Iran in World History

Arya
, including Persians, Medes, and Bactrians) and non-Iranians 
(
Anarya
) who were the majority. Non-Iranians paid higher taxes, while 
Iranians were better represented in the army. Darius’s royal inscrip-
tions also give the first clear indication that the Mazdaean religion of 
Zoroaster had achieved the level of royal patronage: “A great god is 

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I r a n i n Wo r l d H i s t o r y
20
Auramazda (Ahura Mazda), who created yonder heaven, who created 
this earth, who created man, who created happiness for man, who 
made Darius king, who bestowed on Darius this land, large, with good 
horses, with good men.”
4
Darius considered Ahura Mazda to be his personal patron deity, 
just as Cyrus had earlier adopted Marduk as his. But that did not make 
the Achaemenid state officially Zoroastrian. The Median Magi, cus-
todians of the Zoroastrian rite, had apparently worked their way into 
Darius’s inner circle, but it would be another eight centuries before they 
could exercise full religious authority over Iranian society. Within the 
general population, religious diversity was the norm among Iranians 
and non-Iranians alike. This consisted of a wide range of cults to local 
deities, as evidenced by the records of priestly commissions preserved 
in the so-called Persepolis fortification tablets. These documents men-
tion only a tiny handful of ceremonies performed for Ahura Mazda, 
compared to much larger numbers dedicated to Elamite and other gods 
and goddesses.
In 515 bce Darius began building the palace complex of Persepolis 
(from the Greek, 
persis-polis
, “Parsa-the-city”) just north of the mod-
ern city of Shiraz, and construction continued for about a hundred 
years thereafter. Persepolis was the Persians’ springtime capital, a spe-
cial ceremonial center used on the occasion of the Persian New Year, 
Noruz
, when nobles from all across the realm brought tribute such as 
live animals or other valuables to the emperor. Processions of dozens of 
these gift-givers, each in their native garb, are depicted in stone engrav-
ings which are still preserved at the site.
Occurring exactly at the moment of the vernal equinox, Noruz 
was originally an agricultural festival symbolizing the ending of 
winter and the regeneration of life. Iranians seem to have adopted 
it from Mesopotamia, where its roots can be seen in the myth of 
the goddess Ishtar and her son/lover Tammuzi, who is sacrificed 
each autumn and enters the underworld, mourned by Ishtar with 
tearful laments until he returns to life in the spring. (This resurrec-
tion myth later served as the precedent for yet another springtime 
celebration, the Christian Easter.)
Mesopotamian traditions heavily influenced the monumental art 
of the Achaemenids as well. The 
fravahr
—a winged disk with a human 
figure in the center—was used as a royal emblem from Darius’s time 
onward. Originally derived from an Assyrian model representing the 
Semitic solar deity Ashur, the 
fravahr
symbol was used in Achaemenid 
times to depict Ahura Mazda.

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I r a n a n d t h e G r e e k s
21
For centuries to come, large numbers of Greeks and other eth-
nic groups would spend long periods as Persian subjects, especially 
in Anatolia and Mesopotamia, fostering considerable interaction and 
mutual influence between the two civilizations. Although the Greeks 
had managed to halt Darius’s expansion at the Battle of Marathon, 
Persian and Greek armies continued to push the border back and forth 
for the next thousand years. Many Greeks attained important positions 
in Persian society, and even at Athens pro-Persian groups were pres-
ent. Herodotus and other Greek writers popularized an “us-and-them” 
antagonism with their anti-Persian political propaganda, but on the 
ground Persians and Greeks often thrived together.
The history of the Achaemenid period is generally told in a way 
that emphasizes more or less constant battles between the two major 
powers of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Greeks and the Persians. 
Darius’s successor, Xerxes (Khshayarsha) I, renewed the campaign 
against Greece and entered Athens, where he burned the Parthenon 
in 480 bce. Two centuries later, Alexander of Macedon burned down 
Persepolis in revenge. What is often glossed over in discussions of the