history ping!
At first I assumed this was about the Bush administration. Delighted to find an interesting history piece instead.
"CUSTER" was Evil?
I knew He embodied "the Peter Principal".
I knew he was Last in his Class, at West Point.
I knew he had an EGO.
I knew he distrusted "New" weapons {gattling guns, etc}.
I knew he got "whooped" by "savages".
I'm Amazed to learn that he was EVIL!
The author makes a point that Herodotus wrote the history, and so he did, but plenty of it is distinctly unflattering to the Greeks. It was, after all, Persian cunning and Persian gold that subverted Ionia and helped start the The Peloponnesian War so ably chronicled by Donald Kagan. It turns out that the Greeks did not despise the Persians at all, indeed, some of them - Alcibiades - ended up either under Persian protection at some point or actively employed by them.
Bump
Between you and I; I really feel the art of ancient Greece was more appealing than that of Persia` s; nevertheless, two things must be kept in mind. One; the Persians were such a huge wave that not only they influence and triggered Greece’s culture, but they themselves gave the world many enduring contributions such as, proper etiquette which included honesty, kissing one another during greeting, introducing and wearing trousers, not allowing public nudity, and other gifts to humanity such as being the saviour and protector of the Jews, tolerance for all other cultures, the first notion of internationalism, inventions of the first highways, courier post, governmental administrations like having governors, discovery of wine, introducing Satan, angels and demons, and possibly even the first monotheistic religion to the world. Indeed, Herodotus himself wrote the Persians teach their children two things; to ride horses and shoot arrows, and to tell the truth. Family values were of paramount importance, and the love between a man and a woman was the only accepted courtship: homosexuality was almost unheard of. Even Alexander himself succumbed to this culture, and was despised by the Greeks because of it.
Compare that to the idle worshipping, homosexual society of Greece, who’s so called Democracy murdered Socrates for telling the truth. Because of Persia` s culture and wealth, the Greeks were green with envy, yet, it was this power--Persia--that single handedly dominated Greek imagination, not only influencing and inspiring them, but also via competition forcing them to greatness as well. Alexander the Great in known as one of the history’s greatest Generals, but Cyrus the Great is known as one its biggest heroes. He is almost worshipped as a saint by the Jews. The megalomaniacs who you speak of, are the decedant, sexual sadists, power hungry, egoist, idle-worshipping, inhumane tyrants of Rome. Indeed as Persia’s religion, Zoroastrianism thought the Empire; the world is involved in a fight between the forces of light vs. the forces of darkness. And, with all due respect the forces of darkness were the Evil Empire that was Rome, not Persia.
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