Tuesday, February 28, 2012

811 (1/2)

Little is known of the pre-imperial history of the Persians, but it's clear that they were established in the eponymous kingdom or principality of Pârsâ in southwestern Iran before the 6th century BC.

The area was the home of a very ancient, pre-Iranic people, known in Old Persian as Huzi, in Greek as Cissians and in the Bible (and most modern histories) as Elamites.  Once a large empire, Elam seems to have been weakened by internal conflict and war with Assyria.  Migrants into an established and highly-developed civilisation, the Persians adopted Elamite dress, used the Elamite language for royal records and made the Elamite city of Anshan their capital.  It was from here that King Cyrus II (Kurush or Kurash) started his empire.

A century later, Herodotus wrote that Cyrus was the son of Persian noble Cambyses (Kabujiya) and Mede princess Mandane.  The Median king, Astyages, ordered the infant killed because of a prophesy that his daughter's offspring would overthrow him; Cyrus was instead raised in secret by a shepherd and grew up to lead the Persians in rebellion against their Mede overlords.

Cyrus was then attacked by King Croesus of Lydia, an ally of Astyages.  The kings fought indecisively at the Halys River in central Anatolia; with winter and the end of the military campaign season drawing near, Croesus called the whole thing off and went back to his capital of Sardis.  As did Cyrus.  (To Sardis.)

Stunned like a bug on a windshield by this unorthodox strategy, Croesus had only time to watch his cavalry's horses run in confused terror from the Persians' camels before getting conquered the hell out of and nearly burnt at the stake.  Herodotus claims he was saved by a miraculous rainstorm after telling Cyrus of his meeting with the legendary Athenian lawgiver Solon.  Right.

Meantime, Cyrus had inadvertently added Lydia's vassal Greeks of Ionia and Aeolis to his empire.  The Greeks weren't happy and had to be, er, added to the empire again, one by one and holp along with many stabbings by Cyrus' lieutenants.

Meanmeantime, in 539 BC, Cyrus conquered Babylon, and was well-received if his propaganda is to be believed, earning a spot in the Bible as the liberator of the captive Jewish nobles, who rebuilt Judea as a client state of Persia.  Herotodus has a nifty story about Cyrus diverting the Euphrates with trenches and marching his army under the river gate, but Herodotus clearly didn't know squat about Babylon, since he thought it was the size of New Jersey.

Stories of Cyrus' death (in or around December, 530 BC) vary, sometimes fighting the Dahae, or peacefully at his capital of Pasargadae.  Herodotus claims to have heard several and recounts one where he dies in a vicious battle against the Massagetae.  He was interred in an above-ground tomb at Pasargadae, which stands there still.

He was succeeded by Cambyses II.  His short reign was troubled; though he conquered Egypt in 525, his campaigns against Kush and Carthage failed; Herodotus describes him suffering a madness as punishment for killing the bull sacred to the Egyptian god Apis, and while he tarried in Egypt, the aforementioned Gaumata/Smerdis/Bardiya arose to seize the throne.  Cambyses died in 522, variously of an accident, or (according to Darius I the Great) suicide.

Bardiya/Gaumata's assassins placed Darius on the throne, which he held for 36 goddamn years.  He spent the first years of his reign quashing rebellions all over the empire.  He also conquered parts of northern India c.  515.  At around this time, the new ceremonial capital of Persepolis was built.

In 514 or 513, he invaded Scythia, crossing the Bosphorus with a pontoon bridge.  The nomads conducted a scorched-earth retreat and couldn't be confronted, so after capturing part of Scythia, Darius built a series of fortresses along the river Oarus (possibly the Dniepr or Volga).  He commemorated what success the campaign had with inscriptions at the ancient Elamite city Susa.  Afterward he gained a loose hold over Thrace.

Little is known of the years between these inscriptions and the Ionian Revolt of 499 BC.  This revolt resulted from the decision of the Persian kings to support a single lord (tyrannos) from among the cities' factional aristocrats.  These tyrants often lacked popular support.  The spark came the previous year when exiled aristocrats from the new democracy of Naxos approached Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, to help reconquer the island.  Aristagoras in turn asked Artaphernes, the satrap of Lydia, to lend him an army for the purpose, planning to repay him with the island's captured treasure.

Herodotus blames the attack's failure on a dispute between Aristagoras and the Persian commander Megabates, who chose to warn the Naxians of the invasion.  Whatever the reason, Aristagoras was now unable to repay Artaphernes, and in desperation, abdicated power, declared Miletus a democracy and incited the Milesians to revolt against the imperial government. To Be Continued

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Change of plans:  It's not going to be 1,000 words or less at all, as this is proving to be too ambitious (stupid).  This'll instead be a two-parter totaling maybe 1,500-2,000 words.  Part 1 goes up Tuesday.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Denim and leather

Update 12/10/13:  This post contains information that is probably incorrect.  Please see here.

We're getting to the fun stuff, how to make your costume and gear - your "kit" as it's called.  We'll start with materials.

The workhorse of ancient clothing fabrics was wool.  Plentiful wherever people raised sheep and relatively easy to process, wool is handsome and hangs smoothly even in light weights, and breathes well.

Unfortunately, if you, like me, happen to be sensitive to it, you don't want it next to your skin all day.  By the time I got to bed on the second day of Marathon 2011, I had welts around the base of my neck that didn't go away for a week.

Lesson:  If you have only one tunic, make it linen.  While it does wrinkle terribly in wear and "run" when washed, it's extremely comfortable, cool, and breathes better than anything.  Linen is made from fibres  from inside the stems of the flax plant, and the long and complicated steps in getting these fibres to the same level of usability as newly-sheared wool makes it very expensive.  It's worth it.  You can wear your linen tunic alone on hot days, or under your wool one or even with just a wool cloak when it's chilly.

Much more expensive in ancient times was cotton, imported from India.  For our purposes, cotton should be regarded as up there with silk, although if you're doing an Indian impression, you have more leeway.  Silk, of course, was also available (via the ancient Silk Road).

I'm still investigating historic weaves.  In the meantime, plain weave is a good default choice.  There will be no thread-counting in XMFM, mainly because I don't know enough about the subject, but also because I do know how hard it is to find good, affordable materials.

The other main kind of cloth used in our period was felt.  Felt is not a weave, but made by compressing loose, tangled wool fibres into a mat.  This mat is water-resistant, can be cut at any angle and won't unravel if you leave the edges unfinished.  It's the material of choice for hats.

Get natural-dyed fabric if you can, or dye fabric at home if you're really ambitious.  Madder (red), woad (blue) and turmeric (yellow) were common.  The green rind of Persian (aka English) walnuts produces a greenish-brown dye, but according to Robert Jacobus Forbes (Studies in Ancient Technology), ancient peoples more often used naturally brown and black wool in the production of brown and black fabrics.

While natural dyes tend to fade faster than synthetic ones, this will only make you look like someone who actually wears your costume more than a few times a year.  Replace fabric items if they become so faded as to be unsightly, or as your impression would indicate - the richer your persona, the more clothes you should have and the more frequently you should replace worn ones.  Remember, ancient people liked bold colours and wealthier Persian warriors were known for flaunting their finery on the battlefield.  We are not looking for a drab Hollywood "ancient" look.

If you really want to go all-out as a rich noble or royal bodyguard, wear purple and saffron (golden-yellow or orange).  In Achaemenid times, trade of Tyrian purple was controlled by the state and possession of a garment made with it was an indication of royal favour.  It, and saffron, are as expensive today as they were then because the real things can still only be produced in minute quantities by labour-intensive processes.  While other natural purples are available, they can't replicate Tyrian purple's resistance to fading, so in this case alone would I actually recommend an artificial substitute.

Leathers should ideally be vegetable- or otherwise naturally-tanned or else just rawhide (not actually leather, but you'll get it from the same sources).  However, I'm not going to insist on anything because finding the right stuff can be challenging.  And you will be needing a lot of leather:

1-2 ounces per square foot:  Almost like fabric, a good leather for covering scabbards or other hard objects.

3-5 ounces:  Use a soft leather in this weight for shoes and as backing for scale armour.

7-9 ounces and up:  All-leather knife sheaths, bowcases, quivers, belts, bottles.

12 ounces and up:  Shoe soles and shields.

Rawhide:  Thick for shields, thin for shield facings.  It's more resistant to puncture than tanned leather, but rots if allowed to stay damp for extended periods.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Guh.  Kicking "1,000 words or less" down the road again due to work (read:  working on getting work).  Next up:  "Denim and leather," which'll be rather short.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

History - Who were the Achaemenids?

Since "The Persian empire in 1,000 words or less" is coming along a bit slower than I anticipated, I'm going to buy some time by changing up the schedule a bit.  Hopefully, this post will become clearer upon rereading after I get that one done.

The traditional view of the first Persian empire is that their rulers all belonged to a single family, founded c.  700 BC by Achaemenes (Hakhâmaniš).  But Cyrus the Great does not mention an Achaemenes in the lineage he presents in the Cyrus Cylinder, the record of his conquest of Babylon, where he traces his ancestry to a Teispes.  The name first occurs among the inscriptions of Darius the Great at Behistun, the third man to hold the throne after Cyrus' death.

Cyrus' elder son and first successor, Cambyses II, died in 522 BC just eight years after his father.  According to the Behistun inscription, in the last year of Cambyses' life, during his lengthy occupations in Egypt, a man claiming to be his younger brother Bardiya (whom Cambyses had secretly killed before his Egyptian campaign years earlier) raised Persia and Media in rebellion and declared himself king.  This man, whom Darius identified as a Magian named Gaumata, ruled the empire from March to September of 522 BC before Darius and six other Persian noblemen gained access to his palace at Sikayauvatiš and killed him.  The story is essentially the same in Herodotus' Histories, except that he uses the name Smerdis in reference to the Cyrus' younger son.

It is in this same inscription that Darius details his shared ancestry with Cyrus:  Cyrus' grandfather Cyrus I was brother to Darius' great-grandfather Ariaramnes, their father was Teispes, Teispes' father was Achaemenes.

It should come as no surprise that modern historians have questioned whether Darius was really a relative of Cyrus at all, and whether Achaemenes existed or was an invention of Darius.  Adding to the suspicion is the fact that Cyrus' Pasargadae inscription identifying himself as an Achaemenid is written in Old Persian cuneiform, generally believed to have been invented during the reign of Darius.  For these reasons, some prefer to describe the ruling line before Darius as "Teispid" rather than Achaemenid.

I am not going to assert a conclusion here.  I'm bringing up this topic early on because I believe that reenactors shouldn't just recount the most popular version of history when there are real uncertainties.  We should aim to present the truth as best we can discern it; if that includes admitting sometimes that the truth is unclear or disputed, so be it.