Persian Empire

The Persians did turn on the Babylonians because they wanted to enlarge their territories.

Alexander's soldiers on horseback, cavalry, were a strong force. They crushed the local Persian forces, leading to the final downfall of the Persian Empire.

The Kushan Empire began to decline under King Kanishka, who ruled in the 2nd century CE. However, it was during the reign of subsequent rulers, particularly in the 3rd century, that the empire fragmented due to internal strife and external pressures. The empire ultimately fell apart as various regional powers, including the Sassanids and emerging Indian states, took control of different territories that were once part of the Kushan Empire.

Twenty provinces (Satrapies) each controlled by a Persian governor (Satrap) responsible to the Persian king and his council for supervising the province's indigenous rulers, keeping external and internal security, establishing prosperity and collection of taxes.

The mother to King Darius one was called Rhodugune.

They banded together as a cohesive force, producing a combined navy which outmanoeuvred and defeated the Persian navy; and then without the threat of naval attacks on their cities, they were able so send out their armies to combine and defeat the Persian army. The Persian army was also weakened as, after losing the ability of their navy to protect their resupply fleet coming from Asia, they then had to send half their army home as they could not feed it, and this evened up the size of the opposing armies. And the Greek army had armoured warriors which outclassed the unarmoured soldiers of the Persian army.

It all hung on the elimination of the Persian fleet at Salamis.

Darius adopted the religion promoted by Zoroaster (Zarathustra), who simplified the Persian pantheon of gods into just two opposing ones - Ahura Mazda (Illuminating Wisdom) and Angra Mainyu (Destructive Spirit).

Zoroastrianism still has about a million adherents in Persia, Pakistan, India, and scattered through the world, with the US home to the second largest number. In India they are known as Parsees.

Persia was a tribal grouping in the Middle East which was subject to Media. In the mid-6th Century BCE, under its king Cyrus the Great, it absorbed the Medes.

With this combined strength Persia progressively absorbed the entire Middle East and Central Asia. Cyrus' son Cambyses added Egypt, and Darius I added western India and Thrace by the early 5th Century BCE.

From 550 BCE when Cyrus the Great began to take over the Middle East to 331 BCE when it was taken over by Alexander the Great.

In a pre-mechanical and pre-electronic world, communication was by land and sea couriers.

It therefore established river and sea transport for those cities near water, and for the others, post-houses which held relays of horses for couriers to use carrying messages.

Of course these transportation routes also carried commercial and military traffic.

Persia did not have an empire before it took over the Babylonian Empire.

It was a subsidiary kingdom to the Medes. Under King Cyrus the Great, took Media over, and this combined force was able to defeat the Babylonians and absorb them, which was the beginning of the Persian Empire.

After that the Persians moved on into Asia Minor the rest of the Middle East, Central Asia and under King Cambyses took Egypt and Libya.

Achaemenid Persian leaders had incredible tolerance for the religions and local character of the peoples that they conquered. As long as they acknowledged the political sovereignty of the Persians, they were free to worship as they wanted, live where they wanted, work in the fields that they wished, and speak their local languages.

Because it was bequeathed to him by his father Philip II of Macedonia. The plan was Philip's, but on the eve of his departure he was assassinated. His son Alexander then took over the project.

Philip decided to conquer the Persian Empire because, having brought mainland Greece under control, Persia offered a target for his boundless ambition. His son Alexander inherited boundless ambition.

After much fighting between his generals who succeeded him, the three major parts were Macedonia, Egypt and Syria-Mesopotamia

King Darius the Great.

By the time Cyrus took over, the Persian Empire was already well established by his predecessors Cyrus the Great and Cambyses. Darius added Thrace, Macedonia and the west of India up to the Indus River.

His major expedition to capture Scythia failed - he was driven back and rescued by the Ionian Greek fleet which had guarded the crossing of the Danube River for him.

His plan to incorporate mainland Greece was forestalled by his having to put down a revolt in Egypt, and he died before resurrecting that plan.

From 559 BCE to 530 BCE he took Persia from being a subsidiary state of Media to having an empire stretching from Asia Minor east to Central Asia.

To produce a civilisation, after producing a surplus to finance it, you need sophisticated ways of doing things. So you need specialised workers to carry it out. This was begun in the Middle East by the Assyrian Empire, replaced by the Babylonian Empire then by the Persian Empire to carry it on and improve it.

No , the Peloponnesian War was an ongoing conflict between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta lasting from 431 to 404 BC whereas the conflicts between Greece and Persia (known as the Greco-Persian Wars) lasted from 499-449 BC .

Cyrus the Great.

The attempted to bring peace and prosperity to the peoples living within it's Empire, stretching from Libya to Central Asia. They were largely successful, but the ambitions of Macedonia brought it to an end after two hundred years when Alexander the Great conquered it and turned it into an empire of his own and his successor generals divided it amongst themselves and waged war on each other.

He established fleets of trading ships to supplement the slow and limited cargo transport on the road system.

After it was established, it attempted to bring peace, prosperity and good government to its inhabitants and provide internal and external security.

The invasion was the project of his father Philip II of Macedonia. Alexander was to accompany him as a subordinate commander. On the eve of their departure for Asia Minor Philip was assassinated and Alexander took over.

The plan he took over was to first capture the eastern Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor through to Egypt in order to disband the Persian fleet by taking over its ports, so that it could not attack Macedonia and Greece in his absence in Asia. With this accomplished he could them press on to Persia for the deciding battle.