Persia and Historical Accuracy

Imma be real here. In all my years watching movies, playing video games, and reading books and stuff, I have never once seen someone portray the Persians as even halfway historically accurate. Not in any video game, not in any book, and not in anything like that. Hell, 'historical' stories and books get them wrong all the time too.

The ancient Persians were the single greatest empire pre-iron age, and even during the Iron Age! People always give that title to the Romans, but always forget the fact that the Romans were constantly getting their asses kicked and clowned on by the Persians. To the point where the Sassanid and Parthian Empires were the only ones, in all of history, to actually consistently hold back and defeat the Romans, single-handedly halting their eastwards expansion. Power scaling in the ancient world is bullshit, cause the Greeks beat the Persians but lost to the Romans, and the Romans beat the Greeks but lost to the Persians. I tell you man, the author of this shit needs to work on his game smh.

Now keep in mind I am just a white boy from 'murica who has an extreme interest in studying middle eastern cultures and history, so if I got anything wrong, please let me know and I'd be happy to fix it! And if you are actually Iranian and reading this, I want you especially to let me know if I got anything wrong, because I'd be happy to talk with an actual Iranian on making my opinions actually factually correct.

And please keep in mind, I spent 2 hours writings this, from 3:00 AM to 5:00 AM. I am tired as balls and this might just end up looking like senile ramblings.

But, back to the topic of Ancient Persia, writers of all kinda always fall for one of three traps. I like to call these: The Arabic Trap, The Barbarian Trap, and the China Trap.

The Arabic Trap:
The Persian Empire was the first actual Empire to have ever formed, before that, the best you got was small city-states and kingdoms all sorta bunched together. That, or stuff like the Assyrian and Median Empires, which would have usually been classified as Kingdoms in any other time period (the Assyrian Empire at its height was about the size of Modern Day Iraq.). Not to mention, the Assyrian Empire was super Genocidal and insane and spent most of their time massacring people and picking fights rather than doing any actual nation-building and development, to the point that their entire religion centered around how unstoppable their army was, and the second they lost a battle, their entire empire completely collapsed.

Now, the reason I am bringing this all up is just to show you how actually ancient the Persian empire was. The Persians predate Rome. The Persians predate medieval civilization. Hell, the Persians, as a culture, pre-date the ancient greeks! So, why is it that the Ancient Persians are constantly shoved into the same boat as a culture that only started really existing 800 years after them? Because, Arabic culture, as we know it, didn't become a thing until 700 AD. Before then it was basically just a bunch of nomadic camel and goat herders attempting to make one of the most inhospitable places in the world livable.

Now, I am by no means saying Arabic culture isn't amazing. Arabic culture is probably one of the most based things in history (barring the whole women as second class citizens thing.) But come on, literally lumping the Persians in with the Arabs doesn't make any sense! Especially because the Persians and Arabs were only ever united into one Empire once! There are multiple reasons for this, of course, such as the Persians following Islam as well as being in around the same area, but their cultures are super different!

The Barbarian Trap:

Now, if you've ever studied history, you probably encountered a Romaboo. You know, someone who never shuts up about how oh so perfect and glorious the Roman Empire was. Something you will also hear these people say a lot is stuff like: The Greeks and the Romans were the only Civilized nations in the area. Everyone else were Barbarians who lived in mud huts or stuff similar to that. So, barring the fact that the Carthaginians and Egyptians existed both before and during the era of the Romans, and barring the fact that in some cases the only thing separating the Gauls and Romans in levels of civility were that one was united and the other was decentralized, everyone always always forgets the Persians.

The Persians were an extremely civilized state, but a sizable chunk of Roman-o-philes flock to the 'Rome is supreme' idea and lump everyone at the time period who wasn't roman into the same boat. To them, the Persians were sand-dwelling nomadic barbarians, just like how the Germans were forest-dwelling barbarians, and the celts were sea-dwelling barbarians.

They also have a nasty tendency of falling into the; Romans always won in their battles and had the best army ever, spiel. Let's just take a moment to compare their militaries for a second, shall we?

This is what the Armies of the Romans looked like:

Notice the fact that they are all on foot, and the fact that the armor doesn't cover the legs, and their shields are somewhat flimsy and made of wood. Also, their main equipment consisted of javelins, meant for fighting infantry, and short swords. Historically, the Romans always struggled against calvary due to this fact.

Let's compare that to the armies of the Parthians and Sassanid Empires, who both existed at the time of the Roman Empire and frequently battled them:
Parthian:

Sassanid:

Now let's compare for a second, what we have above to what I previously told you about the Romans. And then, use the realization to understand this; The Romans were constantly being defeated and embarrassed by the Persians. A perfect example is the Battle of Carrhae, where the Parthians killed upwards of 20,000 Roman soldiers, and only lost about a hundred of their own men.

Another thing the Barbarian trap includes is teaching that Persians were barbaric despoilers who destroyed all cultures they assimilated and were savage murderers. No no sir. That was the Romans. The Persians were extremely tolerant, to the point of actually protecting the cultures of those they conquered and keeping them independent and free. A perfect example of this was when Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from enslavement in Babylon, took them back to their ancient homeland of Isreal, helped them reestablish themselves, and then forked the bill to rebuild their great temple. Compare that to the Romans who completely and utterly exterminated every culture that wasn't greek that they conquered.

Another thing the Barbarian Trap includes, is portraying the Parthians as Pagans who worship hundreds of gods and worship fire and water and elements and stuff. That is just wrong. In so many levels. The Persians were the first Monotheistic religion. They were the first nation in history to embrace a religion that only preached a single god, the Jews came after, and were actually inspired by the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism is like the beaten abused and forgotten grandfather of Christianity and the even more abused great grandfather of Islam. Part of the reason the idea of Persians being pagans exists in the modern-day is the fact that Zoroastrianism is a dying religion.

Historically, it was exterminated by the first Caliphate of Islam. This was mainly done by offering people extremely good bonuses for converting and everyone just accepted it, but rebellions and refusal to convert did happen often, and the Caliphate responded by simply killing everyone who rebelled and enslaving the ones they didn't kill. While Islam is a wonderful religion, they do have a rather... bad bit to them, that being a notable teaching that was enforced in the early days of their empire that said you can't enslave Christians and Jews, but enslaving other religions is A-ok.

Because of that, Zoroastrianism has been largely forgotten, with most people not knowing it even exists, and the people that do know it exists often just mistake it for some weird polytheistic fire religion. Which it isn't.

The China Trap

I will keep this one brief, but, a frequent trap people fall into is the 'God Emperor' or 'God King' trap. The reason I call this the China trap is that China is perhaps the best, most commonly known example of a culture that made their king/emperor Divine in nature, but there are plenty of others that would work.

Cultures that had a god-king:
The Egyptians, the Incans, the Aztecs, The Mayans, the Greeks, the FUCKING ROMANS, the South East Asians, the Japanese.

Cultures that, at no point in their history, had a god-king:
The fucking Persians.

Why in god's name would a Monotheistic nation like the Persians even have the concept of a god-king. It makes 0 sense, but throughout all of fiction, everyone is making it out that the Persians declared their rulers as immortal god-kings. Which is just stupid. That'd be like the Queen of England declaring herself a god ruling over all peoples, but also instating Christianity as the state religion of England, and anyone who worshipped anyone but Jesus and the Christian god were heretics. It's stupid!

Now then

Some examples of things that did the Persians super wrong:
300 - The Persians literally never used Elephants in Europe, that was a Carthaginian, Indian, South Asian, and Early Arabic thing. While they did make use of them, their use was extremely limited, only seeing action against Alexander the Great. Not to mention all of the clothing used by the Persian troops.

While the shields are correct, the face masks and hijabs are Arabic. More accurate Persian soldiers would have been dressed like this;

The Persians recruited from all corners of their empire. So you would have seen Egyptians fighting next to Hittites fighting next to Indians. A uniform look like that, especially in Arabic garb is just wrong.

Also, just like... no. At no point in history did a single Persian soldier dress like this;

Again, that is Arabic. The black uniforms being very much in line with the garb of Ismali Hashashins. Also, the masks are... well, no one wore masks in warfare at the time period. Especially ones that seem to obscure your vision so much. At that point, wear something effective like a helmet, not a terrible thin piece of metal that serves no purpose beyond looking cool.

This is how the Immortals dressed:

Notice the bright colors. These guys were meant to stand out. Being an immortal was to be the pride of the Empire. You were meant to shine as a beacon of what it meant to be Persian. Also, they didn't fight with knives, they fought with spears and bows. The bow was the supreme weapon used by the Persians. They were masters with it, and everyone knew, it's why the Greeks did everything they could to avoid fighting the Persians on open ground because otherwise, that would result in a very messy one-sided fight as the Greek Heavy infantry were completely and utterly massacred from the other end of the battle by swarms of arrows so massive it would make the ones from 300 look piddly and pathetic.

Also, literally everything involving Xerxes is fucking wrong. First of all, he wasn't bald. Feel like I need to point that out. We have carvings and statues of what Xerxes looked like, and this is it;

Secondly, he didn't spend the entire war sitting on a solid gold throne leering at the Greeks and making snide remarks. He literally fought alongside the Immortals and was apparently a skilled archer and spearman, again, we have carvings depicting him in battle, in this one, he is killing a Greek Hoplite:

Thirdly, he didn't kill hundreds of his own men and generals for failing him like he was Darth Vader. For one, he literally was the general, leading his men personally and not delegating to cronies while laughing maniacally. Also, as I have previously stated, the Persians were a tolerant and mostly benevolent empire. The only notable example we have of the Persians executing Generals was when the Persian Shahanshah (king of kings) executed General Surena, but that was mostly because Surena was a nobleman whose family had historically rebelled against the Parthian Empire constantly, and he was a direct threat to the Shahanshah's power by staying in place.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey:
Ok, this one is minor but, one of the biggest problems I have with Assassin's Creed Odyssey is, again, their depiction of the Persians. Entirely this scene right here;

Imma go down a list of everything wrong with this scene;
1. The Regular Guards are dressed like a mix of Arabs and Romans. They are literally wearing Roman Llamelars, why.
2. The Immortals are wearing Arabic Llamelars and literally dressed head to toe in Plate Armor, something that wouldn't be invented for another thousand years.
3. They are using Xiphoses. Which were Greek swords. Why would the Persians be using Greek Swords? Actual Persians used spears.
4. OH MY GOD WHY IS HE A GOD-KING! STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!!!!

The Prince of Persia:
Persia has literally nothing to do with this setting, instead, The Prince of Persia games are basically 99% taken from Arabic mythology, such as the Thousand and One Arabic Nights.

God of War:
Not a lot of people know this, but in an obscure God of War DLC, Kratos fights a Persian Shahanshah. And literally every detail was wrong. First of all, look at how he looks:

Oh yes, a Persian King would totally forsake a crown for a skull cap and then wear literally no clothing on top of that. And a Persian king would definitely be so fucking pale he literally shines in dark rooms.

Also, not to mention, they gave him a fucking Efreet. A fucking EFREET! THAT'S ARABIC AGAIN!!!!

There are more, but I will have to get to them later, cause it is literally 5 AM and I have work tomorrow, so this is all I can do for now. Until later, terrah.

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[Loganic]

I learned today.