Persian Empire

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel. Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

Not be assassinated on the eve of his departure for Asia.

From Libya to Central Asia.

Invasion by an ambitious Alexander the Great who took over the Empire and turned it into an empire of his own.

Cyrus

Athens was part of an alliance of Greek city-states which varied in size from a couple of dozen to 180, led at first by Sparta, then later by Athens after defeat of the Persian invasion.

Cyrus the Great.

Libya-Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Thrace-Macedonia, Media-Persia, Central Asia, Western India.

Darius I

It extended from Libya to Central Asia. It was split into 20 provinces with Persian governors but the local governments continued their traditional systems. It was dedicated to maintaining internal and external security and promoting prosperity.

They did not want to be captured and put under control again of the Athenian tyrant they had expelled 20 years earlier.

Cyrus the Great.

Cyrus the Great, added to by Cambyses and Darius.

Establishing internal and external security, encouraging prosperity and establishing 20 provinces with Persian governors to promote and progress this.

They did - they provided the second strongest Greek contingent at the battle of Plataea, and after the Persian invasion was repelled, took over leadership for the next 30 years until the Persians agreed to peace.

He first got rid of a pretender king Bardiya after King Cambyses died.

Then he divided the empire into 20 provinces and established a Persian governor in each, responsible for internal and external security and collection of taxes. These were overseen by the king and his council and supported by the regular army forces. He also levied from the cities and provinces fleets of warships which formed the naval protection for security and trade.

The endless wars fought between the Greek city-states were spilling over and disrupting the Persian Empire, which had several hundred Greek city-states within it. Persia decided to bring them all nder control, and used their usual tool of bribing the upper class to agree. This worked for many of them, but the rest resisted and Persia invaded to impose tyrants to keep the cities at peace under a Persian provincial governor.

He used the same techniques of retaining local government with provincial governors appointed by him. It's just that he had a much vaster area to control.

He added an area in Central Asia, Thrace and Macedonia.

The Persians burnt down Athens including the foundations of the new Acropolis being constructed as payback for Marathon after Persia tried to invade Greece to gain more territory and was defeated.

The Athenians had previously helped the Ionian Greeks of the Greek city of Sardis, revolt against the tyrannical satrap of Persia and Persian subjugation in which the Persian temple of Cybele was burnt down. The Ionian revolt delayed Persia's attack on Greece and fuelled Persia's lust for more and more land. Xerxes then used the revolt as a pretext to invade mainland Greece.

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There was a group of hold-outs defending it and there was also payback - the Athenians had earlier been involved in the looting of the Persian provincial capital of Sardis in Asia Minor, where they destroyed the statues of the gods. But they wanted the city as quarters for their army.

20.

All - he took over all of the Empire and made it his own.

Cyrus, the first king of the Persian Empire was known as a just and noble king. He let go of the Israeli from Judea who were taken captives by the Babylonians to return when he took them out. After him came his son Xerxes who was in war with the Greeks and the other kings after him were involved in battles until Darius III lost to the Greek therefore the beginning of the Greek Empire.

It covered Southwestern Asia. Persia itself is Iran.