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Was There Really a Median Empire? - The Uncertain Empire of the Medes | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

• 0:00
  Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. Most of
• 0:13
  what we think we know about the Medes comes from
• 0:15
  a single Greek historian writing centuries after
• 0:18
  the fact, describing a unified kingdom with a
• 0:22
  magnificent capital. But when we look at the
• 0:25
  actual archaeological and contemporary textual
• 0:28
  record from ancient Iran, a very different and
• 0:31
  more uncertain picture emerges. This episode
• 0:35
  examines the Medes. Not as a fully realized empire
• 0:38
  waiting to be conquered by the Persians, but
• 0:42
  as a fragmented landscape of pastoralists and
• 0:45
  warriors in the Zagros Mountains who somehow
• 0:48
  coalesced into a power capable of destroying
• 0:50
  the Assyrian Empire. I kept returning to one
• 0:54
  central question while working on this episode.
• 0:57
  How do we categorize a people who left behind
• 1:00
  no archives, no inscriptions, and no administrative
• 1:04
  tablets? yet possessed enough military coordination
• 1:08
  to sack Nineveh alongside the Babylonians? It
• 1:12
  is a genuine historical puzzle. We explore the
• 1:16
  Assyrian records that first labeled these groups,
• 1:19
  the later Greek traditions that shaped our understanding
• 1:22
  of them, and the archaeological sites like Nushiyan
• 1:26
  that suggest a layered hegemony rather than a
• 1:28
  centralized state. I wanted to understand why
• 1:32
  the familiar label of empire might actually obscure
• 1:35
  the reality of Median political organization.
• 1:39
  By looking at the transition from the Medes to
• 1:42
  the Achaemenid Persians and the Cyrus the Great,
• 1:45
  we find that this may not have been a national
• 1:48
  conquest, but rather a reconfiguration of power
• 1:51
  within the shared Iranian aristocratic culture.
• 1:55
  It is a lesson in reading evidence carefully
• 1:58
  and resisting the comfort of historical categories
• 2:01
  that fit the story we expect rather than the
• 2:04
  facts we have. The Medes appear in history not
• 2:10
  as a nation waiting to be born, but as an Assyrian
• 2:13
  label for scattered peoples in the Zagros Mountains.
• 2:17
  They were pastoralists, raiders, and tribute
• 2:20
  payers. They would nonetheless become powerful
• 2:24
  enough to help destroy the Assyrian Empire itself.
• 2:27
  Yet they left behind no archives, no inscriptions,
• 2:31
  and no certain proof of the centralized kingdom
• 2:34
  that later tradition assigned them. In the 9th
• 2:37
  century BCE, Assyrian scribes began recording
• 2:41
  campaigns into the Zagros Mountains. The Zagros
• 2:45
  is a rugged spine of western Iran, where narrow
• 2:49
  valleys and high passes sheltered communities
• 2:51
  that the Assyrians called Meds. The scribes did
• 2:55
  not describe a kingdom. They described groups.
• 3:00
  Sometimes these groups raided Assyrian territory.
• 3:03
  Sometimes they submitted to tribute. Sometimes
• 3:07
  they fortified themselves behind thick mud brick
• 3:10
  walls on hilltops. The name Maid was an Assyrian
• 3:14
  label for a population zone. It was not a political
• 3:18
  entity with a single capital, a single ruler,
• 3:22
  or a single army. This is where the story actually
• 3:26
  begins. It does not begin with a unified nation
• 3:29
  waiting to become an empire. It begins with a
• 3:32
  fragmented landscape of pastoralists, local strongmen,
• 3:36
  and fortified settlements scattered across an
• 3:38
  ecologically demanding terrain. Imagine standing
• 3:43
  on the outcrop at Nushi Jan. This site would
• 3:46
  not be built for several more centuries, but
• 3:48
  it represents the kind of place the Assyrians
• 3:51
  encountered. It is a high rock visible for miles
• 3:55
  across otherwise empty terrain. Valleys fall
• 3:58
  away on every side. Their communities were cut
• 4:02
  off by snow for months each winter. The Zagros
• 4:06
  does not yield easily to centralized control.
• 4:10
  Agriculture clings to terraces and narrow valley
• 4:13
  floors. Movement follows the seasonal drift of
• 4:17
  flocks rather than the straight lines and imperial
• 4:20
  roads. The Assyrians, with their professional
• 4:23
  armies and administrative bureaucracy, repeatedly
• 4:27
  entered this zone to extract horses, cattle,
• 4:30
  metalwork, and human labor. They installed local
• 4:34
  chiefs who would cooperate. They deposed those
• 4:38
  who resisted. They recorded these transactions
• 4:41
  in annals that now constitute our earliest evidence
• 4:45
  for who the Medes were. Shalmaneser III in the
• 4:49
  mid -9th century to Glathpiles III in the 8th
• 4:53
  century. Sargon II and his successors in the
• 4:56
  7th century all encountered Median groups, but
• 5:01
  they always encountered them as a mosaic of separate
• 5:04
  encounters, never as a single polity with which
• 5:07
  to negotiate. The Assyrian records are precise
• 5:11
  about tribute and battles. They do not describe
• 5:14
  a Median king who ruled from a Median capital
• 5:17
  over a Median nation. This matters because most
• 5:22
  listeners who have heard of the Medes at all
• 5:24
  having counted them through a very different
• 5:27
  source. That source was written two centuries
• 5:30
  after the period in question by a Greek historian
• 5:33
  named Herodotus. Herodotus, composing his histories
• 5:38
  in the 430s BCE, tells a compelling story of
• 5:43
  a medium kingdom founded by a clever man named
• 5:46
  Diocese. Diocese established justice. He built
• 5:51
  a capital at Ecbatana with seven concentric walls
• 5:54
  of different colors. He ruled as the first of
• 5:58
  a sequence of Median kings, diocese, then phraates,
• 6:03
  then sayasares, then astiages. It is a narrative
• 6:09
  of political development, of law and centralization,
• 6:13
  of a kingdom that rose and then fell to the Persians
• 6:17
  under Cyrus. The story has shaped almost all
• 6:21
  subsequent understanding of the Medes. It is
• 6:24
  also, as a source for administrative history,
• 6:27
  deeply problematic. Herodotus was writing for
• 6:31
  a Greek audience. He used oral traditions and
• 6:35
  perhaps Persian court stories that had already
• 6:37
  passed through multiple retellings. He had no
• 6:41
  access to Median archives because no substantial
• 6:43
  Median texts survive. To understand what this
• 6:47
  absence means, consider what other powers of
• 6:51
  the same region and era left behind. Assyrian
• 6:54
  palaces contained rooms lined with baked clay
• 6:57
  tablets. These included tax records, military
• 7:01
  rosters, diplomatic correspondence, and labor
• 7:04
  assignments. They were preserved when those palaces
• 7:08
  burned and the tablets hardened in the fire.
• 7:11
  Achaemenid centers like Persepolis yielded archives
• 7:15
  of administrative tablets recording grain distributions,
• 7:19
  provincial orders, and the movement of workers
• 7:22
  and soldiers. Royal inscriptions were carved
• 7:25
  in stone and set into walls. For the Medes, none
• 7:29
  of this exists. There are no royal inscriptions,
• 7:33
  no administrative tablets, no law codes, no diplomatic
• 7:38
  correspondence in a Median language. The absence
• 7:41
  is not trivial. It means that our most detailed
• 7:45
  narrative of Median political organization comes
• 7:48
  from a literary account composed long after the
• 7:51
  fact. It was shaped by Greek ideas about what
• 7:55
  a proper kingdom should look like. Diocese as
• 7:59
  a law -giver founder reads suspiciously like
• 8:02
  a Greek political parable. He is a figure who
• 8:06
  embodies a transition from chaos to ordered rule.
• 8:10
  Archaeology has not confirmed a large, tightly
• 8:12
  organized imperial capital at Iqbatana in the
• 8:16
  period Herodotus describes. The site of modern
• 8:20
  Hamadan almost certainly overlays and obscures
• 8:23
  any Iron Age settlement. But what has been investigated
• 8:27
  does not reveal the administrative infrastructure
• 8:30
  that would support the image of a centralized
• 8:32
  state. There is no evidence of extensive archives,
• 8:36
  standardized bureaucratic quarters, or provincial
• 8:39
  governments. Herodotus' sequence is influential,
• 8:43
  memorable. and almost certainly not reliable
• 8:46
  as a record of how Median political life actually
• 8:49
  functioned. Yet something powerful did emerge
• 8:53
  in western Iran during the 7th century BCE. The
• 8:58
  Assyrian records themselves trace its development.
• 9:01
  By the reign of Izar -Hadden and Ashurbanipal
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  in the late 7th century, Assyrian scribes begin
• 9:08
  to describe Median leaders with greater prominence.
• 9:11
  Assyrian policy toward the Zagros shifts from
• 9:14
  extraction and punishment to alliance and anxiety.
• 9:18
  The most important figure in this transformation,
• 9:21
  as the Greek tradition remembered him, was Syaxares.
• 9:25
  His actual name in the Iranian languages was
• 9:29
  probably something like Uvakhshatra. What the
• 9:32
  Babylonian chronicles confirm, and what the Greek
• 9:35
  tradition elaborates, is that by the late 7th
• 9:39
  century, a Median -led force had become capable
• 9:41
  of coordinated military action on a scale that
• 9:45
  threatened the Assyrian Empire itself. The decisive
• 9:49
  event came in 612 BCE. The Assyrian Empire had
• 9:54
  dominated the Near East for three centuries through
• 9:57
  a combination of military terror, administrative
• 10:00
  sophistication and ideological assertion. Now
• 10:04
  it was collapsing under the pressure of multiple
• 10:06
  enemies. The Babylonians under Nabopolassar had
• 10:11
  established an independent kingdom in southern
• 10:14
  Mesopotamia and were pressing northward. The
• 10:17
  Medes under Syaxres allied with them. Together
• 10:22
  their armies besieged Nineveh, the Assyrian capital
• 10:26
  on the Tigris River. They captured it and destroyed
• 10:29
  it with a thoroughness that still shocks in the
• 10:32
  archaeological record. There were burned buildings
• 10:35
  and collapsed walls. Assyrian administrative
• 10:38
  tablets abruptly terminated in a layer of ash
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  and destruction. The Assyrian state that had
• 10:45
  recorded maids as scattered tribute payers for
• 10:48
  two centuries stopped writing in a single season
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  of fire. This demonstrates beyond doubt that
• 10:56
  Median power was real, consequential, and capable
• 11:00
  of coordinated action against the most formidable
• 11:02
  military state of the age. But what kind of power
• 11:07
  was it? This is the central question that the
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  evidence forces us to confront. It is where the
• 11:14
  category of empire becomes problematic. The Babylonian
• 11:18
  Chronicles confirm the alliance and the destruction
• 11:20
  of Nineveh. They do not describe Median internal
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  organization. They do not tell us whether Syaxaresa
• 11:28
  commanded a unified Median army as a sovereign
• 11:31
  king, or whether he led a coalition of Iranian
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  chiefs who had agreed to cooperate for a specific
• 11:37
  campaign. The distinction is not academic. A
• 11:42
  centralized empire extracts resources through
• 11:45
  appointed officials. It maintains standing armies.
• 11:49
  It standardizes law and administration across
• 11:53
  subject territories. It generates the documentary
• 11:56
  record that makes such operations visible. Tax
• 11:59
  receipts, governor appointments, provincial reports,
• 12:02
  the physical paperwork of rule. A coalition or
• 12:06
  layered hegemony operates through personal alliance,
• 12:10
  kinship obligation and tribute relationships
• 12:13
  with subordinate rulers who retain local authority.
• 12:17
  Military cooperation must be continually renegotiated
• 12:20
  face to face. This leaves almost nothing written
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  behind. Both can field large armies. Both can
• 12:30
  destroy great cities. But their internal structures,
• 12:34
  a stability, their capacity for sustained administration,
• 12:38
  and the evidence they leave behind are fundamentally
• 12:41
  different. The period between the fall of Nineveh
• 12:45
  in 612 BCE and Cyrus' defeat of Astyages around
• 12:50
  550 BCE is the crucial test for what kind of
• 12:54
  polity the Medes actually built. In these six
• 12:58
  decades, the Medes became the dominant power
• 13:00
  in western Iran. They extended their influence
• 13:04
  eastward across the Iranian plateau and westward
• 13:07
  into eastern Anatolia. They clashed with the
• 13:11
  Lydian kingdom near the Halys River in what later
• 13:14
  tradition remembered as the Bacchal of the Eclipse.
• 13:17
  A solar eclipse in 585 BCE supposedly interrupted
• 13:22
  the fighting and led to a negotiated frontier.
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  The story, even if partly elaborated, indicates
• 13:29
  median reach into Anatolia and recognition by
• 13:33
  other major powers as a force to be reckoned
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  with. But reach and recognition are not the same
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  as centralized administration. Archaeology provides
• 13:43
  the material reality against which to test claims
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  of imperial organization. At Nushiyan, a small
• 13:51
  fortified site perched on its high outcrop in
• 13:54
  western Iran, Excavators found a central columned
• 13:58
  hall with thick mud brick walls. They found a
• 14:02
  fire altar suggesting ritual function. They found
• 14:06
  evidence of metal working. But they found no
• 14:09
  archives, no administrative tablets, and no evidence
• 14:13
  that this was a node in a bureaucratic network.
• 14:17
  Similar patterns appear at Gorontipe and Babajan.
• 14:21
  There are fortified structures and elite residences.
• 14:26
  There are distinctive architectural forms that
• 14:28
  distinguish them from Assyrian or Babylonian
• 14:31
  centers. But there is nothing that indicates
• 14:34
  standardized provincial governance or a system
• 14:37
  of resource extraction across a large territory.
• 14:41
  These sites suggest a society with skilled craftsmen,
• 14:44
  warrior elites, and religious institutions. What
• 14:48
  they do not show is the infrastructure of empire.
• 14:51
  There are no extensive archives of administrative
• 14:54
  tablets. There is no evidence of standardized
• 14:58
  provincial governance. There is no uniform system
• 15:01
  of weights and measures or taxation. There is
• 15:05
  no network of roads designed for rapid imperial
• 15:08
  communication. The colland halls at Nushi Jan
• 15:13
  and Godentepe are impressive, but they are isolated
• 15:17
  highland sites, not the nodes of a bureaucratic
• 15:20
  system. The absence of median written records
• 15:23
  is particularly telling. We know that Median
• 15:27
  was an Iranian language related to Old Persian
• 15:30
  and Avestan. Yet no substantial texts in Median
• 15:34
  survive. This could mean that administration
• 15:37
  was conducted orally. It could mean that writing
• 15:40
  was used on perishable materials. It could mean
• 15:44
  that the Achaemenids who succeeded the Medes
• 15:46
  deliberately suppressed Median documentary culture.
• 15:50
  Whatever the explanation, the result is the same.
• 15:54
  We cannot read Median administrative records
• 15:57
  because they do not exist in the archaeological
• 15:59
  or manuscript record. The temptation to imagine
• 16:04
  a centralized Median state is understandable.
• 16:07
  If an army large enough to destroy Nineveh marched
• 16:10
  from west in Iran, it is natural to picture a
• 16:13
  king, a court, a treasury, a bureaucracy, the
• 16:17
  familiar furniture of empire. But none of that
• 16:20
  furniture has been found. Modern scholarship,
• 16:24
  influenced by Herodotus and by this natural assumption
• 16:27
  that great military power implies great administrative
• 16:30
  organization, has often described the Medes as
• 16:34
  the first Iranian empire. In this view, they
• 16:38
  were a centralized state that Cyrus the Great
• 16:41
  conquered and whose institutions the Persians
• 16:44
  inherited and expanded. This narrative is coherent.
• 16:48
  It may even be partly correct. But it imposes
• 16:53
  a level of administrative certainty that the
• 16:55
  surviving evidence cannot support. The Medes
• 17:00
  may have built something more like a layered
• 17:02
  hegemony. A dominant center, perhaps with a leading
• 17:06
  king and a core territory, may have exercised
• 17:09
  loose and variable control over subordinate rulers
• 17:12
  and regions through alliance, tribute, and military
• 17:16
  threat rather than through direct bureaucratic
• 17:18
  administration. Or... They may have operated
• 17:22
  as a confederation of Iranian elites, united
• 17:25
  temporarily by charismatic leadership and shared
• 17:28
  interest in plundering or resisting Assyria,
• 17:31
  but not integrated into a permanent state structure.
• 17:35
  These possibilities are less satisfying than
• 17:38
  a clear narrative of imperial foundation and
• 17:41
  succession, but they are more faithful to the
• 17:44
  fragmentary and ambiguous evidence. If median
• 17:48
  power was layered rather than centralized, then
• 17:51
  Cyrus' rise was not the conquest of one state
• 17:54
  by another. It was something more intimate and
• 17:58
  more difficult to name. The Greek tradition,
• 18:02
  and much modern historiography influenced by
• 18:04
  it, presents Cyrus as a Persian conqueror who
• 18:08
  overthrew a Median empire and established a new
• 18:11
  Persian one in its place. The Nabonidus Chronicle,
• 18:15
  a Babylonian source contemporary with these events,
• 18:18
  records that Cyrus defeated Astyages, and took
• 18:21
  him prisoner. It records that the Median armies
• 18:25
  submitted to Cyrus. But the language of conquest
• 18:29
  may obscure a more complex reality. Cyrus and
• 18:33
  Assyages belonged to related Iranian elite worlds.
• 18:37
  Their languages were cognate. Their religious
• 18:41
  practices were probably similar. Their social
• 18:44
  structures were organized around comparable patterns
• 18:47
  of kinship, pliantage, and warrior status. Cyrus
• 18:52
  may have been a subordinate ruler or vassal within
• 18:55
  the Median sphere before his rebellion. He may
• 18:58
  not have been the leader of a separate nation
• 19:00
  that invaded from outside. The defeat of Astyages
• 19:04
  may have been a transfer of leadership within
• 19:07
  a shared aristocratic network. It may have been
• 19:10
  a coup or a rebellion rather than a national
• 19:13
  war between sealed peoples. The aftermath supports
• 19:17
  this interpretation. Median nobles did not disappear
• 19:21
  after Cyrus' victory. They served in Achaemenid
• 19:25
  administration and military commands. Harpagus,
• 19:29
  the Median general who allegedly defected to
• 19:32
  Cyrus, became a key figure in Persian expansion
• 19:36
  into Anatolia. Median place names and titles
• 19:40
  persisted in Achaemenid usage. The Persian court
• 19:44
  incorporated Median elements in dress, ceremony,
• 19:48
  and perhaps administrative practice. This continuity
• 19:52
  suggests that the transition was not the replacement
• 19:55
  of one nation by another. It was a reconfiguration
• 19:59
  of power within a broadly shared Iranian aristocratic
• 20:02
  culture. The Persians who built their Khimanid
• 20:06
  empire were not starting from nothing. They were
• 20:10
  reorganizing and expanding structures of power
• 20:13
  that had already been established in western
• 20:15
  Iran. whatever the precise nature of those structures.
• 20:20
  The Achaemenid Empire that emerged under Cyrus
• 20:23
  and his successors was, by contrast with the
• 20:26
  Median Order, a demonstrably centralized state.
• 20:30
  The Persians left the kind of evidence that proves
• 20:33
  centralized administration. There were tablets
• 20:36
  recording grain distributions. There were inscriptions
• 20:40
  naming provincial governors. There were roads
• 20:43
  with way stations for royal messengers. This
• 20:47
  documentary record, royal inscriptions in multiple
• 20:51
  languages, administrative tablets from Persepolis
• 20:55
  and other centers, a system of satrapies, standardized
• 20:59
  coinage, makes the Achaemenid state visible in
• 21:03
  ways the Median polity is not. The Persians left
• 21:07
  a documentary record that the Medes did not.
• 21:11
  This does not mean that the Medes were primitive
• 21:14
  or failed. It means that the category of empire
• 21:17
  which fits the Achaemenid evidence with reasonable
• 21:20
  comfort may be an inappropriate container for
• 21:24
  the Median polity. The Achaemenid administrative
• 21:27
  system provides a standard against which earlier
• 21:30
  Iranian political formations are often measured
• 21:33
  and found wanting. But this is a historiographical
• 21:37
  choice, not an evidentiary necessity. The debate
• 21:42
  among scholars about Median political structure
• 21:44
  is genuine and ongoing. Some historians, emphasizing
• 21:49
  the scale of Median military operations and the
• 21:52
  later Achaemenid use of Median precedents, argue
• 21:56
  for a more centralized Median state than the
• 21:59
  fragmentary evidence strictly allows. Others,
• 22:03
  pointing to the absence of administrative documentation
• 22:06
  and the archaeological evidence for regional
• 22:08
  variation, favor a model of loose confederation
• 22:12
  or layered hegemony. Archaeologists disagree
• 22:15
  about whether sites like Nishijan represent a
• 22:19
  distinct median material culture or simply local
• 22:23
  elite centers that happen to fall within a zone
• 22:26
  of median influence. These disagreements are
• 22:29
  not manufactured for dramatic effect. They reflect
• 22:33
  real uncertainties in the evidence and genuine
• 22:35
  differences in how to weigh archaeological silence
• 22:38
  against literary testimony. What can be said
• 22:42
  with confidence is that the Maids were a significant
• 22:45
  and powerful force in the ancient Near East.
• 22:48
  They helped destroy the Assyrian Empire, the
• 22:51
  dominant power of the age. They established a
• 22:55
  dominant regional order in Western Iran that
• 22:58
  lasted for at least six decades and perhaps longer.
• 23:02
  They extended their influence into Anatolia and
• 23:05
  were recognized by other major powers as equals.
• 23:09
  Their elites continued to shape Iranian political
• 23:12
  culture under the Achaemenids. These achievements
• 23:16
  are substantial. They do not require the label
• 23:20
  of empire to be meaningful. The label, however,
• 23:24
  carries weight. Calling the Medes the builders
• 23:27
  of the first Iranian empire makes a claim about
• 23:30
  administrative structure. centralization, and
• 23:34
  institutional continuity that the surviving evidence
• 23:36
  cannot fully substantiate. It projects backward
• 23:40
  onto the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, a category
• 23:44
  of political organization that became clearly
• 23:47
  visible only with the Achaemenids. It risks treating
• 23:51
  Herodotus' literary narrative as administrative
• 23:54
  history. It risks treating archaeological silence
• 23:58
  as evidence of absence. rather than as a genuine
• 24:01
  limit on what we can know. The Medes deserve
• 24:05
  better than to be treated either as a primitive
• 24:07
  prelude to Persian greatness, or as a fully realized
• 24:11
  empire waiting to be discovered. They were, as
• 24:15
  far as we can reconstruct, something more interesting
• 24:18
  and more difficult. They were a powerful regional
• 24:22
  order built in a fragmented landscape through
• 24:25
  mechanisms that remain partially obscure. by
• 24:29
  people who left no written account of their own
• 24:31
  political arrangements. The vague assumption
• 24:35
  that the Medes were a unified kingdom conquered
• 24:37
  by the Persians dissolves under scrutiny, but
• 24:41
  what replaces it is not a neat alternative. It
• 24:45
  is a more precise uncertainty. The name Mede
• 24:49
  began as an Assyrian category for scattered groups
• 24:52
  in the Zagros. Something powerful coalesced under
• 24:55
  that name by the late 7th century. It was powerful
• 24:59
  enough to help destroy Nineveh and to dominate
• 25:02
  Western Iran for two generations. But what that
• 25:06
  something was, whether empire, hegemony, confederation,
• 25:10
  or a form of political organization for which
• 25:13
  we have no adequate modern term, remains genuinely
• 25:16
  uncertain. The evidence is fragmentary. The sources
• 25:22
  are biased and late. The archaeological record
• 25:25
  speaks of elite power without revealing administrative
• 25:28
  structure. Cyrus' defeat of Assyrges was a transformation
• 25:33
  within a shared Iranian world, not a national
• 25:36
  conquest. And the Median nobles who served under
• 25:40
  the Achaemenids remind us that political change
• 25:44
  in this period was often a reconfiguration of
• 25:47
  elite networks rather than a replacement of one
• 25:50
  people by another. The historical problem of
• 25:53
  the Medes is, in the end, a lesson in how to
• 25:56
  read evidence carefully and how to resist the
• 25:59
  comfort of categories that fit the story we expect.
• 26:03
  The Medes were real. They were powerful. They
• 26:08
  mattered. Whether they built an empire in the
• 26:12
  sense that historians can verify is a question
• 26:15
  that the surviving sources do not permit us to
• 26:17
  answer with confidence. that uncertainty is not
• 26:21
  a failure of research. It is the honest condition
• 26:25
  of understanding a past that left no administrative
• 26:28
  archives of its own. We know the past primarily
• 26:32
  through the records of its enemies, its successors,
• 26:35
  and a Greek historian writing two centuries later
• 26:38
  for audiences who wanted their barbarians to
• 26:42
  look like Greeks.