Negative Positive
Title: Much Overrated
Review: This is not a history of Ancient Persia but rather a set of essays on just a few topics: "The Testimonies" (i.e. the historical sources); "The King and his Subjects"; and "Everyday Life".Basically, apart from the Bisutun relief (text available at http://www.avesta.org/op.htm) and the Persepolis Texts (R. T. Hallock, Chicago 1969), nearly all the sources are Greek or Latin upon which the author relies despite the contrary assertion given by the publisher on the flyleaf. It's not the ancient Greek and Roman writers that the author attempts to discredit but rather the modern writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Better to read "The Persian Empire" by J. M. Cook or "A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire" by Muhammad A. Dandamaev.
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