Cyrus The Great

Cyrus the Great ruled at a rare moment when empires could have chosen domination or cooperation. In this lecture, Dr. Roy traces the rise of the Persian Empire under Cyrus, exploring how conquest, restraint, and an unprecedented vision of tolerance reshaped the ancient world. Dr. Roy examines how Cyrus combined military brilliance with ethical governance, creating the first known model of an empire built on pluralism, legal limits, and respect for human dignity.


Takeaways

• Cyrus emerged from the convergence of Iranian, Median, and Persian cultures during the collapse of older Near Eastern empires.
• Horse warfare, mobility, and strategic restraint allowed Persian forces to defeat much larger armies.
• Cyrus repeatedly chose incorporation over annihilation, turning conquered peoples into partners rather than subjects.
• The defeat of Lydia demonstrated how innovation in currency, logistics, and battlefield tactics could overturn numerical advantage.
• Babylon fell without a battle due to engineering ingenuity and restraint rather than mass violence.
• The Cyrus Cylinder represents the first known declaration limiting state power over individuals.
• Religious freedom under Cyrus went beyond tolerance to active protection and restoration of temples.
• Slavery and human sacrifice were curtailed, redefining the moral boundaries of imperial authority.
• The return of displaced peoples, including Jewish communities, marked a radical break from earlier imperial practices.
• Cyrus’s empire functioned as a federation of cultures rather than a single imposed identity.
• His death on campaign underscored the limits of even the most visionary leadership.
• The Persian model influenced later ideas of rights, governance, and multicultural states.

Resources & References:

• The Cyrus Cylinder
• The History of Media
• The Battle of Pteria
• The Neo-Babylonian Empire
• The Battle of Opis
• The Persian Satrapy System

Beyond the podcast: 

• Want to watch this lecture? Check out the full video.
• Want to support the show? Buy Dr. Roy a coffee!

This lecture was originally recorded at the Museum of the Future for the series Lessons from the Past (2025).

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Roy Casagranda: Hi, this is Dr. Roy and welcome to my podcast. I'm here to tell you the enemy of every state is an ignorant population. It is too easy today to have uneducated people or people who are ignorant of a subject go to the internet and then spiral into some kind of bizarre conspiracy that misshapes their worldview and then creates people who don't quite understand the world they live in.
[00:00:24] What you need is a well-educated public that can see through whatever nonsense is happening. The last thing you want is a public that isn't steeped in reality. You want to give people an expertise, but you have to give them that well-rounded background. That's what creates the culture. How can you know anything about humanity if you don't do these things?
[00:00:45] So today's talk is about Cyrus the great ro. Um, it's actually. Part two of Grace and Tolerance, because Koro totally fits into that topic. He is one of my all time favorite leaders in human history. He did something truly extraordinary and he changed the way the world worked in the process. Unfortunately, our species is really, really awful at learning good lessons.
[00:01:16] We're great at learning bad ones. And so even though he set a standard that we should have followed, we didn't. So anyway, alas, it's sad, but I have to start with a caveat 'cause he's not perfect. 'cause nobody is like, if you want your heroes to be perfect and then you actually study them, you'll have zero heroes.
[00:01:39] That does that Doesn't happen. It's impossible. Where humans were flawed. In principle, I am always against the attacker. The attacker is always wrong. Right, and the, the conflict could be a really long one. So for example, in the United States, there is still a Native American struggle. I am on the side of the American Indians against the United States of America.
[00:02:06] Just so we're clear there, they were attacked. It doesn't matter that it was 418 years ago, the struggle never stopped. It's still ongoing. So I, having said that, Koro definitely attacks. So he's definitely in that zone, but I, I would say is ethically wrong. Having said that, what he also creates in the process is truly extraordinary.
[00:02:37] So it's not maybe forgivable, but nonetheless, there's a, there's a lesson in here, but before I go into all that, um. I'm gonna have to set up the background 'cause we can't just jump into this thing and, and not have any background. So if we run the clock back far enough, there were a group of people called Aryans.
[00:03:02] And I know that the word Aryan has gotten a bad connotation because of Hitler and too bad, let's take the word back. It, there was an attempt for years to try to replace it with Indo-European. Um, I think that's a dumb thing to do. I think, just take the word back. There's nothing wrong with the word. We're talking about 4,000 years of history that was interrupted by one idiot.
[00:03:26] So there's no need to give him that word. The Aryans, uh, there's two hypotheses about where they started from. One is that they started in Turkey and the other one is Kazakhstan. I don't know enough about this. The archeology to have an opinion. But I do know this, there's a series of fire temples that seem to go like in a line from Kazakhstan to Iran, and those fire temples get younger, newer as you go south.
[00:04:00] So I tend to think that the Kazakhstani hypothesis makes more sense. But here's the twist. Why can't both be true? Maybe there were two different groups of people who do migration and then combined and merged. What the Arians did that was unusual was not that they domesticated the horse, they may have been the guys who domesticated, I'm not sure.
[00:04:23] But they did something even better because when the horses were originally domesticated, they were domesticated as a food supply. What the Aryans realized was if you jumped up on their back, and you gotta remember like, this is the first time anybody's doing this. So there's no saddle, there's no stirrup, there's no bit bridle or reigns.
[00:04:44] There's no tack and harness, right? It's just you're jumping on the horse's back and you grab a fist full of mane. 'cause you're gonna need something to stay on. And then you're gonna use your leg muscles to squeeze really hard if you have anything in your hand. It could be a stick. It doesn't even need to be a spear or a javelin.
[00:05:04] And then you charge another person who isn't on a horse, and then you swing your club at their head. Even if they have a spear. You have a crazy advantage because you're on a large animal. Horses weren't that big in the beginning, but still relative to a human being. You're on a large animal who's charging at a really fast speed and you're aiming, you're swinging at their head.
[00:05:30] They're aiming, they're swinging at your leg. It's a bad transaction for the other guy. And then if you decide you've made a mistake and there's too many of them and you can't beat all of them up, you just ride away. They're not gonna be able to chase you. You're on a horse. But if they make a mis, they realize they've made a mistake and try to run away, you just run up and smack them in the back of the head as they're riding away.
[00:05:53] Like this is a very amazing event. The three great weapons were the bow and arrow, the spear and the horse. It completely transformed humanity. The Aryans do this and they go from a small group of people who were living in marginal land to conquering the Iranian plateau, and they name it after themselves.
[00:06:20] Iran is Aryan. It's just another way of saying Aryan. There are two countries on earth today called, named after the Aryans, Iran and Aaron. In English is called Ireland. Ireland is actually er, and it's Arian. So the Aryans conquer the Iranian plateau. And then they did something really interesting because they have this weapon that nobody, they can't, nobody can stop them.
[00:06:55] They break up into three groups. One group goes and conquers about 70% of India. The other group stays in Iran, and today are the Pashto and the Tajis. The Dari, the blue cheese, the Stanis, the Kurds, and the Persians. And then the third group goes to the caucuses mountains. And then little by little decides the caucuses isn't big enough for them and breaks up into smaller groups that then subsequently invade Europe.
[00:07:28] The first group to do so was the Celts. Now they went in a counterintuitive direction to get to Europe instead of going through Russia and Ukraine. Like that would, that's, it's just right there. They went through Iraq, Palestine. Egypt. They crossed all the way across North Africa. By the way, when they were in Iraq, they discovered the most beautiful sound ever made.
[00:07:52] The bagpipe, the bagpipe was invented in Iraq and they lo fell in love with it and they took it with them. And then they got to North Africa and left the bagpipe behind. Today there's still traditional folk music, the bagpipe music in Tunisia, and then they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and they, they went from migratory to conquerors and they conquered everything from Spain to Britain through Germany, through Poland, into the Balkans.
[00:08:20] And they, they looped back and they ended up conquering Central Turkey. So Central Turkey is Galatia Southern Poland is Gian, France is Gaul, Northwestern Spain is Galicia. It's all another way of saying Celt. So land of the Celts. Then subsequent waves of more S went in Romans, Greeks, Albanians, sls, and they ultimately ended up overrunning the native population of Europe.
[00:08:56] So, because I keep using the term Arian, somebody's gonna go, okay, wait a minute. Indians are dark, and Persians don't have blonde hair and blue eyes. Very often it happens, but it's rare. So what's with this? So when those populations conquered India and Europe, they bred into the local population and the conquerors were a minority.
[00:09:21] So if you just think about the genetics here for a second. Right. If you're a minority and you've been around for, in an area for 3000 years, your DNA gets sucked up really fast by the majority, and so you're gonna end up looking like the population you conquered. Right? Look at the pictures of Turks from a thousand years ago and then look at Turks today.
[00:09:44] They all look the same. 'cause the pictures of Turks from a thousand years ago look like they're from East Asia because they were from Central Asia. But today they look like they're from the Middle East because they've bred into the local population. That's just how DNA works. So the aliens who conquered India look like Indians.
[00:10:01] Syrias, who conquered Europe, look like native Europeans. There is only one pocket of native Europeans left, and it's the Basque in northern Spain and the southwest corner of France. They've held out for 4,000 years. Against Arian Conquest. I mean, they were, they were conquered right by the Spanish and the French, but they've, they were never assimilated and destroyed ethnically and culturally.
[00:10:28] It's incredible to think about, like, talk about resistance. It kind of almost makes you wanna harvest Bask DNA. So is that a bad thing to say or I'm just, it probably was wrong. Was that a eugenics thing? I'm pretty sure I crossed some kind of ethical boundary. Alright, so the group that stayed behind is the top topic of tonight, but there's actually two groups that stayed behind because in the north, so think Kazakhstan Turk, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, right?
[00:11:03] Central Asia, but then stretching all the way across Southern Russia and into Ukraine and right up into what is today, Romania. So all the way across. We're a group of Iranians called Ians. They were the uncivilized Iranians, I'm gonna use the term Iran, for all the people who stayed behind. And then I'm gonna be careful and say Meads for the Meads and Persians.
[00:11:35] For the Persians and Kurds. For the Kurds. But so the, the Ians were in the north and then in the south, and the further south he went, the more civilized people became. So like the Meads ate with their hands and they talked while they ate and they burped while they ate. But further south, the Persians didn't talk when they ate and they never burped.
[00:12:00] There was never any gas released from their bodies, ever. They were, they were perfect and, and they ate with utensils. Right. But when you were with the Saka. They had skulls that they used for cups, human skulls, and they would pour wine in ephedra in the cups and they'd mix it up ephedra as a stimulant, and they would drink it.
[00:12:25] So, and they were covered in tattoos, and they would take a knife and they would make scars all over themselves. Anyway, so you, there's the full range of everything possible in, in human civilization. The completely insane people in the north and the completely insane people in the south. It's just the middle where they were eating with their hands that weren't, that were okay.
[00:12:47] The moderate people. So the Persians settle in, the meads settle in, and they get conquered. Well, the Western end gets conquered. They get conquered by the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian Empire is this big monstrosity. It's very successful because it took the horse technology from the Aryans and went Yeah.
[00:13:17] And they conquer Egypt to Western Iran. And they have a big empire and they're a little ruthless and they're a little rough around the edges, but the artwork is amazing and they're truly glorious. There's just no two ways about it. Um, they're, but they are rough. Like you don't wanna be the loser with the Assyrians.
[00:13:38] It's not great. Little by little Persian or I, I should, I need to be careful. Iranian resistance. So the Meads and the Persians begin to little by little, carve out their independence so that by sometime around the year six 80 ish, 6 85 BC. There is enough sovereignty for the me mead state that it's actually become a local power, and the Syrian empire is shrinking and it's crumbling, it's coming apart at the seams, it's on its death throws.
[00:14:14] The Persians become a satellite state for the Meads. And, uh, we're not actually sure exactly where this, where this guy comes from. He's a Persian and he may not even be real. He may be a legend. Um, it may be that Ush later on retroactively created him. But is Hamish. Hamish was his name, and he gives the name to KO's Dynasty, the Hamish, also known as the Hamed Dynasty.
[00:14:51] Um, he, if he was real, and I think he was real. 'cause why not? I mean, just because we don't have a lot of evidence of his existence doesn't mean he, he, we should, we should just automatically write him off. Oh, I, I should say something to, before I go on. Um, if you look at European and American literature on this, on Cyrus the great from like the 1970s, 1960s, 1950s, he was a saint.
[00:15:18] The, the Persians were perfect in every way. They were the model civilization. If you read Xenophon, the Greek, uh, writer and mercenary, um, he loves Cyrus the Great, and he loves the Persians. Uh, one of the coolest books you'll ever read is the Cedia, which is about Cyrus the great's life. It's written 200 years later though, so don't accept everything as fact.
[00:15:43] Um, it, Anna Bassis is a fun read as well. Um. What happened was 10,000 Greeks ended up as mercenaries 200 years after my story. But I just wanna sort of set the stage for this In Persia and two brothers, when their father died, decided each one was gonna become the next and Emperor and the Civil War breaks out.
[00:16:08] And those Greek soldiers included Efan. Xenophon was a student of Socrates, and uh, he was an Athenian, but there was a bunch of Spartans. And the Spartans were in charge, and the Persians are actually wiped out. But the Greeks managed, the Persians on their side get wiped out. But the Greeks on that side, by the way, the guy's name was Cyrus, the younger, they survive and then they have to fight their way back to Greece and they're being pursued by the Persians the whole time 'cause they're on the losing side.
[00:16:40] And it's a, it's an epic story, but it also gives you a lot of insight to the culture and the history of that moment. And, and how amazing Xenophon was. The guy was truly incr. Oh wait, he wrote the books and he is probably really biased about himself. So yeah, take that for a grain of salt. Ous hates the pers, he can't wait to trash them.
[00:17:05] He makes up stories. He takes old stuff from mythology that had nothing to do with Persia and then just changes the names and sticks 'em Persian liers just to trash them like he can't stand the Persians. Uh, he was born in the Persian Empire and what happened was his uncle tried to do a ude to against the ruler of Kario, which was a Persian tropi, and they lose, they don't pull it off, and he, he ends up fleeing to Athens, so he needs to please his Athenian hosts.
[00:17:42] And so he goes out of his way to villainize the Persians. Even though, right? He's a product of the Persian Empire himself. He's a jerk. What I've noticed is the literature since 1979 doesn't quite portray Cyrus the great quite as well, and there's now like, oh, well maybe he wasn't quite as cool. I just wanna point out how the present can have this weird impact on our understanding of the past.
[00:18:15] And so I am gonna try not to buy into that. But I do think there's a weird bias that's been, especially in the last 10, 15 years, I, it seems like every few years, suddenly the Persians aren't as cool, the ancient Persians. And I, I just, that makes me wonder, oh, is there an agenda here? Why are you cheering?
[00:18:37] Oh, was there an agenda in the seventies? Anyway, I'm gonna go with Xenophon. I really like Xenophon. Uh, so, you know, when, when Socrates is killed, Plato writes The Apology, which is the explanation of Socrates' death. And Plato loves Socrates. He's so perfect in every way. Xenophon wrote his own version of The Apology.
[00:19:02] He trashes Socrates pretty thoroughly. I, I, I feel like that alone makes Zenon a more reliable source just because he, you know, at the same time, he loved Socrates. He was his teacher, but he wanted to be honest, he was coming clean. And he is like, yeah, no, he is a flawed human being. He wasn't perfect, but, but Plato, uh, that guy.
[00:19:23] Anyway, what can he do? I actually really love Plato. It's just he was also a profoundly flawed human being. Um, okay. So I just needed to get that out away. So if it sounds like I'm pushing back against the current narrative, it's 'cause I don't think the current narrative is unbiased. I like the, the Xenophon narrative better.
[00:19:44] Um, okay, so Hamish, we are not exactly sure exactly where he pops up. He's a general, he ends up being part of the push against the Assyrians and he conquers about half of Elam. So Elam is today, Stan, it's in the southwest corner of Iran. The I Iami were a language isolate. There's no related language to Iami on the planet.
[00:20:12] They were not Aryan, they were not semis. They were wedged between Aryans and semis, but they were neither. Um, so now there are Persian rulers for the Western, sorry, for the eastern half of Elam, and the Assyrians still own the Western half at this point. And they, when the Persians take over, they put the capital in Anson and they call it the Kingdom of Anson.
[00:20:36] And it becomes a vassal state for the mead state, which is to the north and bigger. Um, the mead, the language of the meads is extinct, but it was very similar to Kurdish and Persian. Like I imagine the average Kurdish or Persian speaker would've understood what they would saying. It's uh, not much different from them.
[00:20:57] So they had a lot in common linguistically, even if culturally one is eating with utensils and one is eating with their hands, um, anyway, you don't think that's an important distinction. The Persians really did this, upset them. They were like, what is wrong with our cousins to the north? Why are they like this?
[00:21:18] So. Um, the, the Hameshi, the family tree is Hamesh. Then Tpe becomes the next king of Anan. He's replaced by Cyrus, the first who's replaced by Kabi. The first and Kabi. The first is the father of Cyrus, the second Cyrus, the great Roche. So that's the guy, Oria. But Koro has an interesting lineage on his mother's side as well.
[00:21:49] So his mother was a woman named Manana. Her father was a, was the king of the means. His name was Tu. So when the Greeks heard ish Vigo, they went and like, what was that encounter like? What's your name ish. Vigo. Whoa. How did you get that?
[00:22:17] Okay. And so as you look him up and you see, if you look him up, you have to look Upas 'cause ish married Es So Ana's mother was, es es is the sister of esis. ESIS is the king of Lydia. Lydia was a large state in Western Anatolia and what is today Western to. So they really matter. And I, and I, I want to talk about them briefly just to give you a sense of what's going on.
[00:22:53] 'cause this is a really critical moment in human history, right? Buddhism is being created in India. In this moment, the Zoroastrian religion has become the new state religion of the Persians. And so it's there, there are these two brand new, relatively brand new religions popping up at the same time that are gonna play a major role in the Middle East.
[00:23:12] There's a reason why there were Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, right? That what was happening as the Persian empire was going into decline at the moment that the Islam came onto the scene was in the, in the western part of the Persian empire. Persians were converting to Christianity, but in the eastern part of the Persian empire that are converting to Buddhism.
[00:23:32] And then Islam changed all of that. But, um, there's also something else going on, something even maybe more earth chattering than, uh, two new, relatively new major religions. The Greeks have a colony. They have a few colonies. The Ionian colonies on the western coast of tortilla Miltos, Ephesus are probably the two most famous of them, but there's, there's actually quite a few of them.
[00:24:02] They go down into Kaia and they go all the way up the coast through Bethia. Bethia is the northwest corner of Antalia. Um, and they have just done something actually really strange. I'm gonna open the black box, so if I, if I can figure out how, so I brought show and tell
[00:24:31] and I should have put these on top, I guess. All right, so
[00:24:37] they just did this. So these are coins. They're really tiny. I would've lost these all the time. Like they should have been a nightmare for me. Uh, I don't know why you would make coins this small if, you know, like how do you keep track of them and then counting of them would've been a pain with my big fat fingers.
[00:24:59] Like, ah, I don't, I just don't understand. Anyway, um, this one is actually a little strange 'cause it actually has a lion face on it. Um, it's really hard to see 'cause it's so tiny. But they actually went through the truck. The other one is just round and then on the backside they punched. They punched it. So there's a dent on the backside of these coins.
[00:25:22] We don't know the exact years these were made. We think these two coins were somewhere between 600 and 650 bc. These are two of the first coins ever minted. Uh, the round one is probably the original dye that was cast to make the original coins. They're electrum, they're silver and gold mix and they didn't know how much gold or silver that was in them 'cause they didn't know how to separate them.
[00:25:49] So they, so they were the first coins, but their true value was sort of iffy. You have to remember there was no currency for the majority of the ancient period. So in this really strange way, um, everything was by barter. So one of the confusing things then is how do you know when. There's slavery, right?
[00:26:12] Because if I, somebody's in my employee, I pay them through food and clothing 'cause there's no coins, right? And then I, I, I maybe provide them with shelter. If someone's my slave, I give them food and clothing and I provide them with shelter. So where's the, where's the boundary on that? And the answer will just boil down to my employee has the right to quit.
[00:26:41] My slave doesn't. That's, that was basically the gist of the difference between the two. But in terms of like wealth accumulation, it's essentially gonna be the same. 'cause you have to remember, right? Ancient and medieval slavery was just forced servitude. It wasn't the stuff that the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English, the French were doing, which was genocidal, chattel, slavery.
[00:27:07] You know, industrial scale brutality, this is a very different thing going on in the past, but once coins pop up, now you can definitely tell the difference between a slave and a paid employee because now you can, you can pay them and you wanna pay them because it's just easier now that you can go buy their own food and their own clothing and take care of their own shelter.
[00:27:30] And, and it also makes it really easy 'cause think about how, in how hard economics was before, like you want, you want a dozen eggs and you have a bolt of linen, uh, and you, you walk into the egg shop and you're like, how many eggs can I get for this bolt of linen? And the guy goes, zero. I don't want it. So then you go to the guy who's selling salt and you go, do you want linen?
[00:27:58] And he goes, sure. And he gives you a bag of salt and you go back to the egg dealer and you go, do you want salt? Like, I don't, that sounds like a nightmare. I don't even know how you figure out the value. How much, how many eggs do you get for a bag of salt? So coins changed everything. Lydia is right next to Ionia and the King, king Atu ends up adopting those coins.
[00:28:26] They're made of Electrum. And then his son, esis, the brother of Es, the grandmother of manana, sorry, the grandmother, sorry. It's the mother of Manana. Uh, who's the wife of Cyrus the Great. So ESIS is the guy who figures out how to separate gold from silver in Electrum, and as a result, Reis becomes filthy rich.
[00:29:01] The Kingdom of Lydia is rich out of its mind because it, if you have a choice of Ionian coins, like the ones I showed you, or you have a choice of, uh, cro ais coins, you're gonna, or Lydian coins, you're gonna take them. So I actually have a silver, uh, Lydian coin. It is actually from Cro ais. This is Cro ais is coin.
[00:29:23] It's a lion charging a bull. You can't probably see it 'cause it's so tiny. But, uh, this is minted probably 700, I'm sorry, 575 bc, somewhere around there. Um, so ESIS has a fun encounter with a, an Athenian named Solon. So ESIS is about 30 years older than Cyrus the Great, but their two stories are gonna intersect.
[00:29:53] So I just wanna set him up for the intersection that's gonna come later. Solan was supposed to be the wisest man in Athens. Athens got into this brutal civil war. Terrible, disastrous civil war. The king died. There was no error. And so factions formed and they began fighting each other. But it's a city state.
[00:30:17] So when you fight in a city state, you're not out in the fields fertilizing the fields with the dead. You're fighting house to house through the marketplace, through the streets. 'cause if you leave the city, you automatically lose, right? 'cause as you leaving, they just run over and close the gates. 'cause the city has a wall on this.
[00:30:36] So you have to stay in the city's Athens is dying. It's finished. There's no way it's gonna survive. This people are pouring out of the city because of the, because of the violence is too great. I don't remember how many factions there are. So it's not even like, it's too factions. And there's a thin line in between them.
[00:30:55] This is. You know, and the, and the, the lines are constantly in flux. So people are just leaving, they're abandoning a city. The factions realize one of them will eventually win, but they'll win a ghost city and what's the point? So they get together and they try to come up with a compromise. And the compromise is they're going to turn everything over to Sallan.
[00:31:19] The wisest man in Athens, they bring her over and they say, design a civil war, proof government, whatever you decide, whatever you create, we will accept it. We've, we're, we're literally surrendering to you. You're the victor. And Solan goes, okay. 'cause he was a, he was that kind of guy, and he draws up a, a constitution.
[00:31:45] And then he goes and he shows the factions and they notice he's got a stick with a bag on it. And they go, what are you doing? He goes, I'm leaving. And they go, what do you mean you're leaving? He goes, I designed you a republic. Enjoy the factions. Can each elect their own representatives and you can just argue with each other in the legislature instead of killing each other and about in the city, in the streets.
[00:32:10] And, and they're like, yeah, but what's with the bag? He goes, I told you I'm leaving. You go, why are you doing this? He says, 'cause you're idiots. The first thing you're gonna do if I stay here is wreck my republic by electing me to become king. I gotta go so that my republic has a chance of survive in your stupidity.
[00:32:29] And he leads, one of the places he goes to is the Kingdom of Lydia, and he's hanging out with King esis who can't wait to talk to him. And ESIS is like, I've gone to the Oracle of Delphi and I've gone to this Oracle. I've gone to that Oracle, and I'm, I'm trying to figure out the pattern. And in the process.
[00:32:51] They're, they told me this tale, and I don't know, can you help me? And solans like, uh, no, I can't, I can't help you. You can, you can only ever know what the Oracle meant after it happens, at which point crisis is like, then what's the point? And Solan goes, I don't know. You're just gonna have this puzzle that you're gonna sit there and spin your wheels over, and you're, and then when it happens, you'll be like, oh, that's what it meant.
[00:33:23] And so s goes, okay, well that's lame. Then he goes, what? Who's the happiest man on, on the planet? And, uh, someone says, I need to think about it for a moment. He goes, okay. So there were these two young men whose mother asked them to participate in a ceremony, but she was too frail, and so they carried her on a lit.
[00:33:49] And took her to the ceremony and then they died a few days later. They were definitely two of the happiest. And, and at that point, crisis is looking at him. He's like, look at my pile of gold. How am I not the happiest man? He goes, oh, there was another guy. He was in the service of the military and he died in battle.
[00:34:10] He was one of the happiest men to ever live. And s goes, no, look at my pile of gold. I'm filthy rich. I'm clearly the, the, the happiest man on earth. And song goes, no, no. We'll know whether you are the happiest man on earth, whether you die, because at that moment we can look at your life and we can determine.
[00:34:30] But right now your stories as of yet untold don't leave that hanging. Also, I wish I remembered what the Oracle of Delphi told them. I should have looked it up before I came. I just didn't think to look it up. It was, it was cryptic. It was something like, uh, there will be a great power in the East and something awful is gonna happen to you.
[00:34:55] But it wasn't quite that clear. It becomes really clear after something awful happens to him. All right, so back to Anshan. So Koro ii, Cyrus's second is now the King of Anan, which is this small vassal state. It owned a little bit of Persian territory, but it's mostly Eastern Elam. And then immediately to the east of that was, was the Kingdom of Persia.
[00:35:26] Now, um, uh, our emus, our aem, I think is his name, is the king of Persia at this point is the king of the meats. So his grandfather is, is in charge of the meads. Ours is. Ro is dad's cousin, so it's du vi's nephew. And then, uh, Kuro is du vi's grandson. Koro decides he doesn't wanna be the king of Anan. He wants to be the king of Persia.
[00:36:04] The problem is his father's cousin, his cousin once removed, is the king of Persia. So he needs to take that guy out. But he knows if he attacks ish, Vigo will be angry and he'll come do, he'll come straighten ash out and he'll punish Koraj. And the reason he knows this so clearly is he actually lived with his grandfather for years.
[00:36:30] So when he was a child, he went, I, I wanna say he was like six years old. He moved. To, to uh, live with his grandfather. And his grandfather would take him hunting and his grandfather taught him how to eat properly with your hands. And his grandfather told him that it was good to talk during a meal and it was good to make sounds while you're eating.
[00:36:52] And so Koosh had learned this wild mead style of life. And in the process he fell madly in love with his grandfather. They became really close and he came to know his grandfather 'cause his grandfather was, would teach him battle tactics. He was teaching him history, he was teaching him mythology, he was teaching him philosophy like he was teaching him everything he knew.
[00:37:17] So Kors now knows if to Vigo isn't gonna take this play well. So he decides the only way he can pull this off is he has to set up a trap for his grandfather. So what he does is he marches an army into Persian and he attacks and he captures Pa oh God. And he captures his father's cousin. And he knows as soon as Word gets back to his Stu Vigo, there's gonna be a media median army coming for him.
[00:37:56] That'll be much bigger than his. And then he has no chance against this. So he runs, he takes his army and moves as quickly as he can. There's a mountain pass that the Mead army is gonna have to pass through. It'll go through Esfahan and it'll come down this valley and it's gonna hit this mountain pass on its way to pa God.
[00:38:14] And he, all he has to do is set up the ambush right there at the mountain pass, and he ambushes ish, Vito's bigger army. The the means are shocked. They're defeated and they route, it's one of the first times the means are defeated in battle. Like they don't do this. That's not their thing. They win. And the grandfather takes his army and races back towards Han and Koro chases his grandfather down and he catches him and fights him a second time somewhere, probably just east or southeast of Han and defeats his grandfather a second time.
[00:38:53] And Ht Vigo is stunned. He can't believe that this has happened. He holds up a white flag and comes out and goes up to Koosh and goes, what are you doing? Why have you done this to me? And Koosh says, you're my grandfather and I love you and I would never, ever do anything to hurt you. And I know I have hurt you now, but it's for a greater cause.
[00:39:24] I am serving the greater good for humanity in this moment. So here's what's gonna happen. Our semi. He's fine. I'm gonna make him a governor. He's gonna become a sat trapp. He's no longer king of the Persians. I am. There's no longer a king of anon. It just got annexed by the king of the Persians. Me done that.
[00:39:48] That conversation is finished, but he is fine. I'm not gonna hurt him. I'm not gonna kill him. I'm not gonna cut something off of his body like his ear or something. He's fine. He's gonna be okay. And you are too. You're gonna remain king of the means. I'm not gonna try to conquer your kingdom, but you are now part of an empire.
[00:40:13] You're the king of the means. I'm the king of the Persians. We are equals in everything. You're my partner, whether you like it or not. And now let's go build a really big empire together. And each two Vigo goes. This is the weirdest surrender in human history. At least you don't call me Osteous, and they do it.
[00:40:38] They make an empire together. Two kingdoms join together in a single state with two kings equal power, which is, by the way, a terrible idea, right? Just think of a marriage and how complicated that is. If you have two people in a marriage of equal power, constant arguing, the best arguing the world has ever seen, it's delicious.
[00:41:01] It's the spice of life. That's how it should be. Because I don't know if y'all have figured this out yet, but women are wiser than men. I know it's like totally taboo to say, but we all know it in our hearts. We won't admit it in public, but maybe we should. Like when I compare my mom to my dad, oh my God, like orders of magnitude difference between the two, it's not even comparable.
[00:41:29] Like one was on the verge of enlightenment and the other one crashed out of existence and the oblivion.
[00:41:39] Anyway, just think about your mom and, you know what I'm saying? It's true. So,
[00:41:48] uh, I derailed my brain Koosh and ish Vigo because they're so close and because they really do genuinely love each other. They make this work. The first target is atu. So the Kingdom of Atu was the Armenian kingdom that was north of the, the Assyrian Empire. By the way, the Assyrian Empires collapsed. I, I should have mentioned that.
[00:42:11] I don't remember the exact year. It's around six 20 bc. It just implodes. And now there's a new empire, the Neo Babylonian Empire, which conquered. It conquered all of Mesopotamia and then it went and conquered Syria and Palestine. And by the way, it really hated the Jewish resistance in Palestine. So it tore down the temple of Solomon and to took a large portion of the Jewish population out of Palestine and forced them to live in Babylon.
[00:42:38] They were not slaves. People will frequently say the Jews were slaves in Babylon. They were, they were not. I mean, I'm sure there were Jewish slaves in Babylon. The majority of the Jews that were brought were not slaves. They were captives. They were free, but they were not free to leave Babylon. They were forced to live in Babylon.
[00:42:56] So it's, I don't know, is that serfdom? I feel like that's serfdom. Um, yeah, I think that's what that is. It's like urban serfdom though, instead of peasant style. Serfdom. Um, so. There's this new Babylonian empire, which is super powerful, and to the north of it is atu. And I just realized there's a really fun story I have to tell you about atu.
[00:43:21] Okay? Remember the aka the Ians drinking outta skulls wine and, uh, ephedra. So the Armenians had an all woman Archer division, and they were famous for it. These, these women were amazing archers. They were really good at what they did, but the Saka also had women archers, and the Armenians wanted to bolster the size of their army.
[00:43:47] So they went to the sah and they said, Hey, we'd like to hire another, another woman division, archery division. And the, and the, you're like, yeah, drink this and we'll talk about it. And they end up hiring this second all woman Archer division, and they bring them to, to Ry. We don't know what happened next.
[00:44:10] Like, we don't know. Something happened. We dunno what it was. That division, after a few years of service snapped like they just went, we're done with this, we're gonna do something different. And they began marching west through what is today, Northern Tokyo, all the way to the northwest corner of Analia.
[00:44:34] And then they turned south and they were, they, they may have been doing this before this moment, but once they turned south, they made contact with the Greek colonies on the A GNC and they began sacking them one after the other. The archeological evidence is clear, like there, if you look at a temple in the region, if you dig underneath the temple, you find an old temple that was burnt down.
[00:45:00] These Saka women archers just went nuts and began smashing one Greek city state on the coast after the other, and burning the cities down, burning their temples down until they got to Kario, which is in the southwest corner. And then they stopped again. We don't know why. And then they just left. Maybe there was a bad transaction or somebody called somebody a name.
[00:45:30] Amazons the story of the Amazons is based on an actual event. The Greeks were traumatized by this, and so they have, that became their boogeyman story. You better go to sleep now, or the Amazons will come and the, they created all this artwork, and of course in their minds, Hercules defeats the Amazons, but they weren't defeated.
[00:45:54] They, they just got bored, I guess. They were like, okay, we've sacked all the cities. Emphasis was a lot of fun. Let's go. And I don't know. We don't know where they went. They probably just went back to Maes or one of the states in Central Asia. They're like, let's go. Let's go back. The E Fedra here sucks. It just doesn't, it's not potent.
[00:46:15] Like the stuff back home was, imagine a bunch of warriors on basically speed. It's like the perfect warrior at that point. And a little drunk. For the record, most armies go into battle a little drunk. Like that's just a thing. You don't wanna be too drunk. Like at the Battle of Stalin grad, the Russians were complaining that the Germans were just too drunk.
[00:46:40] You are in trouble when the Russians think you're drinking too much. Like what was that? It was, 'cause the Germans knew they were dead, so they were just like, might as well drink.
[00:46:54] So. Okay. I, I, we got that out of the way. But isn't it cool that Amazon's really did exist? There really was an event. It's so cool. All right. So they, uh, ish, Vigo and, um, Koro conquer tu and they kind of wait for blow back, see what's gonna happen next. Nothing happens. So they move into Cappadocia and they seize cappadocia, which is, uh, by the way, one of the places on the planet that mu it should be on your list to visit Cappadocia in Turkey will break your mind.
[00:47:34] That place is unbelievable. Actually, Turkey, Turkey will break your mind. It's one of the most beautiful countries on the planet. It's, it's insane. Um, they captured Cappadocia. This worries esis. He's like, okay, what? They're too close to me. This is really unnerving. And he re, I can't remember what the exact Oracle thing was, but it was something like, there will be a force to the east.
[00:48:03] And, you know, it's unclear how it's supposed to turn out. So he decides to act on the Oracle's word, and he goes, and he attacks the Persian empire at a place called Aria when he does Oh, and ish d Vigo has since passed. I forgot to mention that when Ish d Vigo dies, Koosh becomes the king of the me. So now there's just one emperor, it's the Persian empire.
[00:48:29] Now it's the, the means have been absorbed into the empire. They're now sat traps within the empire. It's a federal system with governors. And so, um, when K Kois attacks right, K knows that his grandmother is Kois sister. So it is, this is, this is not a family problem. 'cause Arianne right, is his grandmother, and ESIS is Ena, his brother.
[00:49:00] But they, they fight it out at Petia and neither side wins. It's a draw, but it's a horrible battle. Like there's lots of dead. At that point, ESIS panics. He starts to think, oh, maybe the Oracle meant I'm gonna be defeated A few years earlier, by the way, his son dies in an accident. So now he's thinking, oh, right, Solan said we needed to see how my life turns out.
[00:49:28] Am I gonna be defeated by Koro? And then my son is dead and he panics and he pulls his army away after he sets Paria on fire and he runs the Sardis. Sardis was the capital of the, the kingdom of Lydia. And, and he waits. And as Roche's army is approaching, he realizes. He's, it's not good to be trapped in a city.
[00:49:50] You need to be out in a battlefield and try to win the battle. He has an army twice the size of Ash's army. According to Zenon, uh, Kois had over 400,000 men, and, um, Kora had a little bit less than 200,000 men. I, I think most historians now think that the Lillian had about a hundred thousand men, and the Persians probably had somewhere between 20 to 50,000 men.
[00:50:15] You know, one of the things I've noticed is modern historians are always shrinking the numbers in the past, and it's such a strong pattern now that I'm starting to wonder, should we be doing that? Maybe the, maybe the guys that were 200 years away, no more than the guys that are 2,500 years away. But I don't know in any, in any case, we know it was at least a two to one Han Battle.
[00:50:37] It might have been as bad as five to one. Um, and so ROIs thinks I'm just gonna meet 'em in the battlefield. They meet at a place called finra. Atra Koro takes his smaller army and he puts it into a V-shape. And he had built towers in the middle to put archers on to get better shots from the archers. And then he put his cavalry in the on flanks.
[00:51:02] And then Cro ais had his infantry, this big massive infantry army in front. By the way, it was an international force, like there are people from all over there. Were even Babylonians fighting for ESIS at this point. 'cause they're starting to get nervous about this new Persian empire that's just popped up on their eastern border.
[00:51:20] Uh, there were Egyptians also that were fighting for Cro Oasis. And so, uh, he puts his infantry there and he puts his cavalry on the flanks. And Kuro knew that this, the v-shape that he had put his army in would, it was just too tempting, it was too tasty that Reis would launch his cavalry against the flanks trying to push it in.
[00:51:43] And as soon as that happened. And the cavalry was fully engaged. That's when Koosh launched his cavalry into the Lidian Cavalry. It's a disaster for the Lidian. They're forced to, the cavalry's, forced to retreat, and then Koosh orders a full scale attack from his men. And the smaller army destroys and defeats the larger army.
[00:52:04] And Koosh wins the battle to everybody's shock and dismay. He captures esis well, ESIS comes to surrender. He comes with a white flag, and Koosh goes, I'm not gonna hurt you. I mean, you're my relative. Why would I hurt you? That's terrible. Do you wanna be a minister in my cabinet? And Kois goes, yeah, sure. He goes, okay.
[00:52:30] I have to go capture your capital first. They're not surrendering. So they go back to Sardis, they put it under siege. And what the Persians do is they build an earth and ramp. They put shields in the front so that the guys bringing the dirt don't get hit by arrows. And they just build earth and ramps up to the walls.
[00:52:47] And then once they do, they charge onto the walls. It takes 12 days, they capture Sardis. Uh, unfortunately, CRO ISIS's wife panics in the process of the city being captured and throws herself off the roof and dies. So Salan was a jerk. Turns out and was really mean to Cro ais anyway, 'cause right, his son's dead.
[00:53:12] His wife is dead. He just lost his kingdom. He's not gonna become a cabinet minister. Actually, that sounds pretty good. But anyway, so Koraj turns around and starts heading back because he is nervous about what the Neo Babylonian Empire is planning to do. And he is already thinking about his next campaign.
[00:53:32] His next campaign is India, so he's wanting to prepare for it. So he goes to a trusted lidian named PIAs, and he says, I need you to confiscate Reis Gold, all of it, and you're gonna bring it to Pa Garde and it's gonna now become Persian revenue, by the way, thank you very much. Oh, and at some point we're gonna need to figure out how to mint Persian coins, but for now we'll just use the Lidian and the Ionian coins.
[00:54:04] That's great. And so PIAs goes, oh, okay. Yeah, sure. I'd love to do, do that. And uh, what he does is he takes the gold and he goes and hires a bunch of mercenaries and tries to start a rebellion to break Lydia back out of the Persian Empire. You know, weeks after it was incorporated in the Persian empire.
[00:54:23] Koosh sends a general name Zaes to go get him. The, uh, Pacas realizes he is outnumbered. He goes to the Ionian Greek colonies and he hires even more mercenaries with S'S gold. Azaris chases him down, eventually defeats him, and they take the rest, the remaining gold back to pa and that's the end of Lidian resistance.
[00:54:46] Mazarra though, continues to conquer Anatolia and he'll conquer Bth and, uh, several other of the, the, the states there. But he gets replaced by another general named Hagas 'cause he dies and then they finish off, uh, Anatolia. They capture l uh, Lucia, they capture Ka uh, they capture Miltos syn Ephesus. They capture the Greek city states and they, they turn them into sat trape and they incorporate them into the empire.
[00:55:16] Here's what happens when you get conquered. So you are told you are now part of the Persian Empire. With all the rights of membership in the Persian Empire, as if you're a Persians. So you're Armenian, you have all the rights of a Persian, you're aian, you have all the rights of a Persian, you get all the benefits of the empire and no, and that's it.
[00:55:44] You're done. You're incorporated. In other words, you're not a subjugated nation, you're now a partner nation. So the conquest was ethically wrong, but then once you're conquered, you're not enslaved, you're not plundered, you're the state. Coffers are plundered, but the individual people aren't plundered.
[00:56:04] There's no civilian plundering and in, and in fact you're told keep speaking your language and keep doing your religion. We, you're just now partners, enjoy congratulations, and then he invades India. He begins conquering up to the Inus River. He eventually gets defeated when he crosses the Indu River. He then does a second campaign, crosses the Inus River a second time.
[00:56:31] But when he does, instead of annexing that land on the, on the east side of the Indu, he turns it into a vassal state and pulls back. But everything east, oh, sorry. West of the Inus River goes into the Persian Empire. At that point, he turns his attention to the Neo Babylonian empire. 'cause well, it's the last big boy in the neighborhood, so it's time to bring them down.
[00:56:59] Um, we know the year for this up to nine haven't been giving it years 'cause there's really no point. I'd be guessing, you know, like, I think the general consensus is Lydia was conquered in 5 47, maybe 5 43. Maybe we, you don't really know. 5 46 is another year. It gets thrown around. But 5 45 39, that's when he campaigns against the Neo Babylonian empire.
[00:57:27] So there's a, a battle, um, battle of Opus. The Neo Babylonian empire is defeated. It's, we don't have any details for the battle, so I can't tell you the strategy, but they're defeated. And then the, uh, the neo Babylonian emperor escapes and tries to figure out what he's gonna do next. And Ro chases him down to the city, escaped to, and he, and they flee and he captures that city.
[00:57:57] And then Kora starts heading down, uh, towards Babylon. And the Babylon was huge. It was a city of 200,000 people. It was, up until that moment, one of the largest cities that had ever been built. It may have been the largest city that had ever been built at 200,000 people. And right there's this, I don't know if you know this, there's a big river.
[00:58:19] There's two, there's two really big rivers there. And, uh, Babylon is on one of them. And what they did was they, they were trying to figure out how to get through the walls. 'cause forget about it, like building that earth. And ramp was gonna take a long time. And they were gonna catch a lot of fury from our ERs.
[00:58:37] So what they did was they took the Tigris River and they cut a canal and they rerouted it. And where the Tigris River went through the walls, there was a hole for the river to go through. And once they had the river down, so that you, it was less than knee deep, the, the Persian army just marched through the hole and entered the city.
[00:58:57] And the city surrendered. There was no fight. And, uh, nadis the per, the Neo Babylonian emperor surrenders in that moment and becomes a member of the cabinet. And then at that point, the Persian army. Takes over the entirety of the Neo Babylonian empire. So they will rule from Palestine to Pakistan and they will rule, uh, all the way to Analia and part of Afghanistan.
[00:59:29] So this probably happened, this next piece probably happened. I feel like a magician or I've got a fun box. So I, okay. I need you guys to promise me something. I committed a very awful crime and I need you to swear you do it quietly that you won't report me. But I broke into the British Museum and I stole this.
[00:59:52] This is the original piece. It's uh, and it's actually not, but I wish it was like, it is my dream to break into the British Museum and actually steal everything. 'cause there's nothing from Britain in it. Have you noticed the Tower has the British stuff? The museum has our stuff. Anyway, this is a copy, obviously of this KO cylinder, the Cyrus cylinder.
[01:00:22] It is written in K form, it's actually Babylonian. It's not in Persian. It was put on, I bought this in 2002 with my wife in Pedestal Police. So it has sentimental value, so I'm really hoping I don't drop it. Um, it was put underneath the temple of Mar Duke as part like a sacrifice. Uh, and in it, by the way, it says there's no human sacrifice.
[01:00:48] So this was a, this is like an inanimate object sacrifice. I know somebody's gonna freak out. Um, it is a description of why Kuro is a really cool guy and why the Neo Babylonian emperor wasn't such a great guy. That's part of this. It's also the world's first ever Bill of Rights. So this was put in the temple of Mar Duke into its foundation in 5 39, and archeologists stumbled upon it.
[01:01:18] We did. Nobody knew it was there. It, two of the rites in here are the right to freedom of religion, which there's really three rights in here. One of 'em is the right to freedom of religion, but it's not freedom of religion like you're thinking it's way past what you're thinking. Roche didn't just say, I want you to be, have the right to worship the way you wanna worship.
[01:01:42] He said, we will maintain your temples and if your temples are broken, we'll rebuild them for you. We want to support you. We wanna make your religions free. You he, he's Osh. He's z Austrian. He doesn't care what your religion is. He wants to support it. He believed it was good for people to have religion and so he funded.
[01:02:07] So that's one of the things. Another thing is no slavery. Now this is one of those things where people get stuck on, so remember I told you, how do you tell in a barter society when a person's a slave? Um, but the coins have just come onto the scene, but they haven't become fully widespread. So there's some quibble quibbling about, well, was this group slave or were they just free in an, a barter system?
[01:02:32] There was a group that wasn't fully free, prisoners of war that Koro was nervous about releasing because he didn't think they accepted defeat, and he was worried they would turn into rebels down the road. He, he turned them into serfs. So they were not slaves, but they were not allowed to leave their farm, if that makes sense.
[01:02:54] So it's the differentiation that Europeans have gone outta their way to say that the Russians had serfs, not slaves. And I think that distinction is true If you're, you're essentially free, you just can't quit your employment. It's a very thin line. Above that, of course, is peasant peasants are free, and they could quit their employment.
[01:03:16] Um, but a slave doesn't make income, doesn't, doesn't get to a share of their produce. The, their products. They're just basically kept alive. So that's the difference between a surf and a slave is this, the SFS could make money. They, they were actually capable of, uh, getting some of the product that they produced, right?
[01:03:36] They were like peasants who were trapped in their land. But slavery, slavery was banned by Koro. Human sacrifice was another thing that he got rid of. He said that, how can we do this to each other? This is terrible. You gotta remember, right? Everybody, not everybody, but most of the civilizations in the region were doing it.
[01:03:55] The Assyrians were doing it. The Greeks were doing it. The Romans did it. This is just the thing that people did. Uh, right. There's like a t the skeleton of a 12-year-old boy in the bottom of Zeus's Temple. Uh, they sacrificed them and then built the temple on top of 'em. So Koro said, this is done. No more, no more human sacrifice.
[01:04:16] So that's what, this is the first ever Bill of Rights, a bill of rights limits what the state can do. Nobody had ever thought that there could possibly be a limit to the power of a king or a state prior to this. And the crazy thing is, is he's an absolute monarch. There's no parliament. He's giving this to the people, and it doesn't matter who you are.
[01:04:40] He wrote this in Babylonians so the Babylonians would know what their rights were. We found a second one a few years after we found this one in Stan, and it's written in Elamite. It's a square. So he, we know, he put it in every language of the empire. He told the empire, our diversity is what makes us strong.
[01:05:05] If we have one culture and one language and one religion and a crisis happens, there's one answer we'll come up with. But if we have 50 languages and 50 cultures and 50 religions and a crisis comes up, we'll have 50 answers. And maybe one of 'em will be good if we're lucky. If we're really lucky, we'll get five good ones and experiment.
[01:05:33] That's what he thought and he thought he was building an empire where everybody was gonna be holding hands. The artwork at per shows, all the different nations holding hands as they're proceeding together, dressed in their clothes. The Arabs are dressed as Arabs. The Afghans are dressed as Afghans. The Jews are dressed as Jews.
[01:05:54] The Armenians are dressed as Armenians because it was this celebration of diversity. Who thinks like that? The Romans were like, we are gonna destroy you mass. Enslave you. Plunder you. And then the rest of you that we didn't send sell often to slavery, you're gonna Roman eyes, welcome to the empire. He's the exact opposite of this.
[01:06:19] So the Jews who are in captivity in Babylon read this and they come up to him 'cause he's, he's, he's gonna make Babylon one of his capitals. And they go, is this for real? And he goes, yes. And they go, well, you know, we're captives. He goes, not anymore. You're free. You can live anywhere you want. And then he goes, but I really like you.
[01:06:44] If some of you're willing, I would love a community of Jews to move to Han. And a group did. They're still there today. Then the rest of them said, we wanna go back to Palestine. He goes, absolutely, I'll help you get there if you need. What? What do you need? But your captivity is over. It's in the Jewish Bible too.
[01:07:07] They call him ash instead of Ura Ash, but he's in there, they praise him. He's the only person in the Bible that wasn't Jewish that has Messiah status. Then they go, well what about that freedom of religion thing where you said you'd pay for the temples? He goes, yep, that's sincere. They go, the Neo Babylonians tore our temple down.
[01:07:36] Gimme the plans. We'll rebuild it my gold. And they went, okay. And they got their architects together and they built a giant, they drew a giant human made Mesa, big flat Mesa. And then they put a temple on top and he looked at that plan and he went, wait a minute. They tore down your mesa. Yeah, man, the, they must have really hated you.
[01:08:07] They're like, yeah, they really hated us. And Koro goes, I only know one people on the entire planet who can build mountains. And so he sends a delegation to Egypt. He hires a group of Egyptian engineers. They come and they build the temple mounts. A giant human made mesa. And then those engineers go and they build the the temple on top.
[01:08:37] So it's Solomon's second temple that the Romans will destroy later. It was Persian gold and Egyptian engineers, 'cause he was sincere. Crazy. He was sincere. Who's sincere? Like this? Many rulers on the planet today are sincere and a bunch of them have a first name Muhammad. It's really weird, like this repeating pattern, like maybe the Prime Minister of New Zealand, prime Minister of Sweden.
[01:09:13] Like I think when we were done naming them, there's like four Mohammads and then there's like a, a a, a handful of Irish and Scandinavian guys, maybe some Spaniards, couple of Slovenians, a Dutch person here or there.
[01:09:34] The rest, you know, you're like, oh my God, what happened to our species? Maybe extinction isn't bad. How did we get here? So crazy. Especially when you look at the list of leaders that we used to have like in the sixties and seventies. Like you say their names Kwame Nma and you wanna cry. 'cause it is like, why, why can't we have that again?
[01:09:57] Patrice Lumumba, like you look at his face and you can tell he was gonna be great, but the CIA killed him. So it's okay.
[01:10:08] Is that what happened? Anyway, too many Kutas and assassinations there might be. So Koro decides he's not done. He decides he needs to go get the Ians for sa. So he captures a big chunk of Afghanistan, but in the process is fighting the Ians, the Masti are one of the more powerful Ian forces in what is today, like Uzbekistan, but it's stretched up.
[01:10:43] So go into Turk, Stan, and even into Kazakhstan a bit. And they were fighting him in Afghanistan and he ends up killing their king in the process. And he's also fighting in Northern Pakistan, and he kills the king in Northern Pakistan. The Queen, the Northern Pakistan was a woman named S Spta and the queen of the Ma GTAs was a woman named Tommy Reese.
[01:11:10] And the two queens meet together and they decide they're gonna set up an ambush forum in what is today, Uzbekistan. And he marches his army by this point. He's an old man. He's, it depends on whom he talked to. He's, he might be 70, so he's too young to be president of the United States. Um, but I think he was closer to 60, I think.
[01:11:33] Uh, he was probably born around five 90 BC but I, I've noticed a lot of people put him around 600 BC Anyway, he's either a 60 or 70-year-old man campaigning. He's still there leading battles and he leads just one too many. And the Persian army is defeated by to Reese and Spar, his armies. Uh, and when they go down, Koro is killed in the battle.
[01:12:04] And Tommy Reese, who wants vengeance 'cause she's also lost, I, if I remember correctly, her sons are dad. From fighting Roche. Her husband is dad. She wants vengeance. She finds Roche's body. She cuts off his head. She pulls out, uh, an animal skin. She pours, uh, wine, if I remember correctly, into the animal skin and drops Roche's head in it, ties it and throws it into a river, and that's how Koosh dies.
[01:12:38] Isn't that a sad ending? Don't mess with this. By the way, when the Turks invaded Central Asia and drove the Persian South, a lot of 'em ended up in Afghanistan.
[01:12:57] You know, the graveyard of empires that place.
[01:13:05] So it's not a north south thing anymore. It's an east west thing for the Persians.
[01:13:13] Anyway, the, the AKA had a game they loved to play. It was polo. They invented polo. Isn't that cool? It was. There were no teams. Every horseman was for themselves. There was a pole in the middle of a field, not a person, like a stick. I'm worried somebody was gonna think I meant like a Polish person. Just a, that comes later.
[01:13:37] And they were Russians. Um, was that a bad joke? It was, but I'm not done with it yet either. Uh, they each had a bat and they would take a sheep's head and they would tie it in the skin and they would throw the sheep's head into the middle of the field. And it was a full contact sport. You could choose to hit the bat against the sheep's head, or you could choose to hit the other horseman with the bat, it was your call.
[01:14:04] And anybody who could hit the bat, the head into the pole got a point.
[01:14:13] When the Russians decided in the war against the Afghans to kill all their sheep, they found substitute heads and kept playing the game. I'll let your imagination run with that one.
[01:14:28] The Sah will not be stopped from playing polo.
[01:14:34] So Koosh is dead, but his empire is still alive. It was the largest empire ever built to that moment. There had never been anything bigger. There's obviously been stuff bigger since it had a huge chunk of the Mediterranean, and in that moment it, the, the, the throne passes to his son Cambi ii. Cambi decides Egypt is next.
[01:14:59] He decides Kar or conquering. It's okay. You can just be the wild Persians drinking your wine, A federal drink. I'm gonna go after Egypt. He conquers it. He conquers kaka. So, uh, Eastern Libya, and he conquers, um, Nubia, so Northern Sudan, and he incorporates that into the empire. And so that becomes, its full length.
[01:15:22] It went from the Inus River, uh, to Kaka is huge, but Cambiz doesn't last long. He dies just a few years after taking the throne. At that point, the Persian leadership, which includes men like Dar, sit down, there's all these generals, there are all these sat traps. They sit down to try to figure out what's next.
[01:15:47] How does this look? Because they've all bought by this point. They, in the beginning, a lot of 'em were skeptical, like, what are you doing? Clearly Persians are superior to everybody else. Why are you treating everybody equally? But by this point, they've drunk the Kool-Aid. They're like, this is amazing. I can't believe what this crazy guy did.
[01:16:03] And they wanna continue it, but, and what is it gonna look like? And how are they gonna do the government? And they actually had a debate, this council of men, and in the debate they asked, do we wanna be a democracy, a republic, or continue the monarchy? That was the debate. And when I mean democracy, I don't mean what you mean democracy.
[01:16:26] When you talk about democracy today, what you mean is electoral republic, that's what they were considering. Do we wanna be electoral republic or a hereditary republic or an actual democracy? So when I told you the Salan story, Salan didn't make Athens a democracy. He made it a republic. There was a guy named Ese.
[01:16:47] A few decades later talked the Athenians into becoming a democracy. In a democracy, there's no government. The people directly vote on policy. One way you can tell if you're a democracy or a republic in republics there are elections because you're electing, the politicians will make the decisions in your name.
[01:17:05] In a democracy, there's no elections because the people vote directly on policy. They were talking about this before Athens became a democracy. So this idea that the Greeks invented the concept is if it's true, it's way before Athens does it, but it's probably not true. Right? It was probably an idea that had been around for, since forever.
[01:17:27] And after the debate they decide monarchy it is w she's gonna be the next emperor. And that, that, that would be for another talk. But that's, that's Ash's legacy almost. If you walk into the UN building. As you're going in the front entrance in six languages above the door is that text because it's an amazing moment in human history.
[01:17:55] In individuals have rights, the state has limits. Diversity is good. Different religions should be accepted and tolerated. We should work together as different communities as a big super community. It's incredible. Can you imagine if we tried to do that on the planet today? It's truly inspiring. Anyway, I think we should create more confederacy, like be a starting place like you know, the European Union.
[01:18:26] Just make that all over the world. Like there could be a Middle Eastern Union, an African, oh, there is an African union. I just keep working on it. A Southeast Asia Union. Then get the confederacies to start working together. No. All right. You're right. World War II will be more fun. Actually, can I just tell you something?
[01:18:49] I study World War ii. I'm like actually obsessed with World War ii. Like to the point where I probably have mental illness. It's good enough. The stories from World War ii, they can fuel us forever. We don't need to do a World War iii. If you really like just, just go read World War II history, and besides we all know World War ii, world War II will be really short.
[01:19:09] There's no point in doing it. It won't create the kind of fun stories that you get outta World War ii. So I just think we've done it. There's no way we're ever gonna do it better. Let's just call it there and then try and do cooperation and, and trade. I really think trade and not just economic trade, but people trade, cultural trade.
[01:19:32] No, no. Okay. It's fine. Oh yes. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, uh, I wanna leave it there and just say that, uh, you know, the year has ended. This is the last talk. I've been told that they are gonna bring me back for next year, but you guys have been such a wonderful audience. Oh, oh, okay. He, he looked up the oracle for me, so he looked it up.
[01:19:54] If Greece is crosses the Halles River, a great empire will be destroyed. And he thought it was the Persians, 'cause Terrio was on the other side of the Halles River. Oops. Hi. It was his great empire that was destroyed. Oh, that, that the oracle is evil. You know what I mean? Like, why don't you just spell it out.
[01:20:18] Don't go east. Anyway, thank you so much. 
[01:20:25] Thanks for listening. Y'all come back now, you hear!