From peter-green-1@uiowa.edu Thu Mar 9 19:29:10 2000 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id TAA30572 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:29:09 -0800 Received: from ns-mx.uiowa.edu (ns-mx.uiowa.edu [128.255.56.78]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id TAA20285 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:29:09 -0800 Received: from DialupEudora (IDENT:CLImodem58WedDec3118000119690telnet_cmd11236@portal-3.weeg.uiowa.edu [128.255.56.103]) by ns-mx.uiowa.edu (8.9.3/8.9.1/ns-mx-1.7) with ESMTP id VAA60836; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 21:29:05 -0600 X-Sender: pegreen@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 21:18:09 -0600 To: mbcohn@earthlink.net (Michael BennettCohn) From: Peter Green Subject: Background to Achaemenid Persia Cc: classics@u.washington.edu Dear Mr Cohn: Since Janice Siegel has named me, I guess the least I can do is to respond. Besides, I like seeing accuracy in movies. The most recent work, and for you one of the most useful, will be Margaret C. Miller's "Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C.: a Study in Cultural Receptivity" (Cambridge UP, 1997). This covers a lot of the kind of thing you're looking for, and also has a huge up-to-date bibliography which you can search through. =46or the visual arts, the best work is still Roman Ghirshman's "Perse: Proto-iraniens, M=E8des, Ach=E9m=E9nides" (Paris 1963): I'm sure this has be= en translated, but I only have the French edition. The most recent general history (and one of the best) is Am=E9lie Kuhrt's ch. 13 in vol.ii of her "The Ancient Near East, c. 3000--330 BC" (Routledge 1995), 647-702, entitled "The Achaemenid Empire (c. 550-330)". Useful also from your viewpoint is Maria Brosius's monograph "Women in ancient Persia (559-331 BC)" (Oxford UP 1996). This too has an extensive bibliography that you can skim for likely material. Handy on the religious and social background is richard N.Frye, The Heritage of Persia (Mentor pb, 1966). Very full, and still useful in many ways though inevitably dated, is A.T.Olmstead's posthumous "History of the Persian Empire" (Chicago 1948).Lastly, Simon Hornblower's ch. on Persia in the 2nd ed. of CAH vol. vi (1994) 45-96, is a very useful survey, as is vol. ii of the Cambridge History of Iran, "The Median and achaemenian Periods" (Cambridge 1985) and J.M. Cook's "The Persian Empire" (London 1983). I hope some of this helps. PMG .