The Rise of the Persian Empire: Professor Matt Waters on Ancient Empires and Cyrus the Great

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Persian Empire followed in the footsteps of the Assyrians and Babylonians, but it was a much different entity than its predecessors, and its founder - Cyrus the Great - deserves to be mentioned among history's most accomplished conquerors. Professor Matt Waters joins me to discuss Cyrus, the Persians, and the empires that shaped life for millions upon millions of people.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to Tides of History, add free on Amazon Music.
0:04.2	Download the app today.
0:05.6	Hi, everybody from Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History.
0:20.7	It is wonderful to have you all here and thank you for joining me.
0:25.0	One of the really wonderful things about diving into a new field of study is that you find
0:29.0	out just how much of what you thought you knew is somewhere between misleading and totally
0:33.4	wrong.
0:34.4	For most of us, the empires of the ancient Near East are unfamiliar territory.
0:38.4	Their background players in the Old Testament, tyrants, enemies of the Greeks, ultimately
0:42.2	supplanted by the Hellenistic world that Alexander the Great brought forth.
0:46.4	Yet in reality, the succession of empires that led from Assyria to Persia played a fundamental
0:50.8	role in shaping the lives of millions of people for centuries.
0:54.8	They laid the imperial foundation on which Greeks, Romans, and their successors built.
1:00.1	Today's guest is precisely the right person to help us make sense of these ancient empires
1:03.9	and their place in history.
1:06.0	Matt Waters is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Wisconsin,
1:09.7	O'Clair.
1:10.7	He has worked extensively on Assyria, Babylonia, and especially Persia and has authored several
1:15.2	books, including King of the World, The Life of Cyrus the Great, and Ancient Persia, a concise
1:20.3	history of the accammated empire.
1:22.3	Professor Waters, thank you so much for joining me today.
1:25.1	Thank you very much for having me, Patrick.
	...

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