The Persians: An Introduction (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Persians: An Introduction Kelly A MacFarlane Maria Brosius. The Persians: An Introduction. Peoples of the Ancient World. Routledge: New York, 2006. Pp. 217. $29.95 (pb.). ISBN 978-0-415-32090-0. Brosius’ general survey of the history and culture of the ancient Persians/ Iranians (from the rise of the Achaemenids c. 620 b.c. to the Arab conquest of the Sasanians in a.d. 650) is a useful look at a culture that is too often seen only through the eyes of the Greeks (the Persian Wars) or the Romans (their interactions with the Parthians and Sasanians). A brief introduction that covers the arrival of the Persians in the Iranian plateau and highlights their political and cultural achievements is followed by three chapters, each concerned with a specific dynasty (Achaemenids, Parthians, and Sasanians); two short excursuses intervene, the first on the creation of the Persians as “Other” in Greek texts, the second on the Romans’ depiction of the Parthians and its political uses. [End Page 558] Each chapter opens with the history of the relevant dynasty, which is followed by brief sections on cultural aspects, e.g., the army, Zoroastrianism, and the role of women. The histories, while informative, contain too much detail, with insufficient highlighting of the significance or importance of the details. For example, we are told that the Sasanian king Kavud I was temporarily dethroned in favor of Zamasp (153), but we are not told how, who Zamasp is, or what happened to him when Kavud I regained his throne (Zamasp is not mentioned elsewhere). The Parthian king Shapur I’s capture of the Roman emperor Valerian is mentioned (145), but its historical and political significances are omitted (never in more than two and a half centuries had a Roman emperor been taken captive, and it was only a few years earlier that the first Roman emperor died in battle). Without guidance, the general reader can easily get lost in the mass of historical detail and miss the larger picture. The sections on the political and cultural aspects of the dynasties are better as they provide some synthesis and analysis. The book is intended for a general nonspecialist audience and consequently, footnotes are kept to an absolute minimum (there are only twenty-one in total) and much is presented in an ipse dixit fashion. While this is understandable given the scope of the work, the approach is not entirely successful since in some instances even the general reader needs footnotes or at least bibliographic help to make sense of an argument, especially when there is controversy (there is a bibliography, subdivided by chapter). Brosius challenges the traditional view that Zoroastrianism was the official state religion of the Sasanian dynasty and asserts that, while influential, it had no official status (188). At the very least, the reader needs a footnote pointing to both sides of this debate and providing Brosius’ evidence for her position. Brosius also tends to prefer Persian sources to Roman whenever there is a disagreement between the two, without explaining why the former are to be trusted while the latter are not (e.g., the res gestae of Shapur I vs. Roman accounts of the death of Gordian). On a technical matter, there is some inconsistency in reference: Petrus Patricius on page 148 is Peter the Patrician on 154, and Peter Patricius on 174 and 183. A more serious fault is the maps showing the extent of the empire under various dynasties. The maps stretch from Thrace and Egypt in the west to the Pakistan/India border in the east and lack any indication of ancient borders, while the borders of modern states are given, and so are confusing if not outright misleading (a reader can be excused for thinking, on the basis of these maps, that Achaemenid Persia ruled Macedonia and that Ptolemaic Egypt in fact belonged to the Parthians under Mithridates I). Many of these shortcomings result from the study being intended as a general introduction and the limited scope of the series itself: condensing over a millennium of history and culture into approximately 200 pages is a difficult task; nonetheless, even in a book of this compass, judicious...