Ancient Persia and the Persian Empire

Ancient Persia and the Persian Empire The Ancient Persians (modern Iran) are more familiar to us than the other empire builders of Mesopotamia or the Ancient Near East, the  Sumerians,  Babylonians, and  Assyrians, not only because the Persians were more recent, but because they were amply described by the Greeks. Just as one man, Alexander of Macedon (Alexander the Great), ultimately wore the Persians down quickly (in about three years), so the Persian Empire rose to power quickly under the leadership of  Cyrus the Great. The extent of Persia varied, but at its height, it extended southwards to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean; to the east and northeast, the Indus and Oxus rivers; to the north, the Caspian Sea and Mt. Caucasus; and to the west, the Euphrates River. This territory includes desert, mountains, valleys, and pastures. At the time of the ancient Persian Wars, the Ionian Greeks and Egypt were under Persian dominion. Western Cultural Identity and the Persian Army We in the West are accustomed to seeing the Persians as the them to a Greek us. There was no Athenian-style democracy for the Persians, but an absolute monarchy that denied the individual, common man his say in political life. The most important part of the Persian army was a seemingly fearless elite fighting group of 10,000, known as The Immortals because when one was killed another would be promoted to take his place. Since all men were eligible for combat until age 50, manpower was not an obstacle, although to ensure loyalty, the original members of this immortal fighting machine were Persians or Medes. Cyrus the Great Cyrus the Great, a religious man and adherent of Zoroastrianism, first came to power in Iran by overcoming his in-laws, the Medes (c. 550 B.C.)- the conquest made easy by many defectors, becoming the first ruler of the Achaemenid Empire (the first of the Persian Empires). Cyrus then made peace with the Medes and cemented the alliance by creating not just Persian, but Median sub-kings with the Persian title khshathrapavan (known as satraps) to rule the provinces. He also respected area religions. Cyrus conquered the Lydians, the Greek colonies on the Aegean coast, the Parthians, and Hyrcanians. He conquered Phrygia on the south shore of the Black Sea. Cyrus set up a fortified border along the Jaxartes River in the Steppes, and in 540 B.C., he conquered the Babylonian Empire. He established his capital in a cold area, Pasargadae (the Greeks called it Persepolis), contrary to the wishes of the Persian aristocracy. He was killed in battle in 530. The successors of Cyrus conquered Egypt, Thrace, Macedonia, and spread the Persian Empire east to the Indus River. Seleucids, Parthians, and Sassanids Alexander the Great put an end to the Achaemenid rulers of Persia. His successors ruled the area as the Seleucids, intermarrying with native populations and covering a large, fretful area that soon broke up into divisions. The Parthians gradually emerged as the next major Persian power ruling in the area. The Sassanids or Sassanians overcame the Parthians after a few hundred years and ruled with almost constant trouble on their eastern borders as well as to the west, where the Romans contested the territory sometimes through to the fertile area of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) until the Muslim Arabs conquered the area.

Hyphenation in Compound Nouns

Hyphenation in Compound Nouns Hyphenation in Compound Nouns Hyphenation in Compound Nouns By Mark Nichol I was reading the jacket copy for Garner’s Modern American Usage, the successor to the similarly titled classic reference work by H.W. Fowler, when I found what I felt to be an ironic instance: an error. The book’s description refers to its attention to â€Å"questions . . . of word-choice.† Whenever I see hyphenated compound nouns such as this, I feel as if I’m being whisked in a time machine to a bygone era in which hyphenation of word pairs was rampant: to-day, co-operate, tea-cup, and so on. Why on earth, I thought, did the copywriter think that word-choice merits hyphenation? Continuing to read the copy, I stumbled once again, while reading a reference to â€Å"language-lovers of all persuasions.† By this time, I thought it unfortunate that a book that purports (with eminent justification) to be a trusted authority on proper usage should have two superfluous hyphens in the jacket copy. Authors are usually given the opportunity to proof their books, and occasionally have a chance to weigh in on the cover art, but rarely, if ever, do they get to see jacket copy before publication. I wondered whether Garner had noticed these errors when he received his first copy. Minutes later, I was reading an entry, and I noticed the second error repeated therein: â€Å"The word denotes a well-informed language-lover and word connoisseur.† This time assuming the author, while reading the proof, had not overlooked a copy editor’s erroneous insertion the culprit was Garner himself. Only then did I realize I had fallen into a trap that the English language often lays for the erudite and the inexperienced alike: the expectation that it will be consistent. The hyphenation of word-choice is unequivocally wrong, but who is to say that Garner and the jacket-copy writer erred with language-lover? Many writers insert a hyphen in â€Å"decision making,† â€Å"problem solving,† and the like, though such treatment is justified only when the compound modifies a following noun (â€Å"decision-making apparatus,† â€Å"problem-solving skills†). However, similar noun+verb compounds, like eye-opener, are valid. The final arbiter of how a word is treated is a dictionary or, if a publication for some reason prefers an alternate form, a published style guide such as The Chicago Manual of Style or a house, or internal, style guide compiled by one or more editors of that publication. In the case of language-lover, the term does not appear in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, nor does it grace Chicago’s pages. I don’t know whether the house style guide of the Oxford University Press, which published Garner’s book, covers this point, but now I know why, in that work, a hyphen appears in language-lover: It was published in the United Kingdom, whose form of English (the oldest among nations where English is widely spoken, though that doesn’t make it the definitive form) has only recently begun to veer from favoring such constructions. An online search for â€Å"language lover† yields one hyphen-free usage after another, which confirms my opinion that in American English, at least, the hyphen is extraneous. And a writer’s rule of thumb is that if a term has not made its way into a dictionary, use a corollary form (would you hyphenate â€Å"cat lover† or â€Å"coffee lover†?) or, in the absence of a similar term, use the simplest possible construction. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Punctuation category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:75 Synonyms for â€Å"Angry†When to Form a Plural with an ApostropheQuiet or Quite?