Second paragraph of third chapter:
It was rare for him to be home in the Persian heartlands of his youth. In the last two decades he had spent most of his time on horseback in far-flung places acquiring lucrative territory. But, for now, Cyrus was pleased to be at Pasargadae. Spring was the right time to be there and he was delighted to see how, over the years, his fine garden had matured with tall cypress trees running in straight avenues alongside bubbling streams which passed through endless stone water channels and little pools. Flowerbeds burst with the colour of exotic flora imported from each part of the empire, and every now and then Cyrus saw the red hash of a rooster’s coxcomb as the haughty bird strutted through the garden, its feathers shimmering black-blue-gold. Cyrus had a dozen cockerels, an unexpected gift of the Indian ambassador. Bas-bas they were called in Persian. They were angry and aggressive and Cyrus was shown by the ambassador how, in India, they were trained and used for sport. Consequently, he and his best friends wagered fortunes on cock-fights. But this particular cockerel did not fight. He was allowed to wander the gardens of Pasargadae and service the fat brown hens who gave Cyrus eggs on a daily basis – a new phenomenon for a society that knew only the seasonal hatchings of geese, swans, and ducks. His chickens were precious birds and Cyrus entrusted them to the safe keeping of their own warden, the Master of the bas-bas.
This book is about the Persian empire of the Achaemenids, starting with Cyrus II in the sixth century BCE, with the explicit intention of redressing history’s bias towards the Greeks whose side of the story has become the standard account.
I regret to say that I gave up on it before finishing the second chapter. I found the style too novelistic – how on earth can a historian tell us what was going through Cyrus’ mind at crucial stages, or give us details of what he was wearing on a particular day? This might have been excusable if the writing was sourced through footnotes or even GRRRRR endnotes, but there are none apart from a list of further reading.
Very disappointing; I had been looking forward to a proper analysis of a part of history I don’t know much about, but this ain’t it. You can get it here.
