The Persian Empire

By: John W. Lee, The Great Courses

Narrated by: John W. Lee

Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

For the past 2,500 years, we've heard about the Persian Empire as a decadent civilization run by despots, the villains who lost the Battle of Marathon and supplied the fodder for bad guys in literature and film. But it turns out this image is inaccurate. As recent scholarship shows, the Persian Empire was arguably the world's first global power- a diverse, multicultural empire with flourishing businesses and people on the move. The key is to look at the Persian Empire from the Persian's perspective. Over the span of 24 fascinating lectures, you'll take on the role of a history detective to discover the truth about this grand civilization.

You'll discover the key to the empire's success lay in its greatest rulers, each of whom played a critical role in shaping and strengthening a civilization we still remember today. But while the great kings were administering justice or waging wars, everyday Persians were just as important to the success of the empire.

You'll also learn about the empire's efficient communications network; the Persian economy and the workers and entrepreneurs who supported it; the role of women in the empire, especially the influence of royal women; and the daily cultural exchanges between the diverse peoples of the empire.

Professor Lee shows you a whole new history of the ancient world - a perspective largely unknown even by students of history. These lectures capture the people, the strength, the rise and the downfall of this great empire, revealing the complexity behind centuries of a previously one-sided history. Take this opportunity to complete your understanding of the ancient world and discover the humanity of the ancient Persians.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2012 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2012 The Great Courses

Ancient History Does Not Get Much Better Than This

Would you consider the audio edition of The Persian Empire to be better than the print version?

Not sure. I do not have the print version of any of the Great Courses. This category of Audible products is unique.

Have you listened to any of Professor John W. Lee’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Not yet but if he has any others available I definitely will consider purchasing them.

Any additional comments?

John Lee really made the history of the Persian Empire come alive for me. This is a difficult subject to teach because so much of the evidence was destroyed by Alexander the Great--and then buried under so many later layers of history. However, John Lee did a fantastic job of putting all of the evidence in context (in a manner that did not require one to have a PHD in Archaeology to understand) which allowed listeners to form more complex conclusions about the ancient Persians than the remaining biased sources state.

Good... not great

Dr. Lee is obviously very knowledgeable in his subject and many of the lectures (particularly the earlier ones) are very good. However, this course is at its worst when it is trying to argue against pre-conceived notions about Persia that most modern listeners would never have had to begin with. Unfortunately, Dr. Lee does this quite a bit. One example is his lecture on Persian women where he draws stereotypes about the ancient rights of Greek women in order to show us that what we thought we knew about Persian women is all wrong. I never assumed Persian women were less advantaged than Greeks?? He uses unfavorable Greek comparisons and anecdotal evidence from royal class women instead of spending that time telling us more about the role of women in the wider Iranian cultural context which would have been much more interesting.

I was also not convinced by his argument that Persia wasn't in decline in the mid-4th century. I understand why he does this but again I think he's fighting to hard against tendencies that the average listener doesn't have. Egypt was lost, the Greeks made inroads into Asia Minor and there were other internal problems... sounds like relative decline to me. Of course that doesn't mean the civilization was in danger of imminent collapse which I think should have been his point.

All in all though I was happy to see a course on Persia offered on Audible and I much enjoyed it despite its flaws.

Fantastic thematic historical exploration

As a student of history, I found this exploration to be filled with both crucial details that made me re-think ancient times and anecdotal cultural cues that wove a fascinating tale in my mind. Great balance of archaeological historical evidence, secondary sources and myth debunking!

This Book Would be Better as a Visual Experience..

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I am a history buff and admired Dr. Lee's command of the material and his passion for it. I know with other video CD versions of "Great Courses" there are handbooks, visuals, etc. as part of the video series. I suspect that those versions of this lecture have a non-stop series of images which Dr. Lee refers to as he lectures. It was difficult to visualize this very "fact-based" set of lectures. He describes artifacts, objects and locations, none of which you can see obviously, by listening. It seems that this soundtrack was literally lifted from the in-classroom lecture without any adaption for the audio-only format. The Great Courses publishers do this lecture series a great disservice by being careless in adapting this to audiobook format. I wouldn't take any of their courses without the visuals now.Without the images or illustrations/maps, etc it becomes quite frustrating listening to events located in ancient cities without being able to see where they are, e.g., "Babylon". A verbal aside saying "Babylon, located in central modern Iraq, near the city of Hillah", etc.would have helped for some basic geographic positioning instead of saying "it's on the same latitude as San Diego" which doesn't tell us anything of value. I quit halfway through the first section. I wish I could get a refund. That was an expensive experiment learning that "Great Courses" don't translate well into audio files.

What was most disappointing about The Great Courses’s story?

Darius dies.

What didn’t you like about Professor John W. Lee’s performance?

See above.Given it is so "fact-based", without images it doesn't lend itself to stand-alone audio without adopion (there are some great examples of how to do this on Audible- I just listened to "Without Their Permission" and the author was very considerate and did an audio book which was uniquely produced for audio. For this lecture series to succeed in this medium, it would have to be more story-driven (vs. fact-oriented); think of how David McCullough or Robert Caro tell a historical story.

Did The Persian Empire inspire you to do anything?

Yes, read some BOOKs on it. :-)

Any additional comments?

Someone should get the "Great Courses" people to stop trying to take the shortcut way of simply re-packing the existing audio and re-engineer their content approach for audio-only.

Disapponted

Would you try another book from The Great Courses and/or Professor John W. Lee?

Doubtful. Please stop playing the nerve racking music at the start of every chapter.

Would you ever listen to anything by The Great Courses again?

Probably, with hesitation.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

I do not know what this question means, The material were mostly trivial and extremely narrow in topic, not covering the great pre-Islamic contributions of Persian Empire in science, literature, arts for over four centuries.

Could you see The Persian Empire being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Absolutely.

Any additional comments?

The author did show a great deal of passion about his subject, I appreciated that. Unfortunately, he spoke only of the geography and wars of B.C. Persian Empire, very limited details, and nothing of the great engineering, mathematics, literature, medicine, etc. that all were developed between 200 and 700 AC centuries.

A 360 degree view of Ancient Persia

This is a great course for people new to studying ancient history or people that have studied it for years.
For periods I was familiar with, like Alexander's invasion of Persia, Prof. Lee does a great job of presenting the Persian viewpoint which is very thought provoking.
Topics like the role of women in Persia, the economy of the period, and the daily lives of everyday people were covered in penetrating detail with reference to the ancient sources.
The downside of the overall excellent presentation is that Professor Lee is too in love with the topic and appears to sometimes dismiss Greek sources completely while presenting Persian sources with little criticism.

Not bad.

This feels like a HS level set of lectures. Professor assumes everyone has some anti-Persian historical viewpoint. Hint, if someone is sitting down to listen to 12 hrs + of lectures, it's safe to assume objectivity is expected. Also Prof, anyone who takes 300 seriously from a historical stance, isn't a fan of history, they are a moron. I guess he must teach bunch of morons? We paid for this, we aren't being force fed it in some bleak classroom setting, thanks for making it feel like it. Unfortunate really.

Completely worthwhile!

I never really gave the Persians too much thought, and certainly almost no credit in terms of their success. Professor Lee frames the entire course in a more balanced perspective of the Persian empire than is typical. Overall, this course really made me realize how integral the Persians are to classical history; their impact on past and present times is remarkable.

Magnificent! Simply magnificent.

Professor Lee has put together as comprehensive, objective and complete a treatment of the Achaemenid Persian Empire as any I have come across, covering not just event history, but analyzing Achaemenid Persia in the context of of the larger forces of history, and covering such aspects as travel and communications in the Empire, and the lives and status of women. If you want to learn about the Achaemenid Empire, start here!

The Persian Empire.

Most of what we know about the Persian empire is what we read from the ancient Greeks. This course gives you a better perspective.

Love Persian history and this book is great. The great courses never let me down!

This is a great unbiased view of Persian history with lots of unknown facts from this learned lecturer. If you have a view on Greek history this audiobook offers a fair and fresh opposing view from the history writers from Ancient Greece and Alexander the Great.

fascinating insight into the unknown (for me!)

What made the experience of listening to The Persian Empire the most enjoyable?

The material is fascinating; well put together and well read.I know something of Egyptian, Greek and Roman history but very little of the Persian empire- other than the view that comes from Greek sources.This was an eye opener- not just about the Persian Empire, but also it's relationship to other things I know more about such as Thermopylae, Alexander the Great;...

What did you like best about this story?

I enjoyed all of this audio book: content and narration.

Which scene did you most enjoy?

Details of things like Artemisia- the woman Persian leader; the strengths and weaknesses of various leaders -especially the Achaemenid period with the likes of Cyrus the Great, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes...- people whom I'd heard of vaguely but knew very little about.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I kept making time to listen to this- a good sign for an audio book!

Any additional comments?

It's raised my interest to know more about the history of Asia- especially in a world of globalisation.

Excellent

Having only known of the Persians slightly I wondered what I would make of this and was pleasantly surprised. Very informative and helpful. It was pitched at a good level for me. The accompanying notes were good but one or two good maps would been useful in locating incidents. As ever we fell back on Google for maps.

An Exhaustive Account

Given that most of what we commonly know of Persia comes from a Greek perspective, through Herodotus and Arrian, detailing the battles of Marathon, Thermoplyae, Salamis and Platea and then Alexander's conquest, Lee sets out to provide a corrective to this, telling the story from the Persian point of view, and filling in the missing years.

Adding to the account using mainly Ctesias and Xenophon, rock inscriptions and the Persepolis Tablets, Lee largely succeeds in the attempt, teasing out significant levels of detail.

This is fairly exhaustive, by which I mean than almost every possible detail is utilised to its full extent, leaving one with the impression that there is not a lot more of general, rather than specialised academic, interest to be known.

Lee's presentation is good, the accompanying notes comprehensive, and all in all this one of the best Great Courses I have listened to.

Well worth a listen

Firstly this was a subject I wasn't versed in but it was very informative.Being from England some of the narrators pronunciations sometimes irked me.I know part of this Great Course was to sell the idea of the Persian Empire but sometimes I felt he felt he needed to diminish the Hellenes accomplishments in order to bolster the achiements of the Persians.Over all well worth a listen.

Great learning experience

Great to get updated on Persia.
However, the lecturer seems to miss the point that empires tends to base their rule on " do as we say or you will be killed"

Excellent

Very well researched and presented lecture course, enjoyed it. I learnt a great deal from listening to these lectures, thank you.

Brilliant

Another brilliant lecture series. One of the better quality ones. Highly structured. Articulate. Not overly long or detailed. Smooth, read, narration. Fascinating subject. Recommended.

Ideal for the amateur

This has really expanded my knowledge. As an interested amateur I’d only ever heard the Greek perspective until now. These 24 x 30 minute lectures are delivered beautifully with care and affection.

Informative and easy to follow

The lectures are broken down in manageable chunks and explained in a really accessible way.