A. R. Mirzaee (mirzaee1352@yahoo.com)
M. R. Bank Tavakoli (banktavakoli@yahoo.com)

Should the conflict between Tehran and Washington result in historical distortion, lying and insult to ancients?

The authors would decline any desire for racism and national instinct in writing these words about Persian history and ‘300’ movie and they have not any contribution to any kind of governmental or political activity.

Undoubtedly, the Greece rule in history and our nowadays civilization is deeply exclusive and undisputable. The Greeks contribution in philosophy and science considering the staring names of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, among others, prove how influential they were in our current knowledge of universe. Not going so far, they were the medium to transfer the art of thinking from ancient Egyptians, Sumerians and Babylonians to next world generation and they were the sole of current European culture.
The inherited civilization, today, is highly indebt to the ancient people who makes effort to promote human kind to better life. Perhaps the most valuable outcome of those efforts fruit today’s democratic government and respect to the originality of human liberty which on their own, constitute the expansion of art, culture and science in the West.
But, speak frankly, the ancient Persian rules in developing our current situation of human civilization is not deniable. It is just pointed out that Persian wisdom rule after conquest of Babylon and its effect on modern Judaism is so high that all prophets contemporaneous to the conquest were deeply inspired Persian mottoes. The kindness-based religions were other Persian doctrine to the human cultures as well.

Remember Daniel’s (Jewish prophet) words “The Persian’s and Median’s law never be abolished”. Based on Eudoxc de kinde’s, there were high interests and attentions to Zoroaster’s (Persian prophet) words in the Plato’s academy ‎[1], ‎[2]. It is worthful to remark that Ostanes’s (Persian philosopher) had strong influence upon the Democritus (establisher of atomic theory) ideas. Also, according to the Appoiionius (A Greek historians and philosopher) words, the diameter of earth had already been evaluated by Persians scientists contemporaneous to Eratosthene. Nevertheless, The Gnosticism wisdom (It had been formed from the Zoroastrian opinions) and Mithraism (another Persian religious philosophy which was the Roman Empire’s official religion for three centuries) are two fundamental bases which lead to the creation of Christianity ‎[3], ‎[4]. We can see these impressions even on the next generation of philosophers such as Nietzsche ‎[5] and Montesquieu ‎[6].

The movie ‘300’ portrays the Thermopylae, one of the battles between Persians and Greeks in 480 BC. In that war, The Persian empire multi-nationality army force leading by king Xerxes face Spartans leading by their king Leonidas in the narrow cliffs of Thermopylae. A traitor (Ephialtes) who betray Leonidas informs Xerxes of a goat path to the Spartans back. Consequently, the Greeks parts of Leonidas troop escaped from the hell and only 300 Spartans in accompany with 400 Thespians and 700 of the people of Thebs stayed there and heroically fight to the last man ‎[7].

Indeed, such a sacrificing scene is impressive but there are some cases of so called excessive generosity of giving life in different nation’s history. The Ariobarzan (the patriotic Persian commander 329BC) deadly attempt to block Alexander’s enormous army or the fight of 25000 unequipped Persian Soldiers with Ottoman Empire invaders of 200000 soldiers, with 800 artillery and 60000 gunmen, are some examples from Persian history ‎[8].

In ‘300’ movie, the writer and director successful efforts for making the film a prosperous box office product (by use of the symbolic portrays, exaggerating and hyper-stylizing the battle) is understandable; but, there are some critical points in the film that change this money-making ultra-violent treatment of the battle of Thermopylae to a filthy lie and false flagrant accusing the Persian ancients who can not (or if they can, they never allowed) to defend themselves:

1) In the film the Persians (particularly the king Xerxes) are portrayed as devil creatures (adopted mainly from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie). Also, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) was represented as a black skin, shaved, bald androgynous who wear such clothes which never used by any Persians in its long history. In all Apadana and Persepolis palace stone paintings, there are not any Persians without long beard & hair and silk clothes, see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Xerxes in movie 300.

According to Greek’s historians, Xerxes and his brother Achaemenes were of the most handsome mans of their days ‎[9]. It might be true that the Xerxes was a dictator king but he never was black skin & bald and never have been seen nude (like other Persians) in the society. Although, it is a symbolized representation, but almost a question remains that why only Persians should be portrayed so “symbolized” like monsters and Spartans does not need any symbolic remarks, see Fig. 3. and Fig. 4. Other deduction of portraying all the symbolic bad men to be black is the sense of racism which is cleverly run behind exciting screams and bloods. Ironically, the filmmakers did not produce the film without historical investigations and with such bizarre pictures of Persians and their king they should have strong intentions!

2) What is really tried to be shown in this film and what will induced by audience at the end of the film is that Persians were bloodthirsty barbarians and underdeveloped zombies in front of Spartans who were clever, beautiful and the defenders of human rights, culture and democracy!!?

It’s absolutely clear that the principles like democracy are not one-second born concepts and are developed after so many try and errors by human kind during centuries in accordance with different historical period’s requirements. Today Western democracy has been theorized by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in advance and after numerous initially straggles and efforts, it experienced much perversion, defeat and success until it got the current characteristics.

Albeit, in 2500 years ago, not only ancient Persians but also other people of that period like Spartans were not familiar or interested in such concepts like democracy. Basically, for an economic hierarchy based on agriculture and feudalism (characters of ancient society) a democratic government was not relevant. The democratic government advantages in industrial societies were revealed and became effective with the help of broadcasting facilities and ever-increasing level of people awareness.

As a matter of fact, the ancient Greece, even in Athens, had only some kinds of aristocracy which was the democracy for aristocrats (lords) and the real democracy based on all races of human kind liberty emerged only in 20th century ‎[10]. Thus, it’s not logical to expect ancient Persians in 2500 years ago to be democracy defenders! Moreover, the Spartans and Leonidas could not and never be the democracy and liberty defenders. Going one step further, the Persian kings behavior, comparing their contemporary rulers (e.g. Alexander the great and his confederate Greeks) against defeated nations, was much more debonairly and courteous ‎[7]. The history book of Herodotus on Cyrus treatment of Croesus (king of Lydia), Jews and Babylonians is evident enough to be referred.

Xenophon, famous Athenian philosopher and historian, portrayed the Cyrus as the lord of high valuable human kind ethics.

"education of Cyrus", which could mean the education he received or the one he gave, especially since Cyrus' preferred verb seems to be didaskein (to teach) and Xenophon seems concerned primarily with the alterations Cyrus made to Persian society in order to make it fit for empire, which could be described as an education. Prior to Cyrus, the Persians had been interested only in virtue and justice; he persuaded them to turn their virtue to the task of conquest which led to the accumulation of vast territories but also had enduring negative effects on Persian society, as can be seen in the turmoil following Cyrus' death ‎[11].

One clue for such assert is the Cyrus cylinder (the first document defining a person’s human right, Fig. 5.) which provide the brilliant believe of ancient Persians to justice and truth.

Iran is home to the first charter of human rights. The Persian Empire established unprecedented principles of human rights in the 6th century BC, under the reign of Cyrus the Great. After his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, the King issued the Cyrus Cylinder, discovered in 1879 and recognized by many today as the first document defining a person's human rights. The cylinder declared that citizens of the Empire would be allowed to practice their religious beliefs freely and abolished slavery. This means that all the palaces of the Kings of Persia were built by paid workers, in an era where slaves typically did such work. These two reforms were reflected in the biblical books of Chronicles and Ezra, which state that Cyrus released the followers of Judaism from slavery and allowed them to migrate back to their land. Following Persia's defeat at the hands of Alexander the Great, the concept of human rights was abandoned ‎[12].

3) Another aspect of the film, which severely distorts the history, is the number of Persian soldiers, which was exaggerated by Greek historians to be unbelievingly high (from 1 to 5 million). In this controversy, Count Gobineau (Napoleon military consultant) logical deduction is adopted.

Herodotus uses the narrative of this muster in order to list and describe in detail all the contingents that composed this army drawn from 46 nationalities (VII 59-88). The infantry would have been counted by letting the men pack completely a precinct that could hold 10,000 men; since the precinct was filled 170 times, the infantry would have consisted of 1,700,000 soldiers (VII 60). This counting by units of 10,000 is mentioned also by Aeschylus (line 981). Herodotus reckons that since for each combatant there was at least one non-combatant camp follower or supply man, the total of the army on foot must have been about 3,400,000 men. But since other Greek sources estimate the effectives of the Persian army around 700,000 or 800,000 soldiers, Herodotus must have been guilty of error: the figure of 1,700,000 must have included the non-combatants. Herodotus estimates that the cavalry amounted to about 80,000 horsemen plus 20,000 men mounted on camels or chariots (VI 84). Later the Persian forces were joined by men provided by the European allies in an amount that Herodotus guesses might have been 300,000 (VIII 85). Gobineau thought that he had made a laughing stock of the Greeks by proving that in calculating the size of the Persian army Herodotus had exaggerated almost four times and the other Greek writers two times. But the climate of opinion was changing rapidly among the scholars of ancient history. When in 1895 Macan published the first of his five volumes on Herodotus he thought of himself as a radical critic, but by the time he published the last volume in 1908 he found himself to be holding a rather moderate position. When in 1901 G. B. Grundy estimated the size of Xerxes' army at "several hundred thousands" he was expressing an old-fashioned view. He justified himself by declaring: "The tendency which is sometimes displayed to belittle the Persia of this time, is in violent disagreement with such evidence as is extant" ‎[13].

And the last word is that the behavior of the people should be judged according to their period of life’s requirements and conditions in their date.

We all believe that throughout the West and other parts of the world, most of the writers and filmmakers, produce their works in congruence with the codes of ethics and without self-intentions. Thus we can just hope that people around the world review the 300 movie and other films of that ilk, with open eye and avoid prejudice about the people based on their concepts. Also, we hope that Iranian (in Iran or other countries) does not deduce the works like ‘300’ as a common sight of all Westerns against their culture.

References

[1]      C. f. Jaeger, Aristotleles, Berlin, 1923.

[2]      “Filosofia”orietale”od”illuminatival”Avicenna,” in Rivista degli studi orientali, pp. 433-467, 1925.

[3]      S. Spencer, Mysticism in world religion, P.B., London, 1963.

[4]      Scholem, Major trends in Judaism, P.B., London, 1955.

[5]      Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

[6]      C. Montesquieu, Letters Persanes.

[7]      H. W. Wells, The Outline of History, vol. 1.

[8]      Godfrey Goodwin, The Janissaries, Saqi Books, London 1997.

[9]      Will Durant, The story of civilization, P.B Simon and Schuster Inc 1939.

[10]  Will Durant, The story of philosophy, P.B Simon and Schuster Inc 1927.

[11]  Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus, trans. and with an introd. by Wayne Ambler, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, The Agora Editions, 2001. ISBN 0-8014-8750-1. Available online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great.

[12]  Nadon, Christopher, Xenophon's Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN 0-520-22404-3. Available online partially at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Cylinder.

[13]  G. B. Grundy, The Great Persian War (London, 1901). Available online at: http://www.metrum.org/perwars/persize.htm.