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During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries historians and scholars collected the heritage of Classical antiquity, a corpus in which, traditionally, Greek vigor and Macedonian strength were contrasted with the weakness of the Persian empire. The latter was usually defined by its state of political and territorial disorganization, by its corrupting luxury, and by its irreversible military inferiority, in short by, to use the traditional expression, “Achaemenid decadence.” According to a tenacious stereotype, which can be traced back to Greek authors, this empire was wealthy and weak at the same time.(8) It suffices to examine a single example, the Histoire ancienne by Charles Rollin, which was published from 1730 onward to exceptional acclaim in all European states. Influenced by Bossuet (1681), Rollin developed a catastrophic view of the Persian enemy and its continuous decline from Xerxes to Darius III. Based on the same pedagogical and political presuppositions (the values to be impressed upon a prince), Rollin condemned Alexander’s excesses, which he saw corrupted by Asian luxuries:(9) “In imitation of the Persian kings he turned his palace into a seraglio, filling it with three hundred and sixty concubines (the same number Darius kept) and with bands of eunuchs, of all mankind the most infamous” (Rollin 1791: 168)
Read the entire paper on Academia.edu
(c) Pierre Briant: Collège de France, Chaire d'histoire et civilisation du monde achéménide et de l'empire d'Alexandre and Emeritus
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries historians and scholars collected the heritage of Classical antiquity, a corpus in which, traditionally, Greek vigor and Macedonian strength were contrasted with the weakness of the Persian empire. The latter was usually defined by its state of political and territorial disorganization, by its corrupting luxury, and by its irreversible military inferiority, in short by, to use the traditional expression, “Achaemenid decadence.” According to a tenacious stereotype, which can be traced back to Greek authors, this empire was wealthy and weak at the same time.(8) It suffices to examine a single example, the Histoire ancienne by Charles Rollin, which was published from 1730 onward to exceptional acclaim in all European states. Influenced by Bossuet (1681), Rollin developed a catastrophic view of the Persian enemy and its continuous decline from Xerxes to Darius III. Based on the same pedagogical and political presuppositions (the values to be impressed upon a prince), Rollin condemned Alexander’s excesses, which he saw corrupted by Asian luxuries:(9) “In imitation of the Persian kings he turned his palace into a seraglio, filling it with three hundred and sixty concubines (the same number Darius kept) and with bands of eunuchs, of all mankind the most infamous” (Rollin 1791: 168)
Read the entire paper on Academia.edu
(c) Pierre Briant: Collège de France, Chaire d'histoire et civilisation du monde achéménide et de l'empire d'Alexandre and Emeritus
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