamic fundamentalists to see the caliphate restored.) Meanwhile, when President Bush talks of an axis of evil, his vision of a world divided by forces of light and darkness derives ultimately from Zoroaster, ancient prophet of the Persians. Holland makes these points and then leaves them. His interest is in relating his history as a powerful narrative for the general reader. He does so with drama and vividness, so that the battle of Marathon, the skewering and hacking, the pulverising crash of metal into bone, feels as if it could have been a matter of decades ago rather than millenniums, and the heroic last stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae is still painful to read. Holland is fascinating on military strategy, but doesn't neglect the startling detail. We learn, for example, that the Persians were so obsessed by physical appearance that even on campaign, every nobleman kept a personal make-up artist in his train. He is absorbing on the motivations of the main players: Xerxes, who saw that knowledge was power and commanded the first information superhighway, or Themistocles, the master of spin, of networking, infighting and making oneself visible, the key components of success in a democracy. Following Herodotus, to whom he acknowledges a profound debt, Holland presents a panorama of the world before it went to war. He writes about the rise of the Persian empire along the Khorasan highway, and the barracks society that was Sparta, with its master-race complex. The many notes on ambiguities of detail attest to the scholarliness of his project, but he doesn't let the uncertainties slow him down too much. The writing remains fluent and compelling. There should be a word of praise for the maps, too, which are invaluable. Holland has succeeded in doing something very difficult: making the period of the Persian wars seem not at all distant to a modernity that fears that the ancient world might be too abstruse, too esoteric, too far removed from our own concerns. The brutality of battle, the glee in killing, the pleasure in punishment - all these are terrifying, but too close to what we know about ourselves to be truly alien. As for the rest of it - the politics, the desire for domination, even the superstitions in the name of which great crimes are committed - they are grimly familiar. I haven't read Rubicon, Tom Holland's earlier account
of the fall of the Roman empire, but I will now. In Persian Fire |
