The Pursuit of Happiness?

Persian (Hi)stories of Empire and Domination

Abstract

This paper engages with recent scholarship on Herodotus’ understanding of Persian (ideologies of) imperialism. It is suggested that the Histories offer a coherent counter-narrative of Achaemenid history as one of (successful) conquest and, ideally, never-ending expansion. Critical episodes of royal campaigns across imperial borderlands are scrutinized to prove this argument. Against the background of long-standing ancient Near Eastern conceptions of kingship and rulership as resting upon divinely sanctioned success, Herodotus’ account of Persian military failures calls into question the king’s foundational claims to authority and, with them, the very rationale of his empire’s place in the world: to bring ‘happiness for mankind’. By contrast, Herodotus crafted the Histories as an act of mimicry of and resistance to said project. He developed his masterpiece within the framework of, and as a reaction to, discourses about history and empire which, under the Great Kings, seem to have been more widespread, constructed and impactful than usually thought.