Thinking Like a Persian King: Professor John Hyland on the Persian Perspective of the Greco-Persian Wars

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2023

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When we think about the wars between the Persians and the Greeks, our perspective is quite explicitly that of the Greeks. But how did the Persians view these conflicts, and what were they after? Professor John Hyland explains his fascinating research on how the Persians understood war and their war with the Greeks.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody, from Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History, I'm Patrick
0:17.4	Wyman, thanks so much for being here with me today.
0:20.1	The wars between the Greeks and the Persians occupy a foundational place in the birth
0:23.4	and development of a quote-unquote Western world.
0:26.0	They have held that place for a long time, literally since they were going on.
0:30.0	They were a touchstone for Greek identity, their sense of themselves and their place in
0:33.6	the world, part of a shared memory that bound them together in opposition to the outside
0:37.3	world.
0:38.6	That is mostly the version of events that we get, one, both tinged by and constitutive
0:43.2	of the role of the Persian Wars in ancient Greek memory.
0:46.9	But these conflicts were so much more than that, and less.
0:49.9	The Persian side of the wars, their reasoning, their perspective, their goals have received
0:53.2	far less attention.
0:55.2	Most of that has to do with the nature of the source material, but it's also been a
0:58.2	relative lack of study of the accammated empire on its own terms.
1:02.0	Thankfully, in recent decades, that has changed dramatically.
1:05.0	We can now understand so much more about the Persians, and that includes a much different
1:08.8	understanding of their wars with the Greeks.
1:11.7	Today's guest is an expert on the Persian Empire, and especially the Persian Empire's involvement
1:15.7	in the Aegean world.
1:17.4	John Highland is professor of history at Christopher Newport University.
1:20.6	He has published extensively on accammated Persia, including an excellent book entitled
	...

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