reply to post by dooper
Godfather, I almost don't know where to start to reply.
Start with admitting that you have some intense hatred for anything relating to Iran, that's a logical step.
You imply that Darius, and I assume Xerxes declared themselves to be a god-king.
Uh, no. That's what
YOU implied. The title "God-King" (which is lifted directly from the movie 300) implies the King of a nation considers
himself like a god to his people or above one.
The Persian Kings never did, they had many religious traditions in which all members of the Royal Court showed their subservience to a higher God.
Note this picture: (symbolising all member nations of Ancient Persia greeting the King)
The figure above everyone else,
is God. Darius on the left is looking up to him for guidance.
Why, if he really was "God King" and some Ancient Dictator that you love to imply he is, would he place himself below god?
Note also the 80 or so times "Auramazda" (the Zoroastrian God) is referenced in official Imperial reliefs like the Behistan Inscription:
mcadams.posc.mu.edu...
Oh yeah, the Persian Kings were full of themselves.
Can we stop with the sillyness now? You have absolutely nothing to prove your asinine theory.
He did as he pleased with his chattel, and he was a god-king.
According to a theory
ONLY supported by YOU. Find me one credible claim of this in an history textbook. Just one.
The same thing occurred in the Roman Empire, as a string of emperors violated Grimsley's First Law of Bull****ing. And so, they started
believing in their divine position. You point out that even Alexander believed that crap, so don't get your panties in a wad over this.
That's because Roman and Greek mythology and religion believed God could incarnated as a person, such as the Emperor or Basileus. Zoroastrianism had
no such belief.
Kings had control over their Empire, obviously. Thanks for further wasting time to state yet another blatant fact.
They did have the power of life and death and could overrule anyone else.
That being said, the Persian Kings
NEVER thought of themselves as God. Case closed.
Ever read a non-Iranian, non-Muslim influenced, secular history book?
Hundreds by now... after completing primary school and high school in Australia. I'm also taking a Classical Antiquity unit this year, with a minimum
8 textbooks.
See where it says "Location" on my avatar?
Terra Australis = Australia 
(That's Latin btw, I know, it must have confused the hell out of
you.)
Don't for a second assume to know anything about me. The fact that you believe person's ethnic background somehow influences their knowledge of
history according to you, shows how fargone your argument is.
You're resorting to labelling me "Iranian" just like Israel-apologists label people "Anti-Semite" when they dare to challenge their beliefs.
Alexander wanted to defeat Persia. He wanted payback for all the trouble Persia had created over the past centuries.
No, he wanted to rule the world. Do you know where the word "Hegemony" comes from? Greek: Hegemon, a title bestowed upon Alexander which means
"overlord".
This is the mindset of Alexander:
If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic (Greek), to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out
the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the
Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the
frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos,
the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic
revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…
* As quoted in "On the Fortune of Alexander" by Plutarch, 332 a-b
en.wikiquote.org...
Those are the delusions of a true hegemonic, dictator who had a lust to rule the world.
As his mentor, Plato taught him during his childhood,
all things Greek are superior to all things not.
Alexander was nothing short of an egotistical maniac.
Contrary to your statement, it can be argued that Alexander had lots of women, and like all kings, his marriages were made for political
reasons, not out of admiration for a culture he wanted to punish.
It
CAN be argued yes, if you really want to make yourself look entirely clueless, you may as well argue that point which no honest historian
would agree with:
In the years 330-327, we see Alexander appointing Persians in important functions, dress himself like an Iranian nobleman, introduce the oriental
court ritual (proskynesis).
www.livius.org...
Alexander's men attempted to kill him numerous times for what they saw as "traitorous intermingling" with barbarian culture that was widely held to
be inferior. He lost a lot of loyaly from this men as a result of this:
During this time, Alexander adopted some elements of Persian dress and customs at his court, notably the custom of proskynesis, a symbolic kissing
of the hand that Persians paid to their social superiors, but a practice of which the Greeks disapproved. The Greeks regarded the gesture as the
preserve of deities and believed that Alexander meant to deify himself by requiring it. This cost him much in the sympathies of many of his
countrymen. Here, too, a plot against his life was revealed, and his companion Philotas was executed for treason for failing to bring the plot to
his attention.
www.crystalinks.com...
So as I said, you
CAN argue that Alexander risked his own life and the loyalty of his Greeks for some vain political purposes.
Zoroastrianism of the Persian kings almost 2,500 years ago, is not to be confused with Islam, which didn't begin to spread until the seventh
century.
I'm not the one that was confusing it in the first place:
Your post on Page 2:
Their fanatical, fundamentalist Islamic leaders are once again compelling them without choice. Their religion? Submission. Islam means
submission.
Once again?
So it was these same "fanatical, Fundamentalist" leaders that were the Ancient Persian "God Kings" several thousand years ago, in era when Islam
didn't exist?
The destructive excesses of the Western nations seems to derive from concepts and practices not found anywhere else in the world. Free will.
Freedom. Economic freedom, political freedom, and religious freedom.
Let's talk relevance for a second instead of your run-of-the-mil anti-Islamic diatribes.
Thousands of years before modern Western nations even existed, there was religious freedom:
King Darius when he conquered Syria, Phoenicia and the modern-day regions of Israel he
FREED the Jews from centuries of constant oppression and
discrimination at the hands of the Romans. (Remember the Romans? The people who crucified Jews on crosses?)
King Darius gave them amnesty and freedom and that is precisely why there are still 30,000 Jews living in Iran today. The largest population in the
Middle East outside Israel, who have been an integral and inseparable part of Persian culture since the beginning.
Economic freedom existed under Persian rule as well. The
"Silk Road" of Central Asia was an ancient, international trade route stretching for
some 4,000 miles.
It was the world's very first, "free-market" economy. Goods and trade from Egypt to China flowed along the Silk Road passing along major cities
where traders stopped, set up shop and exchanged with the local population rare and exotic items.
It brought together nations and countries which had never even known of each other in antiquity by exchanging items for economic reward.
The Persians pioneered and controlled much of the Silk Road during the height of the Achaemenid and Sassanid Empires, long before anyone in the West
got over their isolationist trade policies and decided to start exchanging goods and services abroad, sometime in the middle ages.
Western nations habitually field bold, disciplined, well-armed armies of considerable power in times of need, and historically, these Western
armies, once turned loose, kill like no others on earth.
Yeah, uh once again, hate to break up your Euro-centric power trip there, but it was the Persians who invented the concept of heavily armoured cavalry
with their famed Cataphracts.
This then spread to Rome, who lost so many battles at the hands of these Cataphracts (notable of course, the Battle of Carrhae), that they copied them
and created their own armoured Calvary corps.
After the fall of the Romans, the concept of Knights and Paladins and the Feudalist era that spread across Europe were directly derived from the
Romans (who got it from the Persians).
Not to mention, military archery itself (which the Persians excelled in), the Chariot, the compound bow, chain-mail armour and plate-mail armour were
all invented in Ancient Persia and spread to Europe via contact with the Greeks and Romans.
The Persian Empire was during it's day, the unrivalled power in the world as the US is now.
Long before the term "Superpower" was coined, there already existed a historical example of one. The Persian Empire, undefeated for almost 1,000
years.
[edit on 10/4/09 by The Godfather of Conspira]
