How Big Was the First Persian Empire?
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The story in brief
How did one Persian king start the largest empire the world had yet seen? This Short runs through how big the first Persian Empire got, and how it fell, in under a minute.
Cyrus the Great conquered the Medes, then Lydia, and in 539 BC, Babylon. His son Cambyses added Egypt around 525 BC. Under Darius the First, the empire stretched from Egypt and the Aegean to the Indus, in provinces called satrapies, each paying fixed tribute. Around 500 BC it covered roughly five and a half million square kilometres.
Then the Persian invasions of Greece failed, at Marathon in 490 BC, and at Salamis and Plataea in 480 and 479 BC. Alexander the Great invaded in 334 BC. By 330 BC, Persepolis had fallen and the last king, Darius the Third, was dead, which leaves the Short's closing question: could anyone have stopped Alexander?
Sources
- Britannica, "Achaemenid Empire": https://www.britannica.com/topic/Achaemenian-dynasty
- Turchin, Adams & Hall 2006, Journal of World-Systems Research 12(2): https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2006.369
Maps
- William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas (New York: Henry Holt, 1923 ed.), via University of Texas Libraries PCL Map Collection
- Wilhelm Sieglin & Max Kiessling, Atlas Antiquus. Atlas zur Geschichte des Altertums (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1909), no. 8
- Gustav Droysen, Allgemeiner historischer Handatlas (Bielefeld & Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing / R. Andrée, 1886), scan via Internet Archive item DroysensHistoricalAtlas1886 (Public Domain Mark), map 8
Borders on the maps in this Short are approximate.
Full image and music credits are in the video description on YouTube.
Narration is AI-generated. Scripts are AI-assisted and fact-checked against the sources listed.
Card artwork: Ink Before Dust (own work).
