Customer Reviews

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

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1 star:		(8)

 

 

This very readable popular history of the 5th-century BC Persian Wars with Greece combines careful historical detective work with a sometimes breezy tone.

I enjoyed this book probably about as much as I enjoyed Holland's "Rubicon"--which is to say, quite a lot. It is solid, credibly researched history as it might be presented by a tabloid journalist: cynical, gossipy, and salted liberally with salacious or incriminating nuggets about its many characters. It is intended for a general audience, not an academic one, and it succeeds very well.

The book has an unusual but well-considered structure. Holland starts off by describing the societies of the protagonists, devoting his opening chapters to Mesopotamia, Iran, Sparta, and Athens. He does an excellent job of showing how different these worlds were from each other, and gives a strong flavor of how their inhabitants thought and behaved. That done, Holland moves on to the wars themselves, with accounts of the campaigns leading to the famous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, which we are now in a position to appreciate much better, knowing something of the outlook and worldview of the different players.

Holland's drive to tell a seamless story has him solving all kinds of problems of conflicts in the sources, drawing canny conclusions from wispy or contradictory data. Only occasionally does he draw attention to his reasoning; mostly it is part of the work underlying the flow of his story. And his story does flow.

Sometimes I found that Holland had laid the cynicism on a bit thick. While of course the ancient world, including among its heroes, had its share of scheming, selfish, greedy, backstabbing blowhards, some of the people must have exhibited more noble qualities at least sometimes. You wouldn't know it from reading Holland.

But I get a sense that all this is done with a twinkle in Holland's eye. As though taking such liberties were part of the fun available to the ancient historian, whose subjects (and their families) are many centuries past being able to take legal action. Holland's mission appears to be to make ancient history relevant, interesting, and most of all fun to a wide contemporary audience, and any peccadilloes of scholarly balance are a small price to pay for this bigger prize.

Holland makes the ancient world a very human, indeed an all too human, place. The portentous theme of East vs. West he handles with a light touch. In many other ways too he shows respect for the intelligence of the reader, who, while being fed heaping portions of gossip about our ancestors, is perhaps learning more than he or she realizes.

If you're interested in the history of ancient Greece, but are new to the subject, you could do a lot worse than reading this book.

In his excellent 2003 book, RUBICON, Tom Holland showed that he has a unique ability to take a highly complex situation in ancient history (in Rubicon's case, the career of Julius Caesar and the death of the Roman Republic) and make it not only clear and credible to the well-read history buff, but understandable to the reader who knows nothing about ancient history. RUBICON was a well-balanced history that read with the drama of a novel. After its well-praised reception, Holland turned to his latest book, PERSIAN FIRE, in which he trains his academic mind on the equally dramatic Greek drama of the Persian invasions in the late fifth century - an invasion pregnant with implications for the rise of a democratic Athens as well as its eventual fall.

Like RUBICON, Holland's classical background makes him a natural to explain the peculiarly complicated relationship between Darius and Xerxes, the Persian Emperors who cast hungry eyes at the west; their two invasions, and the eventual triumph of the unified Greeks after many hair-raising challenges. Some of the best-known and best-loved stories of ancient Greece make PERSIAN FIRE at least as dramatic as RUBICON; Pheidippides, running the 26 miles from the battle of Marathon to Athens with word of a miraculous Athenian victory, only to die of exhaustion; crafty Themistocles, who at a crisis in Athenian affairs, sent word to the Persians to blockade the straits at Salamis, thus forcing the Greeks to unify and beat them; most famously and movingly, the death to the last man of the Spartan King Leonidas and his 300 men at the Pass at Thermopylae, a tragic strategic sacrifice that gave the Athenians breathing time against the Persian invasion; the complete destruction of all Athens' temples atop the Acropolis because Themistocles had convinced the Athenians to abandon their city to the Persians and fight from the sea; the panic-stricken embassy to the Oracle at Delphi, when the Athenians were at first told their cause was hopeless, and later cryptically told to depend upon "the wooden walls" - all these facts are commonplace to classical scholars, but they deserve to be retold again for an eternally new audience, for courage and sacrifice is never outdated. Holland brought tears to my eyes in his careful recreation of Thermopylae - but his book does far more.

In a time when cultures of East and West seemed farther apart than ever, Holland concentrates on explaining the mighty Persian culture which, from the time of the victorious Greeks to our own day, was mocked, denigrated, and underestimated. He makes a fairly clear argument that this kind of cultural misapprehension, after the famous Greek victory, led to an alienation between East and West which had not really existed prior to the Persian invasions, and which affects our understandings even today. He shows just why the Persian culture - in many ways, far superior to that of the more primitive Greeks - deserved respect for its own accomplishments, as well as how and why the Greeks came to blow up their honest victories and denigrate their Persian foes. All these points give PERSIAN FIRE a peculiarly modern resonance, as well as telling some of the greatest stories of antiquity with clarity and flair.

I have read Persian Fire twice and am still learning much about both the ancient Persians and Greeks and why their wars created a divide that still exists between Europe and Asia. Highly recommended.

Suzanne Cross
Web Author - Ancient History

This is an extremely well-written book that takes the reader back over 2500 years to discuss the first serious clash between east and west. The problem with writing about events so far in the past is that there are not necessarily many sources for events, and what we have are often quite contradictory. This particular situation is aided by the fact that there are several near-contemporaneous accounts written. Unfortunately, they often disagree with each other, often in very material ways. It is the task of the historical writer to sift through these various, and varied, accounts and attempt to give the reader as close to an accurate tale as is possible. The author succeeds admirably in this, and when he disagrees with certain ancient authors or modern interpreters, he gives his reasons for so doing. We have a truly exciting story of the defense of Greece from the invasion of the Persian Empire. The basic story is fairly well-known to most people, with the important battles (Marathon, Salamis, etc.) retold in every high school history text. This book goes beyond these events, and covers much territory concerning the founding of the Persian Empire, and early Greek city-states, and the inevitable clash that resulted from their proximity. It is a story of a turning point in history that, if it had turned out differently, the world we now know would be quite a bit different. For that alsone this book is well worth reading.

OK, Tom Holland gets my vote for fun and read-able history. Although he is not good enough for some of the other reviewers, he is a godsend for the regular guy. For example, he can take an historical event like the Battle of Salamis and rachet up the tension and drama to the point where you feel like you are reading about it in this morning's newspaper. That said, you need to know your Punic from your Peloponnesian War, your Samos from your Lesbos, and your Darius from you Xerxes in order to fully enjoy this account, In that sense Tom Holland's PERSIAN FIRE is probably too middlebrow for the scholar and too complicated for the novice. But boy O boy he he fun for the rest of us.
In a world where the East rubs up against the West he can fill in the historical blanks that still bedevil us to this day. And today it still seems to me that we are living in the same battle of the past (East) versus the future (West). PERSIAN FIRE sets todays headlines, in some respects, against a 2500 year old backdrop. As we might watch the CBS news, the Athenians, in the shadow of their burned and gutted Acropolis, would watch the young buck playwright, Aeschylus, stage THE PERSIANS one year after the exhausted Greeks had won the war and returned to the abandoned Athens.
Spartans, that weird and long-haired race of warriors, get their fair share of exposure but lose some of their mystique in Holland's re-telling of Thermopylae and the Spartan king's last stand.

The bottom line is that I like my history books to try and be as exciting as the actual events they describe. Tom Holland fits the bill perfectly. This stands with RUBICON, his earlier effort, as one of my favorite history books. For the scholarly historians, well, I just want to reassure them that this book will push me toward a deeper exploration of ancient Greece, not drive me away. And for that, a tip of the helmet is due to Tom Holland

Studying ancient Perisa is a rorschach test for historians. Because of the vast importance of the empire, and the very difficult and scanty evidence we build our theories upon, the arguments and positions we chose to make and take usually tell us more about ourselves than they do about the facts behind the material.

Was Darius a murderer who lead an assasination squad? A patriot who wanted liberty or death? A forerunner of Asoka or Washington or bin Laden or Alexander? Dig into the backgrounds and philosophy of each historian arguing for each position and you'll find that the arguments are based as much on their ideation as on the facts.

Holland falls into the same traps that all the rest of us do, and in the course of the book you learn a lot about his feelings about the nature of war, the values of modern humanism, and the troubled relationship of the classically trained with Heroditus along with a lot of difficult, often questionable, assumptions about what the material really means. You will, in the course of that, get some good information about Persia and Greece and the conflicts that birthed the idea that East is East and West is West. (For further commentary on that idea in a more modern context, check out "White Mughals" by William Dalrymple.)

But, for all the difficulty and questionable calls, when the book shines it shines brightly, and gives a very readable introduction to some really difficult material. My recomendation would be to read it at the same time as the first several chapters of Josef Wiesehofer's "Ancient Persia" in order to get the most out of both books -- which do a good job of balancing each other out towards a sustainable view of the subject.

Also, be sure to read and think carefully about all the end-notes. Much of Holland's best and most honest insight is found there, rather than in the main text.

With great verve, Tom Holland brings long past history to life in this retelling of the first epic clash between east and west. The long-forgotten Persian Empire is given some deserved attention, and the winding histories of both Sparta and Athens are recalled in amusing fashion. (A few of Holland's points are necessarily speculation, but he makes this clear in his fine footnotes.) The unlikely story of how a few Greek city states in a backwater corner of the globe were able to turn back the largest, most glittering invasion force history had ever seen remains vital and thrilling. It also has contemporary relevance, as Holland astutely points out. My only quibble with this book is: for Pete's sake, do you mean to say that neither this erudite author nor his editor know what a sentence *fragment* is? The book is littered with them. See for example the beginnings of many paragraphs in the chapter on Athens; my wording isn't exact but they tend to read something like: "A point which was driven home with great force." This is not, you will note, a complete sentence, though it is passed off here as if it were one. I can't believe such an otherwise well-written book is so often marred in this fashion. But, anyway, I do recommend the book.

This was one of the most rivetting reads I have encountered in the field of popular history. I finally tackled it shortly after seeing the cartoon cut-out version of the film "300" for the first time, and actually found this more balanced account the more moving and fascinating. There can be no doubt about the unique symbolic significance of Thermopylae, which might have been made for cinema, but once one looks past the pro-Greek propaganda to try and see how the suicidal stand fits into the broader flow of the history of the time there is much to ponder.

Holland does justice to this richness and avoids a monochrome portrayal of "freedom" against "tyranny". Clearly there were great cultural riches on both sides, as well as great inspiration for totalitarian, industrial-era regimes. The Nazis understandably saw Sparta as a model society; the Persians issued ration chits to ducks being fattened for the royal table. (A duck was entitled to more wine per day than a young woman of low birth might be allocated per week.) Here are two models of the repressive state - one of patriotic submission to the state by the individual, one of pervasive and obsessive bureaucracy. On the other hand the Athenians brought us the concept of democracy, while the Persians freed the Jews from their captivity and tolerated all manner of religions in a way that the Mongols, and then the secular West, were to echo centuries later. So cartoon versions make for great cinema, but poor understanding. Holland sure-footedly avoids this more simplistic portrayal and still manages to create an exciting and fascinating read.

Here are some potential misconceptions which Holland clarifies for victims of Holywood's various references to Thermopylae:

Aristodemus was not half-blinded in battle but laid up by an eye infection along with one other man, the other of whom ordered a slave to lead him blind into battle and died there, against Leonidas' instructions. Aristodemus was condemned as a coward when he got back and forced to wear the patched cloak of the "trembler". When the army met the Persians a year later at Plataea he, alone of all the Spartans, broke formation and charged the enemy, redeeming himself from the charge of cowardice but proving himself to be deplorably excitable.

Plataea took nearly ten days, with the Spartans and Athenians holding their ground while being harried by Persian cavalry, until the Persians managed to destroy the water supply which they had left unguarded. The two groups got split up retreating to a new defensive position and the Persians, numbering about 80-100,000, took the opportunity to take on the Spartans alone, cavalry and light infantry against heavy hoplite infantry with at least a three-to-one advantage. The hoplites turned, formed up and slowly and systematically chopped the Persians into buzzard food over the course of a whole day. The Persian satrap got a rock in the head, his troops started to panic and by the end only about 3,000 survived. Then the Greeks went back to fighting each other.

Marathon and, primarily, Salamis were also decisive, with the Athenians at Salamis destroying a superior fleet by ambushing them in a narrow strait where the Persian's manoeuvrability was negated. Somewhat similar to Thermopylae, in fact, but with a more satisfactory outcome for the Greeks.

Oh, and the 300 did not die alone. The heroes of freedom were accompanied by about 1,000 helot slaves who were ordered to remain to the suicidal final stand.

One of these days I'll go and visit these places, carrying a copy of Herodotus. Until then, I'll be returning to this excellent book.

In his new book, "Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West", Tom Holland performed something of a miracle. Working with the limited original documents that still exist, and extracting material from contemporaries of the events, Holland gives us a very clear picture of the events leading up to and including the clash between the Greeks and Persians. The sweep is enormous, and the cast of characters fascinating. The illustrations and maps that pepper the pages are a big help. This is a must read for anyone interested in history and culture.

This is the best history book I have read in 10 years. Tom Holland takes the wispy threads of that time and knits a deep, rich tapestry that reads like a work of fiction. A very readable tale, it shows just how close we came to NOT having Western Civilization as we know it today. If you are a fan of the Spartans, don't read it. The truth about these people is very dark and unpleasant and not at all like the glorified computer enhanced film. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

The book provides an in depth understanding of the conflicts that can oppose political centers and the creativity that is generated by conflict. It shows how historical past can provide a clear understanding of the present and a key for foreseeing the future.
The human nature and the conflicts of interest groups may have did not change much in 2500 years! The birth of democracy is as hypocritical today as it was in Athens 2500 years ago when we take under scrutiny modern countries in the throes of crossing over from tyranny to democracy; present day statesmen can be as treacherous as Themistocles!
And do not forget that 2500 years ago Persian oligarchs and dictators were invoquing the same mission given to them by God as present day ones do, and that goes for western leaders too.
A wonderfully written, masterfully narrated book a must for all thinkers.