Manjeet S. Pardesi

Persia as the eternal Other to the Greek Self is a fabrication of modern Western historians and public officials. I wrote on this in my recent essay in Current History (open access), which draws from a chapter: “Greek Myths and Persian Power,” in my 2025 book The Once and Future World Order. And the Greeks themselves did not identify as European or “Western.” Many Greeks preferred to work for the Persian empire than Athenian polis, where “liberty” meant liberty of the polis rather than individual liberty. “Just as Western historians, relying on partisan Greek accounts, have exaggerated the scope of liberty and democracy in Greek society, they have understated the openness and cultural accommodation afforded by the Persian Empire to its subjects. A fair number of Greek polities and trading settlements such as Thebes, Argos, and Megara preferred Persian rule over that of the Greek powers. As the late British diplomat and scholar Adam Watson writes, the “mild overlordship of the Persians was a lesser evil than the destructive harshness of their Greek enemies.” Plato went so far as to write that the Persians under Cyrus “gave a share of freedom to their subjects and advanced them to a position of equality,” in a view strikingly at odds with the dark portrayal of Persia typical to Western histories. Persia generally preferred indirect rule over conquered territories and allowed rather than extinguished Greek intellectual endeavor. The Greeks, on the other hand, persecuted their own philosophers who challenged orthodoxy or sided with Persia. Anaxagoras, who provided the first scientific explanations of eclipses and meteorites, was born in Clazomenae in 500 BCE when the city was under Persian control. He went to Athens to pursue his work, but was banished for his pro-Persian views.” online.ucpress.edu/currenthi… @GhoshAmitav @DalrympleWill @ShashiTharoor @CurrentHistory1 @kanishktharoor